Category Archives: Isis Magic book

Our Lady is a Goddess of the Dead

It is October.

The soft melancholy and honeyed light of September has given way to chill mornings and encroaching darkness. Here in Portland, the leaves are just beginning to turn, just beginning to ignite in autumnal flames.

It is Samhain-tide. And people have died.

Just yesterday, a friend of many years died. People I know, people my friends know and love, have died. Soon, at the end of this month, we will gather together in remembrance. We will cry and laugh and sing and eat and drink in their honor. I hope those who love me will do the same when I go.

Our Lady understands these things. For She is—among All The Many Things That She Is—a Lady of Death. One of Her many names is “Mooring Post,” for She is the one Who calls us to our deaths. But only when it is our time. I hope…

With its boat-infused culture, in ancient Egypt, “to come to moor” was a euphemism for “to die.” And the Great Mooring Post is the Goddess of Death Who calls us to our final mooring and to Whom our boats ever return and are always safely docked.

She may go by many names (as is the wont of Egyptian Goddesses), but when we can be certain of Her identity, She is none other than Our Lady Isis. “The Mooring Post summons you as Isis,” say the Pyramid Texts, “the Mourning Woman calls to you as Nephthys.”

Nephthys by Jeszkik Le Vye. Her Patreon is here.

Being called by or spoken to by Menit Weret, the Great Mooring Post, was understood as an important part of the process of death and eventual rebirth. The Coffin Texts tell the deceased that the Great Mooring Post speaks to him and a stairway to Heaven is set up for him, enemies fall before him, and even the stars bow down. Magical words of power ensured that the beings in the realm of the dead would serve the deceased, that his Divine mothers would nurse and kiss him…and that the Great Mooring Post would call to him, call to him.

From Isis’ ancient origins as the death-bringing and resurrecting Bird of Prey Goddess to the “voluntary death and a life obtained by grace” experienced by the initiates of Her Mysteries, Isis—the Great Mooring Post—is at home in the land of the dead. And even though, as the Great Mooring Post, Isis is the one Who calls us to our deaths, She is not a frightening figure. Instead, She initiates our transformation as we become fully spiritual beings. Isis is a comfort and a guide to those who journey into death. She “makes a spirit” of those who die and the dead rejoice when they see Her. She is called the Lady of All in the Secret Place [the land of the dead] and the dead beg Her to “spiritualize” them and guide their souls on the paths of the Otherworld.

Isis by Mia Araujo. See more of her work here.

In the land of the dead, Isis is the one “at whom Osiris rejoiced when he saw her.” She is the guide Who is asked to “clear my vision in the paths of the Netherworld.” She also acts on behalf of the deceased, ensuring that their initiation into death proceeds as it should. In a formula for being accepted into the land of the dead, the deceased greets the West, personified as the Goddess Amentet, for having arrived safely and states, “true is Isis who acted on my behalf.”

Isis the Great Mooring Post is Mistress of the Mysteries of the Otherworld. In both the Coffin Texts and the Book of Coming Forth by Day, there is a formula in the form of a dramatic reading in which the new pharaoh, as Horus, is to go on a journey to His father Osiris, the deceased pharaoh. To do this, He first allies Himself “with the Divine Isis.” Then He sends a messenger to whom He has given His own shape. The messenger is none other than the deceased. He must pass tests and provide the proper tokens along the way until coming to “the House of Isis, to the secret mysteries.” The deceased also says that he has been conducted to the hidden secrets of Isis “for she caused me to see the birth of the Great God.” Once in possession of the hidden secrets and having witnessed the rebirth of the Great God shown to him by Isis, the deceased delivers his message to Osiris: all is well on Earth because Horus, the Son of Isis, rules His father’s kingdom.

Nile ducks by a rusted mooring post along the Great Nile.

As the Great Mooring Post, Isis calls us to our deaths, but She also ensures that, in death, we understand Her hidden secrets and that we witness the birth/rebirth of the Great God. We are all Osiris, re-membered and renewed by Isis in the Otherworld. We are all Horus, reborn into the world as Her child. Death bringer, resurrector, life giver. Isis is the Great Mooring Post, the Caller to the Dark Journey. Thus do we offer unto Isis that which is Hers.

To Isis, a Mooring Post
En Iset, Menit

This is a gift the priest/ess brings before the Lady of All in the Secret Place, the Death Goddess: an invocation offering of a mooring post.

I make offering to You as Death, Isis.

While I am yet human, You are inevitable. You show me Your implacable face. Yet I cannot fear You, except with the excited fear of a traveler on her first journey. Will there be pain? Will there be suffering? Or will we dance until I slip quietly into your deepest embrace? How lyrical poets have been about You! Yet I can find no words. Only that I do not fear You. Only that the wise remember You every day. Only that I do not want to go—yet.

Isis, I offer you this mooring post that when you speak to me, it will be with Your kindly voice. May You drive in this mooring post for me that I may come to moor in the heart of my Mother. On that day, I shall speak Your name and silence my soul in Your darkness. But until then, accept this mooring post and remember me.

Listen, O Isis, to the words of the Mooring Post: “I am offered unto Isis as the vision in the darkness. I am the desired thing. The dead speak in joy: “See! There She is,” they say. I am the comforting voice, the heartbeat of the Mother, the enfolding wing. I am eternal and omnipresent. I am the soother of souls. I am the Mooring Post.”

Unto You, Isis, I offer this mooring post and all things beautiful and pure. M’den Iset. Accept it, Isis.

From Offering to Isis: Mooring Post

Talking with Isis

A meditation on beautiful Sirius, the Star of Isis

I was talking, not with Isis, but with a couple priestess friends of mine, last evening at a lovely party we were having. We were talking about our upcoming, local Fall Equinox festival, this year dedicated to Hekate. While I’m not among the main folks in charge, I do have one significant role that includes “talking with Hekate.” I wanted their take on how Hekate “feels” and/or “sounds” when my fellow priestesses connect with Her.

It’s always enlightening and interesting to hear the experiences of others with our Divine Ones. For myself, I will just briefly say that, so far, Hekate feels a bit “heavier” than Isis and has a deeper voice. During one of my first meditations with Her, Isis was there with me, handing me off for a brief time, for this Magical Work with Hekate.

All that said, today I’m cleaning up from last night’s party, so this is a repost about talking with Our Lady Isis. Feel free to add your own experiences in the comments. I’d love to hear them.

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When we connect with Isis, how do we do that? Prayer? Meditation? Invocation? Visualization? Can we talk with Her, actually have a back-and-forth conversation? Can we ask Her questions? Can we request Her help?

Yes, we can. But how it happens exactly is different for different people.

My own boundaries between prayer, meditation, and visualization tend to be rather soft. Very often, I find that meditation flows into visualization flows into prayer flows into an offering chant flows back into meditation. Sometimes I visualize the whole time, sometimes I don’t “see” anything, but just feel Her presence. Sometimes I can “hear” Her voice, sometimes I just sense in some way what She is communicating with me.

Here’s a perfect image for ‘ascending’ in your visualizations…indeed, the pillars in Egyptian temples were meant to be holding up the sky.

But why do we talk with the Goddess, why do we strive to “see” Her? There is a point and it’s not just an ego boost.

The point of this sort of talking with the Goddess is communion—sharing with Her in one way or another and asking Her to share with us. Sometimes we just need the reassurance that She is there, so we invoke and try to sense Her. Sometimes we need help, so we ask for it. Sometimes we are so full of love for Her that we simply must express it.

An excellent posture for meditation

Talking with Goddess is good for our souls and spirits, too. I think that Iamblichus, my favorite Neoplatonic theurgist, had it right: invocation of the Deities lifts up the soul of the theurgist (or Isis devotee, in this case) and brings us closer to the Divine. By repeatedly connecting with Isis—whether through prayer or ritual or devotions, meditations or visualizations, dance or chanting, or any number of other ways—we make ongoing contact with the Divine.

The more we come into the presence of Holy Isis, the more we become infused with Her holiness. In the same way that we tend to mirror the people with whom we spend the most time, spending more time with the Divine can help us better mirror that Divinity, and can help to make us better people.

This classic scribe’s posture is perfect for meditation, too

Of course there are ways we can make some serious missteps in this process. The most problematic is when we think we’re talking to Isis, but we’re actually talking to ourselves; when it’s not Isis Who we hear in our heads, but only our own subconscious echoes.

That’s what I think happens with some of the mega-church preachers who always seem to hear God asking for more money or with church-based hate groups who think they hear God condemning everyone but themselves. They’re not talking to the Divine; they’re getting feedback from their own interior bullshit. This can happen to people with even the best of intentions. I know it’s happened to me; chances are, if you’re talking with Isis, it will or already has happened to you, too.

So what do we do about it?

Sometimes, vision looks like this

Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer, no perfect solution, no quick fix. The only partial answer that I know of is to develop spiritual maturity. A spiritually mature person will be better able to recognize their own internal “stuff,” and so be better able to separate it from true Divine contact with Isis. Did Isis really say that so-and-so with whom I had a fight yesterday deserved a big, fat comeuppance? Nope; pretty sure that was me and not Her. She, on the other hand, might offer advice on how I can get over it or She might even point out that I need to make an apology.

The other tricky thing about all this is that while we live in these bodies, we will never—I repeat, never—receive pure and unadulterated contact with the Divine. It comes to us though our own perceptions of body, soul, mind, and spirit. There is no other path the Divine can use to reach us. While we are incarnate beings, the Goddess must come to us through our perceptions—and our perceptions are always, always, always tinged by our own psychological makeup. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, getting to know our own psychology is very valuable in sorting all this out. It’s just something that is and we have to be aware of it if we hope to hear—in the clearest voice possible—what Isis has to say.

Or like this…

The one clue I can offer, after many years of wrestling with my own head and heart, is that when it is truly Her—as opposed to just my echo chamber—the thought-impression-feeling-intuition I get seems to come suddenly and without precedent. I can recognize it as “not-me” (or not just me). Sometimes the words are strange or the images are not ones I would normally choose. Yes, it’s all very subjective—which is my point exactly. That’s why the more you know about yourself, the more you can move yourself out of the way so that you can better know when it is Isis Who is doing the talking.

Horus’ Twin Sister

I’m taking the holiday weekend off, so here’s a repost of what I think is an important connection.

Warning: this post refers to rape in myth.

Boy and girl Divine Children, enwrapped in the protective coils of Isis-Thermouthis and Serapis Agathos Daimon

During the excavation of Hathor’s temple at Denderah, an interesting statue, now in the Cairo Museum, came to light. It shows two children, one male, one female, standing within the protective coils of two serpents. On the boy’s head is a solar disk with an Eye of Horus on it. The girl has a lunar disk with an Eye of Horus.

The statue appears to be a votive gift, and may have originally come from the shrine of Isis-Thermouthis, believed to be not far from Denderah. According to experts, the serpents are most likely Isis-Thermouthis and Serapis Agathos Daimon.

Isis as Agathe Tyche and Osiris as Agathos Daimon in serpent form

In the Ptolemaic period, Isis and Serapis/Osiris were frequently depicted as Divine Serpents. The Isis serpent can sometimes be the combined Goddesses Isis and Renenutet as Isis-Thermouthis. Other times, She can be Isis Agathe Tyche, Good Fortune. In both forms, She is partnered with Serapis/Osiris Agathos Daimon, or Good Spirit.

Unfortunately, there is no writing on the statue to help with the identification of the Divine Children. One possibility is that They are the well-known twins, Shu and Tefnut. There are things in myth and at the site that could support this interpretation. But as you might guess, I like a different possibility.

Harpokrates with Mom Isis and Dad Serapis

The male child has the Horus lock, so He is probably Harpokrates, in Egyptian Hor-pa-khred, Horus the Child. Harpokrates was very popular during this time period. He is the child of Isis and Serapis and is frequently shown with a sun disk on His head. The fact that the Child God is protected by Isis and Osiris serpents, strengthens the identification. But if the boy is Harpokrates, Who is the little girl?

