Hello, Isiacs! I’m off celebrating the equinox today. Yes, it’s Portland and it’s overcast and chilly. But the daffodils are blooming and all the little green shoots are coming up.
So, no post today, but I’ll leave you with some images of Our Lady that I had the privilege to see at the Egyptian Museum.
Many blessings to you and yours!
Under Her Wings, Isidora
One of the questions I regularly receive from folks who email me is, “how can I tell if Isis is calling me?” It’s a very good question, if a somewhat difficult one to answer.
Sometimes, people have had dreams with what they think could be Isiac imagery. Sometimes they’ve had a vision or some other experience during a ritual. Sometimes it’s a feeling, sometimes a wish or a hope.
To try to unravel this, the first thing we need to figure out is what we mean by “calling?” In other words, if She were calling us, what would that mean? What kind of obligation, if any, comes with that calling? Because so many of us have Christianity in our personal backgrounds as well as Christianity being so prominent in our societies, we might automatically associate “a calling” with a vocation for the ministry or priesthood. It’s certainly possible. But there are other possibilities, too.
What calling means to us can also depend on where we are in our spiritual journey, as well as what we’ve been studying or reading or thinking.
For instance, let’s say you’re very interested in ancient Egypt, you’ve been reading about it, and you’re in a spiritual circle of some kind that regularly invokes Deities. Then one night, you have a powerful dream in which a beautiful, Egyptian woman seems to welcome you. You think She might be Isis. She might, indeed. She could also be one of any number of Egyptian Goddesses, which you would know about from your reading. What you intuit from your own dream will be very helpful here. If you think She’s Isis, you can follow that thread. We’ll talk about that shortly.
For another instance, let’s say you’ve never had any particular connection with ancient Egypt and you’re not on any specific spiritual path. Then one night, you have a powerful dream in which a beautiful, Egyptian woman seems to welcome you. You think She might be Isis. This may be just a dream. But if you find it exceptionally powerful, keep looking. A dream like that might be pointing out that your soul is yearning for some positive Mother or Divine Feminine energy in your life. That knowledge, in and of itself, is very valuable information. On the other hand, such a dream could be the impetus to set you on a spiritual journey as you seek to learn more.
And for a third instance, let’s say you have that same dream. But you don’t feel that you’re ready—or that you even want to—do anything about it. You absolutely don’t have to. If it’s an important knock on your spiritual door, She’ll knock again. And it’s okay to say no. You won’t hurt Her feelings and there are no negative consequences.
So. Dreams are one way to hear Isis if She’s calling you. But if you, like me, are a crappy dreamer and neither remember them nor write them down, there are other ways to hear Her. There are usually signs. Signs can be tricky. In most cases, a sign is something unusual that catches your attention and relates to the particular Deity involved, in our case, Isis. Because She is a Bird Goddess, it might be wings and feathers. You may hear the sound of wings at an odd time. Or a bird swoops down immediately in your line of sight, startling you. Or a feather drops from the sky. Her symbols—like the Knot of Isis or a throne—might show up unexpectedly. Perhaps you overhear Her name in a passing conversation between strangers. This will happen, not just once, but many times. Be patient. Wait. And look and listen for the signs.
Now, if you’re actively wanting Her to be calling you, signs and synchronicities can ramp up. Does a breeze rustle the leaves of a tree as you pass, thinking of Her? It is Her breath. Have you found a piece of jewelry engraved with Her image? She confirms your Path. Did that hawk circle above you as you drive your car down a country road with Her name on your lips? She is guiding you.
Is it foolish to see these signs everywhere? Is it “just my imagination?” In some cases, sure, there will be a kind of confirmation bias. But that doesn’t matter; She’s on your mind. You’re thinking of Her. It has begun.
Sometimes, there are other ways to tell. You might have an intuition of Her presence about you. Or something weird might happen. I’ve had incense burn and disappear all by itself, strangers have given me unexpected Isis gifts, very loud disembodied voices have spoken my name. What your weird thing might be, I can’t say.
Now. There’s also an important secret about all this that I’d like to share with you. Two, really. The first is that if you want to connect with Isis, you don’t have to wait for Her to call you. You can call Her, too. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Ask Her to come into your life. If you like ritual, use the Opening of the Ways here.
The second is that being called by Isis doesn’t necessarily mean you are being called to a lifelong relationship with Her. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being called to serve as Her priestess or priest. It might mean you’re being called to learn more about Her—right now and perhaps only for a while. Perhaps you’re being called to relationship. And like any relationship, that means investing time. Spend time with Her, in meditation and prayer. Read about Her in anything and everything you can get your hands on. Get to know Her. See how She feels to you. Do you like Her energy? Does it fit with yours? That’s what I mean by following the thread…and just see where it leads you.
And if you find, after time, that this is not the relationship for you, that’s perfectly okay. You will have learned. You will have grown and your spiritual world will have been expanded.
But if you find that, like me, you are a lifetime (or at least longterm) devotee of Isis, then I know you will discover for yourself Her deep love, wisdom, power, and magic.
I’d like to share with you some beautiful art of Our Lady that was shared with me recently.
I absolutely adore the fact that She inspires so much art. It seems that sometimes art is the only way we can express our feelings for Her or our experiences with Her. For me, often, it is the art of ritual that helps me both express and share my love of Her. For others, it’s poetry or visual arts or music. What about you? Is there an art that you use to express yourself about or to Her?
And here are some photos from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo that inspired this lovely sacred image:
So, do you do art about or for Isis? Please feel free to share in the comments.
This is an important Isis myth. It almost always gets overshadowed by the main Isis and Osiris myth, the murder of Osiris and Isis’ search for Him. But this is the Isis myth that is, for many, the most unsettling when we are first learning our Isis lore; and that is the tale of how Isis tricked the Sun God Re into revealing His most secret name and thereby gained additional power for Herself and for Her son, Horus. Know that story? If not, you can read a translation here.
On the basis of this tale, some have decided that Isis is an evil magician. I have even seen the story used as an argument to show how naturally underhanded all women are! And, on the face of it, the tale is troubling. Isis decides to gain power. She deliberately poisons Re, then cures Him only after He reveals to Her His most secret, hidden, and powerful name. Although Isis’ Divine knowledge is already equal to Re’s, knowing His name gives Her even more power. What’s more, She will be able to share Re’s name with Horus, once He is oath-bound to keep it secret, and Horus will receive the sun and moon as His Two Eyes.
So what are we to make of this? Is Isis just another tricky female? Perhaps we should consider Her as one of the Trickster Deities. She’s a Divine Magician, after all, and magicians are always tricky. Or maybe Isis was forced to resort to magical artifice to break through a Divine glass ceiling. Think of royal women in the Egyptian court. Because they did not have outright power equal to men’s, they would have used tricks, subterfuge, perhaps even poison, as a path to power. We must remember that it is always human beings who tell these stories, thus all stories come through a human filter.
As you might guess, none of these explanations satisfy me. I do have one that does, but it will take me a little while to get to my point, so I hope you’ll bear with me.
Background Info
There are several things you should know about this story. First, the version of the tale that has come down to us is from a papyrus known as the Turin Papyrus (along with a few other sources). It has been dated to Egypt’s 20th dynasty, about 1186-1169 BCE. No doubt, the story itself is much, much older, but the version we have comes from the later time. Second, the story is part of a healing formula to cure snakebite. Egyptian medicine almost always had a magical prescription as well as whatever herbal or surgical therapy was given. Such prescriptions often included a myth that related to the problem, followed by a statement that just as so-and-so was cured in the myth, so shall the sufferer be cured. In this case, just as Re was cured by Isis, so shall the snakebite sufferer be cured. Instruction is given at the end of the formula to recite the story over images of the main characters in the tale.
Elements of the Myth: the old king
The papyrus tells us that Re was so old that He drooled. In a time when the pharaoh was considered a God, and therefore should be the epitome of physical, mental and spiritual perfection, it would hardly be acceptable to have a ruler so old He drooled. Myths such as the death of the Holly King in Celtic countries, ritual combat to the death between the outgoing priest of Diana at the grove of Nemi and an incoming hopeful, and Arthurian legends of the Wounded King of the Wasteland—all point to the archetypal nature of this theme.
Elements of the Myth: the Goddess of Renewal
If you know anything about Isis, you know that one of Her key powers is the ability to renew and resurrect. The Turin papyrus tells us that Isis came to Re with Her magic and that Her “speech was as the breath of life.” When the Star of Isis, Sirius, rose in summer, it signaled the beginning of the New Year and the renewal of all things. Her magic brought Osiris back to life enough to conceive Horus and then gave Him a new existence as Lord of the Dead. As some of you may know, I believe Isis is the ancient Bird of Prey Goddess. Thus She is the Lady of Death and Regeneration, an identity that She has never lost, even to this day. Since the failing Re does not willingly give up His power, Isis must create the conditions that force the old ruler to the point of renewal.
Elements of the Myth: the saliva of the God
In Egypt, magic might be worked by means of bodily fluids. Saliva, semen, blood, sweat, milk, and other such fluids were a means of creation. If it was the blood, sweat, and tears of the Deities, it was even more creative and powerful. Since Re drooled, rather than purposefully spitting (for example, when Atum creatively spit to give birth to the Goddess Tefnut), He was wasting His power.
Elements of the Myth: the holy serpent
Yet, the Goddess does not let it go to waste. Instead, She mixes Re’s drool with earth, the place of renewal from which new life grows, to create a holy cobra (or “noble snake” as in the linked translation). The cobra is a mixture of life—in that it is made partly of earth and will ultimately cause Re to be healed—and death—in that it is made from the wasted generative power of Re and is a symbol of His unfitness for His throne. And of course, the serpent is an almost universal symbol of renewal due to the snake’s ability to shed its skin and emerge new from the experience.
