The festivals of early winter pave the way for the celebration of the Nativity of God the Daughter.
The Commencement of the Advent sees the start of preparations for the season, while on the Feast of the Conception we contemplate the Mystery of the Daughter's coming.
The festivals of early winter pave the way for the celebration of the Nativity of God the Daughter.
The Commencement of the Advent sees the start of preparations for the season, while on the Feast of the Conception we contemplate the Mystery of the Daughter's coming.
While it is known especially for its tradition of pleasant frights - scarily carved pumpkins, ghost stories, witch costumes – the late-autumn festival of Tamala is a part of the Mysteries of Life season and concerns the end of life and the restarting of the cycle.
During the three-day festival, we remember the departed and look forward to eventual reunion - which is ultimately of course our reunion with the Spirit.
Read about the inner meaning of Tamala, the Feast of the Dead.
While it is known especially for its tradition of pleasant frights - scarily carved pumpkins, ghost stories, witch costumes – the late-autumn festival of Tamala is a part of the Mysteries of Life season and concerns the end of life and the restarting of the cycle.
During the three-day festival, we remember the departed and look forward to eventual reunion - which is ultimately of course our reunion with the Spirit.
Read about the inner meaning of Tamala, the Feast of the Dead.
What are Animal Spirit Guides? They are teachers, mentors, and friends... who come in the form of animals. Even before you are born, you have been chosen by one animal in particular....
What are Animal Spirit Guides? They are teachers, mentors, and friends... who come in the form of animals. Even before you are born, you have been chosen by one animal in particular....
Cuivanya, the Autumn Equinox festival, celebrates our Mother God as the Ground of All Being and the Source of All Life.
Divine Life is present throughout the cosmos, in all creation, and this autumnal equinox festival traditionally expresses that through the agricultural symbolism of the harvest, which is not simply a "metaphor" but a ritual in the fullest and deepest sense of the word.
Read about the inner meaning of the Feast of Divine Life
Cuivanya, the Autumn Equinox festival, celebrates our Mother God as the Ground of All Being and the Source of All Life.
Divine Life is present throughout the cosmos, in all creation, and this autumnal equinox festival traditionally expresses that through the agricultural symbolism of the harvest, which is not simply a "metaphor" but a ritual in the fullest and deepest sense of the word.
Read about the inner meaning of the Feast of Divine Life
The festival starts this coming Friday. The weather forecast is perfection. The ritual cast is rehearsed. We are ready to go and can’t wait to see those of you who can make it. Still time to register!
The Pacific Northwest is ON for an Isis-themed Fall Equinox Festival (Sept. 24-26, 2021). This is not the same festival we were planning for 2020. That one was much more…involved…shall we say. This one is a gentle way of coming together once again as a community. So I’d like to share with you the write up for the festival, then I’ll repost something on Making Offering in the Egyptian way that will be related…
Frederick Arthur Bridgman, A Procession in Honor of Isis or An Egyptian Procession, 1902
Offering to Isis: A Fall Equinox Celebration of the Goddess and of Community
If you asked the ancient Egyptians, the act of Making Offering was one of the things that maintained Ma’et, that which is Right and True. Offering helped keep the world in balance. Making Offering is part of the great reciprocal flow between the Divine and the human. It is one of the most important ways we communicate with our Goddesses and Gods. It is hallowed by tradition. It is empowered by magic.
As we turn the wheel at this Fall Equinox, let us come together in rituals of offering. Under the Wings of the Great Goddess Isis, let us gather in a celebration of our reentry into and reconnection with Community. In the presence of Isis Myrionymos, Myriad-Named Isis, Goddess of the Ten Thousand Names, let us gather with open hearts and generous spirits to Make Offering.
As we human beings have always done—from the First Time, the Zep Tepi—we shall give gifts to Isis and we shall receive gifts from Her.
“My body being on earth, my heart being awakened, my magic being in my mouth, O Isis, I Make Offering unto You.”