We don’t know of a twin sister of Harpokrates from either Egyptian or Greek sources. Some have wondered whether the lunar girl is supposed to be a form of Isis. Indeed Isis is called the Female Horus (Hor-et or Horit) in Egyptian sources. Several other Goddesses and a number of queens are called by the name as well. The Oxyrhynchus Hymn to Isis, written in Greek, calls Her Harpokratin, which is just Harpokrates with the Greek feminine ending. Translators have taken this to mean something like “the darling-girl of the Gods,” but it can just as easily be simply “Horet the [Girl] Child.” What’s more, by Ptolemaic times, Isis was indeed connected to the moon, even though She was not in earlier Egyptian sources.

Nevertheless, I stubbornly like the idea that the Divine Girl could be Horus’ twin sister, Horet. While this is the only statue we know of that shows the Harpokrates Twins together, during the Ptolemaic period, there are a few other baby girl statues that have been identified as Girl Harpokrates. We have no evidence of Her before this time, but we know that the Egyptians always did have a penchant for name-sharing male-female pairs of Deities, such as the Deities of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis.

Horus or Horit? Love this image? Buy a copy from the artist here.

Now, there is a Goddess Horit Who shows up in late Egyptian sources, specifically in what is known as the Delta Mythological Manual. Scholars aren’t sure where the manual came from, but they date it to about the 26th dynasty—though the material may be much older. It contains myths having to do with 12 of the nomes in the Egyptian delta. It could have come from a temple cache or been in the possession of a priest or maybe even a priestess. In this manual, we meet Horit. She is a daughter of Osiris, but we do not know Who Her mother is.

And…then things get bad.

You see, Horit bears sons fathered by Her father Osiris. The Delta Manual is pretty darned cryptic, but we learn that when Her father raped Her, it was Her “first time” and that when She learned She was pregnant, She “sat down and mourned.” What’s more, there was something wrong or unusual about the birth of the resulting child. The text isn’t super clear, but Horit may have either chosen abortion or miscarried. The child, being Divine, did not die, but instead left the premises immediately.

Tefnut in Her lioness form

After this, Horit functions as a wife to Osiris and bears four more children, the last one after suffering a rape by Set. The manual (again very cryptically) tells stories about each of these sons of Horit—all forms of Horus. Strangely, there is even one called The Child of Isis. Of the third of these sons, the manual tells us that after Set murders Osiris, Horit raises Their son to be His father’s avenger; very Isis-like indeed. There is even an incident of decapitation just as there is in the story where Isis grants mercy to Set, which so enrages Horus (the two Gods are battling at the time) that He decapitates Isis, a state of affairs that wise Thoth fixes right away.

In the Delta Manual, the identities of all the Goddesses are very fluid; quite confusingly so. They are associated, joined, or become each other frequently. Horit is identified with Hathor and it is said that “She is the Divine hand of Re,” which is specifically a vagina. (In this version of the story, Re replaces Atum Who uses His Goddess-Hand to masturbate, producing Shu and Tefnut.)

Tefnut is not happy

Many of the myths in the Delta Manual, and most of Horit’s, have to do with boundary-crossing sex among Deities, consensual or not. In addition to Hathor, Horit is associated with Bast, Who is said to “come forth as Horit.” At Sebennytos and Behbeit (Isiopolis!), Horit is joined with Tefnut and the myth of the Raging/Distant/Returning Goddess (which is an important myth for another day). Sebennytos and Behbeit are in the 12th delta nome. There, the myths relate that Tefnut-Horit is raped by Her son Geb and imprisoned. The rapist is eventually punished and the Goddess freed, which becomes a cause for festival in the nome. So now, in addition to the rape of Horit the daughter by Her father Osiris, we also have the rape of Horit-Tefnut the mother by Her son. Some of you may know that there is similar tale in which Horus rapes His mother Isis and Her tears fall into the water.

WTF? Is it any wonder that Horit is among the raging Goddesses? And what the heck are we to supposed to make of all this anyway? We certainly do not approve. But neither did the ancient Egyptians. After all, Geb (and Set in other tales) is punished for His rape. And yet, the Egyptians retained these stories and, no doubt, tried to make sense of them.

Goddess and Son? God and Daughter?

I have speculated, in Isis Magic, about the possible meaning of the rape of Isis by Her son. It goes like this: What if that story, and others like it, are merely the very misunderstood remnants of a different and very ancient story; indeed, perhaps the oldest story? The Goddess Comes Into Being; of Herself, by Herself. She gives birth to a Child, a son. He grows to maturity. Then, in order to start the multiplication of life on earth, Divine Mother and Divine Son mate, not in a rape, but because They are All That Is. Could the same be said of the Divine Father and Divine Daughter? Obviously, I don’t know the answer to these questions. But it’s a way I can try to make it make some sense in my own head.

As for Harpokrates and His twin sister, I doubt we can make a direct connection between Horit and the Girl Harpokrates of the votive statue. And yet, and yet, and yet. Osiris has a son, Hor, and a daughter, Horit. (Different mothers? Same mother?) Hor and Horit make a perfect Egyptian name-sharing male-female pair. Horit’s myths come from the delta, including from Behbeit, where Isis’ great delta temple once stood.

I wonder whether we will some day find stories about Horit and Her mother? And if we do, what will Her name be?

Iset Demdjet, Isis the Bone Collector

Bone Woman, Crone Woman by Joan Riise. Find her work here.

We know quite a lot about the history of the Great Goddess Isis. For instance, we know that She was already important by the time of the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, 5th-6th dynasties). We know fairly clearly how Her worship spread throughout Egypt. We know how She came into Nubia and the Mediterranean. And we know how She went underground with the rise of Christianity in the Mediterranean and the West…staying alive in the magical traditions. Today there are few who do not at least know Her name.

Yet, what we don’t know for certain is where Her worship originated. So far, it is one of Her Mysteries.

Oh, there are theories. The one I am most seeing lately is that She is originally from some small city in the Egyptian delta of Lower Egypt. But strangely, no town in ancient Egypt, Upper or Lower, claimed to be Her “birthplace.” Since She became Egypt’s most famous Goddess, you would think someone would claim Her as their own.

The Egyptian delta. The arrow points to the location of Isiopolis. You can see Heliopolis above Cairo (Caire).

Others attribute Upper Egyptian origins to Her, especially given Her important Upper Egyptian temple at Philae (now on Agilkia island). However, the oldest evidence we have of Isis worship on Philae is from the 26th dynasty.

On the other hand, the consensus of researchers today is that what would become ancient Egypt was first populated by Paleolithic people moving from south to north. So if proto-Isis was already known to these people, perhaps She did come from what would eventually be Upper Egypt. And Abydos, an important Osirian cult center, is in Upper Egypt.

On the other, other hand, Isis and Osiris are incorporated into the Heliopolitan myth cycle. And Heliopolis is about 20 miles north of Cairo and in the delta. What’s more, there was another famous Isis temple right there in the middle of the delta at Isiopolis. We may eventually find that it (or its predecessor on the site) is, in fact, the oldest temple of Isis. (Yes, of course, I asked Her. She told me, “delta.” But that is decidedly UPG, “unverified personal gnosis.”)

Some very pretty skulls and bones from an Egyptian tomb

I recently came across a paper by Dr. Kelly-Anne Diamond, an Egyptologist serving as Visiting Assistant Professor in the History Department at Villanova University, that makes a new and interesting contribution to the possible origins of Isis. She focuses in on the title of a female funerary ritualist. The title is “demdjet” and the demdjet can appear as a human ritualist, but also sometimes as a Divine ritualist. We find her—very infrequently—from the Old Kingdom to the New. Egyptologists used to group this particular ritualist under the general category of “mourning women,” but it appears the demdjet or Demdjet may have had a more specific function.

The root of the word has to do with collecting or assembling. And since the title is a feminine active participle, the title demdjet is “she who collects or assembles.” If you’re at all familiar with the ancient Egyptian funerary texts, you may recall that there is quite a lot of emphasis on making sure the deceased have all their bones, bits, limbs, heads, etc. collected or assembled for them as well as ensuring none of those things are disassembled or lost. Since Isis is the collector of bits and pieces par excellence—at least when it comes to Osiris (and thus the deceased)—Diamond suggests that this ritual role may play a part in Isis’ origins.

The demdjet (top) and the kenut (bottom) offering nu pots

One of the Pyramid Texts (PT 2283) refers to a Demdjet Vulture. It says, “Osiris Neith, accept Horus’ Eye, which Seth hid—THE HIDDEN VULTURE, which he joined—THE JOINED [Demdjet] VULTURE…” This Demdjet Vulture is involved with stretching or spreading something. We cannot say whether the Demdjet Vulture is supposed to be Isis, but at least we may have an early attestation of a Divine Demdjet. Of course, Isis can take vulture form, but it is not Her most common bird form. Yet, as a winged Goddess, She is often shown stretching or spreading Her wings over the deceased.

We also find the Demdjet in the pyramid temple of Senwosret III where She gives life and protection. From the Middle Kingdom, there are demdjets in the papyrus Ramesseum E. Some scholars think that the contents of that papyrus may date back to the 3rd dynasty (there are archaisms in the text). If true, it would be the oldest mention of a demdjet.

In this papyrus, we learn that the demdjets are present throughout the funerary rites. At some point, the demdjets move simultaneously, perhaps in ritual motion or dance. They are there when the deceased is summoned to revivification. And they have speaking parts. In the New Kingdom, we have several more instances of demdjets. They are shown as two kneeling women with nu water pots and they are watering “the desert necropolis.” In one case, one woman is labeled menkenu and one demdjet. (Alan Gardiner suggests menkenu is a title of Isis, while demdjet is a title of Nephthys.) In another case, one is called demdjet and one is called kenut (menkenu and kenut may be different versions of the same title).

Same offering, different labels: The Great Kite and the Lesser Kite

But here’s where it gets more interesting for Isiacs. In the last New Kingdom example (tomb of Paheri, if you must know), we find the same scene—women kneeling with nu pots, dressed in the same way—but this time, They are labeled Djeret Weret (Great Kite) and Djeret Nedjeset (Lesser Kite). In this time period, we know Who the Great Kite and the Lesser Kite are; They are Isis and Nephthys. So, the women depicted may be human ritualists portraying the Goddesses, which we know was done in Egyptian ritual. In additional—but very damaged—scenes in two of these tombs, we see the demdjet no longer kneeling, but standing with her/Her right arm raised, elbow bent, and fist clenched while her/Her left clenched fist is placed at her/Her chest. It reminds me of the henu gesture, but standing.

The henu gesture

She is labeled Djeret Weret Demdjet, the Great Kite Demdjet. The gesture s/She makes is thought to be associated with transfiguration, the recitation of holy words, and glorifications for the dead.

In the Book of the Amduat, a Goddess named Demdjet appears in the 7th and 8th Hours of the Night where She helps protect Re and the Sun Barque as it journeys through the Otherworld. In the 7th Hour, She is with three other Goddesses: She Who Cuts, She Who Punishes, and She Who Annihilates. In the 8th Hour, Demdjet is with three other mummiform Goddesses: She Who Veils, She Who Decorates (?), and the Dark One. Interestingly, the 7th Hour is the same Hour in which Isis and the Elder Magician work Their powerful magic to subdue Apophis. So in this case, with Isis in Her Great of Magic form, it seems to me it would be a bit of a stretch to consider this Demdjet, a minor Hours Goddess, to be a form of Isis.

The Djeret Weret Demdjet making a gesture of transfiguration; we can see the feet of (probably) another demdjet (the Djeret Nedjeset Demdjet?) above this one, but this part of the tomb is damaged.

Nevertheless, with its core meaning of She Who Collects, Assembles, and Puts Together, we can find in the Demdjet an important harmony with one aspect of Great Isis: She Who searches, finds, reassembles, and gives new life to Osiris.

