This week, I had essentially the same question presented to me by a number of Shemsu, concerning the nature and purpose of Ma'at. Clergy in other faiths will immediately recognize this question in other forms; these are the fundamental questions of human existence and perhaps a major reason why religion was founded in the first place:

• Why do good things happen to bad people?
• What is God doing about it? Or not?
• What is God's purpose, if good people get hurt, bad people get away with it, and praying and doing sacrifice etc. don't help?

Kemetic Orthodoxy teaches belief in two things: a Being and a Process, the process sometimes being personified as one aspect of the Being. We call the Being, Netjer (or God, Which can in turn be identified by any number of its Names, or forms); and the Process, Ma'at.

While I feel I can adequately refer to Netjer as "God" and not lose persons of other religions, I do not feel that translating "Ma'at" into English is helpful, for a number of reasons. Ma'at can be translated in a number of ways, all of which fall somewhat short of the total understanding of the real Process/Being. If I call Ma'at "truth," I characterize it as absolute and static; if I name it "what is right," I make it subjective and moving. If I translate it as "justice" I bring up an even bigger set of English baggage. What does "justice" mean to a man on Death Row who never committed a crime but was convicted on trumped-up charges? What does "justice" mean to the rich and to the poor? To a person in Turkey and a person in Japan? To children or the elderly?

Ma'at is more than right action or right process.... even the word "right" in English has as many meanings as does "justice," and not all of them good. I am left with a word I cannot explain to you in the language I must use to explain it, and so we have a limitation. We will do our best to come to some understanding of what Ma'at is, even if we cannot agree on how best to term it in our native tongue.

First of all, Ma'at is a process and not an event. Ma'at happens; it is not simply a monolithic yardstick for behavior, such as the Ten Commandments of Christianity. While there have been some useful comparisons of the 42 "negative confessions" one is asked to say in the judgment halls of the Kemetic Orthodox afterlife to the Ten Commandments (such as in Karenga's The Declaration of Innocence), it is not a one-to-one comparison where Kemetics feel a need to tack on 32 more prohibitions than the Jews. The important part of the judgment of the dead, actually, is not the negative confession, but what comes afterward: the weighing of the heart (the central essence of a person, not the actual beating red muscle in one's chest) against Ma'at.

This too unfortunately is not well understood. Ma'at is not the feather on the other side of the scale. Ma'at is the scale itself. There is a very good reason why ancient artists chose the scale motif to visualize the concept of Ma'at. A scale, first of all, neither chooses nor creates what it weighs: it is completely neutral. Ma'at doesn't play favorites or choose sides.

Secondly, a scale is reactive rather than proactive: a scale doesn't start weighing until something is put upon it. Ma'at is reactive; an important revelation especially in a world where the majority of religions worship omnipotent, omnipresent Deities. Ma'at doesn't start working until you do, and then acts in reaction to what you do. She doesn't tell you what to do, She doesn't stop you, She simply reacts to your action, just like the laws of physics concerning motion and action. As such, She is fully part of the natural order of things ("order," incidentally, being another of those English words attributed as a meaning for Ma'at).

Thirdly, and in relation to Ma'at's reactive rather than proactive nature: Ma'at has a purpose, and Her purpose is to put things in balance, just like the scale. A scale weighs two things and finds a balance between them. It does not decide which is better than the other, which is right and which is wrong. It simply holds two things together, adjusts them as necessary, and forces them to balance. This is Ma'at in action. Ma'at does not always work as quickly or in the manner in which a human wishes Her to act, but She will always act when actions force Her to do so. She will weigh out what is put into Her pans, no matter who puts it there or why.

A person can have two reactions to learning these basic truths about Ma'at. One is a cynical approach: that the universe is blind and doesn't care. The other is perhaps more reminiscent of what Ma'at Herself does in a situation: looking at all sides, She always makes the correct response. If one is told that one's actions always, no matter what, have reactions, and so one is always responsible for those reactions, no matter what, it would then stand to logic that to live a life of responsibility is the best way to avoid "bad things" happening. This is more than just cleaning up your own act, and here is where it becomes most difficult.

Human beings, even in the Western world where people like to pretend this is not so, are social creatures and are to a certain extent dependent upon one another. Therefore, one's responsibility is not only to oneself, but to everyone else surrounding the self, because your actions may invoke Ma'at not just on you, but on everybody around you, the earth, perfect strangers: everything in the universe. You could be causing bad things to happen to someone and not even know it. Your response? It should be to get your life in balance: for them, for you and for Ma'at, Who exists to put things in balance in the first place.

Part of the most difficult challenge to the Kemetic Orthodox is living up to this responsibility. We do not have the luxury of omnipotent deities that are either pulling all the foreordained strings anyway, or will "fix it" for us. The gods and goddesses expect us to be responsible children and do what is right, so that the right will return to us and multiply and benefit everyone. Netjer does not intervene in the troubles of mankind not because It doesn't care, but because It has, in Its wisdom, already provided a mechanism by which Its creation can ultimately check itself: the process of Ma'at. Ma'at is also a Name, implying that She is not so far off from Netjer, after all.