Reddit mentions of Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World

Books which may interest, especially for beginners (The first three are highly recommended)

Magic in Ancient Egypt: Revised Edition

Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World

Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred

Following the Sun: A Practical Guide to Egyptian Religion, Revised Edition

Circle Of The Sun: Rites And Celebrations For Egyptian Pagans And Kemetics

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Featuring Integrated Text and Full-Color Images (This book isn't much of a "for beginners"-- it's just a translated funeral text. Still a great read for Kemeticists, though.)

The Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook (Just a contemporary prayerbook which may interest)

> 1.) How are the gods viewed? Extra-dimensional beings, intelligences of natural forces or something else? Are they part of our world or another one?

These small questions demand exhaustive responses, haha. It's difficult for me to condense it here, but I will try, and will more than likely end up elaborating in comments later on.

The Netjeru are viewed as Gods -- Gods with multifarious and complex natures. They're not archetypes. They're not mere "metaphors" for anything, and are by no means facile explanations for natural phenomena conconcted by "pre-rational" humans, as many Moderns who privilege promissory materialist philosophy and interpretations are so fond of and known to say.

Personification-deities -- like Ma'at, the embodiment of the concept of ma'at; Sia, the embodiment of Divine intellect, perception, prophecy, etc.; and Shai(t), the God Who manifests more often as male than as female, and embodies fate, destiny, prophecy, etc. -- are still literal Divine beings as all the rest, but are not ones which are personable and personally accessible to human beings, on human terms. Some are much more "humanly accessible" than others. There are many classes of deities, with many roles and functions each performs, both on an individual basis and as units.

Fair warning: One does not get very far with two-dimensional interpretations and approaches to Egyptian religion(s). Ancient Egyptian theo-logic is incredibly polyvalent, and is not comprised of nor dictated by a series of competitive and contradictory bivalent values.

Arguably, the majority of the Netjeru are both immanent (within the world) and transcendent (above/outside the material world but still affecting it). That said, there are Gods that specifically dwell in the Duat (the Unseen), and do not manifest in the Seen (the material world which we inhabit). These obscure legions of specialized Divinities and "demons" are primarily but not exclusively encountered in funerary religious material, including but not limited to the Books of the Earth.

We must account for differences between localities and time periods, too . . . there is simply no simple, short, sweet answer (or set(s) of answers) to such questions, I'm afraid. Nor should there be, for a religion (or rather, series of religions) so old and multiplex as those of Ancient Egypt.

>2.) What should I read first? Should I study the myths or read a 101 book?

>3.) What specific books do you recommend?

There is no one book, nor only a couple of "handy manuals," that will inform you even remotely satisfactorily on Ancient Egyptian religion(s) and/or ritual mechanics. Anything that focuses solely on "myth," as per the nature of the discipline of "Mythology" (which is the study of myth as literature, frequently to the exclusion of cultural and religious context, and without regard for the fact that not all myth corresponds to ritual, or vice versa), will inevitably be inadequate and piecemeal.

The easiest place for me to start is to advise you whose works to avoid. Rosemary Clark, E. A. Wallis Budge, Judith Page, Normandi Ellis, Jeremy Naydler, and Jocelyn Almond are among those on the "Do Not Read" list. They're all rife with interpretative and methodological faux pas and plain-old factual historical inaccuracies.

The not-so-easy place for me to go from there is whose I recommend. There are too many scholars and texts to recommend, and my advice and recommendations are most definitely colored by my formal education in Philo/Theo and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. There are some articles I would recommend before out-and-out textbooks, but I realize that not many people have ready access to them as I do.

Anyway, even the best "Western" scholars, such a Jan Assmann and John Baines and Dimitri Meeks and Stephen Quirke, have their own interpretative problems embedded in their best pieces of writing. That said, Stephen Quirke probably has the best (not to mention the most recent) introductory, survey text on Ancient Egyptian religion(s) to date. I absolutely do not recommend Garry Shaw's, which was published last year, for all his privileging of Modernity over "pre-rational" Ancient non-Greeks and refusal to view Egyptian religious material as anything other than "poor explanations of the physical world for people without recourse to particle physics" (paraphrasing, though "for people without recourse to particle physics" are among his exact words). Nor does Shaw say anything different or better than other scholars like Meeks and Assmann and Baines have already said years earlier, elsewhere.

Erik Hornung's Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt : The One and the Many is one of the most important books on the nature of Egyptian religion(s). While I have some issues with it, I highly advise people curious about Egyptian religion(s) read that text in particular. Definitely plan to read that one, and read it slowly and carefully. Many Modern Kemetics who have read it didn't particularly understand the material for whatever reasons, which I highly suspect had to do with, in no small part, speed-reading and no time taken for critical reflection.

