Help me design a ritual for Bast

[starrykitten]

Hello all--

Bast has only recently joined my pantheon, and I am trying to honor Her as much as possible. I've been burning orange and yellow candles to Her, treating my cat extra-extra well, talking with Her, offering Her perfume, and other small things. I would like a ritual to really bond with Her and also to ask for Her blessings in my emotional health and my love life. I don't want to ask for too much so soon into knowing Her, but I would love to do something bigger and more formal for Her because I can tell She has a positive force on my life and is helping me love myself.

[Romani Vixen]

Em Hotep!

When designing a ritual, much depends on what your own path is. Your path gives you the frame work.

That said.... The biggest thing with any God/dess (IMHO) is to spend time with them. I have found that both Bast and Ra very much appreciate meditations on Them during a walk to work or home at dusk or dawn. Take Her shopping with you. Ask Her to tell you what She would like. The more time that you spend focusing on Her, the more clearly that you will know what to do to please Her.

Non-physicall offerings that she loves include works of art, including music and dance, and volunteerism.

[MonSno_LeeDra]

This may sound strange but Bast is a goddess that changed many times over the duration of her history. When you say you want to honor her and create a ritual I'd first have to ask which Bast are you working with? Bast of the 2nd dynasty and onward is clearly a warrior goddess and solar aligned in all her capacities and influences. She is one of the eye's of Ra in that manifestation and dipicted with a Lioness head not that of the later wild cat. Perhaps seen as an equal to Sehkmet in her influence over the Lower Kingdom and the Nile Delta. Around the 22nd dynasty she is more seen as the Lunar goddess and associated to the wild cat which would come to represent her. She is also seen more so as the Eye of Horus at that point in time and has shed many of her earlier War Goddess artibutes and takes on more of the fertility and fecundity aspects she is known for today. Yet you also have to consider the many facets of Artemis that became tied to Bast via the Greek histories and the influx of Greek settlements that came to see her more as the huntress.

Music, Dance and celebratons of great joy and merryment are at best associated to the later goddess and the histories recorded by the Greeks. As far as volunteerism that's a modern assumption at best though one can not rule out how a particular goddess may appear to anyone.

In her earliest incarnation she is associated to protection of Ra and fertility and fecundity of the land. Her protection aspect is seen in her warrior facet and protectress of the lower kingdom. In the later 22nd dynasty period she is still greatly tied to protection and fertility and fecundity of the land but has softened in apperance to the wild cat who hunts in the night pretty much. Her colors changing from the golds and bronzes of the 2nd dynastic period to more silvers and such in the later period. Though one might consider a reddish color as a primary color for given that her temple was covered in red stone from the evidence excavated at Tel Basta.

[helmsinepu]

I'd consider the volunteerism as an offering of Ma'at to Bast, if its an organization that supports those principles.

A good place to start for learning about the many aspects of Bast is the section for her on Henadology (http://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/bast/).