Category Archives: Plutarch

The Veil of Isis

This work is by Ludovic Pinelli; you can purchase a print here.

To Isis, a Veil
En Iset, Behen

This is a gift I bring before Isis the Hidden One, Who, Revealing Herself, Shakes Destiny: an invocation offering of a veil.

For You, Isis, a hiding, a hint, a whisper, an obscuration, a veil.

From behind it, may You send revelations into my sleep. Dreaming, I understand the inner voice and vision; I coax truth from my heart. Yet upon waking, the veil is torn asunder and I only half remember that which was so potent while I lay beneath Your veil.

O, but I adore Your mystery, Your obscurity, the crooked finger of Your concealing veil! Yes, Goddess, yes—veil Yourself in the depths of the indigo sky, in a blue-green blade of grass, in fire, in eyeshine in the darkness. For I could not bear the full brunt of Your beauty!

Draw me on with insinuations. Call to me with half-answered questions. Lead me with unknowns. And I shall ever follow, carrying the train of Your not-quite-translucent veil, hoping for another brief glimpse of You, beneath it.

Listen, O Isis, to the words of the Veil: “I am offered unto Isis as a kindness to mortals for I am their shield against the awe of the Goddess. Woven of darkness and daylight, the Cosmos itself is the loom upon which I was made. All things are connected to me in warp and woof. Tayet Herself, the Weaver, has made me, a perfect thing. I am the Uniting Mystery Never Quite Revealed. I am the Veil of Isis.”

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

The Veil of the Goddess

A coin with the image of Ptolemaic Queen Berenike II of Egypt with head veil

The phrase “the Veil of Isis” is so common that we might not question where it came from. But perhaps we should. For one thing, ancient Egyptian women generally weren’t veiled so it would be odd to see a Goddess depicted so. Oh, there were headdresses aplenty, but not concealing veils.*

By Ptolemaic times, under Greek influence, we do see veils as head coverings come into use, though they seem more decorative than anything else. Both Greek and Roman images of Isis often include a veil covering the back of the head and hair.

The phrase, Veil of Isis, comes to us from our Greek friend, Plutarch in his essay On Isis and Osiris. In it, he is talking about Egyptian Mysteries. He tells his readers that when the new pharaoh was crowned, he become privy to hidden Egyptian philosophy and notes that the Egyptians’ knowledge of their Deities “holds a mysterious wisdom.” To illustrate his point, he notes a certain seated statue of the Goddess of the Egyptian city of Sais. He says She is Athena “whom they [the Egyptians] consider to be Isis also.” She would, of course, be Neith, the Lady of Sais, Who was indeed assimilated to both Athena and Isis.

The statue bore an inscription: “I am all that was, and is, and shall be, and no mortal hath ever Me unveiled.” It speaks to the all-encompassing power and mystery of the Goddess.

If there was such an image, we have not yet found it. Since Plutarch was writing in the 2nd century CE and the Ptolemies came in long before that, about 300 BCE, it is possible that the image of Neith-Athena-Isis could have been veiled—at least with the decorative-type veil we see in images of some Ptolemaic queens.

Proclus, a Greek philosopher writing in the 5th century CE, also quotes the inscription and adds another line: “The fruit that I have brought forth the Sun has generated.” He doesn’t mention Isis, but rather Neith-Athena and speaks in terms of the Goddess being involved in creation processes, both visible and invisible.

There are a few other ancient references to the veil of Isis. The Greco-Egyptian magical papyri refer to it on several occasions. In one, the magician invokes Isis and asks Her to remove Her veil in order to reveal the future and “shake destiny.” By revealing the Mysteries beneath Her veil, the magician hoped that the Goddess Who was worshiped as Lady of Fate and Fortune could not only predict, but could change or “shake” destiny.

Science unveiling a multi-breasted Nature

Even after the end of the open worship of the Pagan Deities in the Mediterranean, Plutarch and other Greek philosophers continued to be studied. Because of Plutarch’s mention of the inscription in relation to Isis, the idea of the veil of Isis formulated more and more strongly and eventually passed into the annals of the Western Esoteric Tradition. The unveiling of the Goddess became a symbol of the revelation of esoteric secrets, sometimes specifically the revelation of Egyptian secrets.

European esotericists of many kinds came to use the metaphor of the Veil of Isis for the hiding or revealing of their own secrets. By this time, Isis was identified with the Goddess Nature, Who hides Her secrets from those who seek to understand Her.

This idea was particularly important to the alchemists who sought to uncover Nature’s secrets—She Who is Isis and Venus and Ephesian Artemis and the Anima Mundi (World Soul). Freemasons took up the idea of a veiled Isis keeping their own secrets and some even found Egyptian antecedents in their rituals.

A French occult magazine titled the Veil of Isis

The Romantic movement, which rejected what they considered the coldness of the Enlightenment, preferring emotion and imagination, was also developing at this time. For Romantics, Isis’ veil concealed not just the scientific secrets of Nature, but a deeper, unexplainable Mystery that is, at the same time, Ultimate Truth.