We are living through extraordinary times. Many of us have gone through intense changes. There have been painful losses. And there have been surprising gains. Through Rites of Offering, we can give thanks, mourn losses, and ask for aid. We can find Divine connection and reawaken our hearts.
The Rites of Offering
Our rituals are inspired by the Daily Offering Rites worked in ancient Egyptian temples. We will come together four times, at the cross-quarters of the Holy Day and Sacred Night, to Make Offering to the Goddess in four of Her myriad names.
Yet, as a Community, we are many different people, on many different paths, who honor many different Deities. And so the Iset Weret— the Great Throne Altar of Isis—will welcome all our Divine Ones. If you wish, you are invited to bring an image or symbol of your own Divine One/s to add to the Great Altar that They may receive Offering as well.
We’ve missed each other!
Now, Let’s Celebrate
This festival is intended to give us plenty of open time so that we can be together…for feasting, drumming, dancing, and just relaxing. No formal workshops are planned.
Come join us in this Fall Equinox celebration as, under the Wings of Isis, we come together as a Community once more.
Now here’s a little something about Making Offering…
Nefertari makes offering to Isis
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Can Isis smell the flowers we place upon Her altar? Does She eat the delicacies we so carefully arrange upon Her offering mat? Does She drink the wine we pour into a beautiful cup and lift to the smiling lips of our sacred image?
Well, no.
And, yes.
Although I have had weird phenomena happen with offerings—for instance, once an entire two-ounce packet of incense (you DO know how much two ounces of powdered incense is, right?) was apparently incinerated without leaving a whiff of scent in the air of our tiny temple space—usually, the flowers wither naturally, the food dries to inedibility, and the wine evaporates.
So did the Goddess receive Her offerings or not?
An ancient Egyptian offering table
For the ancient Egyptians, the sacred images of the Deities were sacred precisely because they were filled with some measure of the Deity Her- or Himself. Offerings to Isis were received by this bit of the Goddess residing in the image, and through it to Her greater Being.
The main spiritual mechanism for the transfer of an offering from offerent to Deity was the ka, or vital, life energy. All living beings—Deities, human beings, animals, fish, plants, stars, mountains, temples—have a ka. The kas of the Goddesses and Gods are extremely powerful. In one Egyptian creation myth, the Creator Atum embraces His children, the God Shu and the Goddess Tefnut, with His ka in order to protect Them from the primordial chaos of the Nun into which They were born—and, importantly, to transfer His ka to Them, giving Them life. Ka energy exists before a being comes to birth, is joined to that being at birth, lives with them throughout life, then travels to the Otherworld after death. The tomb became known as the Place of the Ka (among many other designations) and to die was to “go to one’s ka.”
King Hor’s ka statue; beautiful and haunting
The ka “doubles” the person physically, yet the ka is not essentially personal. It is held in common with all living things—including the Deities. The ka was the ancient Egyptian’s connection to a vast pool of vitality greater than the individual person.
But that’s not the end of it. One meets one’s ka after death where it can continue to protect.
Utterance 25 of the Pyramid Texts says that the dead king “goes with his ka.” Just as a list of Deities “go with Their kas,” so does the king:
“You yourself also go with your ka. O Unas, the arm of your ka is before you. O Unas, the arm of your ka is behind you. O Unas, the leg of your ka is before you. O Unas, the leg of your ka is behind you.”
A ka statue of Amenemhet III
You might recognize this formulation. It is a common magical formula for invoking protection on all sides; similar to casting a circle or the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or part of the so-called Breastplate of St. Patrick (“Christ at my right. Christ at my left, etc.”)
Even though ancient Egyptians could experience the ka as separate from themselves, the ka also connected the person with the long line of humanity—for the ka was associated with the ancestors. In fact, the ancestors were thought to be the keepers of ka energy. Jeremy Nadler suggests that when people died, the Egyptians believed that they returned to the ka-group of ancestral energy to which each person naturally belonged. In other words, after death, the ka returns to its family.
