Welcome to Gaia! ::

I think a really helpful thing in reviving conversation here would be to know what people are interested in- religion, magic, politics, kings, architecture, daily life, craftmanship, jewelry, animal and/or plant life, etc... there are so many aspects of ancient Egypt, perhaps it is daunting to people to figure out where to jump in? There's probably too many options for a simple poll, but we could work it into a thread somehow. Maybe even conduct several polls at the same time, covering a wider range of subjects? At any rate, knowing what people are interested in specifically would be a natural segueway to getting some new threads started- and I do think that we have a few good threads available for general discussion already, so perhaps we should try some which are more specific (e.g. discussion of a particular god or temple, rather than religion in general), and see if that opens the way for people to start up threads on other, equally specific subjects.

For my part, I don't come by Gaia as often as I used to- my computer has been having issues with the site ever since their first experiment with revamping their "look," only months after I joined- and when I do come by I usually prefer to post comments in other people's threads. So getting some new threads started would lead to an increase in my own post count, at least. wink

I like quizes and games, but they do tend to be something of a gold-sink since you have to keep supplying prizes. If you have a few ideas and would like to put them into use, though, I'm game. (and I reserve the right to pun here, because the ancient Egyptians loved that kind of word play!) It really is a shame that Gaia doesn't have any Egypt-themed items, other than the mummy costume!

Hmm... I might start posting links and articles from Egyptology news sites. ^_^

I could make more subforums but there are two problems:
1) I need people to donate
2) I have already made a subforum and it hasn't been used since I added it and people were like "Woah role plays, yeah!" so it would be a waste to keep creating subforums.

If we get more members then I will think about this further.

Subforums cost 2,500g but I don't want to create any more subforums as I learned that you can not remove subforums once you purchased one.

I am thinking of changing that particular subforum into a competition subforum, with lotto, art contests etc with other activities such as puzzles. The only problem is that with the lack of members attending there will not be alot of people to attend such activities, especially Lotto.

But I am also thinking of using my Mule account as a Guild Mule, the only problem is that it has many posts on it that I do not want people seeings so I may need to do a bit of posting before I use it (so the old posts get deleted). I can get Guild members only to join it so they can recieve PM's easier without me having to do everyone's one-by-one and wasting time (but a positive thing is that I recieve more gold, lol) on this account. It can also recieve PM's from members. Also if Crew find it uncomfortable to announce warnings then I can use the mule to do so.

That sounds like a good idea- hey, the forum already says that it's reconstructing... not a big stretch at all to change it to reconstructionism. wink I'd prefer calling it a Reconstructionism forum rather than the Kemetic Orthodoxy forum, since that would keep it open to several types of modern Egyptian practices which give priority to the traditions of ancient Egypt- not just KO! If you want it to be more open, including forms of practice which even loosely involve Egypt we could call it the Modern Practice forum or something like that... but since this is the Egyptology guild I tend to think that it's reasonable to expect discussion to remain in the realm of Egyptian theology. I caution against calling it the Kemetic Orthodoxy forum because, even though I am a student of KO myself, I think that gives the mistaken impression that KO is the only version of living Kemetic religion which is out there today- and that is a misjudgement of the modern Kemetic community which is already far too prevalent online.

I think it would be a great idea to have a place for folks to talk about modern practices and experiences with the gods- and I also think, as a modern practitioner myself, that it's very important for us to be able to distinguish between what we learn from these sorts of experiences and what we know from the records which the people of ancient Egypt have left behind for us to study. Actually, I've been thinking of starting a discussion along those lines, somewhere in the guild.

I think that in many Egyptian forums, discussion of modern practice is not always smiled upon precisely because many modern practitioners don't seem to be able to distinguish between their sources, don't check them against each other, and don't differentiate or document them in their posts. It can make a scholarly discussion of the issues very difficult, and very frustrating... I've seen it happen in other forums where people feel that they have experienced something which directly conflicts with what is described in the historical record, and when that fact is revealed to them not only do they not consider this as an indication that they may have misheard or misinterpretted their vision/oracle/past life memory/etc... they get defensive when someone points out the discrepency and act like they're being oppressed or attacked. sweatdrop Thank ntjr that hasn't happened here yet!

Creating a subforum for modern practices, and requesting folks to stick to scholarly sources when posting anywhere else in the guild, may also make the place more comfortable for those who aren't modern practitioners and would prefer to keep discussion strictly academic. Hopefully, of course, we'll maintain a level of academic integrity within our modern practices as well... just adding other sources into the mix. 3nodding

So long story short= yeah, I think that's a great idea.^_^

That would be nicely subtle, and a Religion Forum would include pretty much anyone. 3nodding It may be a good idea to have a sticky somewhere which designates it as an appropriate place for discussion of modern Egypt-related religious experiences... since the title is rather ambiguous, and folks looking to discuss their own encounters with the gods might not pick it out as being the forum for the modern practitioners without being pointed that way.^_^

I found this nice site that has Ancient Egyptian clip art, you just have to link to it if your using it.
http://www.kingtutone.com/clipart/

and these too:
http://www.neferchichi.com/clipart.html
http://www.webweaver.nu/clipart/egyptian.shtml

Any time! xd