In the form of the holy cobra, Re’s own weakness strikes Him and brings Him more pain than He has ever before experienced. He quakes with cold and burns with fire.
Elements of the Myth: name magic
In Egyptian magical theory, to know someone or something’s name is to be able to access its essence at the time of Creation, when all heka was at its more pure and potent. In this story, Re is considered the most powerful Deity in the universe (the tale also contains a litany of Re’s great powers). Knowing His secret name confers ultimate power; including the power to heal. As Isis tells Re, “the person who hath declared his name shall live.”
If this story is very ancient, it may be that its original form, in which Isis renews Re simply because that’s what the Goddess does, was lost. Perhaps later scribes tried to explain the Mystery to themselves and their audiences by framing it as a trick to gain power. Thus what may seem like simple blackmail is actually much more profound. Re is being forced to reveal a most secret and inner part of Himself to the Goddess. To be healed, He must make Himself vulnerable to the Lady of Renewal. He must accept both Her help and Her very real power.
Once Re gives Himself over to Isis, He is healed, renewed in strength and power. He learns that He must give up in order to gain. He learns to trust the Goddess Whom He has been forced to trust. And the Goddess proves Herself worthy. In no successive myth do we ever find any evidence that Isis abuses the ultimate power She has gained.
But Wait, There’s More
In the very same papyrus in which this story is found, there is a parallel story involving Horus and Set. It, too, is a magical snakebite cure. Here’s that story:
Horus and Set were voyaging together on Horus’ golden barque. Suddenly, Set cried out, “Come to me Horus, I have been bitten!”
And Horus turned to Set and said, “Tell Me Thy name, that I may work magic for Thee. One works magic for a man through his name, and a God is greater than His reputation.”
Set replied, “I am Yesterday, I am Today, I am Tomorrow That Has Not Yet Come.”
But Horus said, “No, Thou art not Yesterday, Today, or Tomorrow That Has Not Yet Come. Tell me Thy name, that I may work magic for Thee. One works magic for a man through his name, and a God is greater than His reputation.”
So Set said, “I am a Quiver of Arrows, I am a Cauldron of Disturbance.”
“No, Thou art not,” said Horus and repeated what He had said before.
“I am a Man of a Thousand Cubits, Whose Reputation is Not Known.”
“No, Thou art not,” said Horus and repeated again what He had said.
“I am a Threshing Floor; I am a Jug of Milk, Milked from the Breast of Bastet.
“No, Thou art not,” said Horus again.
Finally, Set replied with His True Name, “I am a Man of a Million Cubits Whose Name is Evil Day. As for the Day of Giving Birth or of Conceiving, There is No Giving Birth and Trees Bear No Fruit.”
The formula concludes with the promise that the sufferer will be made as sound as Horus was by Isis, so even though in this story Horus is one Who is pushing Set to reveal His true name, the cure is attributed to Isis.
What the Trickster Teaches
It seems clear to me that a key to both of these myths is vulnerability to the Divine that precedes healing. We must reveal our innermost selves, symbolized by our true name, to Goddess, to God. We must do so even if, like Set, it is a name with which we are not entirely comfortable. We must give ourselves over to the Divine, as we are, right now, with no masks. Only in this state of radical openness can we receive the renewing gifts that Divinity has for us. Like Re and like Set, we must—at least eventually—be willing to acknowledge and trust the Divine in order to bring Its power into our lives. This vulnerability and revelation of truth can be painful, like poison; and yet the truth always frees us.
Like Re especially, we must acknowledge the power of Goddess and make ourselves open to Her. If we don’t, She will find a way—perhaps a rather difficult way—to bring that lack to our attention. But when we do reveal ourselves to Her, we can know Her and be known by Her. We can enter into mystical communion with Her as we move through the natural cycle of death and renewal that is guided by Her hand.
Egypt is a land of bricks. From the ancient sun-dried mudbrick temple enclosures to modern Egyptian apartments, everything was and is made of bricks. (And, modernly, supplemented by concrete.)
It’s because there never were many trees and the native ones aren’t very suitable for large building projects. Even anciently, building wood was imported.
So bricks were and are still the answer. the ancient Egyptians encountered bricks on the way into life, during life, and on the way out of life.
The ones they encountered on the way into and out of life were special. There were magical.
On the way into life, there were four bricks, stacked in pairs, that served to elevate a birthing mother so that when her child emerged beneath her, the baby could easily be caught in the hands of the midwife. (According to midwives even today, a squatting or sitting posture is preferable to the supine position in which most modern Western women give birth, generally resulting in a faster, easier delivery.)
On the way out of life, there were the four talismanic bricks that were placed in niches in the four sides of a burial chamber. These bricks were decorated with amuletic figures: in the east, the Anubis jackel; in the south, a flame; in the west, the djed pillar of Osiris; and in the north, a mummiform male figure. All of them protected the deceased.
Doubtless, the talismanic bricks that surrounded the body of the deceased in the tomb were meant to assist in rebirth into the next life, just as the birthing bricks assisted in a child’s birth into physical life.
The Goddess most closely associated with the birthing bricks is Meskhenet, Protectress of the Birthing Place. The bricks were called meskhenut (pl.) after Her. Meskhenet is depicted either as a woman-headed birthing brick or as a woman with a distinctive curling headdress that has been identified as a stylized cow’s uterus. She protects mother and child during the dangerous process of birth, She foretells the child’s destiny as the baby is born, and She is among the Deities of rebirth Who witness the judgment of the deceased in the Otherworld.
With Isis’ own connection to both birth and rebirth, you will probably not be surprised to learn that Isis is closely associated with Meskhenet. At Osiris’ temple complex at Abydos, four Meskhenets serve as assistants to Isis in the great work of rebirth done there. At Hathor’s temple complex at Denderah, a combined form of Isis and Meskhenet (Meskhenet Noferet Iset or Meskhenet the Beautiful Isis) is one of the four Birth Goddesses of Denderah. And in the famous story of the birth of three kings found in the Westcar papyrus, both Isis and Meskhenet are among the four Goddesses Who assist in the kings’ births.
Both tomb bricks and birthing bricks were protective. In an inscription from the temple at Esna, Khnum, the God Who forms the child’s body and ka on His Divine potter’s wheel, places four Meskhenet Goddesses around each of His various forms “to repel the designs of evil by incantations.” As Birth Goddess, Meskhenet is associated with the ka as well. A papyrus in Berlin invokes Her to “make ka for this child, which is in the womb of this woman!”
We have a few surviving spells that were used to charge the birthing bricks. They were used to repel the attacks of enemies to the north and south of Egypt and may indicate that the birthing bricks, like the tomb bricks, were connected with the directions.
And here’s another tidbit showing parallels between the magical tomb bricks and birthing bricks. In an Egypt Exploration Society article by Ann Macy Roth and Catherine H. Roehrig, the authors point out an interesting gender-reversed aspect of these magical bricks.
You may recall that four Sons of Horus are the Gods Who protect the four canopic jars that contain the internal organs of the mummy. These four Gods are, in turn, guarded by four Goddesses. In Tutankhamun’s tomb, the Goddesses are Isis, Nephthys, Selket, and Neith. Roth and Roehrig suggest that we may be able to explain the amuletic figures associated with the tomb bricks in a similar, though opposite, manner. If the four meskhenets are personified as four Goddesses Who protect the birthing place, perhaps the four figures on the tomb bricks—the God Anubis, a mummiform male, a Divine pillar associated with Osiris, and a flame, the hieroglyph for which is rather phallic—may be considered Divine Masculine Powers Who protect the four Meskhenet Goddesses, just as four Goddesses protect the four Sons of Horus.
It is worth noting that these magical bricks were made in the same way as were the traditional mudbricks of Egypt. They were fashioned from the fertile Nile clay and sand, mixed with straw, which may be associated with Isis as Lady of the Fertile Earth, then they were dried in the brilliant heat of Isis-Re, the Radiant Sun Goddess. And, of course, as a Divine Mother Herself, Isis is connected with every aspect of human and animal fertility, from conception to birth, as well as the protection of the children as they grow.
As we have a south-to-north flowing river here in Portland, I might see if I can get some Portland “Nile” mud to create four miniature mudbricks. Then I could magically charge them by naming them “Meskhenet Noferet Iset” and placing them in the four quarters of the temple—or even outside, one on each side of the house. They might provide some very fine magical protection.
For me, of course, a highlight of our recent Egyptian pilgrimage was the visit to Her temple at New Philae, or Agilika (or Agilkia), island.
So I thought I’d share some photos with you so you can see what it looks like from more angles than you might usually get to see. There are more exterior shots than interior because the interior of the temple was freaking FULL of tourists. (Tourist tip: if you go, go as early or late as you can. We neglected to do this.)
But first, do you know the story of how they moved this temple, considered the most beautiful of all Egypt’s surviving temples? If not, I’ll tell it briefly…
With the building of the second Aswan dam in 1971, the Temple of Isis on the original Philae island was flooded.
Happily, it does not look like this today thanks to an enormous international effort that moved the entire temple—block by block—to a new and higher island, which was landscaped to look like the original.
Ancient Philae was situated at the Nile’s first cataract, the beginning of Nile whitewater, which was much more dangerous before the building of the dam. This area was where Egypt ended and Nubia began. Thus Aswan, the nearest town, became a huge market town. Aswan’s original name, Sunu, means “market.” The Nile is beautiful everywhere, but the cataracts are, I think, exceptionally beautiful—and an appropriate place for the beautiful temple of the Beautiful Goddess.