This meant the living had several reasons for making offering to their ancestral dead. As we all do, they wanted to remember loved ones who had died. The offerings provided their ancestors’ kas with the nourishment required to keep the family spirit strong. But since the ancestors had ready access to the greater pool of beneficial ka energy and could bestow it on the living, people could also ask their ancestors to send them a blessing. A blessing of ka energy could nourish human beings, animals, and crops alike.
As usual in Egyptian society, the king was a special case. He could have multiple kas. He also had more intimate contact with the powerful ka energy of his royal ancestors than the average person had with their familial kas. The royal ka was especially connected with the power of the God Horus. By the time of the New Kingdom, the king’s ka was specifically identified as Harsiese, “Horus, son of Isis.”
Modern Balinese food offerings that look remarkably Egyptian
In Egyptian, the word ka is related to numerous words that share its root. Egyptian words for thought, speech, copulation, vagina, testicles, to be pregnant and to impregnate, as well as the Egyptian word for magic (heka), all share the ka root. And all have some bearing on the meaning of ka. Ka is also specifically the word for “bull” and “food.” Connections such as these reveal mysteries. Ka is also the bull because it is a potent, fertile energy that contains the ancestral seeds that connect us with our families. Ka is also food for it is the energy that nourishes life, in both the physical and the spiritual realms. Ka is intimately connected with offering; the plural of ka, kau, was used to mean “food offerings.” Sometimes the ka hieroglyph replaces the images of food inscribed on offering tables.
Offering table piled high with kau and other offerings
Kau, food offerings, provide life-energy for the individual ka. When the Egyptians offered food to their Deities or honored dead, they were offering the ka energy of the food to the ka of the Deities or ancestors. The ka inherent in the kau nourished the ka of the spirit being. Offering thus feeds the kas of the Deities and ancestors and the great pool of ka energy to which all enlivened things are connected. Simultaneously, the great pool of ka energy is the source of the energy found in the offerings by virtue of the ongoing, archetypal connection with it. By making and receiving offering, a great reciprocal power system was set up and could be eternally maintained. No energy was ever lost; it was continually transformed and re-activated by being offered and received, received and offered. Ka energy may be considered the food that fuels the engine of the living universe.
A modern offering table
Since offerings are given and received ka to ka, it is no wonder that the Egyptians who made offering before the sacred images in the temples, did not expect the Deity to physically consume the food or drink offered. Instead, they expected the Deity’s ka, residing within the image, to take in the energy from the kas of the offerings. Ancient texts are explicit about this. A text from Abydos says that the pure, Divine offerings are given daily “to the kas” of the temple Deities. Sometimes the Deities are said to have been “united” with Their offerings. It is the ka of the offering and the ka of the Deity that unite. In another text from Abydos, the king asks the Deity to bring His magic, soul, power, and honor to the offering meal. Clearly, the king is not expecting a physical appearance, but a spiritual one.
It is the same with our offerings. We offer the ka of the kau to Isis and Her ka receives it. We can open our awareness to this aspect of offering by envisioning the ka, perhaps as Light, move from the offering to our sacred image of Isis (if we are using one) or to an image of Her we hold in our mind’s eye. In this way, we can know that Isis has indeed received what we offer to Her.
One thing that goes around the Wiccan community a lot is that it’s bad to with magick for yourself, that it's selfish to improve your life with magick...
One thing that goes around the Wiccan community a lot is that it’s bad to with magick for yourself, that it's selfish to improve your life with magick...
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.
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.
A classic Nephthys
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)
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”
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
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.
The Nephthys again, just because
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.
A stunning modern Nephthys by—appropriately—a pair of artist sisters, Katya and Lena Popovy
Let us have a little Nephthys today. It is early September and there is melancholy in the air. Not to mention that there is some serious s*it going down all around us. Sometimes we look to our Dark Goddesses in such times.