Philosophers took up the metaphor as well. Immanuel Kant said of the Saite inscription: “Perhaps no one has said anything more sublime, or expressed a thought more sublimely, than in that inscription on the temple of Isis (Mother Nature).” Influenced by Kant, the physician, playwright, poet, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller (what a guy!) tells a tale in which a young initiate rashly removes the Veil from a sacred image of Isis and is found nearly dead the next morning by the wiser priests; apparently, the secret was just too much for him.

Following in those mysterious footsteps, Helena Blavatsky’s 1877 book, Isis Unveiled, is a compendium of occult lore that purports to draw aside the veil of the Goddess for its readers. It continues to influence occultists to this day.

As a metaphor, the Veil of Isis was ubiquitous for centuries. Alchemists, magicians, freemasons, philosophers, scientists, poets, novelists, and visual artists all desired to life Isis’ Veil to discover the deepest secrets and truths, truths about Nature and truths about human beings in Nature.

This post barely scratches the surface of the many ways and places people were inspired by the veil of the Goddess. I’ve expressed some of my thoughts in the Offering at the beginning of this post. What is the Veil of Isis for you?

“Isis, Goddess of Life” on the Herbert Hoover National Historic site. A gift of the people of Belgium in gratitude for Hoover’s famine relief efforts for them in WWI. Engraved on the statue, in French, is,” I am that which was and is and will ever be, and no mortal has yet lifted the veil that covers me.”

* It is possible to see the daily opening and closing of the shrines that held the sacred images of the Egyptian Deities as a kind of unveiling and veiling of the images.

More Nephthys

"Nephthys" by the Popovy sisters — “Nephthys” by the Popovy sisters

Yes indeed, there is much more to say about Nephthys…

O, She is a Hidden One. In the Book of Caverns (an afterlife text), She is even described as the one Whose “head is hidden.” Yet She reveals Herself when you pay attention, when you search, when you ask.

Remember that lovely image of Nephthys by the two sister artists in last week’s post? Well, I found a couple more shots of it. Turns out the artwork is stranger and more unexpected than you would have thought having seen just the first photo.

Nephthys Herself is like that. She is stranger, more intriguing, and indeed more beautiful and powerful than you might, at first, think.

When we first read our Egyptian mythology, we see loyal Nephthys always in Her more dramatic sister’s shadow. She assists Isis with Osiris and Horus; She gets stuck with the troublesome, rowdy, and too-dry-to-be-fertile Set for a husband. As I mentioned last time, we used to think She didn’t even have Her own temples. But She did. And Her own priesthood, too.

The whole Nephthys sculpture...not what you expected? Me neither. — The whole Nephthys sculpture…not what you expected? Me neither.

When in a dyad with Isis, Nephthys is decidedly the “darker” one. The Pyramid Texts advise the king to “descend with Nephthys” in the Barque of the Night, but arise with Isis in the Barque of the Day. Nephthys speaks and the pathways of the Otherworld are obscured. The one being reborn is to “throw off the tresses of Nephthys” like he throws off his mummy wrappings at his rebirth. (I refer you back to a post on the magic of hair in Egyptian funerary ritual.) Nephthys is called Keku, Darkness itself. She is the Lady of the West, She is “in the Cemetery,” She is Lady of the Duat (the Underworld), Mourner and, like Her mother Nuet, She is called “Coffin.” She shares a number of these epithets with Isis (Who can be quite as dark as Her sister when She so desires).

Some researchers see Her darknesses and consider Sad-at-Heart Nephthys to be Death Itself and specifically the first half of the death process—the dying part, the entering into death part that does indeed make us sad at heart. Plutarch records that one side of the sistrum was decorated with Isis’ face while the other had Nephthys’ face, symbolizing creation and death respectively. (On Isis and Osiris, section 63)

It is an interesting and useful identification—and you can certainly make a good case for it. Yet it doesn’t quite satisfy me.

Not that Death isn’t a Big Thing. Death is possibly the Biggest Thing we face in our lives—outside of being born itself. But because it is so big, many of the Egyptian Deities are Death Deities. For instance, we could certainly consider Amentet to be Death Herself for Amentet means “The West,” that is, the Egyptian Land of the Dead and Amentet is often called the Beautiful West and welcomes the dead to Her realm.

Death is among the concerns of many Deities and it is indeed an intimate concern of Nepththys. But we’re not there yet. Where else can we look for Nephthys?

One place some scholars have looked is Her connection with other Deities. One of the more interesting ones is Her surprisingly close connection with Seshat, the Lady of Books, the Mistress of Builders.

Yeah, I know. Not the first one that would come to mind, is it?

