the idea of idols." In Egypt, as Stephan Quirke notes, any object could become more than a mere physical object by performing a special ceremony: it could "live permanently and thus open the way between this world and the world of the gods. The mummified body in a coffin, the cult image of a god, the statue of a king or a deceased nobleman, were all soulless objects that opening the mouth transformed into living forces, or, more precisely, into receptacles for the invisible and elusive force we call life." Worship Followers of Kemetism generally worship a few gods (Maat, Bastet, Anubis, Sekhmet or Thoth, among others), but recognize the existence of every god. This worship generally takes the form of prayer and setting up altars, but there are no set guidelines for worship. Altars are most often constructed using a statue or two-dimensional representation of one or more given deities, as they serve as the focal point of worship. Other additional items include candles, votive offerings, prayer beads, incense burners, and one or more dishes for food offerings. Principles of Kemetism The idea of god/gods The looseness of the Kemetist doctrine (if that word can be used at all) is best captured just by defining the object of Kemetist religious veneration. Although the Egyptian religion was a polytheistic religion (though there are scholarly egyptologys now no longer accepted distinctly minority views that monotheism was always covertly present in the background of the plurality of worshipped gods) and Kemetists do not deny this formal polytheism, it can be interpreted differently by different currents. Today, the minority definition of this problem is the traditionalist notion of individual gods as wholly individual beings with a separate cult that enter into the interactive relationships and agencies described in myths and legends. In accordance with the ancient Egyptian concept, any of the gods can be considered as the "supreme" or "most powerful" of the gods, analogically according to the mythological context that is currently referred to within the cult. The notion of a universal single god, if used at all, has a rather abstract meaning and is close in meaning to the philosophical notion of Gender: it is a designation of a particular divine quality forming "the defining feature of a group of beings of the same kind" -gods rather than individually existing beings. In addition to this, in contemporary times, one can encounter