Priesthood

I have tried to write this post several times. After last night's experience with Annubis, I am trying again.

Sometime after my  Alexandrian neophyte, I thought being a priest sounded pretty good. I have no idea why. It never occurred to me before. There was no prior desire in that direction, none. I have already chronicled that my Alexandrian path was a disaster. I was reminded of why last night after the Anubis rite in a ways I will not chronicle here. Their mode of thought is utterly alien to my own.

Priesthood has returned to my thoughts over the past few months.  There are many forms that I think of as priestly but they have different names, pastor, deacon, holy man, rabbi, preacher and a host of others. When I examined my thoughts on priestly service, I landed on the idea of the Catholic priest. From my perspective, which may be theologically incorrect, the Catholic priest intercedes with "God" for or on the part of the laity. He performs the rites that lead to Holy Communion. He hears their 'sins' and forgives them 'for'* Christ or at least passes on the message of forgiveness.

(* for is in quotes because I didn't know the proper word to use.)

The Druid is a priest. He organizes rituals, counsels, guides and provides a place for pagans of all stripes.

My mentor is a priest by my definition as he has officiated the initiation rituals. Those rituals require a human to work for the gods and the candidate. He intercedes and brings them together. He works for the candidate and does not expect the candidate to serve him. He counsels and provides a holy place.

I find myself becoming a different sort of priest. I stand between lay people, magicians, witches, pagans of all stripes and certain aspects of the gods. I have done so through divination. I have done so as a temporary priest of the Helpful Deity. I did so for my friend with Anubis last night. I will do so again. I appear to have the ability to call upon a wide variety of gods. Oddly, this ability isn't all that different that reading the tarot, which was my only acknowledged talent to this point.

I am thinking at this point that the primary duty of such a priest is to be true to the god or goddess I'm calling at the moment or to the generic "God" when the Universe comes calling. My job is to pass the message in as true form as possible without owning what the human that hears that message does with it. This is a bit like being a mailman. The sender of the letter trusts the mail will be delivered unaltered. The receiver trusts the postman not to provide advice on which catalog to take and how to manage all those bills.

My job is not to bring the seeker to the deity in question. My job is to manifest as much of that deity as possible for the person that comes to me for such aid.

I can do that.