Some researchers have suggested that there may have been a very early Egyptian funerary custom in which important dead persons were disarticulated and then put back together for rejuvenation. It’s a highly controversial topic, but if so, perhaps the original Demdjet may have been the female ritualist who did this reassembly. Perhaps she was serving as a priestess of the Great Renewing Mother. And perhaps, just perhaps, this Great Mother Regeneratrix was the Demdjet Weret—(proto) Iset Demdjet—She Who collects our bones for us that we may be made whole in preparation for our rebirth.

Serving Isis: Worshiping the Goddess

A worshipper giving worship and receiving from the God
A worshipper giving worship and receiving energy that looks like flowers from the God

Some time ago, I was corresponding with a man in England on Dionysian subjects. (You may recall that, in addition to my devotion to Isis, I also have a passion for Lord D.) During the course of our conversation, I said something about worshipping Dionysos. He wrote me back to the effect of “you wouldn’t catch me worshipping anybody or anything!”

I suspected we had a definition problem—and that turned out to be so, because when I explained that what I meant by worship was an expression of love, appreciation, and honor toward the Divine, my Dionysian pal wrote back saying he’d decided that, in that case, he guessed worship was okay with him.

keep-calm-and-love-isis-5
Always good advice

I think a lot of people share my friend’s ideas about worship. The word is too…um… “churchy.” For many, it has come to have a hollow sound and worse yet, a hollow feeling. Some associate it with merely going through the motions—attending church, sitting in rows, singing ill-harmonized hymns, and eventually passing the collection plate. Others may associate worship with bowing before some cold and distant deity. (I am inevitably reminded, and perhaps you are, too, of Monty Python’s toadying minister: “Oh God, You are so gosh-darned BIG…”) Such prostration appears to them to have no respect for the sacred possibilities of either humankind or Nature and leaves an unpleasant taste in their mouths.

Kissing the ground before Her beautiful face

Yet worship is one of the most significant ways we can relate to the Goddess. It is certainly an appropriate way for a ministrant of Isis to relate to Her.

True worship has to do with reverence and appreciation for the Divine, as well as for that which is sacred in others, in ourselves, and in the manifested world. Worship is a meaningful way of expressing our feelings and inner selves to the Divine. It is a way of speaking about and participating in that which we find sacred. Worship requires participation not by the mere rote actions of our bodies, but by the focus of our minds, the openness of our hearts, and the willingness of our souls and spirits.

Two worshippers adore the God
Two worshippers adore the God

When we sense Isis’ heartbeat and understand that She senses ours, we are participating in worship. When we finally, actually know, in our bones, in our guts, in our hearts that She really is there, the door to worship is flung wide. The temple of our soul is opened, and She indwells. When we taste Her truth upon our tongues, and are grateful, grateful, grateful for that taste, then we worship. When Her Mystery allures and deepens us rather than merely baffling, that is worship. When we know Her in the light in our lover’s eyes, a blade of grass, a spider’s dance, we are worshiping.

We may do this intuitively or, using the Art of Ritual, we may speak to Isis, sing to Her, listen to Her, make offerings to Her, express our gratitude to Her, commune with Her in a ritual context. When we do this consciously and with full intent to expand our souls and spirits, it is then that we truly worship. As we come to know Isis through our acts of devotion, we come to love Her and to understand that She has always loved us.

The fiery heart of true worship
The fiery heart of true worship

And love…love is the true essence of the worship that a ministrant of Isis gives to their Goddess.

Video Game Isis to Become Eset

A perfect example

I am not a fan of comicbooky-videogamey over-sexualized depictions of the Deities. I am especially not a fan of images of Goddesses with huge, spherical boobs that would hurt like heck in real combat (oh, it’s always about combat; you know that.) Personally, I like my Deity images to be either historical or, if they are art, to capture something of the awe of the Divine. But that’s just me.

Nevertheless, I was amused, or perhaps bemused, when the popular video game Smite introduced a new fightin’ Deity back in 2013: Isis, Goddess of Magic. They even have a halfway decent version of Her myth in the game’s character information.

Then, earlier this week, the company that makes Smite announced that they will rename the character Isis as Eset, to be pronounced “Ee-set.” The idea is to be able to avoid being caught in YouTube’s “ISIS is a terrorist group” algorithms. Sigh. I wish we had been able to get people to call them ISIL or Daesh (or, really, anything else), but “ISIS” is just too easy, just too familiar, for people.

Smite’s Isis, soon to be Eset, doing Her magic-casting thing

Which is precisely why I continue to use it in my blog and books; it’s the familiar name by which She is known to more people throughout the world. Yes, I can be stubborn. Of course, as many of you know, “Eye-sis” is the Anglicized version of what the ancient Greeks called Her: Ἶσις (EES-Ees).

I represent Her Egyptian name as Iset. Here’s why:

These are the most common hieroglyphs for Isis’ name in Egyptian.

In Egyptian, Isis’ name was most often spelled with the hieroglyphs throne, semi-circle (possibly a bread loaf), Goddess, although during the thousands of years of Her worship there were a number of variant spellings. Egyptian artists commonly designated Isis by painting the throne hieroglyph on Her crown. Thus it is possible to identify the shortest version of Isis’ name with the throne itself. The Goddess Isis is the Goddess Throne.

Another “skin” for Smite’s Isis

Similar to Hebrew, the Egyptian hieroglyphs don’t represent the vowels. They had vowels, of course. You were just expected to know where to put them to pronounce the words, plus some of the glyphs function as semi-vowels. As a result, we don’t know precisely how the ancient Egyptians would have pronounced Isis’ name. (Not only that; the pronunciation of words changes over time and Egyptians had regional accents.)

The throne hieroglyph is a biliteral symbol (*it could sometimes even be a triliteral), that is, a single symbol representing several sounds. The semi-circle is a single-sound glyph and represents our letter t. In this case, it provides the feminine ending of the word just as in English we might add -ess to feminize a word. The Goddess symbol is a determinative and provides the overall concept of the word, but has no sound. (And just to complicate things, the throne glyph itself can be used as a determinative.)

The first of the two sounds comprising the biliteral throne symbol is a consonant similar to the Hebrew yod** and is represented by modern Egyptologists as ı͗ . The yod sound is similar to English y or i, but remember that it’s not really a vowel. In hieroglyphs, the yod is represented by the reed flower glyph. The initial sound may also be referred to as another Hebrew letter, aleph, the vulture glyph. It’s a glottal stop, but for convenience is sometimes given as an a. The second of the two sounds in the throne is an s. Between the yod or aleph and the sany vowel could have been inserted. Similarly, a vowel could be inserted between the throne and the semi-circle.

So how can we know which vowels were used? We do have some clues, at least from a later period, in ancient Coptic and Greek.

A Ptolemaic Ese

Coptic is a late form of Egyptian (today, very late as it still survives in the Coptic church) that uses Greek letters plus some special letters to represent Egyptian sounds. By the time Egyptian had changed into Coptic, Isis is Ese (Aay-seh or Ee-seh) or Esi (Aay-see or Ee-see) (the final t was dropped in Coptic, and likely in pronunciation earlier).*** From their earliest encounter with Egyptian religion, the Greeks—and Egyptians who wrote Greek—spelled Her name asἾσις, which they would have pronounced as EES-ees. In Late Antiquity, they sometimes added an epsilon at the beginning so that an alternative pronunciation would have been Aay-sis. So from examples of Her name in Coptic and Greek—contemporary pronunciations that were actually being used by the people who recorded them—we can narrow the search for initial vowels down to either an ee sound or an ay sound. In earlier times, then, the first syllable of the Goddess’ name was probably Ees and in the late period may have changed to Aays. (How could that happen? In the same way that modern English no longer sounds like Chaucer’s English. Ancient Egyptian was spoken for thousands of years and naturally changed during that long time period.)

Between the throne and the semi-circle, Egyptologists usually insert a generic e before the final t to create the feminine ending in line with the Egyptological convention of representing the feminine ending as et as in Amunet, the feminine form of Amun. (It is entirely possible that this e could have been another vowel, for example, i.) Nonetheless, by combining the information we have about Her name as pronounced in Coptic and Greek with current scholarly opinion, it is most likely that Isis in Egyptian would have been pronounced Ee-seh (or Ee-set with the t) and in Late Antiquity also as Aay-seh (or Aay-set with the t). Either of these could have been Hellenized to Isis by replacing the ending with the Greek –is ending. I prefer Iset (Ee-set) to Eset (Ee-set) because it looks closer to Her most well-known name, but Eset works as does Aset (Aay-set).

Look! Giant spherical boobs on a Ptolemaic queen dressed as Isis; does this mean I have to retract my objection? Nah.

Of course, all this is just for the sticklers among us. Isis will know those who call upon Her no matter what pronunciation we use. She’s a Goddess. She knows. Yet, the various pronunciations of Her name are of interest because of the emphasis that the Egyptians themselves placed on knowing the true name of a Deity, person, or thing in order to know its essential nature.

We can use the various pronunciations of the Goddess’ name to touch different aspects of Her nature. For example, to contact a very Egyptian form of the Goddess, we might invoke Her by the name Iset or Ise. For a more Hellenized aspect, we might call upon Isis using the Greek pronunciation, Ees-ees. Many people will call upon Her using the Anglicized version of Her name, Eye-sis. In any and all of these names, we will still be contacting the energy of the Goddess Isis, She of the 10,000 Names. The difference will be not in the essence of the Goddess, but in the particular “flavor” of Her energy that we touch. Personally, right now I’m using Coptic Ese (Aay-seh) a lot lately. It chants beautifully.

In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, better known as the Book of the Dead, Isis is called Iset Nudjerit em Renus Nebu, “Isis, Goddess in All Names.” Perhaps, we can see Her not only as the Goddess of All Names, but of All Pronunciations as well.

*In some uses, the multi-literal throne hieroglyph includes the t consonant; in that case the loaf t indicates the feminine ending.

Smite Isis about to smite someone

**A century ago, in his hugely influential books (which are still so because Dover keeps them readily available), Sir E.A. Wallis Budge used a peculiar set of symbols to transliterate the hieroglyphs, and one of them in particular continues to confuse readers to this day. Instead of the ı͗ used by other Egyptologists and often called yod, Budge represents the reed flower as å (that’s not quite it; the dot should be solid, but it was all I could get WordPress to do.) Most people look at it and read it as “a” rather than a “yod.

***There are several forms of Coptic with different spellings and pronunciations of Her name.

Horus’ Twin Sister

Warning: this post refers to rape in myth.

Boy and girl Divine Children, enwrapped in the protective coils of Isis-Thermouthis and Serapis Agathos Daimon

During the excavation of Hathor’s temple at Denderah, an interesting statue, now in the Cairo Museum, came to light. It shows two children, one male, one female, standing within the protective coils of two serpents. On the boy’s head is a solar disk with an Eye of Horus on it. The girl has a lunar disk with an Eye of Horus.

The statue appears to be a votive gift, and may have originally come from the shrine of Isis-Thermouthis, believed to be not far from Denderah. According to experts, the serpents are most likely Isis-Thermouthis and Serapis Agathos Daimon.

Isis as Agathe Tyche and Osiris as Agathos Daimon in serpent form

In the Ptolemaic period, Isis and Serapis/Osiris were frequently depicted as Divine Serpents. The Isis serpent can sometimes be the combined Goddesses Isis and Renenutet as Isis-Thermouthis. Other times, She can be Isis Agathe Tyche, Good Fortune. In both forms, She is partnered with Serapis/Osiris Agathos Daimon, or Good Spirit.

Unfortunately, there is no writing on the statue to help with the identification of the Divine Children. One possibility is that They are the well-known twins, Shu and Tefnut. There are things in myth and at the site that could support this interpretation. But as you might guess, I like a different possibility.

