Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that all of the stuff I'm talking about here happened many years ago. I have not been directly involved with Kemetic Orthodoxy or the House of Netjer except occasional use of their resources since I left, but I've had discussions over the past year or so with people who are current members of Kemetic Orthodoxy who have said the environment around at least some of these issues has changed, as well as some of the fundamental structure of the organization. I'm not here to try scaring people away from this religion with out-of-date information, but joining the House of Netjer, my gradual shift toward Shemsuhood, and my abrupt departure were a huge part of my journey as a polytheist, and also... I get a weirdly high number of inquiries about this subject, especially from people who think of the House of Netjer as a "cult." I don't necessarily agree, but I do see where people are coming from, based on my experiences.
The first thing I feel the need to mention is that I started my involvement with the House of Netjer as a college anarchist edgelord who didn't think I needed direction from anyone. I had been long practicing Kemetic Reconstructionism, drawn to it by the God Set (in addition to just a typical childhood love of Ancient Egypt). Being in college, I had ample access to academic resources to create a personal system of worship, but I eventually took the House of Netjer Beginner's Class, a free multi-lesson rundown of the religion required of anybody interested in eventual membership. I had no intention of joining, but thought it might be a good supplement to my knowledge. I completed the class and became Remetj, which was basically their membership rung of "people who have taken the beginner's class and have access to some forums, but who have not gotten their Rite of Parent Divination (RPD) or taken any vows."
This is where I was in the faith for quite a while, although I'm not entirely sure how long. The thing is, some of the practices that were required to advance beyond Remetj were, in my opinion, really invasive and controlling. In most modern polytheistic revival religions, the Gods you personally worship are entirely up to you. In Kemetic Orthodoxy, to become a full member, you are required to spend a bunch of money to get the RPD divination done by the Nisut—their leader/pharaoh figure—who then tells you one or two Gods who are your "Parents" and a set of others who are your "Beloveds." Your Shemsu vows, if you choose to accept the results and take them, involve basically putting your Parent Gods above all other Gods, doing a daily ritual to them, etc. This gave me a lot of anxiety, as it does for a lot of people, because I already had Gods I was worshiping and was worried I would be told my Parents were a God or Gods I didn't have any interest in.
Because of this, I was Remetj for a really long time, and if I'm completely honest, I was kind of a prick about it. I was really active in the forums, and everyone knew I didn't like the RPD and was just going to go off my own way. I got into some trouble getting into arguments, including with a Priest at one point (I don't even remember what it was about, but it was definitely something stupid and inconsequential). I had a reputation for this sort of behavior, although I was always treated very well by my peers and Kemetic Orthodox leadership, and felt no pressure to be anything other than Remetj.
After graduating from college, I went through "some stuff." Being an anarchist edgelord worked for me in college because I had a dorm room and a mealplan and could schedule a bare minimum of classes concentrated in two days a week; outside of that context I was really struggling from the lack of structure, and I took a weirdly conservative turn in my spirituality. After a long while of thinking about it (I tell this story a bit in my experiences with the Gods), I got the RPD done. The results were not exactly what I hoped for, but they were really damn close, so I decided to become Shemsu.
After taking my Shemsu vows, I had at least a few years of near-complete satisfaction with Kemetic Orthodoxy. It's not that I didn't have my disagreements with some of their theology or practices, but they never gave me any impression at that point that this was a problem... there were "State" religious practices that I didn't really need to be involved in, and there were personal practices that I was obligated to do as a Shemsu that did not conflict with my beliefs, but largely I felt free to worship my Gods in accordance with my relationship to them. I was even playing around with the idea of maybe eventually seeking Priesthood; I actually told some friends about this potential aspiration a mere two days before the following happened:
I went from fantasizing about joining the Priesthood to leaving Kemetic Orthodoxy completely in the span of less than a week. This was due to an email we all got from their Nisut that essentially requested we email back justifying why we wanted to stay Kemetic Orthodox to begin with, and detailing a number of grievances she had with certain groups of people who were joining.