While the dam had calmed the waters, it had flooded Philae. To save the temple, UNESCO and the Egyptian government worked to move the Philae temple. But that wasn’t all. There were about 20 temples that were flooded and moved, including the spectacular Abu Simbel temples. But our story today is Philae-centered.
To save Philae, they built a retaining wall around the island, then pumped the water out of it.
After that, they were able to deconstruct the temples and monuments, move them, and reassemble them on the re-landscaped Agilika island. You can still see the numbering on some of the temple’s blocks that helped the team rebuild it. And you can also still see the darkness that seeped into the temple’s sandstone blocks from the black, silt-filled Nile waters during its time underwater—the same silt that made the Inundation so important for the fertilization of Egypt’s fields every year. With the dam, there is no longer an Inundation, but there is water control and there is electricity. By the way, none of this was easy or quick. It took from 1972 to 1980 to accomplish.
Our guide told us that the star alignment for the rebuilt temple is slightly off. But I haven’t been able to check that out for myself.
I will tell you one thing that shocked me. I knew that images had been purposefully damaged (not only at Philae, but at every temple). But the extent of the damage! Almost all of them. As in the image above, the faces were hacked away, and often the hands and feet as well.
Those of you of a Kemetic bent already know that the ancient Egyptian New Year began with the predawn rising of the Star of Isis, Sirius, in mid to late summer. After a long absence, this summertime rising marked both the start of the New Year and the coming of the all-important Nile flood.
But there is another time in the year that the Beautiful Star of the Beautiful Goddess is most prominent. And I would argue that it is then that She is even more glorious than during Her summer heliacal rising.
That time is right now. At our own modern New Year.
Sirius is even more breathtaking now because we can see Her illuminating the nighttime sky for much longer. In summer, we get only a brief glimpse of Her light just before dawn—and then Her starlight disappears in the greater light of the rising sun. But now, ah now, those of us in the northern hemisphere can bathe in Her starlight all night long. (In the southern hemisphere, Sirius is best viewed in summer.)
But there’s yet another wonderful Mystery. At midnight tonight—as we ring in the New Year—Sirius reaches its highest point in the night sky. She will be high overhead at midnight on New Year’s Eve. And so we are completely justified in claiming Sirius as our star of the New Year, too, just as She was for the ancient Egyptians.
I utterly and completely love this fact.
Of course, Sirius continues to dominate the night sky throughout the winter months, so tonight isn’t your only opportunity to admire Her. As a devotee of Isis, I take it as a sacred duty to spend at least some time during the winter observing the beauty of the star of the Goddess in the night sky and offering Her the praise of my heart.
If you’d like to join me, look to the east-southeast after sunset. See that diamond-like star near the horizon? That’s Her. No other star in the belly of Nuet can match Her for brilliance (in fact, the second brightest star is only half as bright as Sirius). And of course, if you continue lifting your gaze upwards, you will see the constellation of Orion, which the Egyptians associated with Osiris, the Beloved of Isis. As the night goes on, She rises higher into the sky, until at midnight, She reaches Her highest point.
If you have access to a telescope, O please, please do use it to look at Her, especially when She is near the horizon. The Goddess flashes with green, blue, pink, and white starlight.
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, the Egyptian name of the star.
The location of Sirius in the Canis Major constellation, as well as Her ancient association with Anubis, connects Isis with canines. In a second-century 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 hunting 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 Divine manifestation, just as Sirius could be Isis’ manifestation. 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.
I hope the skies where you are are much clearer than our cloudy Portland skies. While I probably won’t be able to see Her myself tonight, that doesn’t mean She isn’t there.
She is always there. Even if we can’t always see Her.
May your New Year be prosperous, beautiful, deep, and renewing. Amma, Iset.
It’s that time of year when we (once again) see all those articles comparing the Divine Mother Mary with the Divine Mother Isis, followed by either outrage or approbation, depending on who’s doing the writing.
Recently, in relation to this, a friend of this blog asked a very excellent question. It had to do with Isis’ status as a Virgin Goddess. Basically, is She or isn’t She? She is often compared with the famously Virgin Mary, and the images of the two Goddesses, nursing Their holy babes, are strikingly similar. And then there’s all of this.
Well, as is often the way with Goddesses, the answer is both no and yes.
We’re all pretty familiar with the sexual relations between Isis and Osiris. All the way back to the Pyramid Texts we hear about it, rather explicitly we might add. Pyramid Text 366 says, “Your [Osiris] sister Isis comes to You rejoicing for love of You. You have placed Her on your phallus and Your seed issues into Her…” Plutarch, in the version of the story he recorded, tells us that Isis and Osiris were so in love with each other that They even made love while still within the womb of Their Great Mother Nuet. And, of course, we have the sacred story of how Isis collected the pieces of the body of murdered-and-dismembered Osiris, all except the phallus. Crafting a replacement of gold, the flesh of the Gods, She was able to arouse Her Beloved sufficient for the conception of Horus. The mourning songs of Isis and Nephthys have Her longing for His love. The priestess, in the Goddessform of Isis, sings that “fire is in Me for love of Thee” and She calls Him Lord of Love and Lord of Passion. She pleads, “Lie Thou with Thy sister Isis, remove Thou the pain that is in Her body.” (For more on the Songs or Lamentations, go here.)
So, is that all there is to it? Isis is not a virgin?
Well, not quite. Because Isis is a Goddess.
Isis is the Goddess of 10,000 Names and 10,000 Forms. Among those forms are the sexual Lover of Osiris and the Mother of Horus. Among Her many Names are syncretisms with famously virginal Goddesses such as Artemis, Hekate, and Athena, as well as heroines such as Io, a virgin priestess of Hera (a Goddess Who Herself renews Her virginity on the regular). Isis is identified with both Demeter the Mother and Persephone the Kore, the Young Girl, Who were sometimes seen as a single unit, Mother-Daughter, containing All in Themselves. Goddesses can be many things, all at once, without any contradiction—or perhaps with every contradiction, which is one of the ways of Goddesses.
Perhaps no text shows us these Divine Feminine contradictions/not-contradictions as clearly as “The Thunder, Perfect Mind,” a text found among the Nag Hammadi texts. It is a long poem in the voice of a Feminine Divine Power that some scholars have linked to Isis; or at least that Her worship influenced the content of the text. Could be, but in my opinion, the Divine Speaker may be better understood as Sophia—with Whom Isis is also identified. The Coptic (late Egyptian) manuscript from which the text comes is dated to roughly 350 CE. Here’s a brief excerpt from this amazing work:
For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
The Thunder, Perfect MindClearly, Isis is identified with Virgin Goddesses throughout the Mediterranean world. And it is not at all unusual for such Goddesses to be both virginal and associated with fertility. What about Egyptian sources?
The ancient Egyptians were not quite so concerned with virgins—by which I mean, in this case, a young person who has not yet had sex—as were the Greeks and some other Mediterranean peoples. For instance, there was no requirement that young women, or young men for that matter, be sexually inexperienced when they married. Many young women probably were—particularly those who were married very young to older husbands. But prior to marriage, young people might engage relatively freely with each other. After marriage, sexual exclusivity with demanded, especially for women. The penalties for non-compliance could be very harsh, especially for women.
This is not to say that Egyptian virginity was not valued or even required under certain circumstances. The text that included the lamentation songs of Isis and Nephthys noted above specifies that the priestesses taking the roles of Isis and Nephthys be “pure of body and virgin” and also that they are to have their body hair removed, wigs on their heads, tambourines in their hands, and the names of Isis and Nephthys inscribed on their arms.
This text, one of very few we have, is from the Ptolemaic period, when Egypt had been influenced by Greek rule. I wonder whether virginity would have been considered necessary earlier. Perhaps the priestesses would have only had to abstain from sex for a period of time before their ritual service. We know that people serving in Egyptian temples had to abstain from sex for a time (at least a day, often a number of days) as part of their purification. But they weren’t virgins.
The God’s Wife of Amun, the highest of high priestesses and usually a female relation of the king, was virgin for life. Beginning in the 2nd Intermediate Period, the position of the God’s Wife gained a great deal of power, eventually becoming second only to the king. Interestingly, it was an “Isis”—Iset, the virgin daughter of Ramesses VI—who began the tradition of the God’s Wife being celibate. Later, in the Roman period, some Roman priestesses of Isis maintained lifelong virginity. And we know that the Roman Isiacs might maintain a 10-day period of pre-ritual chastity known as the Castimonium Isidis or Chastity of Isis.
Isis Herself is called the Great Virgin in one of the Egyptian hymns to Osiris (I believe it is from the Isis Chapel at Abydos; still checking into it.) In Egyptian, this would is Hunet Weret. Hunet is the word for girl or maiden, weret is the feminine form of great. Hunet is also the name for the pupil of the eye and is connected to the Hermetic treatise known as the Kore Kosmou, the “Virgin of the World.” You can read about those maidenly connections here. (And read about the Kore Kosmou here, here, and here. )Just like Greek parthenos, hunet could mean a virgin, a girl, a maiden, or just youthful. And all Egyptian Goddesses are forever young. A young boy or youth is hunu.
Parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction), was not unknown in Egypt, either. The First Creators in many Egyptian myths, such as the God Atum and the Goddess Neith, created everything from Themselves. Some Egyptian queens, such as Ahmose, Hatshepsut’s mother, were said to have given birth to pharaohs after sexual union with a God.