As early as the Pyramid Texts (the oldest ones date from 2400-2300 BCE), Nephthys is said to have “collected all your members for you in this Her name of Seshat, Lady of Builders.” (Pyramid Texts, Utterance 364) Her much-later hymn from Komir invokes Her as “Seshat the Great, Mistress of Humanity, the Mistress of Writing, the Lady of the Entire Library. To You, Who utters divine decrees, Great of Magic, Who rules in the Mansion of Archivists.” There may be Isis-Nephthys parallelism in this spell from the Book of the Dead in which the deceased is seated beside the Great of Magic (possibly Isis) while Seshat (possibly Nephthys) is seated before the dead person: “Thou coolest thyself on the cedar tree beside the Great of Magic, while Seshat is seated before thee and Sia [Divine Perception] is the magical protection of thy body.” (Book of the Dead, Spell 169)

Seshat, Goddess of Wisdom, Knowledge, and Writing, shown with Her stylus — In Her name of Seshat, Lady of Builders

A Ptolemaic text from the Denderah temple says that Nephthys is “She who reckoneth the life-period, Lady of Years, Lady of Fate,” which Seshat does for the Pharaoh by marking notches on a palm rib. (This, of course, brings us back once again to Nephthys’ association with death.)

The Coffin Texts say, “O <name>, Horus has protected you, He has caused Nephthys to put you together, and She will put you together; She will mold you in Her name of Seshat, Mistress of Potters, for such is this great lady, a possessor of life in the Night-barque, Who raises up Horus, and She will bring to you.” (Coffin Texts, Spell 778) Texts at Edfu and Kom Ombo also record Seshat as a form of Nephthys. (However, it is well worth noting that Isis and Seshat were assimilated as well; which should remind us that, when it comes to Egyptian Deities and when it comes to spirituality, nothing is ever completely without contradiction or complication.)

The priesthoods of Nephthys and Seshat seem to have overlapped in places, too. Nephthys is married to Set and is the mother of Anubis with Osiris; interestingly, we have records of a priest of Seshat who served both Set and Anubis—and who was also in charge of “controlling the foreigners.” More on that in a minute.

The most complete discussion of Nephthys-Seshat (that’s available in English and accessible via your library, if your library is subscribed to Jstor) is in a paper by G.A. Wainwright from the 40s called “Seshat & the Pharaoh.”

A Seshat with a five-pointed star and two serpents forming Her headdress

He proposes that both Seshat and Nephthys were so old by the Old Kingdom that They were already starting to be forgotten and that Nephthys may have originally been rather Hathor-like, having been a Sky Goddess and a Love Goddess and a Victory Bringer (think Goddesses like Inanna and Ishtar, Who are involved in both love and war and are connected with the planet Venus). Plutarch, in the 2nd-century CE, noted that some called Nephthys Teleutê (“End”; more on that shortly), others Aphrodite, and some Nikê (“Victory”). (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, section 12) Nephthys got renewed life by being brought into the Isis-Osiris cycle, while Seshat came into the counting house of pharaoh and became connected with Thoth.

A Nephthys-Seshat connection that doesn’t seem to have been made by anyone I’ve read so far jumped out at me. So…speculation alert; here we go.

As Lady of Builders, one of Seshat’s main functions is to lay out the boundaries for new buildings, especially temples, via the ceremony of “stretching the cord,” which was a method of using a cord or rope to measure out straight foundations for a building. She is Goddess of architecture, math, and accounting, as well as being the Divine Scribe. Broadly, these are concerns of delineation, creating limits, setting boundaries, deciding what is in and what is out. Keep that in mind as we go on to the next part.

A statuette of Nephthys with Her name glyph, showing the neb basket and the temple "blueprint" — A statuette of Nephthys with Her name glyph showing the neb basket and the temple “blueprint”

Next, let’s look at Nephthys’ name. In Egyptian, it’s Nebet-Hwt, the Lady (Nebet) of the Temple (Hwt). You will also see it as Lady of the House. “House” is one translation of hwt, but that translation has, for most of us at least, connotations of the home or household—but Nephthys has little in Her of Hestia or Vesta. More usually, hwt means a mansion, temple, or even tomb. (Remember those similar meanings for Isis’ name?)

The hieroglyph for Nephthys’ name combines two other symbols: a neb bowl placed on top of the hwt sign, which is a rectangular sign with a little square or rectangle in the lower right. The neb glyph represents a wickerwork basket and conveys concepts such as “lord” (neb) or “lady” (nebet with the feminine t ending) and “all” or “every.” My guess is that because neb meant “all” it was also used to refer to the ruler of all, the lord or lady. Gardiner (Egyptian Grammer) says the hwt glyph is an “enclosure seen in plan,” in other words, we’re sort of looking down at a blueprint for a building.

What better name glyph for the Lady of Builders than one that represents the blueprint of a building? The Lady of the House—the Goddess with a blueprint in Her name—is also the architecture Goddess Who delineates the foundations of all buildings—but especially the sacred houses of the Deities, the temples.

