Sunset adoration from Liber Resh at the bus stop, facing west, as discreetly as anyone can make the sign in public. A small girl in a dinosaur raincoat watched closely, then copied it exactly. Her mother and I exchanged a nod of mutual professionalism.
Morning routine on the balcony, now that Melbourne spring is finally behaving. I light a dry bay leaf from the stove, carry it to the sink, and drop it hissing into a bowl of water, then wash my hands and face in it. That's khernips, the purifying water the old Greeks used before approaching the gods. The hiss is my favourite sound of the day. Then the first flame for Hestia, a small oil lamp on the kitchen shelf, and a splash of watered wine into the potted olive for the household gods. The neighbour's lorikeets judge me loudly. I read ten lines of the Odyssey aloud, badly, and the day can begin. Small rites done every day beat grand rites done once a year. My yiayia said the same about phone calls.
My shrine is a bookshelf with little cabinet doors, and every weekday morning it opens like a tiny shop. Wash hands and face, light a battery tealight (I work in an archive, real flame near paper makes me itch), and offer cool water and a slice of bread to Bast and Djehuty. I greet them in clumsy Middle Egyptian, then in English, because I'm fairly sure they prefer sincerity to grammar. After ten minutes I revert the offerings, which just means I thank them and eat the bread myself. Nothing is wasted in this house. Bast gets first look at the sardines on Fridays; the cat gets the sardines. Fifteen minutes a day. It has kept me steady through two job changes and one very long winter.
Four adorations of the sun a day: dawn, noon, sunset, midnight. Dawn and midnight are easy, I'm home. Noon is the problem. I work in an open-plan office. My solution for two years has been the fire stairs between floors 6 and 7. Face south, make the sign, say the words under my breath, note it in the diary at lunch. Last Tuesday a colleague came down mid-adoration and I froze with my arms at an odd angle. She said 'stretching? Same, my back is wrecked' and kept walking. People imagine ceremonial magic as robes and incense. Most days it's a stairwell, a quiet voice, and the small stubbornness of showing up when the sun reaches the top of the sky.
Day nine of sitting for five minutes before I open my laptop. I'm not good at it. My mind still wanders off by second ten. But this morning I noticed I've stopped dreading the five minutes, which feels like news.
Before the kettle goes on, before the phone, before anything: wash hands and face, stand facing the light (the sun if Leicester allows, which is rarely, otherwise the little divo lamp on its steel tray), untie my kusti and tie it again while I say the prayers. The cord goes three times around the waist, for good thoughts, good words, good deeds. Two knots in front, two at the back. My mother taught me when I was seven, at my navjote. Mostly I was worried about getting my new white sudreh stained. Thirty-four years later the whole thing takes three minutes and it is the only time of day nobody asks me for anything. The kettle, as always, can wait.
Every morning, after kusti and before work, I do the chalk. Parsi women have drawn designs on the doorstep for generations: you fill a little tin punched with holes with white chalk powder, tap it along the threshold, and the pattern falls through. Fish for good luck, flowers, neat rows of dots. My mother did hers in Bombay on a stone step polished by eighty years of feet. I do mine on a concrete step in Leicester that the postman walks through by half nine. It doesn't matter. It's a welcome, a blessing on whoever crosses, and a reminder to start the day with something beautiful, even if it only lasts until the first delivery. My neighbour's boy thinks it's for hopscotch. I've decided not to correct him.
You’ve reached the edge of the sky.