Subtle Vengeance

Abandoned project is abandoned? Nope! She-who-wears-red would never forgive me if I gave up that easily. After the jump, update on the progress of the KemCal.

Okay, so I haven’t touched the code since I got sick with that infection last month. However, the project is moving forward! Current notes:

- Still waiting to hear back from Nisut about the Prayerbook data. She has a busy schedule, being head of a religion and all, and apparently little to no support staff, so that’s okay, I totally understand. Unfortunately, the members of the Kemetic Orthodox faith aren’t very keen to volunteer information to an outsider without her say-so (totally understandable!) and all the info they have seems to come down from her. And being the honest type I am, I am not about to join a faith just to peek at their notes. Such deception would be sacrilege, and Sekhmet’s eye sees a lot clearer than Sauron’s.

- Lacking her feedback, I’ve been looking for other reliable sources. The more I look, the more complicated this gets. The overwhelming response is “too hard; don’t try.” I refuse to accept this so easily; I strongly believe that for Kemetic Reconstructionism (or Revivalism, or whatever you may practice) to move forward, we need to get off the Wiccan calendar (no offense, Wiccans, I love you guys) and start honoring the Netjer in ways more befitting their origins.

- It IS really hard! There’s a lot of stuff that’s conditional based on lunar cycles and some based on the stars. I may have to simplify. What I come up with will almost certainly be my personal interpretation of the calendar. But that’s to be expected; I’m condensing 3 or 4 thousand years of history into a 12-month calendar. There’s bound to be some discrepancy. What I’m trying to make is a guideline, not a rock-solid edict to the faithful.

- The Reformed Kemeticism SIG board at ecauldron has been particularly friendly and helpful. These folks seem motivated to gather info and recommend sources to one another. Taking some of the grunt-work out of research means more people can learn about Kemetic beliefs, which is super. Also it means I don’t have to go hunting in bookstores and libraries as much.

- On a technical note, I’m not happy with the back-end on the app. It was never meant to stay as it is (much of it is in sloppy hard-code, I would get poor marks from my professors back in University), and I will need to basically re-write the whole engine before I actually add the revised data I hope to collect. Fortunately I have something pseudocoded in my brain using parallel arrays of dates and strings that I think will work nicely. It’ll take me a couple days to do. I’m putting it off until I have better data to work from. Also because I’m lazy.

- On a spiritual note, there’s some stuff going on.. I don’t want to throw details out right now but let’s just say that some exciting developments may have happened in my life through serendipity. I believe this is related to my shifts in attitude, religious diligence and the amount of effort I dedicate to this research in particular. This has been a theme over the last couple decades of my life: I seem to have God-touched luck. Thanks, Nefertem! I’ll have to see about adding another statue or two to my little shrine area. (Ptah deserves props too; he’s the source of my mad science, and as such the reason I can think in pseudocode)

Life is good, overall. The project continues apace and I hope to release a beta version for public consumption in the upcoming months. Thank you all for your patience, and may whatever Gods you observe cast their warmest gaze upon you.

Em Hotep, Senebty.

1. Bastemhet says:

   August 17, 2010 at 19:16

   Hey, I thought I already posted a comment here so either I didn’t or you didn’t pass it through. I’ll try once again (or for the first time?)

   What you can do is base the date of Wp Rnpt on the new year for the Coptic Orthodox calendar. This next link would explain why:
   http://www.copticchurch.net/easter.html

   Then we can explain how to figure out when Sopdet rises in that person’s area, and then make it so that the program slides all the festival days over accordingly. Please let me know if this works out because I’d like to see this calendar up ASAP. I also think it would be pretty awesome to make a desktop widget for the calendar using google apps or something.
2. James says:

   August 17, 2010 at 20:34

   Of course, being the putz I am, I missed your first comment. Sorry about that!
   I’ve been meaning to post an update about this project. It’s not dead – far from it – but it has evolved. The new project is hosted at http://kemeticcalendar.org/ and I welcome any and all help from the community.
   The project is now a festivals wiki, including a complete(ish) list of festivals by kemetic date and as much info as I can compile about the calendar and its interpretation. In addition, each festival has its own page where more information can be added.
   The only thing I ask from anyone who wishes to contribute is that we keep it professional. There is an awful lot of uncited and in some cases downright inaccurate information about Kemet online, and I believe it’s because of this that Kemetic faiths are so inaccessible to those seeking enlightenment.
   All information on kemeticcalendar.org not directly linked to a verified historical (i.e. ancient) source will be considered personal interpretation or UPG. This information is welcome on the site, as interpretations of others can be extremely helpful in understanding and respecting old traditions, but it will always be clearly marked to avoid confusion and to keep the site relevant to historical researchers and “hard” reconstructionists.
   The desktop app is, for the time being, retired. The dependence of the religious calendar on the lunar cycle made it far too complicated in the form I was using it, and I feel it would be inappropriate to shoehorn so many religious festivals into the civil (secular) kemetic calendar.