At Denderah, we even find an ibis-headed Nephthys, which only strengthens the connection between Nephthys and the Divine Scribe, this time with the Divine Male Scribe (Sesh), Thoth, rather than the Divine Female Scribe, Seshat.

The ibis-headed Nephthys from Denderah; I'm working on finding the hieroglyph translations...but you can see Her name above Her head — The ibis-headed Nephthys from Denderah; I’m working on finding the hieroglyph translations…but you can see Her name above Her head

Now, let’s go back to Plutarch’s comments about what people in his time called Nephthys: Teleutê. In Greek, it means ending or completion. Plutarch says, “They give the name Nephthys to the ends of the earth and the regions fringing on mountains and bordering the sea. For this reason, they call Her Teleutê and say She cohabits with Typhon [Set].” (On Isis and Osiris, section 38) Later he says that Nephthys is what is “below the earth and invisible” in contrast with Isis Who “is above the earth and manifest.” (On Isis and Osiris, section 44) Both statements speak of Nephthy’s mystery and liminality. She is the border between here and there, then and now, in and out. And if She is that border, She also controls it. The priest of Seshat mentioned earlier was also “controller of the foreigners” and Nephthys’ husband Set is God of foreigners and foreign lands; thus the Goddess and God delineate or “draw the line” between us and The Other.

An Egyptian epithet of Nephthys calls Her Nebet-er-djer Em Em Netjeru, which Tamara Suida translates as “Lady to the Limit Under the Gods.” (Thank you, Tamara for your booklet on Nebt-hwt…and most especially those epithets.) There’s also a God called Neb-er-djer, which I’ve seen translated as Lord to/of the End or Lord to/of the Utmost, so we may also translate this Nephthys epithet as Lady of the End (Teluetê again!) or Lady to the Utmost Em Em (“among”) the Deities. Here again, Nephthys is the border, the line, the limit between “all of this” and whatever is beyond the End, the Limit, the Utmost.

As you probably figured out, djer in Egyptian is “end” or “limit.” Faulkner (Middle Egyptian) thinks djeri may mean an enclosing wall, a djeru is indeed a boundary, and the djerty are the Two Kites, Isis and Nephthys. This last, the Djerty, may mean nothing other than being an interesting coincidence. On the other hand, perhaps we can think of the Two Djerty circling aloft, delineating a space in the heavens—one that may be reflected on earth, for example, as They protectively encircle the body of Osiris as He awaits rebirth.

Now let us come back once more to the Lady of the Temple. What are temple walls but the boundary and the limit between sacred and profane? Thus it is Nephthys, the Lady of the Temple, Who founds and builds the temple walls, enclosing the sacred within, setting it aside as special, protected, and preserved.

Whew! I’m stopping now. I think I’ve must have worn us both out for today. I’ll have more to say about Her sometime soon. For instance, there is some doubt about that whole “adultery with Osiris” thing. We shall see.

Amma, Nebet-hwt.

The Keeper of the Pharos Lighthouse

An artist's depiction of reincarnation — An artist’s depiction of reincarnation

I don’t know whether I believe in reincarnation; at least in the usual contemporary sense. Oh, I like the idea of it…and it’s quite true that there are some amazing stories people tell of past lives.

Egyptologists, however, are almost unanimously certain that the ancient Egyptians did not believe in reincarnation; presumably, they had enough going on in their afterlives already.

On the other hand, we do have ancient Greek reports of Egyptian belief in reincarnation or the “transmigration of the soul.”

Herodotus writes,

The Egyptians say that Demeter [that is, Isis] and Dionysos [that is, Osiris] are rulers of the world below; and the Egyptians are also the first who reported the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body dies, the soul enters into another creature which chances then to be coming to the birth, and when it has gone the round of all the creatures of land and sea and of the air, it enters again into a human body as it comes to the birth; and that it makes this round in a period of three thousand years. This doctrine certain Hellenes adopted, some earlier and some later, as if it were of their own invention, and of these men I know the names but I abstain from recording them. (Herodotus, Histories Book II, 123)

Diodorus Siculus also reported prominent Greeks who adopted Egyptian teachings, including the transmigration of the soul:

Lycurgus also and Plato and Solon, they say, incorporated many Egyptian customs into their own legislation and Pythagoras learned from Egyptians his teachings about the gods, his geometrical propositions and theory of numbers, as well as the transmigration of the soul into every living thing. (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book I, 98)

Plutarch mentions it, too:

The Egyptians, believing that Typhon was born with red hair, dedicate to sacrifice the red coloured oxen, and make the scrutiny so close that if the beast should have even a single black or white hair, they consider it unfit for sacrifice; because such beast, offered for sacrifice, is not acceptable to the gods, but the contrary (as is) whatsoever has received the souls of unholy and unjust men, that have migrated into other bodies. (Plutarch, “On Isis & Osiris,” 31)

It may be that Herodotus misinterpreted the post mortum transformations of the dead (“Becoming a Hawk of Gold,” for example) as transmigrations of the soul. It may be that Diodorus and Plutarch, writing after Herodotus, just picked up his idea.