Maulana Karenga composed the most extensive -- not to mention, fair -- study on the Egyptian concept of ma'at to date. He does a good job of pointing out some problems in other scholars' attempts at unpacking the issue over the last several decades, and he does a good job outlining what, precisely, ma'at entails morally-ethically through extensive analyses of diverse bodies of textual evidence from different periods of Pharaonic history. Ma'at, in case you and/or those reading don't already know, is the underpinning of the entire religion(s) and Kemetic worldview, and it's impossible to be a Kemetic without understanding what ma'at is, and making it the foremost part of one's daily life and the foremost goal of one's life.

Robert K. Ritner and Geraldine Pinch wrote texts addressing heka -- Ritner's are considered to be among the best, while Pinch's are considered adequate (she makes glaring citation mistakes in areas, for instance, i.e. in the sections she writes concerning the Seven Hathors. No spell in primary source material, from any period, exists where They perform as Pinch states They perform, on top of her not providing citation for what text she (mis)interpreted those sections from). J. F. Borghouts' Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts, although brief, is frequently cited and worth looking at. A PDF of it should be floating around the interwebs somewhere, if you're interested in that, since it's pretty expensive to acquire physical copies of and is, to my knowledge, since out of print.

James P. Allen's, Thomas G. Allen's, and Raymond O. Faulkner's translations of the most famous funerary texts are among the best. Adriaan De Buck's translations of the Coffin Texts are considered authoritative, but are considerably difficult -- especially for those outside Academia -- to gain access to. I should note that the funerary texts are only so important. They honestly do not play a major role in Modern Kemetic practice and belief, though Modern Kemetics do by no means totally ignore them. Important to know, not much practical use, in other words.

As for Modern Kemetic works . . . nnnnot many exist which I could recommend in good conscience. The late Richard Reidy's Eternal Egypt is much acclaimed by many Modern Kemetics, though it does contain some errors. That's not to say that it's utterly useless, only that some of the rituals contained therein (such as those pertaining to Sekhmet) are predicated on erroneous information and mistaken interpretations. Tamara Siuda's Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook is, admittedly, only particularly handy if you're looking into becoming part of the Kemetic Orthodox Temple. It contains pointers on how to erect and dedicate shrines (in the Kemetic Orthodox way, that is); how to perform the Kemetic Orthodox rite of senut; "how to pray" and prayers in English; and snippets of introductory information about some of the most important Egyptian deities. Nothing super-heavy.

I hope this helps; and apologies for the length of my response.

The upside to Kemeticism is that there's a decent number of solid online blogs and other resources that can help you out, getting started. There's nothing wrong with looking for local groups as /u/Farwater suggested, but that can be difficult with such a small religious community. That being said, Kemeticism has a disproportionately strong online community, and little compunction about sharing things through online formats, so you're not out of luck. Blogs like The Twisted Rope have good material, and Edward P. Butler's Henadology page has very good pages on many of the Netjeru, among other subjects.

As for organizations, probably the most well known in Kemeticism is Kemetic Orthodoxy. I'm not a member, and I don't agree with their approach or perspective on everything, but their leadership seems to be knowledgeable and the community, from the outside, appears solid. They also provide a lot of resources for newcomers, even if their henotheistic leanings are perhaps unconventional compared to other Kemetic groups I've seen.

The book that helped me the most starting out, personally, was Eternal Egypt by Richard Reidy. The rituals therein are perhaps a bit much for the average newcomer (or for non-priests, more generally), but they provide a solid framework to work from, and something to adapt to your own ritual needs or requirements.

Aside from all of that, we have several Kemetic regulars in the r/pagan Discord server, you can find a link to that over on the sidebar.

Now, of course, much of that is general info and not dealing directly with your two obstacles that you presented.

The foremost principle of Kemetic life is the maintenance of ma'at, which you seem to have a basic handle on. Other 'rules' are somewhat looser save for issues like ritual purity, which does involve some particulars and taboos. Most of the resources I offered can help with that, the biggest thing to avoid is any blood or bodily waste in ritual space, which (blood aside, given how it functions in some other religions) is more or less a given for most people.

As for your family, that's something that anyone other than you (or others who know them personally) will have trouble helping with. You'll know better than any of us if it's worth trying to bring them into the loop, or if it's only going to cause problems.

Hopefully this helps, and of course don't hesitate to ask further questions if need be, or pop into the Discord for more real-time discussion, as it suits you.