So, is Isis a Virgin Goddess? Yes. Does She have sex with Her Divine Husband? Yes. She is, as so many Goddesses are, Both And. She is a patroness of marital sexual desire and bliss and She is an ever-renewing, ever-youthful Virgin Goddess. On this holy day and every day, may She bless you with the gifts you most desire.
It’s that time of year when we (once again) see all those articles comparing the Divine Mother Mary with the Divine Mother Isis, followed by either outrage or approbation, depending on who’s doing the writing.
Recently, in relation to this, a friend of this blog asked a very excellent question. It had to do with Isis’ status as a Virgin Goddess. Basically, is She or isn’t She? She is often compared with the famously Virgin Mary, and the images of the two Goddesses, nursing Their holy babes, are strikingly similar. And then there’s all of this.
Well, as is often the way with Goddesses, the answer is both no and yes.
We’re all pretty familiar with the sexual relations between Isis and Osiris. All the way back to the Pyramid Texts we hear about it, rather explicitly we might add. Pyramid Text 366 says, “Your [Osiris] sister Isis comes to You rejoicing for love of You. You have placed Her on your phallus and Your seed issues into Her…” Plutarch, in the version of the story he recorded, tells us that Isis and Osiris were so in love with each other that They even made love while still within the womb of Their Great Mother Nuet. And, of course, we have the sacred story of how Isis collected the pieces of the body of murdered-and-dismembered Osiris, all except the phallus. Crafting a replacement of gold, the flesh of the Gods, She was able to arouse Her Beloved sufficient for the conception of Horus. The mourning songs of Isis and Nephthys have Her longing for His love. The priestess, in the Goddessform of Isis, sings that “fire is in Me for love of Thee” and She calls Him Lord of Love and Lord of Passion. She pleads, “Lie Thou with Thy sister Isis, remove Thou the pain that is in Her body.” (For more on the Songs or Lamentations, go here.)
So, is that all there is to it? Isis is not a virgin?
Well, not quite. Because Isis is a Goddess.
Isis is the Goddess of 10,000 Names and 10,000 Forms. Among those forms are the sexual Lover of Osiris and the Mother of Horus. Among Her many Names are syncretisms with famously virginal Goddesses such as Artemis, Hekate, and Athena, as well as heroines such as Io, a virgin priestess of Hera (a Goddess Who Herself renews Her virginity on the regular). Isis is identified with both Demeter the Mother and Persephone the Kore, the Young Girl, Who were sometimes seen as a single unit, Mother-Daughter, containing All in Themselves. Goddesses can be many things, all at once, without any contradiction—or perhaps with every contradiction, which is one of the ways of Goddesses.
Perhaps no text shows us these Divine Feminine contradictions/not-contradictions as clearly as “The Thunder, Perfect Mind,” a text found among the Nag Hammadi texts. It is a long poem in the voice of a Feminine Divine Power that some scholars have linked to Isis; or at least they think that Her worship influenced the content of the text. Could be, but in my opinion, the Divine Speaker may be better understood as Sophia—with Whom Isis is also identified. The Coptic (late Egyptian) manuscript from which the text comes is dated to roughly 350 CE. Here’s a brief excerpt from this amazing work:
For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
The Thunder, Perfect Mind
Clearly, Isis is syncretized with Virgin Goddesses throughout the Mediterranean world. And it is not at all unusual for such Goddesses to be both virginal and associated with fertility. What about Egyptian sources?
The ancient Egyptians were not quite so concerned with virgins—by which I mean, in this case, a young person who has not yet had sex—as were the Greeks and some other Mediterranean peoples. For instance, there was no requirement that young women, or young men for that matter, be sexually inexperienced when they married. Many young women probably were—particularly those who were married very young to older husbands. But prior to marriage, young people might engage relatively freely with each other. After marriage, sexual exclusivity with demanded, especially for women. The penalties for non-compliance could be very harsh, especially for women.
This is not to say that Egyptian virginity was not valued or even required under certain circumstances. The text that included the lamentation songs of Isis and Nephthys noted above specifies that the priestesses taking the roles of Isis and Nephthys be “pure of body and virgin” and also that they are to have their body hair removed, wigs on their heads, tambourines in their hands, and the names of Isis and Nephthys inscribed on their arms.
This text, one of very few we have, is from the Ptolemaic period, when Egypt had been influenced by Greek rule. I wonder whether virginity would have been considered necessary earlier. Perhaps the priestesses would have only had to abstain from sex for a period of time before their ritual service. We know that people serving in Egyptian temples had to abstain from sex for a time (at least a day, often a number of days) as part of their purification. But they weren’t virgins.
The God’s Wife of Amun, the highest of high priestesses and usually a female relation of the king, was virgin for life. Beginning in the 2nd Intermediate Period, the position of the God’s Wife gained a great deal of power, eventually becoming second only to the king. Interestingly, it was an “Isis”—Iset, the virgin daughter of Ramesses VI—who began the tradition of the God’s Wife being celibate. Later, in the Roman period, some Roman priestesses of Isis maintained lifelong virginity. And we know that the Roman Isiacs might maintain a 10-day period of pre-ritual chastity known as the Castimonium Isidis or Chastity of Isis.
Isis Herself is called the Great Virgin in one of the inscriptions from the Isis Chapel at Abydos. In Egyptian, this is Hunet Weret. Hunet is the word for girl or maiden, weret is the feminine form of great. Hunet is also the Egyptian name for the pupil of the eye and is connected to the Hermetic treatise known as the Kore Kosmou, the “Virgin of the World.” You can read about those maidenly connections here. (And read about the Kore Kosmou here, here, and here. )Just like Greek parthenos, hunet could mean a virgin, a girl, a maiden, or just youthful. And all Egyptian Goddesses are forever young. A young boy or youth is hunu.
Parthenogenesis was not unknown in Egypt, either. The First Creators in many Egyptian myths, such as the God Atum and the Goddess Neith, created everything from Themselves alone. Some Egyptian queens, such as Ahmose, Hatshepsut’s mother, were said to have given birth to pharaohs after sexual union with a God.
So, is Isis a Virgin Goddess? Yes. Does She have sex with Her Divine Husband? Yes. She is, as so many Goddesses are, Both And. She is a patroness of marital sexual desire and bliss and She is an ever-renewing, ever-youthful Virgin Goddess. On this holy day and every day, may She bless you with the gifts you most desire.
I am terrible with memories. I don’t mean my memory is bad. I mean I don’t honor ‘things past’ enough. I don’t take many pictures (and certainly not of myself). I tend not to care for traditional souvenirs. And I definitely have the “get rid of it” gene (which my beloved does not). In my defense, I don’t generally dwell on past wrongs either.
But I do keep magical journals. And semi-recently came across an old one. There were memories in it.
When I keep journals, I don’t record everything all the time (good Goddess, the paper trail would never end!). Usually, I keep them during periods when I’m doing a lot of intensive magical work. This particular journal, as I have said, is old. I mean really old. Like “before the fire” old. Yes, of course, you don’t know what I mean.
Before we moved to the Pacific Northwest, we lived in an apartment in Tennessee. One night the complex caught on fire. Neighbors knocked on neighbors’ doors, telling them to get up and get out. We grabbed the cat and the insurance papers and got out. The next day, with the fire quenched, we were able to go back to survey the damage. It had been a weird fire. Things like our stereo system were completely and utterly incinerated. Things like our irreplaceable magical papers (papers, mind you!) were saved. This journal was among them. I can tell from the singed edges.
So I thought I’d sit down and read it. There was lots of visionary work pertaining to a magical system I was training in. But every now and then, there were entries about Isis. This was before I knew very much about Her, before I became Her priestess, and way before Isis Magic. Yet I clearly had been working with Her (or She was working with me).
One entry reads, “I have had a very strong Isis connection since my dream the other night.” That dream was not recorded, but a vision was. I was working on love and acceptance. For the vision, I called on Isis to touch me and help me let Her love of humanity come through me. I sensed Her great, but gentle hand descend from above. She placed it on top of my head. Waves of Her not-quite-orgasmic love passed though me and out into the world. I describe that flow of energy, then write, “I again saw the bright, bright, blue glowing lotus.” It had been so bright that I couldn’t tell one petal from another; eventually, the lotus-light enveloped me. I conclude, “I am feeling very worshipful of Great Isis.”
I see myself falling in love with Her through this journal.
Another entry says, “A most wondrous dream! A prayer answered!” Apparently, my beloved was snoring, so I took my bedding and went into our temple room to sleep. I was overcome with a desire to know, truly know, that Isis was with me. I write that it was “a demanding, revealing need” for Her presence. I prayed to Her “more emotionally than ever before” to send a dream to let me know She was with me. I chanted Her name for a while, then slept.
“A few hours later,” I write, “I came from a full, deep sleep to awake with loud sobbing from happiness and amazement.” (My sobbing.) Due to the abrupt awakening, I lost part of the dream. But the actual content of the dream wasn’t the point. The point was that, in the dream, the resolution to a dream-problem happened by a miracle. By Her miracle. And it made me so happy that I woke up crying with joy. And I again saw the blue lotus flower.
I remember this event. The details are a bit fuzzy now, but I vividly remember the visionary blue lotus. I could see it anytime I closed my eyes with crystal clarity instead of the vague dreaminess that vision often has. “I must look up lotus symbolism and I must make a blue lotus talisman,” I wrote. See how much I didn’t know then? Another entry says simply, “I love Her.” And now you know why the Isis temple in my backyard is called the Lotus Temple.