Empedokles, a contemporary of Herodotus, refers to “polluted daimons” who are forced to wander the world in many forms “changing one toilsome path of life for another,” though he does not refer to this as being an Egyptian conception. (Empedokles, Katharmoi)

In a number of his works, Plato mentions transmigration as punishment that souls suffer for bad deeds in life. The idea entered the Roman world as well. It can be seen in Virgil’s Aeneid, where reincarnation was seen as a reward for a good soul rather than a punishment for a bad one.

For the Egyptians, the transformations of the dead were simply part of an active and happy afterlife. The dead could become a hawk, a lotus, a serpent…and godlike. Louis Zabkar (an Egyptologist who made an important study of the Isis hymns at Philae) believes that this was a way of ensuring the ba of the person had unlimited freedom to come and go at will on earth and in the otherworld.

Several pharaohs took the name Repeater of Births, which sounds like a reference to reincarnation, but probably isn’t. For Seti I, it apparently meant that he intended to usher in an Egyptian renaissance of sorts. Or it may have referred to the pharaoh’s divine rebirths, which occurred at certain festivals of renewal, or to the the king’s connection to the Sun God Re Who is reborn daily.

All that said, I’d like to share with you one of my (possible?) past life stories.

During a vacation period a while ago, I had the luxury of frequent invocation of the Goddess. While working the Opening of the Ways ritual , I “saw” a flash of a scene that had a deju vu feeling about it, so I decided to follow up on that vision with Isis. Under Her wings, I traveled back in the Boat of Millions of Years to locate the life that included the scene that had touched me. Here is that tale…

A woman of about 20 is looking out across the Alexandrian harbor. Her name is Ankesphilia and she is the priestess of the Pharos, the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Her duty is to perform something like the Opening of the Ways ritual—but for the opening of the Alexandrian harbor and for fair, “open” weather. This is done within the Pharos itself, about halfway up the structure. That’s where the scene that first caught my attention is from: halfway up the Pharos, overlooking the harbor.

And while Isis is the Goddess of the Lighthouse, it is not Isis who is in Ankesphilia’s heart. Instead, it is her duty to the city that occupies her. Ankesphilia has almost no personal freedom and must stay on Pharos Island at all times, except when there are great festivals in the city. Then she may go to see the processions. I have the feeling that she was “given” or vowed to the Pharos, though it was not her own vow; perhaps her parents? In a way, it reminds me of the later Christian anchorites.

An artist's vision of the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria — An artist’s vision of the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria

The priestess is from a wealthy, but not noble, family. Her parents own a shipping business, but now her father has retired to the priesthood and her mother runs the business. Her father sometimes visits Ankesphilia at the Pharos. She rarely sees her mother. She has two brothers, both in the military. Though she has had no choice in her fate, I sense no rebellion or resentment in her. I have the feeling she is perhaps not very well educated, bright, or curious. She simply does the duty that has been given to her without complaint and with conscientiousness.

Ankesphilia died in her 30s after contracting a disease that came into the harbor city from overseas.

And that’s it. Past life? Fantasy? I don’t know, but either way, it tells me something about myself.

Isis, Osiris & the Rites of Spring

While some of us are under a crazy last-gasp-of-winter storm, lucky ones (like me) are enjoying a first-breath-of-spring day.

The coming of the light, the green uprisings from the dark earth, the deep, needed breath. These things open us, make our spirits expand, and give us hope—even as we and the world still struggle with a historic pandemic.

Do you feel it? Even now? Even today, as things are? I hope you do. I wish for you that you do, just as we human beings always have…

The ancient Egyptians certainly knew that feeling and celebrated it. In his essay “On Isis and Osiris,” the Greek priest Plutarch mentions an Egyptian festival that he says marked the beginning of spring and was called ‘The Entry of Osiris Into the Moon.’ Here’s what he says about it:

Further, on the first day of the month of Phamenoth they hold a festival, which they call ‘The Entry of Osiris into the Moon,’ for it is the beginning of spring. Thus they locate the power of Osiris in the moon and say that Isis, as the creative principle, has intercourse with him. For this reason they also call the moon the mother of the world and they believe her nature to be both male and female since she is filled and made pregnant by the sun while she herself in turn projects and disseminates procreative elements in the air.
Plutarch, “On Isis and Osiris,” 43

In his discussion of this passage, Egyptologist J. Gwyn Griffiths notes that there is no festival by that name in any known Egyptian calendar.

Isis and Nephthys in a boat with Osiris. I believe this is the image to which Griffiths refers.

The closest thing is a temple carving from Denderah that shows Osiris in a boat with Isis and Nephthys and explains that Osiris is “entering into the Left Eye.” The Left Eye, as you may know, is usually an Egyptian designation for the moon. In the Denderah text, spring is not mentioned, but Osiris is said to do His entering on the 15th of the month, that is, at the full moon.