Harpokrates with Mom Isis and Dad Serapis

The male child has the Horus lock, so He is probably Harpokrates, in Egyptian Hor-pa-khred, Horus the Child. Harpokrates was very popular during this time period. He is the child of Isis and Serapis and is frequently shown with a sun disk on His head. The fact that the Child God is protected by Isis and Osiris serpents, strengthens the identification. But if the boy is Harpokrates, Who is the little girl?

We don’t know of a twin sister of Harpokrates from either Egyptian or Greek sources. Some have wondered whether the lunar girl is supposed to be a form of Isis. Indeed Isis is called the Female Horus (Hor-et or Horit) in Egyptian sources. Several other Goddesses and a number of queens are called by the name as well. The Oxyrhynchus Hymn to Isis, written in Greek, calls Her Harpokratin, which is just Harpokrates with the Greek feminine ending. Translators have taken this to mean something like “the darling-girl of the Gods,” but it can just as easily be simply “Horet the [Girl] Child.” What’s more, by Ptolemaic times, Isis was indeed connected to the moon, even though She was not in earlier Egyptian sources.

Nevertheless, I stubbornly like the idea that the Divine Girl could be Horus’ twin sister, Horet. While this is the only statue we know of that shows the Harpokrates Twins together, during the Ptolemaic period, there are a few other baby girl statues that have been identified as Girl Harpokrates. We have no evidence of Her before this time, but we know that the Egyptians always did have a penchant for name-sharing male-female pairs of Deities, such as the Deities of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis.

Horus or Horit? Love this image? Buy a copy from the artist here.

Now, there is a Goddess Horit Who shows up in late Egyptian sources, specifically in what is known as the Delta Mythological Manual. Scholars aren’t sure where the manual came from, but they date it to about the 26th dynasty—though the material may be much older. It contains myths having to do with 12 of the nomes in the Egyptian delta. It could have come from a temple cache or been in the possession of a priest or maybe even a priestess. In this manual, we meet Horit. She is a daughter of Osiris, but we do not know Who Her mother is.

And…then things get bad.

You see, Horit bears sons fathered by Her father Osiris. The Delta Manual is pretty darned cryptic, but we learn that when Her father raped Her, it was Her “first time” and that when She learned She was pregnant, She “sat down and mourned.” What’s more, there was something wrong or unusual about the birth of the resulting child. The text isn’t super clear, but Horit may have either chosen abortion or miscarried. The child, being Divine, did not die, but instead left the premises immediately.

Tefnut in Her lioness form

After this, Horit functions as a wife to Osiris and bears four more children, the last one after suffering a rape by Set. The manual (again very cryptically) tells stories about each of these sons of Horit—all forms of Horus. Strangely, there is even one called The Child of Isis. Of the third of these sons, the manual tells us that after Set murders Osiris, Horit raises Their son to be His father’s avenger; very Isis-like indeed. There is even an incident of decapitation just as there is in the story where Isis grants mercy to Set, which so enrages Horus (the two Gods are battling at the time) that He decapitates Isis, a state of affairs that wise Thoth fixes right away.

In the Delta Manual, the identities of all the Goddesses are very fluid; quite confusingly so. They are associated, joined, or become each other frequently. Horit is identified with Hathor and it is said that “She is the Divine hand of Re,” which is specifically a vagina. (In this version of the story, Re replaces Atum Who uses His Goddess-Hand to masturbate, producing Shu and Tefnut.)

Tefnut is not happy

Many of the myths in the Delta Manual, and most of Horit’s, have to do with boundary-crossing sex among Deities, consensual or not. In addition to Hathor, Horit is associated with Bast, Who is said to “come forth as Horit.” At Sebennytos and Behbeit (Isiopolis!), Horit is joined with Tefnut and the myth of the Raging/Distant/Returning Goddess (which is an important myth for another day). Sebennytos and Behbeit are in the 12th delta nome. There, the myths relate that Tefnut-Horit is raped by Her son Geb and imprisoned. The rapist is eventually punished and the Goddess freed, which becomes a cause for festival in the nome. So now, in addition to the rape of Horit the daughter by Her father Osiris, we also have the rape of Horit-Tefnut the mother by Her son. Some of you may know that there is similar tale in which Horus rapes His mother Isis and Her tears fall into the water.

WTF? Is it any wonder that Horit is among the raging Goddesses? And what the heck are we to supposed to make of all this anyway? We certainly do not approve. But neither did the ancient Egyptians. After all, Geb (and Set in other tales) is punished for His rape. And yet, the Egyptians retained these stories and, no doubt, tried to make sense of them.

Goddess and Son? God and Daughter?

I have speculated, in Isis Magic, about the possible meaning of the rape of Isis by Her son. It goes like this: What if that story, and others like it, are merely the very misunderstood remnants of a different and very ancient story; indeed, perhaps the oldest story? The Goddess Comes Into Being; of Herself, by Herself. She gives birth to a Child, a son. He grows to maturity. Then, in order to start the multiplication of life on earth, Divine Mother and Divine Son mate, not in a rape, but because They are All That Is. Could the same be said of the Divine Father and Divine Daughter? Obviously, I don’t know the answer to these questions. But it’s a way I can try to make it make some sense in my own head.

As for Harpokrates and His twin sister, I doubt we can make a direct connection between Horit and the Girl Harpokrates of the votive statue. And yet, and yet, and yet. Osiris has a son, Hor, and a daughter, Horit. (Different mothers? Same mother?) Hor and Horit make a perfect Egyptian name-sharing male-female pair. Horit’s myths come from the delta, including from Behbeit, where Isis’ great delta temple once stood.

I wonder whether we will some day find stories about Horit and Her mother? And if we do, what will Her name be?

Horus’ Twin Sister

Warning: this post refers to rape in myth.

Boy and girl Divine Children, enwrapped in the protective coils of Isis-Thermouthis and Serapis Agathos Daimon

During the excavation of Hathor’s temple at Denderah, an interesting statue, now in the Cairo Museum, came to light. It shows two children, one male, one female, standing within the protective coils of two serpents. On the boy’s head is a solar disk with an Eye of Horus on it. The girl has a lunar disk with an Eye of Horus.

The statue appears to be a votive gift, and may have originally come from the shrine of Isis-Thermouthis, believed to be not far from Denderah. According to experts, the serpents are most likely Isis-Thermouthis and Serapis Agathos Daimon.

Isis as Agathe Tyche and Osiris as Agathos Daimon in serpent form

In the Ptolemaic period, Isis and Serapis/Osiris were frequently depicted as Divine Serpents. The Isis serpent can sometimes be the combined Goddesses Isis and Renenutet as Isis-Thermouthis. Other times, She can be Isis Agathe Tyche, Good Fortune. In both forms, She is partnered with Serapis/Osiris Agathos Daimon, or Good Spirit.

Unfortunately, there is no writing on the statue to help with the identification of the Divine Children. One possibility is that They are the well-known twins, Shu and Tefnut. There are things in myth and at the site that could support this interpretation. But as you might guess, I like a different possibility.

Harpokrates with Mom Isis and Dad Serapis

The male child has the Horus lock, so He is probably Harpokrates, in Egyptian Hor-pa-khred, Horus the Child. Harpokrates was very popular during this time period. He is the child of Isis and Serapis and is frequently shown with a sun disk on His head. The fact that the Child God is protected by Isis and Osiris serpents, strengthens the identification. But if the boy is Harpokrates, Who is the little girl?

We don’t know of a twin sister of Harpokrates from either Egyptian or Greek sources. Some have wondered whether the lunar girl is supposed to be a form of Isis. Indeed Isis is called the Female Horus (Hor-et or Horit) in Egyptian sources. Several other Goddesses and a number of queens are called by the name as well. The Oxyrhynchus Hymn to Isis, written in Greek, calls Her Harpokratin, which is just Harpokrates with the Greek feminine ending. Translators have taken this to mean something like “the darling-girl of the Gods,” but it can just as easily be simply “Horet the [Girl] Child.” What’s more, by Ptolemaic times, Isis was indeed connected to the moon, even though She was not in earlier Egyptian sources.

Nevertheless, I stubbornly like the idea that the Divine Girl could be Horus’ twin sister, Horet. While this is the only statue we know of that shows the Harpokrates Twins together, during the Ptolemaic period, there are a few other baby girl statues that have been identified as Girl Harpokrates. We have no evidence of Her before this time, but we know that the Egyptians always did have a penchant for name-sharing male-female pairs of Deities, such as the Deities of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis.

Horus or Horit? Love this image? Buy a copy from the artist here.

Now, there is a Goddess Horit Who shows up in late Egyptian sources, specifically in what is known as the Delta Mythological Manual. Scholars aren’t sure where the manual came from, but they date it to about the 26th dynasty—though the material may be much older. It contains myths having to do with 12 of the nomes in the Egyptian delta. It could have come from a temple cache or been in the possession of a priest or maybe even a priestess. In this manual, we meet Horit. She is a daughter of Osiris, but we do not know Who Her mother is.

And…then things get bad.

You see, Horit bears sons fathered by Her father Osiris. The Delta Manual is pretty darned cryptic, but we learn that when Her father raped Her, it was Her “first time” and that when She learned She was pregnant, She “sat down and mourned.” What’s more, there was something wrong or unusual about the birth of the resulting child. The text isn’t super clear, but Horit may have either chosen abortion or miscarried. The child, being Divine, did not die, but instead left the premises immediately.

Tefnut in Her lioness form

After this, Horit functions as a wife to Osiris and bears four more children, the last one after suffering a rape by Set. The manual (again very cryptically) tells stories about each of these sons of Horit—all forms of Horus. Strangely, there is even one called The Child of Isis. Of the third of these sons, the manual tells us that after Set murders Osiris, Horit raises Their son to be His father’s avenger; very Isis-like indeed. There is even an incident of decapitation just as there is in the story where Isis grants mercy to Set, which so enrages Horus (the two Gods are battling at the time) that He decapitates Isis, a state of affairs that wise Thoth fixes right away.

In the Delta Manual, the identities of all the Goddesses are very fluid; quite confusingly so. They are associated, joined, or become each other frequently. Horit is identified with Hathor and it is said that “She is the Divine hand of Re,” which is specifically a vagina. (In this version of the story, Re replaces Atum Who uses His Goddess-Hand to masturbate, producing Shu and Tefnut.)

Tefnut is not happy

Many of the myths in the Delta Manual, and most of Horit’s, have to do with boundary-crossing sex among Deities, consensual or not. In addition to Hathor, Horit is associated with Bast, Who is said to “come forth as Horit.” At Sebennytos and Behbeit (Isiopolis!), Horit is joined with Tefnut and the myth of the Raging/Distant/Returning Goddess (which is an important myth for another day.) Sebennytos and Behbeit are in the 12th delta nome. There, the myths relate that Tefnut-Horit is raped by Her son Geb and imprisoned. The rapist is eventually punished and the Goddess freed, which becomes a cause for festival in the nome. So now, in addition to the rape of Horit the daughter by Her father Osiris, we also have the rape of Horit-Tefnut the mother by Her son. Some of you may know that there is similar tale in which Horus rapes His mother Isis and Her tears fall into the water.

WTF? Is it any wonder that Horit is among the raging Goddesses? And what the heck are we to supposed to make of all this anyway? We certainly do not approve. But neither did the ancient Egyptians. After all, Geb (and Set in other tales) is punished for His rape. And yet, the Egyptians retained these stories and, no doubt, tried to make sense of them.

Goddess and Son? God and Daughter?

I have speculated, in Isis Magic, about the possible meaning of the rape of Isis by Her son. What if that story, and others like it, are merely the very misunderstood remnants of a different and very ancient story; indeed, perhaps the oldest story? The Goddess Comes Into Being; of Herself, by Herself. She gives birth to a Child, a son. He grows to maturity. Then, in order to start the multiplication of life on earth, Divine Mother and Divine Son mate, not in a rape, but because They are All That Is. Could the same be said of the Divine Father and Divine Daughter? Obviously, I don’t know the answer to these questions. But it’s a way I can make it make some sense in my own head.

