The Ancient Egyptian D20 Dice: A New Twist on an Old Divination Technique

 

(originally posted on the Set of the Oasis Facebook page, September 9, 2024, archived here)

The oldest twenty-sided dice were found in Dakhla Oasis in Egypt, one of the last hold-outs of Set worship. They were found to have the symbol of a deity on each side, and was used as a form of divination, although the exact way it was used is unknown. I decided to do one of my own, with my own twenty deities. It’s almost like tarot cards but with dice instead. It can be used to decide which deity you should contact for something, or for a more in-depth reading based on the positive and negative characteristics of each deity. (I do so like deities who are upfront about having flaws and not being completely “all-knowing, all-loving and all-good” unlike a certain lying, oppressive god we all know). The inverted characteristics can be determined with a coin flip or omitted altogether if one wishes. They may not necessarily be something the particular deity is shown to have in myths, most are just the positive characteristics taken to extremes unless I happen to know a story about a God’s negative side. In fact, many of the negative characteristics listed are things the deity might be able to help you through if you’re dealing with them yourself, as they’ll have had experience dealing with them.

Ancient Egyptian D20 Dice

The original names of the deities are:

1. Amun
2. Pre
3. Ptah
4. Thoth
5. Atum
6. Khepri
7. Geb
8. Osiris
9. Horus
10. Isis
11. Bastet
12. Hapy
13. Triphis
14. Shay (Agathos Daimon)
15. Nephthys
16. Neith
17. Shepshit (Agathe Tyche)
18. Min
19. Khonsu
20. Mut

Works Cited:

https://www.antikemagie.com/ancient-icosahedron-deities-demotic/

#13, Triphis, is another name for the Lion Goddess Repyt, A Goddess of Healing and Curing Disease, consort of Min (https://seshkemet.weebly.com/repyt-repit.html)

#14, Shai, aka Shay, is the God of Fate, Destiny and Luck.

#17, Shepshit is possibly Resheph, God of War and Disease, but I am not %100 sure.

The Armeno-Kemetic Version:

1. Set-Ra
2. Ash
3. Astarte/Ishtar
4. DjehuTir 
5. Atum
6. Anahit
7. Spandaramet
8. Vahagn
9. Horus
10. Astghik
11. Anat
12. Anubis
13. Hathor-Sekhmet
14. Hutuini
15. Nephthys
16. Neith-Nané
17. Sobek
18. Min
19. Mihr
20. Tawaret 