And sometimes, when we look to Them, we find surprising things.
For instance, older Egyptological books informed us that Nephthys was never worshipped alone and had no temples of Her own. But that was only because they hadn’t found any yet.
We now know of several Nephthys temples, a smaller New Kingdom one within a Set temple precinct at Sepermeru, halfway between Heracleopolis and Oxyrhynchus (where that huge cache of texts, including magical texts and a praise of Isis was found), and a Ptolemaic and Roman-era temple at Komir, near Esna.
Nephthys, the Lady of the Temple
In Her Komir (Egy. Pr Myr) temple, there is a lengthy hymn to Her that identifies Her with many other Goddesses, just as Isis is known by many names. She is “the Great, the Most Excellent, dwelling in the Beautiful Country—the abode of Her brother Osiris, Who comes to life again in Her, She Who renews for Him the body that once was, in Her name of Renewing of Life.” She is invoked as Meshkenet, the Birth Goddess, Hathor, Mistress of Drunkeness and Joy, Tefnut “in the moment of Her wrath,” and Seshet, Lady of Writing and “of the Entire Library.” She is Mut and Mafdet and Meret and Heket. She is the one Who “utters divine decrees, Great of Magic, who rules in the Mansion of Archivists.” She is Excellent of Kindness and unites Herself with Ma’et. She is the Mother of Amun and the Daughter of Re. She is Mighty, Formidable, Beautiful.
In a papyrus known as the Book of Hours—Ptolemaic and probably from Memphis—praises are recorded for a select group of Deities, including Nephthys. There She is called Kindly of Heart, Mistress of Women, the Valiant, the Strong-Armed, Who Begat Horus, Potent of Deeds, the Wise, the Acute of Counsel, and the Sad at Heart.
Interestingly, Her epithets in this papyrus do not parallel those of Isis, Who is In All that Comes Into Being at Her Command, Lady of What Exists, Sharp of Flame, Who Fills the Land with Her Governance, Who Pleases the Gods with What She Says, the Savior, Isis-Bast and Isis-Sakhmet, the Sister of the Great One, Who Comes at Call, and the Living North Wind.
As Twin Goddesses, Isis and Nephthys are often called “the two” this or that. You’ll find a list of those twosome names in a previous Isis and Nephthys post here. We often think of Isis as the Bright Twin and Nephthys as the Dark Twin. And it’s true. Sort of.
For instance, the Pyramid Texts instruct the deceased king to
Ascend and descend; descend with Nephthys, sink into darkness with the Night-barque. Ascend and descend; ascend with Isis, rise with the Day-barque.
Pyramid Text 222
The Two Goddesses bear light and dark children to the same God. Osiris fathered the bright God, Horus, with Isis while with Nephthys, He fathered the dark God, Anubis. The Two Goddesses also manifest their Divine power differently. While Isis guides and sheds light on the hidden paths of the Otherworld, the Coffin Texts tell us that Nephthys speaks and they are obscured: “Hidden are the ways for those who pass by; light is perished and darkness comes into being, so says Nephthys.”
The Two Sisters protect the deceased
While Isis summons the Barque of the Day, Nephthys is “a possessor of life in the Night-barque.” As in Pyramid Text 217, Nephthys is paired with Set, a God of dark moods and dark reputation and associated with Upper Egypt, while Isis is paired with the benevolent God Osiris and connected to Lower Egypt. In the tomb of Tuthmosis III, Nephthys is said to be the Lady of the Bed of Life, by which was meant the embalming table. She is also Queen of the Embalmer’s Shop. Plutach preserves the tradition that Nephthys was associated with the desert and the fringes of the earth, while Isis is that part of the earth made fertile by the Nile.
But wait. As with most Things Egyptian, it’s not that simple. It’s not that black-and-white nor dark and light.