As for Harpokrates and His twin sister, I doubt we can make a direct connection between Horit and the Girl Harpokrates of the votive statue. And yet, and yet, and yet. Osiris has a son, Hor, and a daughter, Horit. (Different mothers? Same mother?) Hor and Horit make a perfect Egyptian name-sharing male-female pair. Horit’s myths come from the delta, including from Behbeit, where Isis’ great delta temple once stood.

I wonder whether we will some day find stories about Horit and Her mother? And if we do, what will Her name be?

Iset Demdjet, the Bone Collector

Bone Woman, Crone Woman by Joan Riise. Find her work here.

We know quite a lot about the history of the Great Goddess Isis. For instance, we know that She was already important by the time of the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, 5th-6th dynasties). We know fairly clearly how Her worship spread throughout Egypt. We know how She came into Nubia and the Mediterranean. And we know how She went underground with the rise of Christianity in the Mediterranean and the West…staying alive in the magical traditions. Today there are few who do not at least know Her name.

Yet, what we don’t know for certain is where Her worship originated. So far, it is one of Her Mysteries.

Oh, there are theories. The one I am most seeing lately is that She is originally from some small city in the Egyptian delta of Lower Egypt. But I’ve haven’t seen the arguments to back that up. And strangely, no town in ancient Egypt, Upper or Lower, claimed to be Her “birthplace.” Since She became Egypt’s most famous Goddess, you would think someone would claim Her as their own.

The Egyptian delta. The arrow points to the location of Isiopolis. You can see Heliopolis above Cairo (Caire).

Others attribute Upper Egyptian origins to Her, especially given Her important Upper Egyptian temple at Philae (now on Agilkia island). However, the oldest evidence we have of Isis worship on Philae is from the 26th dynasty.

On the other hand, the consensus of researchers today is that what would become ancient Egypt was first populated by Paleolithic people moving from south to north. So if proto-Isis was already known to these people, perhaps She did come from what would eventually be Upper Egypt. And Abydos, an important Osirian cult center, is in Upper Egypt.

On the other, other hand, Isis and Osiris are incorporated into the Heliopolitan myth cycle. And Heliopolis is about 20 miles north of Cairo and in the delta. What’s more, there was another famous Isis temple right there in the middle of the delta at Isiopolis. We may eventually find that it (or its predecessor on the site) is, in fact, the oldest temple of Isis. (Yes, of course, I asked Her. She told me, “delta.” But that is decidedly UPG, “unverified personal gnosis.”)

Some very pretty skulls and bones from an Egyptian tomb

I recently came across a paper by Dr. Kelly-Anne Diamond, an Egyptologist currently serving as Visiting Assistant Professor in the History Department at Villanova University, that makes a new and interesting contribution to the possible origins of Isis. She focuses in on the title of a female funerary ritualist. The title is “demdjet” and she can appear as a human ritualist, but also sometimes as a Divine ritualist. We find her—very infrequently—from the Old Kingdom to the New. Egyptologists used to group this ritualist under the general category of “mourning women,” but it appears the demdjet or Demdjet may have had a more specific function.

The root of the word has to do with collecting or assembling. And since the title is a feminine active participle, the title demdjet is “she who collects or assembles.” If you’re at all familiar with the ancient Egyptian funerary texts, you may recall that there is quite a lot of emphasis on making sure the deceased have all their bones, bits, limbs, heads, etc. collected or assembled for them as well as ensuring none of those things are disassembled or lost. Since Isis is the collector of bits and pieces par excellence, at least when it comes to Osiris (and the deceased), Diamond suggests that this ritual role may play a part in Isis’ origins.

The demdjet (top) and the kenut (bottom) offering nu pots

One of the Pyramid Texts (PT 2283) refers to a Demdjet Vulture. It says, “Osiris Neith, accept Horus’ Eye, which Seth hid—THE HIDDEN VULTURE, which he joined—THE JOINED [Demdjet] VULTURE…” This Demdjet Vulture is involved with stretching or spreading something. We cannot say whether the Demdjet Vulture is supposed to be Isis, but at least we may have an early attestation of a Divine Demdjet. Of course, Isis can take vulture form, but it is not Her most common bird form.

We also find the Demdjet in the pyramid temple of Senwosret III where She gives life and protection. From the Middle Kingdom, there are demdjets in the papyrus Ramesseum E. Some scholars think that the contents of that papyrus may date back to the 3rd dynasty (there are archaisms in the text). If true, it would be the oldest mention of a demdjet.

In this papyrus, we learn that the demdjets are present throughout the funerary rites. At some point, the demdjets move simultaneously, perhaps in ritual motion or dance. They are there when the deceased is summoned to revivification. And they have speaking parts. In the New Kingdom, we have several more instances of demdjets. They are shown as two kneeling women with nu water pots and they are watering “the desert necropolis.” In one case, one woman is labeled menkenu and one demdjet. (Alan Gardiner suggests menkenu is a title of Isis, while demdjet is a title of Nephthys.) In another case, one is called demdjet and one is called kenut (menkenu and kenut may be different versions of the same title).

Same offering, different labels: The Great Kite and the Lesser Kite

But here’s where it gets more interesting for Isiacs. In the last New Kingdom example (tomb of Paheri, if you must know), we find the same scene—women kneeling with nu pots, dressed in the same way—but this time, They are labeled Djeret Weret (Great Kite) and Djeret Nedjeset (Lesser Kite). In this time period, we know Who the Great Kite and the Lesser Kite are; They are Isis and Nephthys. So, the women depicted may be human ritualists portraying the Goddesses, which we know was done in Egyptian ritual. In additional, but very damaged, scenes in two of these tombs, we see the demdjet no longer kneeling, but standing with her/Her right arm raised, elbow bent, and fist clenched while her/Her left clenched fist is placed at her/Her chest. It reminds me of the henu gesture, but standing.

The henu gesture

She is labeled Djeret Weret Demdjet, the Great Kite Demdjet. The gesture s/She makes is thought to be associated with transfiguration, the recitation of holy words, and glorifications for the dead.

In the Book of the Amduat, a Goddess named Demdjet appears in the 7th and 8th Hours of the Night where She helps protect Re and the Sun Barque as it journeys through the Otherworld. In the 7th Hour, She is with three other Goddesses: She Who Cuts, She Who Punishes, and She Who Annihilates. In the 8th Hour, Demdjet is with three other mummiform Goddesses: She Who Veils, She Who Decorates (?), and the Dark One. Interestingly, the 7th Hour is the same Hour in which Isis and the Elder Magician work Their powerful magic to subdue Apophis. So in this case, with Isis in Her Great of Magic form, it seems to me it would be a bit of a stretch to consider this Demdjet, a minor Hours Goddess, to be a form of Isis.

The Djeret Weret Demdjet making a gesture of transfiguration; we can see the feet of (probably) another demdjet (the Djeret Nedjeset Demdjet?) above this one, but this part of the tomb is damaged

Nevertheless, with its core meaning of She Who Collects, Assembles, and Puts Together, we can find in the Demdjet an important harmony with one aspect of Great Isis: She Who searches, finds, reassembles, and gives new life to Osiris.

Some researchers have suggested that there may have been a very early Egyptian funerary custom in which important dead persons were disarticulated and then put back together for rejuvenation. It’s a highly controversial topic, but if so, perhaps the original Demdjet may have been the female ritualist who did this reassembly. Perhaps she was serving as a priestess of the Great Renewing Mother. And perhaps, just perhaps, this Great Mother Regeneratrix was the Demdjet Weret—(proto) Iset Demdjet—She Who collects our bones for us that we may be made whole in preparation for our rebirth.

Milk & the Magic of Isis

One of thousands of such beautiful Isis-nursing-Horus image that remain to us
One of thousands of such beautiful Isis-nursing-Horus images that remain to us

Just a note of joy before we start this post: Ahhhhhhhh. Many blessings to those who worked magic, who worked their butts off organizing, calling, and writing, and who worked their powerful, worldly magic by voting. Many thanks to our Divine Ones Who inspired and watched over us. We have a chance again.

And now back to our regularly scheduled post…

You may recall that, to the ancient Egyptians, bodily fluids could be a way of moving magic or heka. Written spells could be licked from the papyrus in order to be taken into the human body. Magic could be eaten or swallowed. Human beings know, deep in our bones, the magic and life-power of both blood and semen.

Multiply the power of these magic-containing fluids to the nth degree when it comes to the Deities. Atum created His children, Shu and Tefnut, by spitting (or ejaculating in His hand in another version). The tears of Re created human beings. The tiet, the Knot or Blood of Isis, protects the dead in the Otherworld.

Isis Lactans, Isis the Milk-Giver
Isis Lactans, Isis the Milk-Giver

Yet of all these magical bodily fluids, it may be that milk, especially divine milk, is the queen of them all. To us at least, milk is the most pleasant—and palatable—of the magical body fluids. It is, after all, our first food. In fact, it is the perfect food and it gives us an intimate connection with our mothers. Children nursing at the breasts of their mothers are drinking Life Itself. No death has ever touched this pure milk. It comes from the mother alive. It is drunken alive. It becomes part of a living being.

Milk is indeed magic.

As Great Divine Mother and a Cow Goddess, Isis is also the Egyptian Milk Goddess from a very early period. The Pyramid Texts say to the deceased, “Take the breast of your sister Isis the milk-provider.” Throughout Egyptian history, Isis is the mother and nurse of kings. A scholar who as studied the images of Isis Lactans (“Milk-Giving Isis”) observed that the idea that milk from the breast of the Goddess (Isis as well as other Goddesses) not only gives life, but also longevity, salvation, and even divinity is one that exists “in the mentality of the populations of the Delta from the earliest antiquity, and manifests itself in the official imagery of the Pharaohs.” (Tran Tam Tinh, Isis lactans: Corpus des monuments greco-romains d’lsis allaitant Harpocrate, Leiden: Brill, 1971.)

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The Mother gives Her breast to the Horus Child

Egyptian art shows the king drinking this holy milk of the Goddess three important times: at birth, at his coronation, and at his rebirth. The symbolism is clear. Goddess milk provides life to the babe, royal power—and perhaps wisdom and a touch of divinity—to the new king, and renewal after death for the deceased king.

A daily ritual conducted in the temples at Thebes, Memphis, and Abydos was designed to confirm the power of the king. Pharaoh (or more likely, his representative) received the sa en ankh, life-energy, from his Divine Father, Amun-Re, by means of magical gestures. Then he received the power of the Goddess from his Divine Mother, Amunet, by means of drinking Her milk. Carved on temple walls, the Goddess invites the king to suckle the milk from both Her breasts. In Hatshepsut’s temple, Hathor’s milk gives the young Pharaoh “life, strength, health.” The Pyramid Texts have Isis bring Her milk to the deceased Pharaoh to assist in his rebirth: “Isis comes, she has her breasts prepared for her son Horus, the victorious.”

A charming vessel in which to store "the milk of a woman who has borne a son"
A charming vessel in which to store “the milk of a woman who has borne a son.” Photo by Rob Koopman; wikicommons

But the king wasn’t the only one to benefit from the divine life magic of milk. Milk was also used for healing. The “milk of a woman who has borne a son” was a fairly common ingredient in Egyptian medicines.

Archeologists have recovered a number of small vessels in the shape of a woman pressing her breast to give milk or, as in the case of the vessel shown here, a woman nursing. They were designed to hold human milk, perhaps for making medicine, perhaps for later feeding of a child. The milk of the Divine Mother was also directly invoked for healing. In a formula for the relief of a burn, Isis says that She will extinguish the fire of the burn with Her milk. By applying Goddess-milk to the body of the sufferer, they will be healed and the fire will leave the body. In a New Kingdom myth, the Goddess Hathor uses gazelle’s milk to heal the eyes of Horus, which had been torn out during one of His battles with Set. A spell from the Berlin Magical Papyrus instructs that if one takes milk with honey at sunrise, it “will become something divine in your heart.” Isn’t that just beautiful?