The first were people with certain alternative identities, namely otherkin, therians, and multiple systems. She dedicated a paragraph or so to basically saying every human body has one human soul, stressing that she won't do multiple RPDs for people with multiple personalities. This came entirely out of left field... I had some discussions with folks in these communities in the aftermath, and all of them reported that they had been fine with this "one human body, one RPD" policy and had no idea why suddenly it was a problem now, not to mention otherkin and therians aren't necessarily multiple anyway, so what was the big deal? Were there people having this discussion with her in private enough times that she finally snapped? None of us knew. Even as somebody who is highly skeptical of otherkin, therians, and most multiple systems, it just felt like she was picking on a group of people for no particular reason other than that she thought they were weird.
The next group of people she was targeting were multi-religious people, specifically Shemsu who take on leadership positions in other religions (like a High Priestess in a Wiccan coven). She argued that the point of Shemsu vows was to put your RPD Gods above all other Gods, and that you can't possibly be doing that if you're also taking these leadership positions in other faiths. On its face this seems fair... the Pagan and polytheist community is full of people practicing choose-your-own-adventure religions people can pick if they want to worship multiple pantheons, there is no reason Kemetic Orthodoxy needed to be one of them. But after I thought about it for a while, I remembered that the Nisut, herself, is also multi-religious, and also has high leadership positions in multiple faiths, being both the Nisut of Kemetic Orthodoxy, and a Mambo in Haitian Vodou. She maintains public personalities under both of these religions, as Nisut Hekatawy I in Kemetic Orthodoxy and Mambo Chita Tann in Haitian Vodou, and she's written books about both these religions.
That, for me, was the last straw. There were a lot of things about this religion I was able to just let slide and disagree with, but being told I needed to write a fucking essay justifying my membership because the Nisut was cranky that some members of the religion she founded were doing something she was actively doing herself just put me over the edge. I don't remember what I replied—it was probably something snarky—and I just left.
I re-visit this question a lot, because at the time I was a member of Kemetic Orthodoxy and including most of the time after I left, I would have argued that it absolutely was not a cult. The main reason is that there was never a point in my Kemetic Orthodox experience where I ever felt even a little pressured to join, or pressured to stay once I expressed I was leaving. Again... during my Remetj years, I was kind of a prick, and I made my opinions known pretty frequently, but it never led to the kinds of problems I would expect in a cult.
Lately I have thought, wait... am I just convinced that the House of Netjer isn't a cult because I was a member and I think I am immune to that sort of thing? And, you know... maybe. But although I definitely would have characterized myself the kind of person who doesn't fall for cults like ten or fifteen years ago, today I am fully aware that I am in fact not immune to cult mentality, as I used to get sucked into all kinds of indoctrinating subcultures.
Ultimately I think that this is a complicated question, and I tend to still lean "no." A big part of why is that small religions get branded "cults" for behavior and beliefs that are pretty well-established in mainstream religions all the time. People like to point to things like the fact that they have a divinely-inspired Pharaoh-figure heading the religion, and they like mocking the time she and an entourage traveled to Egypt, wore costumes, and had a "coronation ceremony." I think people are trying to imply this was some sort of power grab, but this was clearly a spiritual ritual intended to emulate a well-known and documented religious practice in Ancient Egyptian religion, not an attempt to wield actual political power over Egypt, so I think their main "crime" was just, well... looking silly. Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism has a leader they consider divinely inspired, it does have political power, and it definitely also has silly rituals, while also mandating people believe certain things that may or may not be reasonable or in their own best interests, with serious pressure against leaving, but that's a mainstream religion. Yeah, I know, a number of you probably read that and insisted "but the Roman Catholic church is a cult!," and while I get your frustration, that's edgelord talk. It's also worth noting that a lot of people in the Pagan community are just, like... overreactive to the idea of hierarchy; even if they are not obligated to acknowledge that leadership, the fact that a group has leadership at all upsets them.
For me, the only thing that really makes me think "maybe I was wrong and this is a cult" is the "fine for me but not thee" attitude of the Nisut toward multi-religious folks with that last email I got. Demanding your members follow rules that you are very openly not following, that's deeply fucked; there's a reason I left so quickly after that happened.
So in conclusion, is Kemetic Orthodoxy a cult? I don't know. I err on the side of "probably not," or at least "no more than several mainstream Christian denominations." But at the same time, I do get why people would feel that way. Even when my answer was "absolutely not," I thought it was important that people who had really bad experiences with the House of Netjer get the chance to argue the answer is "yes."
Happy Trails,