Isis is not just about rebirth and sunrise. She is also the Great Mooring Post, the one Who calls each of us to our deaths. She is the Goddess “ruling in the perfect blackness” of the Otherworld and She has Her own wrathful and fiery moods. Nephthys, on the other hand, is not only about descent in the Night-barque. She is right there with Isis at the sunrise rebirth. And She is a Goddess for Whom festivals of drunkenness and joy were celebrated. She is the Lady of Beer and while Isis, too, can be so called, I know of no festivals of Divine inebriation celebrated for Her, even given Her close connection to Hathor, the original Queen of Divine Drunkenness.
Nephthys in Her protective stance, a mirror of Isis
The Two Sisters are not so much opposites as complements to each other. It is interesting that Isis and Nephthys seem to have become attached to different aspects of Hathor in Their association with Her. Sad at Heart Nephthys became connected with Hathor, Lady of Joy and Divine Intoxication. Lady of Governance Isis became connected with Hathor the soft-eyed Cow Mother, the Mother of the God, and the Lady of Amentet. Yet, as always, these roles are fluid and the Two Sisters flow into one another, even as They express different aspects of Their Divinity.
People sometimes wonder whether Isis and Nephthys are two different Goddesses or one Goddess? For me, the answer is, “Yes. And no.” They are One and They are Two. In my personal work with the Two Sisters, I can’t say that Nephthys feels very much different than Isis (though there are differences), but that may be because I pay a lot of attention to Isis’ own darker aspects. That admission inspires me to take some time this weekend to honor Nephthys, Excellent of Kindness, and see what more She may wish me to know.
Today, let us take a deep, cleansing breath and honor Isis as Lady of the element of Air—of Breath, of Wind, and thus of Spirit.
Indeed, 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.”
Wind under the wings 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. So Isis is not only the one Who heralds the Inundation and causes it to flow (as Iset-Sopdet), but Her northerly winds also 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
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.
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.
Today, the wind provides power in Egypt; this is the Zafarana wind farm
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. All of them enter the noses of the deceased and bring them life.
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 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
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.
Are you no longer willing to settle for an unfulfilling, inauthentic life? Asking yourself "Isn't there more than this?" That's your Life Purpose calling!
Are you no longer willing to settle for an unfulfilling, inauthentic life? Asking yourself "Isn't there more than this?" That's your Life Purpose calling!
As it often is in Portland (especially when I want to see the rising of Her star, it seems) this morning was overcast. And so I did not witness the beautiful rising of the Star of Isis.
But She is risen nonetheless.
To locate Sirius, look to the left of Orion’s belt
That’s how it is sometimes. Right now for you, perhaps? I’ve seen a number of folks online saying they feel disconnected from their Deities. We are in particularly trying times, and it can feel like that. But They are there. In fact, remembering when we did feel connected can help us reconnect.
For instance, though I did not see Sirius rise this morning, I remember when I first saw Her through a telescope. If you have ever seen Her that way, you will never forget it, either. She scintillates. She glows. She shoots off rays of blue, green, pink, and white. Yes, really. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, second in illumination only to the sun. It is no wonder that we notice this brilliant and beautiful star.
And from at least the time of the Pyramid Texts, if not before, Sirius is connected with Isis.
Iset-Sopdet following Usir-Sah in Their celestial boats
In the sky, Sirius is to the lower left of the extremely easy-to-spot constellation of Orion, which has always looked to human beings like a human torso. Orion has been visualized as a Great Shepherd, Hunter, Warrior, or simply a Giant. And since every shepherd or hunter must have his hunting hound, Sirius itself, as well as the constellation in which it is the lead star, has been envisioned as a Great Dog. Interestingly, this is true in cultures throughout the world, from ancient Mesopotamia to China (where Sirius is a wolf) to Native North American tribes like the Blackfoot, who called it Dog-Face, and the Inuit, who called it the Moon Dog. (The Wikipedia article on Sirius seems to be pretty good and includes references.) Surely it was envisioning Orion as a shepherd, hunter, or warrior that led so many ancient peoples to see Sirius and its constellation as a companion dog.