With all its magical properties, milk was common among the supplies buried with the dead and it served as a valuable offering to the Deities. At Isis’ Philae temple, wall carvings attest that milk was offered to all the Deities worshipped there. To help renew Osiris, milk was poured upon His tomb at Biggeh, a small, holy island visible from Philae. Every ten days, Isis Herself was said to have made these libations.

Milk being offered to a sacred image of a Goddess in India
Milk being offered to a sacred image of a Goddess in India

The whiteness of milk also added to its sanctity in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, for white was a color they associated with purity and joy. In tomb paintings and funerary papyri, Egyptians are usually shown wearing pure, white clothing. This also carried over into the later Isis cult where the wearing of white marked one as an Isiac initiate. Ritual implements were often made of white alabaster. Sacred animals were described as being white; and actual white animals—like the White Buffalo Calf of modern Native Americans—were exceptionally sacred.

The magic of milk was also understood in the wider Mediterranean world. The Greek Kourotrophoi, (“Child-Carrying” and Nurturing Goddesses), could confer hero status on a mortal by feeding him on Their milk. Mysteries, such as the Orphic-Dionysian Mysteries, envisioned a kind of baptism in milk.

Magical, beautiful milk
Magical, beautiful milk

It is widely understood that the Isis Lactans images of late Paganism became the models for the mother-and-child images of the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus. (Although, since I am updating this post, I have since seen some arguments against it…)

Nevertheless, early Christianity, too, had the concept of the blessings bestowed by divine milk. Eventually, it is Christianity’s male God Who becomes the Divine Nurse of worshippers. The Gnostic 19th Ode of Solomon says,

“The Son is the cup; the Father is he who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is she who milked him; because his breasts were full and it was undesirable that his milk should be released without purpose.”

(Sigh. And this is doubly odd since the feminine Holy Spirit (She!) is right there.) Nevertheless this adoption of a Goddess power by a God simply points out, once more, the potency of the symbol of milk—for all of us.

Milk IS magic. It is life, health, healing, resurrection, renewal, and salvation. For me, this holy, holy milk is always the milk of Isis, the Milk Provider, the Great of Magic and the Great of Milk.

It's not Isis, but wow

It’s not Isis, but wow!

Samhain for Isis Devotees?

Did you see the glorious moon last night on All Hallows Eve?

I was with a few friends as we watched it rise, full and brilliant, coming up over the horizon. Our shadows were long and long in the cool, sweet light of the moon. I hope your remembrances and celebrations last night were meaningful.

As it turns out, there is an Isis festival recorded for just about this time of year, too.

It is called the Isia and is found in a calendar from 354 CE that was commissioned by a wealthy Roman Christian named Valentinus from a prominent, also-Christian scribe named Philocalus. The Calendar of Philocalus is famous because it contains the first known reference to the Christian holiday of Christmas as an annual festival of the birth of the Christ on December 25th. (There are earlier references to that date, but not as an annual festival.)

An illustration of November from Philocalus’ 354 CE calendar

But for Isiacs, the calendar is important for its inclusion of a different festival: the Isia. Philocalus records the dates of the Isia as October 28th-November 1st. Some scholars include the days until November 3rd as part of the Isia. That’s because Philocalus’ calendar has what was known as an “Egyptian Day” on November 2nd and a Hilaria on November 3rd, both of which may have been included in the Isia.

Let me explain: to the Romans, an “Egyptian Day” was a bad luck day. There were three in January and two in every other month. The first Egyptian Day in November fell right after the Isia, on November 2nd. These days were inappropriate for public festivals, sacrifices, and were generally stay-in-your-house-and-do-nothing days. The bad luck of the Egyptian Days continued on into medieval Christian calendars. Why were they called “Egyptian” days? No one knows for sure. However, Egyptian calendars (for example, the famous New Kingdom Cairo Calendar) often list festivals along with auspicious and inauspicious days. So it may well be that Romans simply picked up these genuinely Egyptian bad luck days. Later on, the name was taken to refer to the ten biblical plagues of Egypt to better harmonize these pagan-y days with scripture.

From Pompeii: Making offering before the sarcophagus of Osiris

As for the Hilaria, there are two shown on Philocalus’ calendar, one on March 25th, at the end of a lengthy festival of Magna Mater/Kybele in which the death of Attis is mourned. The preceding day (the 24th) was the Day of Blood, on which flagellation and self-castration might take place, and it was also an Egyptian Day. The Hilaria was what it sounds like: a day of joy. People played games and feasted. Some see the spring Hilaria as the origin of our April Fool’s Day.

So clearly, it was not absolutely unheard of to have a festival on an Egyptian Day…of course in the case of the Kybele festival, it was the (yikes!) Day of Blood. There is nothing else listed in Philocalus’ calendar for the Egyptian Day following the Isia. The November Hilaria is shown as the day after that, on the 3rd.

Yet in both cases, we have a Great Goddess with a partner to be mourned, followed by a Day of Joy. This makes very good sense from a psychological standpoint; we need relief after mourning. So it may be that we should include the Egyptian Day and Hilaria following the Isia as part of the Isia festival after all. Which would mean that we’re in the middle of the festival rather than the end right now. So there’s plenty of time should you choose to celebrate your own Isia.

Artist’s depiction of ceremonies at the Temple of Isis, Pompeii. Click to see it larger.

We know little else about the Roman Isia. On one hand, this frees us to create our own Isia. Given the time of year, we might choose to connect the Isia with the modern festival of Halloween. Isis is, after all, a Goddess of the Dead par excellence. There is much we could do with an Isia in which we remembered our own Honored Dead, for example by speaking their names and making offering in the ancient Egyptian tradition.

On the other hand, there is an appropriate Egyptian option for the celebration of the Isia and—and given the timing and the resonant subject matter—it is a likely candidate for the basis of the Roman Isia.

Though perhaps it should more rightly be called the Osiria. For at about this same time of year, in the Egyptian month of Khoiak, the ancients held a festival for Osiris that remembered His conflict with His brother Set, His death, and His resurrection through the holy magic of Isis. We know of this festival from the period of the Middle Kingdom and have a decent record of it from the great Osirian sanctuary of Abydos. We also know of it from the Osiris chapel in Hathor’s Ptolemaic sanctuary at Denderah.

Mourning for Osiris

The festival re-enacted the central Isis-Osiris myth (I won’t recount it here; you all know the story.) The Egyptians moulded images of Osiris from Nile mud, special spices, talismanic stones, and seeds. The images were watered so that the grain sprouted, a fitting symbol of new life. (We should also know that this was about the time of year when the Nile flood was receding so that the fields could be planted with new crops.) The festival ended with the raising of the Djed pillar, symbol of the resurrection of the God Himself as Lord of the Otherworld.

This was, in fact, the Fall Equinox Festival we were planning for 2020. It was to be our own Isia. But. Well. 2020. So at the next opportunity, those of us in the upper left corner WILL make this festival happen.

Watering the grain in the sacred image of Osiris

Nevertheless, if you are so inclined, now is a perfect time to re-enact that core Isiac myth—if on a smaller and more personal scale. And should you do so from Isis’ point of view, it would be a true Isia, indeed.

I have done my own private Isia like this: I shuffle and deal out 14 Tarot cards, representing the 14 parts of the body of Osiris. I place or “hide” the cards in a circle around my temple. Then, during the several days of the festival, I ritually circle the temple, “finding” some of the cards until I have “found” them all. Then I assemble them into a roughly human-shaped, stick-figure Osiris. (This is a fairly large spread, so I place it in the middle of the floor of my temple.) On the last day of the festival, I turn over the cards, revealing them, and read them as an omen for the coming season and coming year. Naturally—to expand the rite and get myself in the proper magical frame of time, I use temple openings and closings of my choice from Isis Magic. (The Opening of the Ways works quite well; if you haven’t got your own copy of Isis Magic, you’ll find the ritual here.)

Should you decide to honor the Isia this year—in this way or some other—I would love to know about your experience. Whether you choose to connect your Isia with the ancient Khoiak festivals of Isis and Osiris, create a Day-of-the-Dead-type Isia, or celebrate some other way entirely, I wish you much depth and beauty in this darkening season of sad, sweet remembrance. May She embrace you always.

Isis and the pharaoh raise the Djed pillar, the symbol of the resurrection of Osiris

The Divine Bread of Isis

I offer bread to the Goddess
Offering bread to the Goddess

With so many of us “Covid baking” these days, I write today in honor of bread—both as a worthy offering to Isis and Her Divine family and as a powerful symbol of transformation.

Indeed, the offering tables of ancient Egypt fairly groaned beneath the weight of loaves of offered bread. In tomb paintings you can see them, baked into neat, conical or oval shapes and piled high upon the altars. “Thousands of loaves” were promised to Deities and deceased pharaohs. Excavations have shown that actual loaves of bread were among the grave goods of kings and commoners alike. In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the deceased declares he will live on the bread of the Goddesses and Gods.

An offering table with the bread and wine already on it
An offering table with the round loaves of bread and pitchers of wine already and eternally upon it

As in so many places in the world, bread in ancient Egypt was a basic, even archetypal, food and the grain from which it was made, an essential, as well as symbolic, food crop. To the ancient Egyptians, a loaf of bread came to symbolize all types of food offerings and all good things.

Both Isis and Osiris are strongly connected with bread and the grain from which it is made. A number of Isis’ epithets attest to this. She is the Lady of Bread and Beer, Lady of Green Crops, Goddess of the Fertility of the Field, and the Lady of Abundance. (And by “bread and beer” the Egyptians meant more than just a sandwich wrapper and a drink. The phrase meant every good thing; Egyptians would even greet each other by saying, “bread and beer,” thus wishing each other prosperity.)

Lady and Lord of Abundance
Lady and Lord of Green Crops

For Osiris’ part, like so many Gods, He is identified with the cycle of the living and dying grain. The Coffin Texts connect Osiris and grain with immortality: “I am Osiris . . . I live and grow as Neper [“Corn” or “Grain”], whom the august gods bring forth that I may cover Geb [the earth], whether I be alive or dead. I am barley, I am not destroyed.” The texts also tell us that the deceased, identified with Osiris as the Divine grain, nourishes the common people, makes the Gods Divine, and “spiritualizes” the spirits. Thus bread and grain are more than just bodily sustenance; they are spiritual sustenance as well.

I am emmer wheat and I will not die
I live and grow as Grain…

Temple walls show grain growing out of the body of the dead Osiris while His soul hovers above the stalks. But it is not enough that the grain sprouts and grows. It must also be transformed so that Osiris Himself may also be transformed. And, as in the main Isis and Osiris myth, the Goddess is the one Who transforms the God. In the myth, She does this by reassembling His body and fanning life into Him with Her wings. Using the grain metaphor, Isis becomes the Divine Baker Who transforms the raw grain into the risen and nourishing bread. In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the deceased person asks for a funeral meal of “the cake that Isis baked in the presence of the Great God.”

Emmer wheat
Emmer wheat, the most common type from which the ancient Egyptians made bread

As a symbol of transformation and ongoing life, grain has magical properties. Some of the funerary texts have the deceased rubbing her body with barley and emmer wheat in order to partake of these magically transforming properties.

In several temples where important festivals of Osiris were held, the priests made a complex form of bread, called Divine Bread, that was molded in the shape of Osiris. (In fact, the ancient Egyptians were quite adept at using molds to bake bread in a variety of shapes and forms.) The Osirian Divine Bread was made from grain and a special paste consisting of ingredients such as Nile mud, dates, frankincense, fresh myrrh, 12 spices with magical properties, 24 precious gems, and water.