Plutarch is seeing things in a Greek way, with Isis as a lunar Goddess and Osiris in a solar aspect. But for the Egyptians, the moon was associated with Gods—Thoth, Iah, Khonsu—not Goddesses. And though Osiris is united daily with the Sun God Re in the Underworld, He too is more associated with the moon than the sun.

Nevertheless, in this case, it seems we should be envisioning a solar Osiris as He enters into and unites with the moon—thus establishing His power there—in order to create the brilliant light of the full moon (if we can include the Denderah text in our understanding).

Yet there is a slight problem. Plutarch says that this festival happens on the “noumenia tou Phamenoth,” the new moon of the spring month of Phamenoth. And indeed, the Egyptian lunar calendar, the temple calendar, starts with the new moon. This would mean the minuscule bits of evidence we have for this festival of Osiris entering into the moon are in conflict. Does the God enter at the new moon or full?

If we just look at what Plutarch says, then Osiris enters into the new moon and Isis, the Creative Principle, unites with Him in sexual intercourse. She becomes the Mother of the World; Isis the moon is filled and made pregnant by the Osirian sun. During this time, the moon is both male and female since Isis and Osiris are united in it. But pregnancy is a process of growth. Could both of our tiny bits of information be right? What if the festival was not meant as a one-day event? What if the 14 days from new moon to full were envisioned as a sort of spring break retreat for the Goddess and God? They come together, make love, and 14 days later the full, round, and shining evidence of the Goddess’ pregnancy can be clearly seen. It’s just speculation, but it does provide some coherence between the few pieces of evidence we have for this festival.

Isis & Osiris as lovers from Kris Waldherr’s Lovers Path Tarot

Whatever the case, I very much like the idea of a spring sexual rite for Isis and Osiris. In fact, it was this intriguing Plutarchian reference that inspired the multi-day rite of sacred sexuality in Isis Magic called (yes, of course) ‘The Entry of Osiris Into the Moon.’

Plutarch’s essay is also responsible for the idea that Isis and Osiris were so in love with each other that They made love while still within Their mother Nuet’s womb. He writes, “Isis and Osiris were enamored of each other and consorted together in the darkness of the womb before Their birth.” Perhaps Their coming together at the first of spring each year may be seen as a kind of return to the womb of the Great Mother for renewal of both Deities as well as humankind…the very same renewal we all feel every spring.

What’s more, as famous lovers, Isis and Osiris are also to be found in the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri (Papyri Graecae Magicae, abbreviated PGM) in a variety of old-fashioned love spells. While many of the so-called “love” spells in the papyri are coercive and more like magical roofies than what I would call “love” magic, there is one I particularly like because it seems the lover does want love and not just sex from the object of his desire.

In a spoken part of the spell, the lover says, “The Goddess in heaven looked down upon him, and it happened to him according to every wish of his soul. [Name of the lover] says: From the day [and] from the hour, I [name of the lover] do this act to you; you will love me, be fond of me, and value me . . . [until] I die. O Lady, Goddess Isis, carry out for me this perfect charm.” The rite takes place before sunrise, as the lover anoints himself with myrrh, “the myrrh with which Isis anointed when She went to the bosom of Osiris.” As the sun rises, the lover asks Isis to wake up his beloved and again to “carry out this perfect charm.”

If you’re feeling in need of a love spell yourself, here’s one to try.

And so, with loving thoughts, I wish you blessings of the coming season of wild uprisings, renewed love, and new life in whatever best form it takes for you. We all need it and we all deserve it.

Isis & the Holiday Tree

A priest censes an offering arrangement of onions decorated with floral garlands. The author of one article I read thought this looked amazingly like a Christmas tree; it’s not, but it’s a fun idea.

Do you have a tree in your house right now?

Many of us do.

Each winter, we celebrate the winter holidays by bringing evergreen trees into our homes, decorating them with shiny ornaments and glittering lights. The rather obvious reason for this is to remind ourselves of the green life that exists even in this darkest part of the year when most plant life has either died off or gone into hibernation—as well as to celebrate that ongoing life with our beloved ones and to prepare for the next phase of life in the coming New Year.

Trees, of course, were important to the ancient Egyptians as well—both symbolically and practically—though they were not the type of evergreen conifers we generally have as Yule trees. (There is only one conifer native to Egypt, a type of juniper; but they had access to other conifers and coniferous resins by importing them.)

Men transporting frankincense trees for transplantation in Egypt.

I’m not sure whether ancient Egyptians brought cut or potted trees into their homes during festivals like we do. But we know they brought in branches and flowers for certain festivals. We know that temples, palaces, and well-to-do homes had extensive gardens and that beautiful bouquets of flowers were ubiquitous as offerings to the Deities. We know that the ancient Egyptians transported trees in pots. The image here shows men bringing potted frankincense trees from their native land back to Egypt.