Explanations 

1. Set-Ra: A synchronization of Set and Ra. Qualities: Chaotic change, storms, conflict, protection, maturity, self-improvement, leadership, foreigners, balance of Chaos and Order, finding one’s inner-light in the darkness. Inverted: Envy, anger, rash judgment, hypersexuality , being a societal misfit, infertility.
2. Ash: Libyan-Egyptian God of Wine and the Oasis. Qualities: Refreshment, Comfort, Journeys, Vision quests, Cleanliness, foreigners. Inverted: Excessive escapism, addiction. 
3. Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna: Primordial Goddess who spans across cultures, known for surviving a trip to the underworld . Qualities:  Beauty, love, difficult quests. Inverted: Envy, narcissistic tendencies, wrath.
4. DjehuTir: A synchroniztion of Thoth/Djehuti with Armenian Wisdom God Tir. Qualities: Wisdom, writing, death, dreams, balance, mediating conflict. Inverted: Nightmares, overconfidence, bureaucracy, finality, data loss, grief.
5. Atum: Primordial cosmic creator deity, may also use Ptah or Amun according to one’s preference. Qualities: Creativity, beginnings, the universe, seeing the bigger picture. Inverted: disconnect from everyday reality, excessive creativity leading to unfinished projects, lack of focus. 
6. Anahit: Armenian Goddess of Motherhood. Egyptian equivalents may be found in Isis, Mut. Qualities: Motherhood, fertility, protection, healing, gold, wheat. Inverted: favoritism to one’s own children over others, materialism. 
7. Spandaramet: Armenian Goddess of Earth, Wine, the Underworld. Egyptian equivalent is Geb, who represents the male aspects of Earth. Qualities: Earth, femininity, stability, grounding, the cycle of life and death, motherhood. Inverted: destruction (via earthquakes), addiction.
8. Vahagn: Armenian God of Fire, Storms, and Reaper of Dragons. Shares similarities with both Set and Horus. Qualities: Fire, thunder, strength, conflict, fighting in defense. Inverted: Anger, blind hatred and forgetting to see someone as an individual rather than a member of a group (for all dragons in Vahagn’s case, maybe for a group of people in yours). 
9. Horus: Egyptian Sun God, rival of Set. Qualities: Combat prowess, leadership, pride, fatherhood. Inverted: Cheating, conflict, ego, blind obedience, broken pride, to be weighed down by the troubles of one’s parents or ancestors.
10. Astghik: Armenian Goddess of Love, Water and Beauty. Qualities:  Love, soothing comfort, cleansing, purification. Inverted: naïveté, being overly-kind. 
11. Anat: Canaanite Goddess of War. Qualities: Battle, strength, gender nonconformity, fertility. Inverted: violence, rage. 
12. Anubis: Egyptian God of Death, Patron of Lost Souls and Orphans. Qualities: Shadow, balance, judgment, guidance, death, change, finding lost things, helping thise who are lost, endings. Inverted: overt darkness, grief, existential dread, hyperfocus on mortality, finality. 
13. Hathor: Egyptian Goddess of Love, Drunkeness and Music. Has another side to Her personality, Sekhmet, who is best understood as a unique entity rather than just the negative aspects of Hathor, having positive and negative qualities of Her own. Flip a coin ifyou want to choose between Hathor and Sekhmet. Hathor’s qualities:: love, creativity, beauty, music, fun. Inverted: Exessive escapism, neglect of responsibility, hypersexuality, addiction, heartbreak. Sekhmet’s qualities: Protection, tough love, healing from either wounds or illness, feminine strength. Inverted: wrath, blind anger, hatred, disease. 
14. Hutuini: Urartian God of Luck, Fate and Victory. Egyptian equivalent: Shay. Qualities: Fortune, wealth, luck, strength. Inverted: misfortune, bad luck, defeat. 
15. Nephthys: Egyptian Goddess of Night, Funerals, Keeper of the Bennu Bird (Egyptian phoenix). Qualities: Comfort, shadow work, reaching acceptance, mental recovery, overcoming trauma. Inverted: grief, depression, excessive darkness, infidelity. 
16. Neith-Nané: A synchronization of two similar Egyptian and Armenian Goddesses. Qualities: Hunting, weaving, creativity, elder wisdom, motherhood, grandmotherhood, nurturing, mediation, advice. Inverted: birthing negativity (Neith is the mother of A𓌜p𓌜e𓌜p𓌜 in some myths), violence, unwanted advice.
17. Sobek: Egyptian God of Crocodiles. Qualities: Strength, protection, stability, mediation, ancient wisdom, constructive chaos. Inverted: gluttony, hypersexuality, destruction,
18. Min: Egyptian Fertility God. Qualities: Health, pride, fertility, masculinity, overcoming shame and embarrassment. Inverted: complete shamelessness, hypersexuality. 
19. Mihr: Armenian God of Light and Truth. Egyptian Equivalent  - Ma’at. Qualities: Light, balance, justice. Inverted: Blinding light, painful truths. 
20. Tawaret: Egyptian Goddess of Motherhood and Protection.  Qualities: Fierce protectiveness, strength, intimidation of enemies. Inverted: violence, wrath. 

Practice run: Sutekh’s Reading

Simple horseshoe spread:

Distant Past

Recent Past

Present

Near Future

Distant Future (Destination)

Distant Past:

15. Nephthys- He was healing and recovering from trauma, suffered a long depression before reaching acceptance and moving on. This could be describing the “Long Night”, between the abolition of Kemeticism and the discovery and translation of the Rosetta Stone. 

Recent Past:

9. Horus - He began to act as a leader again. This could be when He started to rebuild His following over the past century or more, recent history to a God. 

Present: 

13. Hathor-Sekhmet - He has been full of love, both for His consorts and His new followers. He has been enjoying offerings of music and wine. While also fighting and taking down the Chaos Serpent every night. 

Near Future: 

13. Hathor-Sekhmet - Pulled once again, it can mean that things will continue as more or less the same for the near future. There will be more good times as well as tough times ahead. Both love and conflict. 

Distant Future: 

16. Neith-Nané - Sutekh will be a very ancient, wise, cosmic God, perhaps very different from His personality in ancient times or at present. Even Gods will seek His advice and solace. He will eventually rise to the ranks of Neith. 

Incantation to Channel Lord Sutekh

 

I wrote this incantation some months ago during a meditation. I've written it, and now I've spoken it out loud for this video, but I can't say I've actually tried channeling Lord Sutekh, yet anyway. According to the Kemetic Orthodoxy channeling an Egyptian God was done in ancient times and was called a "Saq" or "Sahk". From Kemet.org:

"Saq (sahk) or "appearance" is the full possession of a trained priest by the ka of a Name (their Parent God or Goddess) during a state ritual. To say "a priest is in saq" is to say that (s)he is currently possessed by Netjer. Saq is one of the most immediate and profound ritual experiences of Kemetic Orthodoxy."

I am not a trained priest, but I do enjoy some creative writing, which is why I wrote this.