A "corn Osiris" ... perhaps molded like the Divine Bread
A “corn Osiris” … perhaps molded like the larger Divine Bread of Mendes?

At Denderah, this Divine Bread was modeled into the shapes of the pieces of the body of Osiris and sent to the various cities in which Isis was said to have enshrined them.

At Mendes (which is where, we must note, the phallus of Osiris was enshrined), a sacred marriage was part of the Osirian celebrations. It took place between the Goddess Shontet, a form of Isis, and Osiris as the grain. In the Goddess’ holy of holies, Her sacred statue was unclothed and grain was strewn on a special bed before Her. After allowing some time for the Goddess and God to unite, the grain was gathered up, then wrapped in cloth, watered, and used to model a full-body figure of Osiris Khenti-Amenti (“Osiris, Chief of the West,” that is, the Land of the Dead). Finally, Osiris the Divine Bread was buried with full ceremony, including a priestess who took the role of Isis to mourn Him and work the transforming magic of the Goddess.

Gathering lotuses for the lotus bread
Gathering lotuses for the lotus bread

Several ancient writers describe an entirely different type of bread also associated with Isis. It is lotus bread. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians who lived in the Delta gathered the lotuses that grow profusely there. They dried the centers containing the seeds then pounded them into flour that was made into bread. Lotus-seed bread was made from both the white and the blue water lilies. The lily rhizomes were also used; they were dried, then ground into flour for bread making—though the rhizome version was likely to have been less palatable than the seed bread. In Diodorus’ account of Egyptian prehistory, he mentions that lotus bread was one of the Egyptian subsistence foods and that the “discovery of these is attributed by some to Isis.”

Isis is the Lady of Abundance Who gives us the bread of earthly life; and She is the Divine Baker Who makes the magical bread that gives us eternal life. She is the Goddess Who regenerates the Grain God as She guides the transformation of Her Beloved from the threshed grain into the ever-living Green God Osiris. She is the Goddess of Divine Bread Who feeds our bodies and souls and Her sacred bread is a pleasing offering to Isis, Goddess of Transformation.

Let’s get baking!

Breathing the Breath of Isis

Are Iset and Isis the same Goddess?
Isis, Mistress of Wind

Deep breath. In and out.

It helps when we are angry. Or can’t sleep. Or tired…as many of us are right now.

So today, we take a deep, cleansing breath and honor Isis as Lady of the element of Air—of Breath, of Wind, and thus of Spirit.

It’s quite true that many cultures associate breath, air, and wind with Spirit. For while these things are invisible, they are invisible Powers, and we are intimately touched by their influence. We breathe the air and we live. The wind fills a sail and we move. Wind, air, and breath thus can be seen as manifestations of the invisible powers of the Deities.

Perhaps that is why my favorite title for an Egyptian book of the dead is the Book of Breathings. It is the book “which Isis made for her brother Osiris, to make his ba live, to make his body live, to make young all his members” and it especially emphasizes the importance of breath for resurrection. The Lady of the Breath of Life fans Her wings and puts “wind” into Osiris’ nose. The God lives and His Divine Spirit revives when He “smells the air of Isis.”

In Isis, breath, air, and wind are one.

In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, Isis declares that She comes “with the north wind.” The Goddess and the wind were associated because both were known to bring the cooling, life-giving waters of the Inundation. It was thought that the north wind “dammed up” the Inundation, which flowed from the south, enabling the water to flood and nourish Egyptian fields. Thus, Isis is the one Who heralds the Inundation and causes it to flow (as Iset-Sopdet), but also Her northerly winds keep it in place so that it will water and fertilize the fields.

A fanciful Italian mosaic, from the Hellenistic period, showing Egypt during Inundation

A fanciful Italian mosaic, from the Hellenistic period, showing Egypt during the Inundation

As Iset Mehit, Isis of the North and Lady of the North Wind, the Goddess brings the sweet-smelling north wind and all good things. Temple texts at Edfu identify Her with the “good north wind.” In the Book of Hours, She is the “living north wind.” Isis is especially found whenever air is active, whether in beating wings or gusting winds. Some stories describe Her mourning cries for Osiris as the wailing and moaning of the winds.

Today, the wind provides power in Egypt; this is the Zafarana wind farm
Today, the wind provides power in Egypt; this is the Zafarana wind farm

Isis can be a controller of the winds, too, for it is She Who promises the king in the Pyramid Texts (Utterance 669), “the south wind shall be your wet nurse and the north wind shall be your dry nurse.” The wind or breath of Isis can also purify. In the Pyramid Texts (Utterance 510), the deceased is cleansed with a vessel “which possesses the breath of Isis the Great.” In a work by the Roman writer Lucian, Isis is invoked to send the winds.

In the myth of the Contendings of Horus and Set, when the Ennead finally rules in favor of Horus to succeed His father Osiris, Isis sends the north wind—which She both controls and personifies—to bring the good news to Osiris in the underworld.

Isis can also be connected to other directional winds. In the Book of Coming Forth by Day (Chapter 161), the four winds are attributed this way: Osiris is the north wind, Re is the south wind, Isis is the west wind, and Nephthys is the east wind. As the winds, these Deities enter the noses of the dead and bring them to life.

Elemental de Aire by Ades21 on Deviant Art
Elemental de Aire by Ades21 on Deviant Art

Isis is not the only Deity associated with the winds and air, of course. Wind is also the manifestation of Amun, the Hidden One, of Shu, the God of Air and Light, and of Atum, the Creator. In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, an otherwise unidentified “Great Goddess, Mistress of Winds” brings benefits to the deceased. In the Coffin Texts, the deceased calls himself “Mistress of the Winds in the Island of Joy.” Another tells us that the deceased receives the breath of life from four primordial Maidens associated with the four winds and Who existed “before men were born or the gods existed” (Formula 162).

The deceased holds a sail to catch the breath of life
The deceased holds a sail to catch the breath of life

The Book of Coming Forth by Day sometimes shows the deceased holding a sail to catch the breath of life. Since the dead are identified with Osiris, it would make sense that the sail is intended to help them magically catch the air fanned into the dead by the powerful wings of Isis.

In a later period, images of Isis Pharia show the Goddess Herself holding a sail. The billowing sail of Isis Pharia ensures smooth sailing on the seas as in life. Perhaps this later image harks back to Isis’ more ancient attribution as She Who fills the sails of the dead with breath and life.

In Graeco-Roman texts of about the same period as the Isis Pharia images, Isis “hast dominion over winds and thunders and lightnings and snows” and She declares in one of Her aretalogies, “I am the Queen of rivers and winds and sea.”

Isis Pharia with Her sail and the lighthouse on the right
Isis Pharia with Her sail and the lighthouse on the right

A second-century-CE papyrus found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt calls Isis the “true jewel of the wind and diadem of life.” A hymn at the Goddess’ Faiyum temple connects Her with the winds, too: “Whether you have journeyed to Libya or to the south wind, or whether you are dwelling the outermost regions of the north wind ever sweetly blowing, or whether you dwell in the blasts of the east wind where are the risings of the sun…”

In whichever wind She dwells, Isis is always the ancient Lady of the Living Air, Queen of the Winds, Winged Goddess of the Spirit Revivified. From Her we receive our breath and our life.

Talking with Isis

A meditation on beautiful Sirius, the Star of Isis

When we connect with Isis, how do we do that? Prayer? Meditation? Invocation? Visualization? Can we talk with Her, actually have a back-and-forth conversation? Can we ask Her questions? Can we request Her help?

Yes, we can. How exactly you do it is up to you. And perhaps, with this required downtime we’re all going through right now, you’ve discovered (or rediscovered) the ways that work best for you.

My own boundaries between prayer, meditation, and visualization tend to be rather soft. Very often, I find that meditation flows into visualization flows into prayer flows into an offering chant flows back into meditation. Sometimes I visualize the whole time, sometimes I don’t “see” anything, but just feel Her presence. Sometimes I can “hear” Her voice, sometimes I just sense in some way what She is communicating with me.

Here’s a perfect image for ‘ascending’ in your visualizations…indeed, the pillars in Egyptian temples were meant to be holding up the sky.

But why do we talk with the Goddess, why do we strive to “see” Her? There is a point and it’s not just an ego boost.

The point of this sort of talking with the Goddess is communion—sharing with Her in one way or another and asking Her to share with us. Sometimes we just need the reassurance that She is there, so we invoke and try to sense Her. Sometimes we need help, so we ask for it. Sometimes we are so full of love for Her that we simply must express it.

An excellent posture for meditation

Talking with Goddess is good for our souls and spirits, too. I think that Iamblichus, my favorite Neoplatonic theurgist, had it right: invocation of the Deities lifts up the soul of the theurgist (or Isis devotee, in this case) and brings us closer to the Divine. By repeatedly connecting with Isis—whether through prayer or ritual or devotions, meditations or visualizations, dance or chanting, or any number of other ways—we make ongoing contact with the Divine.

The more we come into the presence of Holy Isis, the more we become infused with Her holiness. In the same way that we tend to mirror the people with whom we spend the most time, spending more time with the Divine can help us better mirror that Divinity, and can help to make us better people.

This classic scribe’s posture is perfect for meditation, too

Of course there are ways we can make some serious missteps in this process. The most problematic is when we think we’re talking to Isis, but we’re actually talking to ourselves; when it’s not Isis Who we hear in our heads, but only our own subconscious echoes.

That’s what I think happens with some of the mega-church preachers who always seem to hear God asking for more money or with church-based hate groups who think they hear God condemning everyone but themselves. They’re not talking to the Divine; they’re getting feedback from their own interior bullshit. This can happen to people with even the best of intentions. I know it’s happened to me; chances are, if you’re talking with Isis, it will or already has happened to you, too.

So what do we do about it?

Sometimes, vision looks like this

Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer, no perfect solution, no quick fix. The only partial answer that I know of is to develop spiritual maturity. A spiritually mature person will be better able to recognize their own internal “stuff,” and so be better able to separate it from true Divine contact with Isis. Did Isis really say that so-and-so with whom I had a fight yesterday deserved a big, fat comeuppance? Nope; pretty sure that was me and not Her. She, on the other hand, might offer advice on how I can get over it or She might even point out that I need to make an apology.

The other tricky thing about all this is that while we live in these bodies, we will never—I repeat, never—receive pure and unadulterated contact with the Divine. It comes to us though our own perceptions of body and mind. There is no other path the Divine can use. While we are incarnate beings, the Goddess must come to us through our perceptions—and our perceptions are always, always, always tinged by our own psychological makeup. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, getting to know our own psychology is very valuable in sorting all this out. It’s just something that is and we have to be aware of it if we hope to hear—in the clearest voice possible—what Isis has to say.

Or like this…

The one clue I can offer, after many years of wrestling with my own head and heart, is that when it is truly Her—as opposed to just my echo chamber—the thought-impression-feeling-intuition I get seems to come suddenly and without precedent. I can recognize it as “not-me” (or not just me). Sometimes the words are strange or the images are not ones I would normally choose. Yes, it’s all very subjective—which is my point exactly. That’s why the more you know about yourself, the more you can move yourself out of the way so that you can better know when it is Isis Who is doing the talking.

The Awe-full-ness of the Goddess

I recently came across a collection of epithets of Isis in which the author translated the core concept as “awful.” In the original sense of the word— “full of awe” —awful makes complete sense as a Divine epithet. In our common understanding of the word today, it’s…oh, let’s say…uncomfortable.

So you can get a full taste of the strangeness of it, here are some of Isis’ awful epithets: She is “The Lady of Awfulness,” “The Lady of Awfulness More than the Divine Powers,” “She Whose Awfulness is Great,” and “She Whose Awfulness is Greater than the Gods.” She is awful on earth, in the heavens, among the Deities, in Egypt. She is “Great of Trembling” and “Hundreds of Thousands Tremble at Her Sight.”

Oooh, scary.

And, She is. Scary. Sometimes.

