Kemetic Tradition
Execration
(Egyptian: execration texts are called Ächtungstexte in scholarship)
The ancient Egyptian ritual of identifying sources of chaos or Isfet, writing them on red pottery or wax figures, and ritually destroying them — understood as a cosmological act of defending Ma'at that parallels the nightly battle against Apep.
Execration is the ancient Egyptian ritual of destroying Isfet — writing the names of enemies, harmful forces, or sources of chaos on red pottery or wax figures and then ritually smashing, burning, or burying them. It was not personal cursing in the petty sense but a cosmological act: the human re-enactment of the gods’ nightly battle against Apep, the serpent of chaos. Just as Set spears Apep in the deepest hour of the Duat (The Book of Am-Tuat), the human practitioner destroys the named sources of disorder in their own life and world.
The ancient precedent
Egyptian Magic by Budge documents the execration tradition extensively: it was practiced at the state level (the pharaoh’s priests performed execration rites against foreign enemies, written on red pots or bound prisoner figurines) and at the personal level (private individuals wrote harmful names on pottery for destruction). The Pyramid Texts preserve early execration formulas against enemies of the deceased king. The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden shows the tradition continuing vigorously in the later period.
The theological logic
The Book of Am-Tuat and The Book of Gates provide the cosmic framework: every night, the gods perform their own execration against Apep and the forces of Isfet. Apep’s name is written; Apep’s form is bound; Apep’s image is burned. Human execration participates in this same cosmic act — the individual at their kitchen table smashing a red pot is, in Egyptian theological terms, doing what Set does in the Duat. Book of the Dead Chapter 39 provides the spoken formula for repelling Apep: words of power (heka) directed against the serpent and all its agents.
What execration destroys
Kemetic reconstructionism understands execration as appropriate for: harmful patterns within oneself (addiction, self-sabotage, destructive habits), genuine external injustice or oppression one is fighting against, named forces of chaos in one’s environment. It is not appropriate for directing harm at specific individuals — the theological framework aims at forces (Isfet as a principle) not at persons. Writing “my fear of failure” on a pot and smashing it is within the tradition’s logic; writing a person’s name to harm them is not.
The rite
Traditional materials include red pottery (available inexpensively as terracotta saucers from garden stores), a red marker, a hammer, and earth for burial. The practitioner writes the source of Isfet with its full identifying description, speaks the execration formula (drawn from Egyptian Magic or adapted from Book of the Dead Chapter 39), smashes the pottery decisively, and buries the remains away from the home. The burial returns the broken force to the earth that can absorb it. Purification before and after is standard.
Related Terms
Duat
The Egyptian underworld — the realm of cosmic transformation through which Ra navigates each night in his barque and through which every human soul travels after death on the way to judgment and the Field of Reeds.
KemeticHeka
The Egyptian principle of sacred, creative speech and magic — a primordial cosmic force older than the gods themselves, by which the universe was spoken into being and by which correctly spoken words carry genuine transformative power.
KemeticIsfet
The Egyptian cosmic principle of chaos, falsehood, injustice, and disorder — the permanent opponent of Ma'at, embodied in the serpent Apep, and increased in the world by every act of violence, deception, and oppression.
KemeticMa'at
The foundational Egyptian cosmic principle of truth, justice, balance, and right order — simultaneously a goddess and the invisible structure of the universe, the ethical standard against which every human heart is weighed at death.
KemeticOsiris
The Egyptian god of resurrection, the afterlife, and divine kingship — first king of Egypt, murdered and dismembered by Set, restored by Isis, and made eternal judge of the dead in the Duat.
KemeticRa
The self-created supreme solar deity of ancient Egypt, who sails the solar barque across the sky each day and through the underworld each night to be reborn as Khepri at dawn.
KemeticSenut
The Kemetic daily shrine ritual — a morning practice of purification, opening the shrine, presenting offerings, speaking prayer, and closing, adapting the ancient Egyptian daily temple rite for personal devotional practice.
KemeticSet
The Egyptian god of storms, the desert, and necessary chaos — murderer of Osiris and antagonist of Horus, yet also Ra's indispensable defender against the serpent Apep in the nightly underworld passage.