The background music again comes to us from Alone in the Hollow Garden, from the song "Aeon of Set". The art is by me, from my webcomic Alcatraz High School.

𓋹֍֎𓋹

Incantation to Channel Lord Sutekh

The Sky is my mother. The Earth is my father. I am a man of infinite cubits, whose name is Adverse Day. 

The Foreigner who wanders in the desert, searching for his oasis. 

Who nightly battles unspeakable monsters so that those he loves may sleep soundly. 

Who defends Ra on his solar barque and upholds Ma’at. 

I am the sha that perches atop a sand dune and howls at the incoming sandstorm.

Who forever carries the weight of his brother on his back, but still goes forth with strength.

If ever I taste defeat, I come back stronger.

For I am of the imperishable stars which circle above the northern skies. I cannot, and will not die.

In your moments of greatest trevail, I am the whisper that tells you to keep going. Because you can, and you must.

Such are the words of the eternal Sutekh, Lord of the Seven Stars! I am mighty, and so are you.

(audience)

dѡ'ä Sἐѡteƙḫ

Dua Sutekh!

ίânŭn mä'ą

Truly it is so...

𓋹֍֎𓋹

~ Siamanto the Foreigner

 𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀

Սիամանթօ Օտարը

https://youtu.be/tpsXBzKTVuQ?si=BlnWSvMzEfTSA4g9

Xeper Xepera Xeperu ~ The Mantra of Set

 “Xeper Xepera Xeperu. Խեպեր Խեպերա Խեպերու:”

Early in my journey with Lord Sutekh I learned of His mantra, Xeper Xepera Xeperu. Much like Sekhmet’s “Sa Sekhem Sahu”. But somehow it got filed away in the back of my mind in the face of a constant flow of new information, thanks to my ongoing addiction to books and term papers about Egyptian mythology. It was brought to my attention again when I read J.M. Dupree’s “Morning Hymn to Seth”. 

“Xeper” is an Egyptian verb meaning “to come into being”, or even deeper, to become aware of your own existence, or to will one’s own self into existence, the way Sutekh did when He split open His mother Nut’s womb at His birth. The phrase consists of three conjugations of this verb. I suppose I have an advantage over other English-speakers in that I already know how to pronounce the hard H that the “x” in “xeper” makes, as it’s the same sound as the Armenian letter Խ, and in hieroglyphs is represented by a circle with four horizontal lines through it (𓐍). It’s not a “K” nor a normal “x” sound. It would be nice to see the word spelled in heiroglyphs so I could get an even better idea of how to pronounce it. The “p” may have been pronounced as an “f” according to some sources, although “p” just feels more right to me. I wonder if it was that sneaky little horned-viper glyph that looks like a slug and makes a “v/f” sound (𓆑). I have seem some spellings of the Netjer Khepri as 𓐍𓊪𓂋𓆣, who I will get to later, and the little square definitely makes a “p” sound. So it might be spelled “𓐍𓊪𓂋”. 

Xeper, in a sense, is much like the concept of self-actualization, to come into the concept of one’s own self, or the concept of individuation, seen in Carl Jung’s Anatomy of the Self as the process by which one integrates various aspects of their personality, which will often involve confrontations with the “shadow self”. It will occur once you have stopped basing your identity on that which society has assigned you, and come into your own self. This will involve letting go of old biases, outdated ways of thought, questioning everything, and dispelling the lies you may have been raised believing. This is not an easy process, you will end up feeling very disillusioned, maybe even detached from not only those around you but from yourself, in fact you may need to undergo an ego death. 

We can see Set’s killing of Osiris as a metaphor for this process. Here Osiris represents the established order, the status quo of a rigid, heirarchical society which values conformity and obedience over individual expressions of self. I don’t know if it would even be possible to truly reach Xeper while following Abrahamic monotheism, as it runs counter to what seems to be the core of their beliefs, at least in practice, if not as a rule in their holy books. I think most of those who come to Set and make Him their patron have either already started or completed the process of reaching Xeper, even if they don’t have a word for what they’ve been through and how they have had to transform their way of thinking to survive. Reaching Xeper is like when new saplings sprout in the spring after a forest fire the previous summer. It’s a painful, destructive process but it yeilds fruit in the end. 

Another interesting aspect to Xeper, and this is kind of an unverified personal gnosis; it sounds like it has similar roots to the name of the Netjer Khepri, Ra’s scarab-headed form, symbolic of the sunrise. This is a divine state that Ra can only reach after being led through Duat by Set and fighting A𓌜p𓌜e𓌜p𓌜, along with a slew of other demons. Set leads all of His followers through the dark similarly, so that they can emerge in Xeper.  

𓋹֍֎𓋹

~ Siamanto the Foreigner

 𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀

Սիամանթօ Օտարը

Further Reading:

https://xeper.info/pub/pub_dw_xeper.html