Next, I found an entry that I had marked IMPORTANT with a drawing of a star, a lotus, and a sickle on top. I wrote, “In the dark month of February, on the 15th of the month, with the moon waning in Capricorn, I have taken and been taken by Isis in Her Black Aspect as my Lady, my personal Goddess.” But this wasn’t when I became Her priestess; that was long in the future then. This was my forming a true bond with Her, a bond that will last my entire life. She became “my” Goddess, I became Her devotee. This is when I really began learning about Her.
There is, of course, more in this journal. I see my own inner struggles, doubts, fears, angers, and depression. But this particular record is incomplete. These are loose-leaf pages without a binder…and it seems that some are missing. After we moved to Portland, I began buying blank-but-bound books for my journals. The next one—which I am still writing in—starts with the time when I actually did become Isis’ priestess. In this journal, I can see that I am working out the magic part for what will eventually become Isis Magic.
But I think I have regaled you with quite enough of my journal entries for now. And I have learned my lesson that I should better value memories and keepsakes. Perhaps you will do some magical work with Isis yourself today? After all, your story will be a much better tale—because it will be yours. Just don’t forget to write in your journal.
Do you believe in Fate?
If we look to ancient Egypt, we definitely find a concept of fate or destiny. It is shai (or shau). Like so many ancient concepts, Fate was personified, in this case as the God Shai. Shai comes from a root word meaning to ordain; as in that which is ordained. Often in ancient Egypt, what they thought was ordained was the length of one’s life. And, also often, this was connected with one or another of the Deities. People prayed that the Deities would lengthen their time on earth.
In some of the Egyptian folk tales we have left to us, the time and sometimes the manner of death is decreed at birth by the Seven Hathors. In the story of the birth of the three kings, the Birth Goddess Meshkhenet is the one Who declares the destiny of the newborn kinglets. The Goddess Renenutet (or Renenet) is also a Destiny Goddess and could decree the prosperity a person might have in life. Shai and Renenutet are sometimes paired as Fate and Fortune or Fate and Destiny.
Those of you who have been following along with this blog won’t be surprised to find that Our Lady of Ten Thousand Names was syncretized with each of these Fate-connected Goddesses.
We already know Her as as Lady Luck. But there is an even more important Isis-Fate connection. And that is, that She is the Ruler of Fate. In Her 1st century CE aretalogy from Kyme in Asia Minor, Isis says, “I overcome Fate. Fate obeys me.” In Egypt, She is called Mistress of Fate (Nebet Shai), Who Creates Destiny; She is Mistress of Life, Ruler of Fate and Destiny. At Aswan, She is “the One under Whose command fate and destiny is.”
Interestingly, sometimes the hieroglyphs for shai were determined (that is, they have another glyph at the end that gives the overall sense of the word) with the sign for either “death” or “time.” Surely this is because of the Egyptian connection between one’s fate and the time of one’s death. We already know Isis is connected with death and the otherworld. But She is also a Goddess of Time.
This is most easily seen when She is Iset-Sopdet or Isis-Sothis. As I write this, it is summer and the star of Isis, Sirius, is absent from the night sky. It will be some time before I can see Her rise before the sun in the dawning light.
As Isis Sothis, Isis controlled the time of the seasonal, all-important Nile Inundation by the rising of Her star. She is also connected with the timekeeping Egyptian decans, which are 36 stars or smaller groups of stars (asterisms). As the earth turns, each decan is visible for a period of about ten days (or 10 degrees of a 360-degree circle), after which another one rises, marking 360 days of the year. To get to 365, the Egyptians added the five epagomenal days that were “outside” of the year—and during which the birthdays of Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys were celebrated. In addition to their yearly timekeeping, tracking the decanal stars and asterisms through the night sky served as a star clock for the Egyptians as they counted off the twelve Hours of the Night.
I’ve seen two different Egyptian names for the decans (decan is Greek for “a tenth”): baktiu and ankhiu. Baktiu, means “those who work” because, when it rose, each decan was said to be “working.” Ankhiu, as you might guess, means “living ones” because, as it rises, each decan is considered to be born. Iset-Sopdet is the first of the decans. Her heliacal rising just before the sun marks the beginning of the New Year. She leads and rules them all.
The Queen of the Decans is also the year as a whole, including what happens within that year. In Memphis, Isis-Hathor is called Renpet, the Year. One of the Oxyrhynchus papyri records one of the names of Isis in the Greek port city of Leuce Acte as Eseremphis, which is a Hellenized version of Iset Renpet. As the Year Itself, Isis decrees what fate each year brings. Horapollon, writing a late work on the meaning of hieroglyphs, says,
When the Egyptians want to represent the year they draw Isis, that is, a woman. And they signify the goddess in the same way. And among them, Isis is a star, called Sothis by the Egyptians, by the Greeks the Dog Star, which appears to rule over the other stars. Now greater, now less as it rises, and now brighter, now dimmer. And according to the rising of this star, we note how everything during the year is going to happen. Wherefore it is not unreasonable to call the year Isis.
Horapollon, book 1, entry 3
The temple of Ptah at Memphis was known (among other names) as “the Balance of the Two Lands.” The devotees who inscribed the Isis aretalogy at Kyme, in which Isis declares that She overcomes fate, wrote that they had copied it from a stele that stood in front of the Memphis temple of Hephaestos, that is, Ptah. German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch commented in his thesaurus of Egyptian inscriptions that the Egyptian New Year’s festival was “the great festival at which the whole world is brought into balance, when the birth of Isis takes place.”
During the period of Roman rule in Egypt and across the Roman empire, people were feeling particularly pressured or bound by Fate. Astrology had gained general popularity, yet people felt constrained, not enlightened, by “their stars.” So we can easily understand the appeal of a Goddess Who, as the Kyme aretalogy says, regulates the pathways of the stars and orders the course of the sun and moon—and Who also frees those who are in chains.
We find all these themes in Apuleius’ story of initiation into the Mysteries of Isis. When he comes into Her service, Lucius is freed from his asinine state (he had been turned into a donkey). Isis, a Goddess of Fortune Who sees, replaces the Blind Fortune that had been tossing Lucius to and fro. Instead of implacable Fate, he is now allied with Invincible Isis, Victorious Isis, Triumphant Isis—Isis Who is Providence Itself.
As She always has been, Isis is Nebet Ankh, Henut Shai yt Renenet, Mistress of Life, Ruler of Fate and Destiny. And perhaps in these unsettling times, we too need a Goddess Who can overcome Fate…or help us to do so ourselves.
And so, let us commune with Isis—invoke and make offering to Her. Let us work magic under Her wings and then work in the world toward a better destiny for us all.
Hello, Isiacs. I’m reposting this because, well, it’s that time of year and this question must be answered. Again.
Every year, at about this time, one post on this blog starts to get a lot more “traffic,” that is, visitors viewing it, than any other. (In fact, it’s already started.)
It’s the one about Horus being born on December 25th. Likely, people are searching for information about how Christianity absorbed Pagan winter solstice traditions (from the non-Christian side) or how it most certainly did not (from the Christian side). The statement about Horus’ birth on that date is often used to dismiss the Christian tradition of the birth of the Christ on December 25th (and by inference, Christian tradition in general) as “mere Pagan superstition.” Which is rude to both Pagans and Christians.
Early Christianity most certainly was influenced by the people and cultures around it. But the thing I specifically wanted to look into was the birth of Holy Baby Horus from the Holy Virgin Isis on December 25th.
What bothered me about it was that I thought that the December 25th date was stretching the truth to make a point; the point being that the “real meaning of Christmas” was, in fact, the celebration of a Pagan Deity Who was born on the winter solstice. Why should we have to distort the truth to make that point?
As you might expect from a sun-focused culture—the winter solstice was quite important in Egyptian culture and religion. There are many inscriptions and texts to support this, as well as a number of temples and monuments oriented toward the winter solstice sunrise. Temples with that orientation were often dedicated to Re-Hor-Akhty, Re-Horus of the Horizon.
In the 17th year of the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhet I (approx. 1991-1962 BCE), the king chose to take a new title as the sun approached winter solstice. The title was Nem-mestu, Repeater of Births. This designation was also given to the dead and may refer to daily/yearly solar rebirth or even to reincarnation.
But still, that’s the winter solstice, usually December 21 or 22, not December 25.
The Greek priest Plutarch, writing in the late 1st and early 2nd century CE, is our source for the most complete version of the Isis and Osiris myth that we have. In his essay, he mentions several Egyptian winter solstice traditions, including the birth of Harpokrates (from Hor-pa-khered, Horus the Child) on the winter solstice. (I quote it here at length because I like the snarky lead-in):
Thus we shall attack the many boring people who find pleasure in associating the activities of these gods with the seasonal changes of the atmosphere or with the growths, sowing, and plowing of crops, and who say that Osiris is being buried when the corn is sown and hidden in the earth, and that he lives again and reappears when it begins to sprout. For this reason it is said that Isis, when she was aware of her being pregnant, put on a protective amulet on the sixth day of Phaophi, and at the winter solstice gave birth to Harpocrates, imperfect and prematurely born, amid plants that burgeoned and sprouted before their season . . . and they are said to celebrate the days of her confinement after the spring equinox.
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 65B-c
Since Horus is a solar God, His birth at the winter solstice—even to the extent that He is “imperfect and prematurely born” at that time—makes symbolic sense. (Calendar translation is always tricky, but in this later period, the 6th of Phaophi would be sometime in October or November by our calendar. So if Isis was going to give birth at the solstice, She would have had to have been pretty inattentive to have only worn a protective amulet that late in Her pregnancy. Seems more likely that She put on the protective amulet in the more dangerous weeks just prior to giving birth.) This tradition of Horus’ winter solstice birth was still going strong in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. Another writer, Macrobius, famous for his book about the Saturnalia festival, notes that:
…at the winter solstice, the sun would seem to be a little child like that which the Egyptians bring forth from a shrine on the appointed day, since the day is then at its shortest and the god is accordingly shown as a tiny infant.
Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1.18:10
The Egyptians weren’t the only ones to note and welcome the winter solstice with its soon-to-be-lengthening days. Just as there are today, there were other winter holy days around the time of the winter solstice. You’re probably familiar with the Roman Saturnalia (Greek Kronia) which took place from December 17th through the 23rd (at its most developed stage). It was a carnivalesque festival with plenty of partying and gift-giving on the last day, just a day or two from the astronomical solstice.
The 4th century CE Christian polemicist, Epiphanius, notes two very interesting Pagan festivals that took place “on the very night of Epiphany,” which is Epiphanius’ preferred date for the birth of the Christos (January 6). He grouches that “many places deceitfully celebrate a very great festival on the very night of the Epiphany, to deceive the idolaters who believe them into hoping in the imposture and not seeking the truth.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 22,8) Of the celebration in Alexandria, he writes:
First, at Alexandria, in the Koreum, as they call it; it is a very large temple, the shrine of Kore. They stay up all night singing hymns to the idol with a flute accompaniment. And when they have concluded their nightlong vigil, torchbearers descend into an underground shrine after cockcrow and bring up a wooden image which is seated naked on a litter. It has a sign of the cross inlaid with gold on its forehead, two other such signs, one on each hand and two other signs, one actually on each of its two knees—altogether five signs with a gold impress. And they carry the image itself seven times around the innermost shrine with flutes, tambourines and hymns, hold a feast, and take it back down to its place underground. And when you ask them what this mystery means, they reply that today, at this hour Kore—that is, the Virgin—gave birth to Aion.
Epiphanius, Panarion, 22,9
Some scholars believe that the Alexandrian Kore or Virgin was Isis (some ancient Egyptian Hymns call Isis “virgin;” in the Hermetic text, Kore Kosmou, Isis is likely the “Cosmic Virgin” of the title) and that the “crosses” on Her limbs may have been ankhs. Could be, but doesn’t have to be; Alexandria was, after all, a polytheistic city. Epiphanius goes on to mention other identical and, in his mind, deceitful festivals in Petra and in Elusa celebrating the birth of the “only son of the Lord” of a Virgin Goddess. In Petra, the Holy Child is Dusares, an Arabian God identified with Dionysos, Who was, in turn, identified with Helios, the sun. (Epiphanius, Panarion, 22,11)
Those of you who have been following along with this blog may recall that the famous Roman Calendar of Philocalus (354 CE)* lists a festival called The Isia from October 28 through November 1.**
Much earlier, in the 1st century BCE, the Greek mathematician and astronomer Germinos noted that the Greeks believe that the Isia—which was derived from the ancient Egyptian Khoiak festival—occurs at the winter solstice. (The Khoiak festival celebrated the death of Osiris and His finding, lamentation, and resurrection by Isis.) Germinos says that that was true 120 years ago, but that, in his time, it had shifted a month earlier. The modern Kemetic Orthodox religion celebrates the Khoiak Festival in late November; so just about now.
However, here at the 45th parallel, we are happily privy to a calendar Mystery. The ancient Khoiak Festival took place in the fourth month of Inundation, which began on the Egyptian New Year. As you likely know, the New Year was heralded by the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Star of Isis. The festival took place over a period of many days, culminating at the end of the fourth month with the resurrection of Osiris.
Here in Portland, the Star of Isis rose this year on August 23. Four 30-day Egyptian months from that date is December 21, the winter solstice. So if you were here in Portland with me, we could celebrate the Isia on the days leading up to and ending with the winter solstice.
Yet, as fabulous as that is, it’s still not December 25th, is it?
Well, as it turns out, the answer to this little puzzle is not all that mysterious after all.
You see, the Roman calendar went through a certain amount of upheaval and—bottom line—December 25th was considered the “traditional” date of the winter solstice, even if that was off from astronomical solstice. (If you want to calendar geek on that, check this out or this.) From a number of ancient sources, including Epiphanius, we have that “the eighth before the kalends of January” was considered to be the winter solstice. (Epiphanius, Panarion, 22,3) Because of the inclusive way the Romans counted, this “eighth before the kalends” was December 25th. (In the Roman calendar, the kalends is the first day of the month.)
What’s more, the early Christians who chose that date, chose it precisely because it was the winter solstice and was connected to the return of the light. In a work attributed, perhaps falsely, to the 4th century Christian church father John Chrysostom, the writer connects the birth of Jesus with the birth of Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, which was celebrated on Rome’s traditional winter solstice, December 25th:
But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December . . . the eighth before the kalends of January [25 December] . . ., But they call it the “Birthday of the Unconquered.” Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the sun, He is the Sun of Justice.
Chrysostom, De Solstitia et Aequinoctia Conceptionis et Nativitatis Nostri Iesu Christi et Iohannis Baptistae; “On the conceptions and births of our Jesus Christ and John the Baptist on the solstices and equinoxes.”
Another interesting thing about the choice of December 25th is that—even just those few days after the astronomical solstice—you can begin to see that the light is indeed returning. Some scholars have suggested that the December 25th date for the solstice reflects this perceivable change, so that even though the exact moment of astronomical solstice is prior to the 25th, it becomes noticeable about the 25th.
So there we have it. There actually IS reason to connect the winter solstice birth date of Isis’ Holy Child, Horus, with the traditional December 25th birth date of Mary’s Holy Child, Jesus.
Should we claim that early Christians “stole” the birthdate of Horus (or any of the other solar Gods Who always were and always will be born on the winter solstice)? Nah, let’s not. In fact, it makes perfect sense to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the bringer of the light of Christianity to its believers, at that time of year when the light of the sun begins its return to the world. It is an excellent symbol and early Christians would have been silly to ignore it.
Of course early Christianity was influenced by the many religions around it. And remember that much early Christian development was in Alexandria, Egypt. For early Christians, as for ancient Egyptians—and indeed for modern people as well—the return of the light at the winter solstice is at once an uplifting environmental fact and a hopeful spiritual symbol.
And so, as we begin the count down in the waning days of the year, I wish you all Many Happy Returns of the Light as we celebrate the upcoming holy days of December 21st and December 25th.
*The reason Philocalus’ calendar is so famous, is that it contains the oldest reference to a regular celebration of the birth of the Christos. The calendar notes: “Eighth day before the kalends of January, Birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea.” Earlier, one of the Church fathers, Cyprian (200-258CE), commented how very, very providential it was the when the sun was born, so was Christ.
**If we go by Philocalus, that late October-early November date for the Isia, with its emphasis on death, lamentation, and renewal, makes a perfect option for our own Samhaim/Halloween celebrations.
Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? Only at festivals?
And no matter what you do, do you sometimes feel guilty that you’re not doing enough? Do you worry that Isis may be displeased because you’re “not doing it right?”
If so, you’re not alone. Many of us feel like that from time to time (or even more often).
But let me tell you a secret.
It’s not a deep, dark secret. In fact, I think we all know it in our hearts. But we are human and we forget.
The first part of this secret is that Isis knows. She knows what we’re going through and what’s hard for us right now. She has Divine patience and compassion. And while we might not have infinite time in our lives, She does. If we drift away, She will always, always welcome us back. Even if it’s with a sly smile and a wry comment.
The other part of the secret is that—very often—our way of relating has to do with where we are in our lives. Now, mind you, my next comments are very generalized. Your path may—absolutely will, in fact—vary.
Some of us find Her early in life, some of us at later points. Some find Her, leave for a while, then come back. Some come to Her only for a specific period in our lives. Whatever the situation, it’s important to take into account where we are in our individual lives and what’s going on with us in general before we start getting all guilty and worried. And by “where we are in our lives,” I mean what stage of life we’re in as we grow and change over the decades.
In our teen years, we’re exploring. Everything is new and can be confusing. Will the Goddess be angry if I don’t have an altar? What if I don’t say or do the right thing? And there are so many people online who are willing to tell us exactly-what-we-should-be-doing for Isis or Hekate or Dionysos. Who do I listen to? Depending on what our home lives are like, in our teens, we may also have to hide our interest in Isis. (Btw, She won’t care if you don’t have an altar.)
In our 20s, we find new freedoms. We might discover like-minded others with whom to explore an interest in Isis. This is when many people start their personal practice and begin to develop the habits that will become a key part of their ongoing relationship with Isis. And because we’re more in control of our own schedule, this is when we might find we have more time to spend with Her and to learn more about Her. At this stage, we’re trying to figure out Who We Are and Who She Is. We might discover that She is an important part of our identity.
In our 30s, we are coming into our power. But that also means that we’re coming into Peak Responsibility. Kids. Career. And everything that goes along with that. Our late 20s and early 30s are also a time when we may find we have some personal healing to do. We discover that what we learned earlier no longer serves us (or never served us, for that matter).
Such healing that takes time, patience, and extraordinary effort. For most of us, the 30s, early 40s, is a crazy-busy time of life. If the personal practice we started in our 20s starts to slip, it’s no wonder. We need to know that it’s okay to scale back our spiritual work in order to handle the things we need to handle. And yet, for some people, this is also the time of life when they first come to Isis. So, they’re starting that exciting journey along with everything else. Whew!