Sopdet with Her star
Sirius cannot be seen during a period of about 70 days, from May to sometime after midsummer. At this time, Sirius and the sun are in conjunction so that the sun’s greater light blocks the visibility of Sirius. The heliacal rising of Sirius is when the star and sun are sufficiently separated so that—for the first time in 70 days—Sirius can be seen on the horizon just before dawn. In the northern hemisphere, this occurs in mid-to-late summer, the hottest part of the year. From Classical times, this period has been known as the “Dog Days” since the Dog Star of Sirius is once again visible. As those suffering through this year’s drought can attest, this hottest time of the year can be miserable. Homer knew it as a time of fevers and suffering. The Romans thought it made dogs act crazy. We think of it as a time when we’re panting like a dog because of the heat.
Sirius, the beautiful Star of Isis, photographed by Monarch with a telescope from the Canary Islands.
In contrast, ancient Egypt didn’t originally connect Sirius with dogs or wolves. It did, however, connect the star with something vitally important—the Inundation, the annual flooding that enabled farmers to grow the crops required for Egypt to feed itself. The heliacal rising of Sirius was the herald of the Nile flood and its rise marked the beginning of the New Year; thus Sirius (Sopdet in Egyptian) was called the Fair Star of the Waters and the Opener of the Year. In Egypt’s earliest written records, the Pyramid Texts, Sopdet is Isis: “Your sister Isis comes to you [Osiris] rejoicing for love of you. You have placed her on your phallus and your seed issues into her, she being ready as Sopdet, and Hor Sopd has come forth from you as Horus who is in Sothis [the Hellenized version of the Egyptian Sopdet].”
Sopdet as a celestial cow
To acknowledge the Goddess’ ancient connection with Her star, some shrines and temples of Isis, including the small Isis temple at Ptolemaic-era Denderah, were oriented towards Sopdet. When Egypt came under Greek and then Roman rule, Isis got Her canine connection. In a later-period aretalogy (self-statement) from Kyme in modern Turkey, Isis says of Herself, “I am She that riseth in the Dog Star.”
Just as Orion the hunter is inseparable from his hound, so the Egyptians saw a connection between the constellation they called Sah (Orion) and the most brilliant star in the heavens, Sopdet. Sah could be identified with Osiris Himself or considered to be His ba or soul. Sopdet was identifed as Isis or as Her ba. As Orion rises before Sirius, you can see the ancient myth of Isis searching for Her lost husband played out before you as the constellation Orion appears to move through the sky ahead of the Beautiful Star.
Osiris on His back (note the position of the three belt stars) with Isis-Sopdet below (framed by the trees), upraising Him
Yet there is another interpretation of the movement of the stars through the sky that takes us to an even more important point in the Isis-Osiris myth. You see, when the Orion constellation first appears on the horizon, Osiris seems to be on his back, with Isis-Sopdet rising beneath Him. As the night passes and the constellation rises higher into the sky, He “stands up,” with Isis at His back all the while, pushing upward until the God is raised. Even more so than the myth of Isis following Osiris to pick up the pieces, we can see the rising of Orion and Sirius as Isis raising Osiris from the dead, the stellar model of the ritual of Raising the Djed Column, which the pharaoh, with the help of Isis, performed on earth.
Sirius Rising Calculator
Depending on your area’s latitude, Sirius could be rising anytime from July to August in the northern hemisphere.
Here’s link to a calculator you can use to find out when She rises in your area. You’ll need to know your latitude and elevation above sea level.
A Blessed Nativity to all!
The Mysteries of Nativity and of the Hearth are closely related and bound up with the Northern Gate of Heaven through which the Princess of the World enters our homes and hearts.
In this season, the Day of the Lady of the Hearth Fire comes a week after the celebration of the Birth of God the Daughter.
Read all about the Nativity season 