So today, let’s talk about the awfulness of Isis.

The ancient Egyptian word translated as “awful” is transliterated nrw. To be able to pronounce it, we go with neru. It is associated with the vulture and with Isis and Nephthys as two Vulture Goddesses, the Nerti. (And you recall that the word for vulture in Egyptian is mut, that is, mother.) The ner root means to be strong, to be mighty, to terrify, to strike awe, to be victorious. Neru can be The Terrible One…or the concept of strength, might, or victory. It can also be fear or dread. Neri can be to over-awe. There is a Goddess of Strength called Nerit. And ner also can have connotations of protection because of the Awful One’s strength and might and power to protect. So, I guess, “awful” may be a pretty good translation of the idea.

Iset Nerit is Isis Who Strikes Awe.*

An awe-some Isis by Ugo Sirius. Find more of his work here.

If you are just beginning your relationship with Isis, it is likely that you haven’t met Iset Nerit yet. Most often, we first meet kindly Isis, the Great Mother, the protectress. Ah, but Nerit is always there. For instance, She may come to you disguised as Isis the Ass Kicker. Or She may give you a glimpse of Her fierceness or Her fire.

But it is when Isis is at Her Most Primordial, Most Ancient, Most—ENORMOUS—that is when we are truly greeting Iset Nerit. In Her presence, my belly thrills, my spine shivers, my hair stands on end. The numinous, the holy, the strange, and the powerful is with me, before me, around me. I kneel and kiss the ground before Her beautiful face.

For some, this experience may be somewhat unsettling. I am reminded of some folks of my acquaintance who apparently thought we were playing at magic, pretending about the Goddesses and Gods. Then magic actually happened and the Goddess was really there and they were done.

If you are in the early days of your relationship with Isis, I suggest that you not seek out Iset Nerit. Not yet. Unless, of course, you like the feeling of sacred fright before the Divine. Some of us do (she admits sheepishly).

What about you? Do you know the awe-full-ness of Isis?

*For Coptic fans, Nerit is Noure (noor-ray), which is rather beautiful in the same soft way that Coptic Ise (Ee-say) is: Ise Noure.

Perfumes for Isis

At this present moment, our home is filled with flowers. Yes, I know. It’s February. That’s why it’s filled with flowers. And since oriental lilies are some of our favorites, right now, I’m smelling the sweet-dark scent of those wonderful lilies throughout the living room.

And all this leads me to think of the perfumes of ancient Egypt and, of course, the perfumes of Isis particularly. For the Goddesses and Gods of Egypt were always associated with scent. Beautiful scents have always been connected with the Divine, but in Egypt particularly, you knew that a Deity had arrived when you smelled Her or His perfume in the temple air.

Egyptian women making perfume

The Egyptians apparently blended scents appropriate for their Deities; for instance, there is a record of an unguent called “Aroma of Horus.” Surely, there was an “Aroma of Isis,” too, but alas, we have no record of it to date. Today’s magical perfumers, on the other hand, almost always have a scent for Her. Isis’ association with scent remained part of Her manifestation even after Her worship spread beyond Egypt. In Apuleius’ account of initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, his protagonist sees Isis in a vision and remarks that She breathed forth the “blessed fragrance of Arabia.”

My personal favorite scent for Isis is stargazer lily. With its deep pink, engorged-looking blossoms, stargazers are downright sexual in their showiness. Of course that is exactly what any flower is; sexual. As you may know, flowers are the sex organs of plants, which they display for all the world to see, marvel at, and enjoy. No wonder we have always given flowers as a love gift.

The stargazer lily; thus do we offer unto Isis that which is Hers

I like the blatant, vulva-pink sexual display of the stargazer to be sure. And the flower’s name reminds me of Isis’ own starry connections. But the main reason I associate them with Isis, and give them in offering to Her, is the scent. The stargazer’s soft, sweet perfume is deepened with a dark, funky musk that is almost animal-like in its pungency. The stargazer is my “jitterbug perfume.” (If you have not read Tom Robbin’s Jitterbug Perfume, oh please do!) The mixture of sweet and strange all wrapped up in an audacious package seems to me a perfect floral resumé for Isis. She offers us the sweet love of a mother one moment, then freaks us out completely with some weirdly magical happening the next. Like the flower, She is not shy; never shy. She will always tell you what you need to hear even when you don’t particularly want to hear it. Thus do I offer unto Isis that which is Hers: the beautiful stargazer lily.

The ancient Egyptians had no stargazers, alas. But they did associate a variety of other scents with Isis as well as with other Deities.

Expeditions to Punt for cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, and other precious resins, were common throughout Egyptian history. The huge gardens attached to the temple complexes also supplied vast quantities of herbs and flowers for the creation of the gallons of scent, pounds of incense, and thousands of bouquets offered in Egyptian temples. Many temples, such as those at Edfu and Denderah, even had special laboratories for making perfume and incense. Perfume was, after all, one of Egypt’s most lucrative exports.

Egyptian women enjoying perfume

Cleopatra VII, the queen who styled herself “the New Isis,” was reputed to use a different perfume for every part of her body and was credited with writing a book on the subject. But Cleo’s perfumes would not have been the clear, alcohol-based liquids we think of as perfume today. Egyptian perfumes were oil and fat-based; similar to our solid perfumes that liquefy as they are rubbed into the skin. A number of Egyptian perfumes were quite famous, the name brands of their day.

Lily was the dominant scent in Susinon, a perfume that seems to have been made exclusively by women. Perhaps this was because the lily was connected with female sensuality and spirituality and lily oil was a common treatment for “female complaints.” Lotus oil, from the sacred blue lotus (actually a blue water lily), was a favorite essential oil and associated with rebirth. It was the fragrance most favored by Egyptian priestesses. Other Egyptian perfumes include Magaleion, a complicated, difficult-to-make scent; Mendesian, known simply as “The Egyptian,” which was a spicy, resinous perfume; Metopion, a mixture of resins, herbs, sweet wine, and honey; and Sampsuchum, a marjoram-based scent sweetened with herbs and nasturtium flowers.

And then there was Kyphi, both an incense and perfume.

Recipes for Kyphi perfume are engraved on the walls of the temple of Isis’ son, Horus, at Edfu and at Philae, Isis’ own great temple in Upper Egypt. Kyphi was used especially to welcome the Deities to Their temples. Wine-based, Kyphi also includes sweet flag, rushes, cinnamon, juniper, raisins, myrrh, frankincense, cardamom, and gum mastic. In his essay “On Isis and Osiris,” Plutarch reports 16 ingredients and says that Kyphi calms, soothes, and can lull to sleep. It is also said to sharpen the intuition and promote dreams.

A priestess friend and I once made a ridiculously huge batch of Kyphi from Plutarch’s recipe, bits of which I am still burning to this day. It has a warm smell; like spicy raisin cookies. In fact, you could eat it without harm—and I believe the Egyptians did, medicinally. Luckily for me, it seems to get better with age.

What scents do you associate with Isis? There are no wrong answers. This is a personal thing. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

A beautiful piece of stargazer lily art

New article in The Light Extended

Coming in June

Hello, all! I am very happy to let you know that I have an article in the upcoming book, The Light Extended, A Journal of the Golden Dawn. It will be out sometime in June. In addition to my article, you’ll also find work from Chic & Tabatha Cicero, Adam Forrest, Tony Fuller, Darcy Kuntz, Samuel Scarborough, Frater YSHY, Jayne Gibson, Alex Sumner, Soror DPF, Frater D, and Frater Yechidah. Such Adept company!

I’m so pleased that this article is being published because it’s been a long time coming. I wrote it a number of years ago for a different book that didn’t happen. For this one, the article has been updated and edited. I hope you’ll like it. It’s titled “I Have Put On the Cloak of the Great Lady; I Am the Great Lady”: The Assumption of Godforms and the Key to Egyptian Magic. Here’s a bit from the introduction:

I am in the retinue of Hathor, the most august of the Gods, and She gives me power over my foes who are in the Island of Fire. I have put on the cloak of the Great Lady, and I am the Great Lady. I am not inert, I am not destroyed, and nothing evil will come to pass against me. I am the Great One Who Came Forth From Re, I was conceived and borne by Shesmetet, and I have come that I may weave the dress for my mistress. The dress is woven by Horus and Thoth and by Osiris and Atum; and indeed I am Horus and Thoth, I am Osiris and Atum.

Formula 485, the Coffin Texts

A series of Coffin Texts dealing with the weaving and wearing of the cloak of Hathor is among the clearest examples in Egyptian magic of what is most-often known today as the Assumption of Godforms. As in the example above, the deceased puts on the cloak of Hathor and becomes Hathor. He is both the weaver and the wearer of the magical covering of the Goddess—Her “cloak,” “dress,” or astral form.

Art seems to capture the Assumption of God/dessforms best; this is The Lotus Soul by Frantisek Kupka, 1898. This is what the energy feels like to me.

The Assumption of God/dessforms may well be the most powerful magical technique human beings have available—in this or the afterlife. It was one of the vital keys to ancient Egyptian magic and it can still be a key to the working of powerful, sacred magic today. 

We will look at how the ancient Egyptians may have developed this important technique, how they used it, and how it passed into the Western Esoteric Tradition. We will see how and why the technique was largely lost to us until being re-discovered and reconnected with its Egyptian roots by the magicians of the Golden Dawn at the end of the 19th century. Then, readers who would like to try this ancient technique for themselves are invited to use the brief ritual at the end of this article. It combines classical Egyptian and Hermetic theurgic formulae to assist you in Assuming the Godform of Amun, a Deity Who may be considered the God of God/dessforms.

I’ll let you know when it’s available!

Isis Thanksgiving leftovers

As you might expect, I have alerts set up for all kinds of Isis-related topics. Every now and then, something interesting comes up. On this day after Thanksgiving, I’d like to share a couple of them with you.

Isis Magic is FAST

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That’s Isis Magic out in front.

The other day, an alert came across for “Isis Magic” that amused me. Turns out there’s an Isis Magic that isn’t a book, but rather, an Australian racehorse. She’s a five-year-old mare with a 57% “win percentage” and a 64% “place percentage.” So she’s a winning horse, too, and is supposed to be able to run very fast for a very long time. Isis has endurance! I have no idea how Isis Magic got her name, but I sure would like to know. Anybody have an inside information on that?

New Isis temple uncovered in Egypt

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Workers building a housing project found an Isis temple. Scary seeing that shovel scooping up pillars with hieroglyphs.

Earlier this month, workers who were building a residential project in the area of Tell Atrib near Egypt’s Banha City unearthed the remains of a pharaonic Temple of Isis. Tell Atrib is in the southern delta, about 30 miles north of Cairo. In Greek, it was known as Athribis. In ancient Egyptian it was Hwt-ta-ḥry-ib, “the place over the heart”.  The heart of Osiris was supposed to be located there.

The city may have been established as long ago as the Old Kingdom, but our physical evidence so far only comes from the 12th dynasty. It was once capital of the 10th nome, Kem Wer, the “Great Black One,” named for the sacred black bull that was kept there and associated with Osiris, the black-faced Lord of the Dead. The city was most prominent in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

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The Temple of Isis in the Place over the Heart

However, the earliest Deities of the Heart City were Khentikhety, a crocodile God, Who was said to have found the heart of Osiris and watched over it, concealing it beneath His own heart. Khentikhety is paired with Khuyet, a winged Goddess Whose name means “Protector.” Eventually, Khentykhety was assimilated to Horus. I haven’t found out for sure yet, but it would seem reasonable that Khuyet would have been assimilated to Isis, though we also have at least one reference to Khuyet protecting Isis Herself.

And that’s what I’ve got for now!

Except for this PS from my publisher, who has asked me to remind you that Isis Magic (the book, not the horse) is available from Abiegnus House…and makes a great gift for any Isis-interested folks on your list. Just click on the book on the right. Thank you so much!