In our 40s and 50s, we still have everything that was going on in our 30s, but it’s at a different level. We know a lot more about what we’re doing. We also have the ability to focus more on the tasks we choose. If we have Work To Do in the World, we’re busy doing it. We lead our covens, make our art, write our books. Or, if our Work is private, we deepen our practice. We might find that it gets easier to make contact with Isis when we invoke Her—even if we can’t do it as often as we would wish. What’s more, if we’re Doing Our Work (groups, art, writing), that IS our Work. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. Remember, She knows our hearts.
In our 60s, we still feel our power—and we still have our power. But to navigate these years, we shift our focus. For most of us, there’s less time ahead than there is behind. Peak Responsibilities are lessening; we’re handling them, or have even handled them. Now we may find that we have more time for our personal relationship with Isis. We find new and different ways to be present in the world and our own lives, and to be of service to and in harmony with Her.
In the later decades of our lives, we may, once again, turn within. We assess our lives. We think about our legacy. And make whatever adjustments are needed. We plan for transition. Who am I now? If we are fortunate enough to be able to retire, our time is—finally, blessedly—our own. If we wish, we can be a full-time Servant of the Goddess and no one can say us nay. Isis will welcome us home and She will continue to teach us new things about ourselves and about Her.
The inspiration behind today’s post is that I’ve seen too many good folks beating up on themselves for not living up to whatever high spiritual standard they have decided to subscribe to. Let’s not do that. We don’t deserve that. None of us do. Especially you.
The point is simply this: at whatever point in your life you are, just do what you can do. None of us who love Isis today live in an ancient Egyptian temple where we can devote ourselves fully to Her service. We always have many other aspects of life we have to take care of. Responsibilities wax and wane throughout our lives.
Of course I’m not saying that our spiritual lives aren’t important. They are. Sometimes it is our spiritual lives that make the other aspects of life manageable. All this is to say, whatever it is that you can do, just do that—and don’t feel guilty or worried about what you can’t do. Isis is wise and loving, magical and powerful. She will be there. Always. I know She will be there for me. Always. And I know She will be there for you. Always.
The awesome scene from “The Mummy” when the statue of Isis raises the ankh to save Her reincarnated priestess from a lovestruck but murderous mummy
Of all the emblems of ancient Egypt, the hieroglyphic symbol of the ankh is probably the most familiar. Many people still wear it as an amulet and know that, in Egyptian, ankh means life.
The ankh was extremely popular in ancient Egypt, too. Egyptians made ankh-shaped vessels, fan bases, sistra, unguent jars, jewelry, mirror cases—in addition to wearing the symbol itself as an amulet. Special bouquets of flowers, formed into the shapes of ankhs and simply called Ankhs, were given as offerings to Deities and as sustenance to the dead. The ankh was carved into temple walls and used to decorate furniture.
In later times, the Coptic Christian church used it as the crux ansata, the handled or “eyed” cross, because of its resemblance to the Christian cross.
Egyptologists still aren’t sure what the familiar oval-and-cross shape originally represented. Some believe it has sexual symbolism because some ankhs have what appears to be a female pubic triangle painted just beneath the cross bar. Others believe it represents a sandal strap. Still others see it as a type of magical knot or bow—similar to the Isis Knot or Tyet, which it closely resembles. Since Egyptian magic frequently employed knots, this idea is not at all far-fetched. Indeed, in some examples of the symbol, you can see what could be folds in the fabric or rope used to tie the knot.
Yet another interpretation combines the knot concept with an idea that may have some merit since it actually connects with the meaning of the symbol itself: life. In this interpretation, the ankh is an umbilical cord that has been looped and tied to a short stick (the cross bar) to create the ankh-shaped amulet. Thus the ankh represents the way Life flows from the Divine to the human in the same way that life flows from the mother to the child through the umbilical cord. There are numerous references to Isis “cutting the navel string” of the reborn Horus. And there is even a myth that Horus recovers the birth cord of His murdered father, Osiris, in order to bury it safely. In a tale about the birth of three kings, the children’s birth cords are cut off, wrapped, and preserved. Clearly, the birth cord had significance.
Yet the life symbolized by the ankh is more than simple daily existence. It is also the sacred and ever-renewing principle of Life. It is the Eternal Life with which the Goddesses and Gods imbue humanity. It is the Life that is renewed after death. In funerary art, Deities such as Anubis and Horus pour streams of ankhs over the deceased to symbolize this eternal, regenerating life that flows from the Divine. Goddesses and Gods hold the ankh to the nose of the deceased to revive her or him in the Otherworld.
While the ankh is rightfully a symbol of every Deity, it is also especially appropriate to Isis. On an earthly level, Isis is the Great Divine Mother, the generatrix of all life on Earth. Isis is intimately connected with the fields that bring forth food, the waters that nourish and regenerate the land, and the life-giving air that fills our lungs.
Isis is a Green Goddess of Life, daughter of Earth and Sky. The Coffin Texts call Her She of Vegetation and Mistress of Herbage Who Makes the Two Lands Green. She is a Water Goddess for Her yearly tears for Osiris caused the Nile to overflow its banks, vivifying the land. She is the Queen of the Sea and the Lady Who brings rain. As a Bird Goddess, Isis is Mistress of the Skies and a Lady of Air.
On a spiritual level, Isis gives the gift of renewed life after death. Beating Her magical wings, the Goddess fans air—and ankh—into the nose and lungs of Her beloved Osiris. It is Isis’ vital breath that fills the nemset jars with which the deceased is dried after a purifying bath. And it is Isis Who brings the spiritual water that helps regenerate the dead.
As She is the Lady of Life, Isis is the Lady of Life Everlasting. She is the Green Goddess of life on Earth and She is the Divine Mother of each of us Who cuts our navel-string when we are transformed and reborn into Eternal Life.
I’ve done some more reading and some more meditation and I want to come back to neheh and djet. Why? Because I am very inspired by a 2022 work by Egyptologist Steven Gregory on the subject.
Unless you’re super geeky on this subject like me, I don’t think you’ll want to read all his arguments for how he thinks neheh and djet should be defined and translated.* (Translating is the trickier part, tbh.) So I’ll summarize and then we can discover some things we might do with these insights.
As we saw last time, Egyptologists have tried translating these two Egyptian concepts in a variety of ways, all of which, I think, add to our understanding. Their interpretations usually have to do with a repetitive time cycle for neheh and a perfected and unchanging time cycle for djet. But rather frequently, when translating the ancient texts, Egyptologists will translate the two terms as if they were synonyms. That’s when we get translations of neheh djet as “forever and ever.” This is Gregory’s big bugaboo.
He argues, persuasively as far as I am concerned, that they are very much not synonyms and that we miss an important part of what the texts are telling us if we so translate. In the book, he takes a while to get to his point because he gives lots of examples, but the point itself is actually fairly easy to home in on. It is simply this: that neheh is physical and temporal, like the cycles of sun and moon in our “real world;” djet is metaphysical and atemporal. In other words, they are not really types of time (though they are sort of), but conditions. Neheh is the condition of the existing world. It is imperfect and changing, providing for natural cycles and regeneration. Djet is the condition of the ideal world; it is the state of the Deities. Djet is outside of time. It is, or contains, the ideal Forms of everything.
And if that makes you think of Plato and his Forms/Ideas/Ideals, yes indeed, Gregory suggests that Plato may have been inspired by the ancient Egyptian concepts of neheh and djet. The Greek philosopher is, after all, said to have studied in Egypt.
If we were to apply those terms to Plato’s philosophy, neheh would be his world of appearances, which is a shadow of the more-real World of Forms. Djet is the realm of the Forms/Ideas/Ideals, which are “abstract, perfect, unchanging concepts or ideals that transcend time or space.”
As I said, I think all the translators’ translations are helpful in understanding these key concepts. And sometimes, thinking of them as variations on time is quite useful. But layering on Gregory’s physical-metaphysical definitions just opened the doors wider for me. It’s funny how sometimes a little thing like a new avenue for looking at things can blossom and unfold and burst into galaxies in your head. This was one of those for me. And it just reinforced for me how much the ancient Egyptian scribes and priests knew what the hell they were doing. They KNEW they were writing about different levels of reality. Always. Because our examples of this go back all the way to the earliest writings. In funerary texts, temple texts, and ritual documents of all kinds, they were very much aware of the different Worlds and they addressed those Worlds in their works, calling them out as neheh and djet. What’s more, thinking of djet as the metaphysical realm, we get additional hints as to how the ancient Egyptians may of conceived of the Divine realms.
I still do like the idea of neheh-time and djet-time, as well as neheh-eternity and djet-eternity, even though my guy Gregory doesn’t so much. But with his insights, we can now add new layers to our own definitions. We can think about the neheh-realm and the djet-realm—Neheh World and Djet World—so that we have levels or planes of reality as well as different dimensions of time and eternity. Of course, we’ve always known about the realness of the heavenly and underworlds in Egyptian thought, but adding the extra mystery of djet-time-eternity to it just adds to the complexity of Reality, which for me reveals a little bit more of what is true, what is right, what is Ma’et.
If you would like to experience these concepts for yourself, try the following visualization and meditation. This one focuses on djet, but you can do something similar for neheh.
Purify and consecrate yourself in any manner you wish. If you’d like an Isiac version, you could use the first part of this, up to “Entering.”
In your vision, imagine yourself in the Temple of Isis. It is night. The temple is illuminated by wall torches, burning in startling colors of blue and orange. As you enter in, you smell the smoke of incense, dark, sweet, and musky. You feel the cool stone floor on your bare feet. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you begin to make out the designs of wall paintings. In the flickers of torchlight, their colors are muted. The low, rumbling sound of soft chanting comes to your ears. You hear Her name being chanted over and again with devotion, with love. Join in, if you wish.