With their blessed shade, precious building material, and in the case of fruit trees, abundant food, trees were vitally important in ancient Egypt. They were, in fact, sacred and under the protection of the Tree Goddess. When we see images of the Tree Goddess, usually in funerary scenes, Her legs often disappear into the trunk of the tree, while Her hands offer food and water. Sometimes we see Her whole body in front of the tree; other times She is abstracted as offering arms or a nurturing breast. The most important of the Egyptian Tree Goddesses are Hathor, Nuet, and Isis.

Isis gives food and water to Djehutihotep and Kayay.

On a funerary stele of an Egyptian official and his wife, Djehutihotep and Kayay, we see a potted, leafless tree. The pot looks decorative, perhaps painted with horizontal stripes or wrapped in offering fillets. Out of its branches arises the Tree Goddess giving food and water. She wears the throne of Isis upon Her head. Behind Her, an inscription reads, “she gives water as is right.” We can see the water flowing to Djehutihotep and Kayay. Interestingly, another inscription on the stele names Hathor while yet another asks Osiris, Horus, and Isis to give the couple bread and beer, air, water, incense, and all things good and pure.

Surely this stele invokes blessings similar to our Yule tree: ongoing life and sustenance in a place of darkness; in this case, the land of the dead. The epithet by which the Tree Goddess is called, Nebet Amentet, Lady of the West, means that She rules the place of the dead, euphemistically called The West, for it is in the west that the sun daily sets and enters the otherworld.

The Tree Goddess, with the sycamore on Her head, nourishes a variety of growing things, including grapevines.

Nebet Amentet is an epithet common to both Isis and Hathor, so perhaps, with its mixed names and symbolism, both Goddesses are intended on this stele. (More often, though, it is Hathor Who is the Goddess of the leafless tree, which other texts identify as the Southern Sycamore, though this particular representation does not look like other sycamores in Egyptian art.)

Still, there are a number of representations of Isis as the Lady of the Sycamore and we know that She, too, is called by that epithet. A pillar in the tomb of Sennefer of Thebes (18th dynasty) shows Sennefer and his wife Meryt as they stand before a leafy tree, as sycamores are usually shown, with a Goddess figure in it Who is identified in the hieroglyphic text as Isis.

A 19th dynasty stele shows “Isis the Great, the God’s Mother” as a Tree Goddess Who extends Her breast toward the souls of the man and woman standing at Her roots.

The Tree Goddess Isis nourishing Pharaoh Thutmose — Another representation of Isis as a Tree Goddess offering Her breast, in this case to nourish Pharaoh Thutmose; you can see Isis’ name as the bottom two glyphs.

The image you see here is another instance of the nourishing Tree Goddess Isis simply represented as a tree with an arm and a breast.

While the sacred tree is most often a sycamore, other Egyptian sacred trees—the acacia, persea, and date palm—could also be associated with Isis. Isis and Nephthys are called the Two Acacia Goddesses; and sometimes, the tree that grew up around the body of Osiris is said to have been an acacia, though other texts name other trees, such as the tamerisk. The Djed pillar of Osiris can also be seen as a stylized tree, sometimes with the two eyes of the God peering out.

According to Plutarch, the persea tree (Egyptian ished) is sacred to Isis “because its fruit is like a heart and its leaf like a tongue.” He explains that this is because no human quality is more Divine than reason, symbolized by the tongue, and that there is no more driving human force than happiness, symbolized by the heart.

The deceased and his ba receive water from the Tree Goddess in the Otherworld

During the Ptolemaic period, we have records of a grove of persea trees and an altar being dedicated to Isis, Osiris, Serapis, and Anubis by a specific thiasos (a private religious group, similar to a coven or circle today). At Isis’ temple at Philae, a graffito from one of the people who worked at the temple noted that he had planted a sacred tree in Her temple there, as well as three others in and around the nearby town.

Isis is associated with the palm tree through Her assimilation with Seshat, the Scribe & Writing Goddess, for one of Seshat’s symbols is the notched palm branch that was used to count time. In a later period, initiates of the Mysteries of Isis used the palm branch as a symbol of their rebirth.

And so this year as you honor the season with your Yule tree, perhaps it would be well to say a prayer to the Tree Goddess Isis and acknowledge Her Divinity in this beautiful symbol of ongoing green life. While the type of tree is not the same, the meaning is: She goes on and we go on—in spite of everything.

Simply a beautiful image of the Tree Goddesses as we approach the Winter Solstice

A beautiful image of the Tree Goddesses in the starry winter night

The Lady of Magic & the Lord of Ecstasy

I missed posting the last couple of weeks. Life, the Universe, Everything…and the Fall EQ Festival. This year was dedicated to one of my two Beloved Ones, Dionysos, so I had to be there. It was a very fine Festival and Divine Madness was had by all. Anyway, in His honor, and Hers, I’d like to show you how, in antiquity, these two Divine Ones came together…as They do even today in my heart.

