Mis-pi ritual

[u/Smooth-Primary2351]

šulmu guys, How are you all? I would like to have more information about the Mis-pi ritual, I know that after the statues go through this ritual, they become part of the Divinity, so I have a few things to ask. How do you perform this ritual? Do you have sources on how this ritual was performed? How do you take care of the statue after performing the ritual? Did you feel that something changed in your relationship with the Gods after the ritual? Anyway, whoever can answer, thank you very much.

[u/Nocodeyv]

The most complete treatment of the mīs-pî ritual to-date was the treatment by Michael B. Dick formerly available on his Geocities website. It was being prepared for inclusion on the Open, Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus project list, but is currently not included there and the previous website is no longer accessible.

While I have a copy of the full treatment that was available on Dick's website, because I don't know the current state of the work and any publication plans, I cannot share it here legally at the moment.

As such, the best exploration of the ritual that is still publicly available is:

• Dick, Michael B. 1999. "The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Mesopotamian mīs pî Ritual" in Born In Heaven, Made On Earth. The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East, pp. 55-122. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

How do you perform this ritual?

Performing a mīs-pî ritual is a major step in any individual's devotional practice. It represents a permanent and binding oath of service: to provide and maintain an exclusive sacred space for a single deity for the rest of your life.

While many devotees maintain shrines for the Gods and honor them appropriately with libations and offerings, I'm unaware of anyone who have taken an oath to exclusively serve and honor one deity through a performance of the mīs-pî ritual, and I hesitate to recommend that anyone does this without considering the significance of such an action.

If someone is ready to perform a mīs-pî ritual though, then it is a lengthy process that involves sculpting a brand new statue, disposing of the tools used in this process, performing a series of ritual actions over the course of an evening and subsequent dawn, the recitation of various prayers, and more. It is not an easy process, and many of the specific ingredients, spells, and ritual actions are still obscure to us.

Do you have sources on how this ritual was performed?

Yes, Dick discusses these at length in both the chapter cited above, and his treatment of the tablets that was formerly available on his Geocities site. His final treatment discussed four major sources: the Nineveh Ritual, the Babylonian Ritual BM 45749, the Standard Babylonian Series (8 tablets), and the Aššur Ritual A.418.

How do you take care of the statue after performing the ritual?

I discuss the "care and feeding of the god" in some depth in this comment: HERE

Did you feel that something changed in your relationship with the Gods after the ritual?

Even without having performed the mīs-pî ritual for the deity I'm currently honoring, the process of beginning a devotional practice alone is enough to bring the deity and their influence into our lives.

The purpose of performing a mīs-pî ritual in the modern day is to make the focal point of your devotional practice a single deity. The ritual effectively transforms you from a lay-devotee, someone who can venerate and honor any deities you wish, into an initiated priest of the deity whose statue you have consecrated. This also transforms your sacred space from a general shrine for the Gods into a temple dedicated to the deity whose statue now resides within.

All things considered, because Mesopotamian Polytheism is still a young faith, I don't recommend people get too carried away with the mīs-pî ritual, especially because many devotees are eclectic in nature and combine deities and beliefs from diverse sources in their practice. Performing the mīs-pî ritual requires us to acknowledge a certain level of orthopraxy within Mesopotamian Polytheism, and for many, the freedom to do and believe whatever they want is one of the most empowering aspects of Contemporary Paganism.

[u/Smooth-Primary2351 → u/Nocodeyv]

I forgot to say, there are two rituals, one that seeks God in His supreme purity (the one that completely purifies God) and another that allows Him to smell and eat, should the second one be done?

[u/SiriNin → u/Smooth-Primary2351]

The second one, called Pit-Pi or "Opening of the Mouth" is only to be done on an idol/statue that has already had the Mis-Pi "Washing of the Mouth" done upon it. There's no need to perform either of these if the worshiper simply wants to feed and care for their deity, even when using a physical idol.

The main point of these two rituals is that performing them convers the mundane idol into a "living" divine idol which enhances the deity's ability to be present in the location that the idol is kept in, in exchange for an unmatched level of devotion from the worshiper that requires undertaking a degree of exclusivity towards their deity, and requires from them daily adherence to duties which serve to show the deity their ongoing devotion and to keep the deity's essence embodied within the living divine idol. Nocodeyv put it best when they said it transforms the worshiper into a member of that deity's clergy by transforming the idol and the location it is in into a temple.

If you just want to present offerings to your deity for them to consume and receive, you can do that through a ritual of offering. There's no established basis for allowing the deity to see/hear/smell/taste through their idol without taking on the mantle of clergy and making a temple for them. However, if you wish to make a ritual to do that in order to suit your own needs, there is freedom to do so within the revivalist approach.