The Universe works in funny ways. I did Senut this morning, and after Senut elected to put some effort into cleaning up my Akhu shrine – the altar at which I honor my ancestors. I finished up Senut and was closing the shrine, blowing out candles and whatnot. All candles were unlit while I was rearranging my Akhu shrine; when I was finished, and was making offerings to the Akhu of incense and cool water, I noticed an odd light out of the corner of my eye. Wepwawet’s candle was lit. It had spontaneously re-lit itself while I was tending to the ancestors.
My initial thought was “OMG WHAT IS HAPPENING!?” My thought following that was “Can that actually happen?” And finally, following that, was “Who cares how likely it is, that was cool”.
I’m pretty bad about honoring my ancestors. So bad, in fact, that I discovered as I was rearranging my shrine that I’d lost the book in which I was recording the names of all the ancestors I knew. Since I’m terrible with names, that’s pretty bad. I’ll have to sit down with my family tree and write them all down once more, in a new book. I thus suspect that the re-lighting candle was something of a rallying cry, the God of the Dead giving me a thumbs up, encouraging me to keep up the relationship with my ancestors. It may just be that the candle re-lit itself in a completely normal and logical manner, but that doesn’t discount the fact that it happened just as I was beginning to offer to my ancestors, or that it was a candle dedicated to a god associated with death. In fact, that makes it almost more unlikely, and more significant.
Or maybe I’m just a loony who likes to read way too much into candles.
I dunno, I try to strike a medium between “it’s just a coincidence” and “God did it!” I want to read into everything but I know I would be making a lot of it up, but I also know that I’m not making all of it up. And “there’s a natural/practical reason for this” doesn’t automatically discount “I’m supposed to glean some meaning from this.”