Now, at first glance, the Greek God of Ecstatic Intoxication & Wine doesn’t seem to have much to do with our Egyptian Lady of Magic & Power, Isis. After all, He’s the Sex, Drugs & Rock-n-Roll God and She’s, well, She’s a bit more serious.

Ah, but wait. All is not as it seems. (All is almost never as it seems.) There are, in fact, quite solid connections between my two Divine Ones. In ancient times, you see, Dionysos was identified with Osiris, the Beloved of Isis. More on that in a moment.

First, I’d like to tell you how Dionysos came into my personal spiritual picture.

I had been vowed to Isis for many years, but long had felt the need to see the Divine with a masculine face as well as a feminine one. Naturally, the first place I looked was to Osiris. So I meditated with Him, I did ritual with Him, I thought and pondered on Him. I found Him wonderful and powerful and beautiful. But He didn’t grab my soul and shout, “Mine!” Or even whisper it. Or anything. The relationship just wasn’t…quite…right.

Fast forward a few years. A friend had been called to resurrect the Oracle of Delphi (or Oracle of Portland, if you want to be a stickler about it) and had enlisted a group of friends to help take the ritual roles. We worked the Oracle once a summer for six or seven years, I think. During that time, I played a variety of ritual roles, from Pythia to serving priestess. Sometime during the process, I decided I wanted to play Dionysos. No reason a woman couldn’t play this androgynous God!

And there wasn’t. And that is how Dionysos first got His panther claws into me. And I wasn’t the only one. My own beloved husband had also played Dionysos, with the same result. Others in that ritual cast soon found themselves called to Bakchic frenzy and we created a thiasos, a Greek name for a spiritual group or circle. The Meliophis thiasos still survives today, along with another group spawned from it.

So that’s how Dionysos claimed one Isis priestess. But perhaps that’s not so unusual. You may recall that Plutarch wrote his essay “On Isis and Osiris” to a priestess friend of his, Clea or Klea. He writes to her about Isis and Osiris for Klea is a priestess of Isis. She is also the leader of the thyades at Delphi. Thyad is another name for maenad, the Divinely mad priestesses of Dionysos. So Plutarch’s friend, Klea, is both a devotee of Isis and of Dionysos. Plutarch writes to her:

“That Osiris is identical with Dionysus who could more fittingly know than yourself, Clea? For you are at the head of the inspired maidens of Delphi, and have been consecrated by your father and mother in the holy rites of Osiris.”

So at least by Plutarch’s time, the identification of Dionysos with Osiris is so complete that the priest can say They are “identical” and know that his confidant will find it readily apparent.

Plutarch goes on to note that the procession for the Apis bull looks very much like a Dionysian procession, thus both Osiris and Dionysos are Gods connected with the bull. Both Gods are torn to pieces—Dionysos by the Titans and Osiris by Set. Both Gods are resurrected afterwards; Dionysos by being born again of Semele and Osiris by being magically born again after Isis reassembles Him. Both Gods are Lords of Moisture, both are associated with trees. One of the sacred plants of Dionysos, ivy, is called by the Egyptians, “the plant of Osiris.”

Read Plutarch for yourself and you’ll see that he goes on at some length about the Dionysos-Osiris connection. Including the wine connection, of course.

Osiris is known as Lord of Wine as early as the Pyramid Texts and His identity as such only grew as time passed. In a magical papyrus from the second century CE, the “blood of Osiris,” clearly wine, is poured into a wine cup, and is to be given to a woman as part of an erotic spell:

“Give it, the blood of Osiris, that he gave to Isis to make her feel love in her heart for him night and day at any time, there not being time of deficiency.”

No doubt, the association of Osiris with wine is the reason that one story tells us that Isis became pregnant with Horus by eating grapes. Isis Herself is also given the epithet Mistress of Wine and Beer.

The sacred image of Dionysos from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii.

In addition to Her marriage to the Lord of Wine, Isis has Her own associations with the vine and with Dionysos. The Greeks considered the sacred star of Isis, Sirius, to be the bringer of wine since its late-summer rising coincided with the beginning of the grape harvest season. Ancient writers also speculated on a variety of Isis-Dionysos connections. One said that Dionysos is the son of Zeus and Isis. Another called Isis the daughter of Prometheus and said that She lived with Dionysos. Herodotus recorded the tradition that Apollo and Artemis are the children of Dionysos and Isis. The Ptolemaic rulers Auletes and his daughter, Cleopatra VII, identified themselves with Dionysos and Isis respectively, calling themselves “the new Dionysos” and “the new Isis.” In the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, sacred images of both Isis and Dionysos stood before the worshippers. And, of course, both Isis and Dionysos are Mystery Deities for both have suffered and so can have sympathy for human beings in our individual sufferings.

And so you see, the connection between Isis and Dionysos is not so far-fetched after all. May you indeed be blessed by Her magic and Divinely entranced in His ecstasy.

The Goddess of Willendorf

In Search of the Feminine Divine