Ahead there is a doorway, and beyond it, another. And another, and again. A long passageway stretches before you. Impossibly, it seems you can see into forever. A soft, deep voice whispers in your mind, “Enter the Chamber of Secrets.”
You enter the passageway, moving through each doorway. In a little while, the path begins to angle upward. Then you see a stairway that you somehow know will take you to the roof of the temple.
Walk up the stairs and you emerge on the temple roof. Look up. And you look into the infinite belly of Nuet, full of stars. Stars and space, moving slowly in their infinity, envelop you. Your eyes can see into the depths of space, opening, opening, opening. Your eyes, your heart, your mind, opening, opening, opening.
And when you let your attention fall back to the roof of the temple, you see the Boat of Millions of Years docked near the edge of the roof. It floats on darkness and stars. Thoth, the master of this vessel, motions you aboard. As you step upon the deck, the boat rocks and dips as if it were floating in water. You take your place, facing the prow, facing the night.
In a moment, the ship begins to move. First, slowly. Then faster. And faster. Moving upward into the depths of space and time. Starlight streaks by you. Your hair is blown back as the Boat of Millions of Years sails and sails.
Then suddenly, it stops.
The soft voice in your head, the one you know is the voice of Isis, says, “Call to Her.” And you do. You call to the Great Goddess Djet, asking Her to come to you, come to you.
Do this now.
In an unknown period of time, the Great Goddess Djet answers. “I am all around you and I am in you. The threads of My Magic knit you together. You are born from Me, but do not live in Me.” And you ask Her how you can better experience Her. She says, “Imagine yourself perfected.”
And you do. Allow as much time as you need for this thought experiment. What would you be like? Who would you be? How would you feel? How would you be?
When you are complete with this, thank the Goddess. The soft, deep voice of Isis speaks in your mind. “Come now,” She says. And you are once more aware of the Boat of Millions of Years. It once more begins to move, this time backwards. In time, you arrive at the roof of the Temple of Isis, thank Great Thoth, and disembark. Move down the stairs, through the many doorways. Thank Wise Isis and let your consciousness return to the here and now, to neheh.
*If you are super geeky and want to read the whole thing for yourself, get Tutankhamun Knew the Names of the Two Great Gods: dt and nhh as Fundamental Concepts of Pharaonic Idealology by Steven R. W. Gregory.
And is it different than the time you exist in?
Here in the US, we just set our clocks back an hour, returning that daylight hour we borrowed in the spring. We all just decide to agree on this human-determined construct of time by which we will lead much of our lives until next spring.
There are rhythms of time that are natural, of course. The risings and settings of sun, moon, and stars. Sleeping and waking, eating and fasting. Some things cycle back eternally; the days, the nights, the seasons. Some things are experienced and do not return; like history. And yet, each cycle, when completed, becomes part of history. And every day in history was once part of a cycle.
Neheh, on the left; Djet on the right; Neheh is sometimes Heh (as you see here; there’s no “n” shown in His name label) and Djet is sometimes identified as Heh’s female counterpart, Hauhet
The ancient Egyptians had names for these two ways humans experience time. The great German Egyptologist Jan Assmann explains that the Egyptian concepts are based not only in these two types of time experiences, but also on the time system inherent in the ancient Egyptian language. He writes that, instead of a language that is based on three main tenses (past, present, future) as ours is, Egyptian is based on the idea of the thing in time being either perfected or not perfected. Assmann calls these perfective and imperfective.
Perfective time, the ancient Egyptians called djet time. When something is perfected and completed, it exists in djet. Neheh time refers to ongoing repetition and regeneration. (The regenerative aspect seems crucial to me; neheh isn’t just an eternal hamster wheel for us, but is the time in which all things are renewed and reborn.) The heavens exist in djet. The earth exists in neheh. The world of the Deities is djet. The human world is neheh.
Two Gods are representative of these time concepts: Osiris is djet and He has an epithet to prove it. He is called Wenennefer, “He Who exists in perfection.” Re, the Sun God, rises and sets each day in neheh time. The union of Osiris and Re each night is one of the Great Mysteries. It is by uniting with djet that neheh can continue. I should note as well, that the identification of Re with neheh time and Osiris with djet time is not exclusive. Each God is, in one text or another, also connected with the other type of time.
The perfection of djet is prior to the repetition and renewal of neheh, since neheh cannot perform its cyclical and renewing function without regular reconnection with djet. After death, the ancients wanted to enter into djet, the time of the Deities. The mummy was created as a perfect, eternal body for the dead. Moral perfection on the scales of Ma’et ensured passing the judgment of Osiris, joining Him in djet time.
Perfective and imperfective time aren’t the only ways scholars have translated and discussed neheh and djet time, as you can see from the graphic here. Quite a few have translated neheh as “time” because it is the everyday way humans experience time with its cycles and renewals of the days and seasons. Time is then paired with “eternity” for djet is perfected and unchanging—as westerners often think about eternity. Others have designated neheh and djet as “circular” and “linear” time, “ongoingness” and “completedness,” “all-time” and “not-time,” “eternal change” and “eternal sameness,” “infinity” and “everlastingness,” “the existent” and “the non-existent,” “temporal reality” and “changeless, atemporal reality.” All of which, I think, can help us start to wrap our brains around these Egyptian concepts. At least a little.
So.
What can we do with these Egyptian notions in our desire for connection with Isis? Besides being interesting in and of themselves, are these ancient Egyptian temporal concepts of any help to us in our relationship with Her?
Perhaps we can answer the question in the title of this post? As a Deity, Isis exists in the everlastingness of djet time, right? But then do we not also experience Her in our world of changes? In the risings and settings of the sun, moon, and stars? In our daytime offerings and nighttime dreams? I keep coming back to the Great Mystery of Osiris and Re. Each needs the other. The cycles of the Sun God need to touch and unite with the Eternal to continue. The perfection of the Eternal needs to touch and unite with the forces of renewal to express itself.
I am just starting to explore this. I have more reading to do. But in the meantime, I’m going to try a little meditation to see what I can learn or experience.
Do let me know if you have any interesting intuitions, too.
If so, how did that happen?
Did you do a specific ritual? Did it slowly gain its living quality over time?
Following the inspirations of ancient Egyptian cult, for me, the ones that are alive are so because of ritual. I’ve used versions of “Enlivening the Divine Image” from Isis Magic on several of them. But my main image—my BIG Isis—was enlivened long before Isis Magic existed.
To enliven Her, I invited a circle of friends to come over for an Isis birthday party. There was ritual around everything, of course, but the main event was that each participant cradled the image in their arms, as if holding a baby, and breathed their living breath into the sacred image…then passed Her to the next person. And it worked; She has been quite lively ever since.
But what exactly do I mean by “is alive,” anyway?
Let me give you an example. Several years ago, one of the traveling Egyptian museum shows came to our local museum and a group of us went. Of course, there were many wonderful things. But one image—smallish, broken, a head of Sakhmet in yellow alabaster—hummed with magical power. I felt Something in its presence. Mind you, not everything in the show felt like that. But this piece did. I think what I felt was the magic of the ritual that had “opened the mouth and eyes” of this sacred image of Sakhmet so that something of the Goddess was still within the image. The priests who worked that rite, those guys were good. This Sakhmet had power; it had life.
That’s what I want from my sacred images of Isis, too. When someone visits my Isis shrine, I hope they feel Something. A little buzz. A little hum. A little magic that says, “yes, I’m here.”
From the very start of the artistic process of making such a sacred image, the ancient Egyptians knew they were creating something that would be alive. Sculptors sometimes referred to their work as “giving birth.”
We are used to thinking of Egyptian statuary are gargantuan. But the main cult image in each temple—the one kept in the holy of holies and cared for each day—was likely no more than about a foot in height for anthropomorphic images. We know this due to the size of the shrines that enclosed these images. So this means that the size of the images many of us have on our own home altars are very much in harmony with the most important Egyptian temple images. I like that. A lot.
The oldest texts we have that provide information on what the ancients thought about their divine images come from the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BCE), but the ideas in them are likely much older. We find this information in ritual texts for the Daily Ritual, which cared for and fed the Deity and the Opening of the Mouth rite used to enliven the images, as well as some additional temple texts that mention the relationship between the Deities and Their images.
At core, what these texts make apparent is that some part of the essence of the Deity was considered to be alive in the sacred image. In the Daily Ritual, the sacred image is awakened, clothed, praised, and anointed as a living being. Each step in the ritual re-enlivens the statue each time the ritual is performed. Toward the end of the rite, the priest can finally say to the Deity in the image, “oh living ba who smites His enemies, Your ba is with You and Your sekhem is with You.” In this case, the ba of the Deity is Their manifestation (ba also has connotations of power) and sekhem is the word for power. The priest then says that he, too, is a ba and embraces the sacred image.
So at this point, the ba of the Deity is in the image. Ba is a complicated term and I won’t go into all its complications here. (Besides, I’m still learning about some of them.) For our purposes here, we can think of the ba of a Deity as Their Presence or Manifestation. In this way, the sacred image of the Deity IS the outward manifestation of the Deity. But that’s not all that it is. For we have other texts that tell us that the ba of the Deity swoops down like a great hawk to alight upon the image and indwell it.
But back to the Daily Ritual…
Next, food is presented and now the emphasis shifts to the ka of the Deity. The ritual says that Ma’et embraces the Deity “so that your ka will exist through Her.” The simplest definition for ka is “vital essence;” it’s the difference between alive and dead. And since I am, at this moment, into simplification, we’ll let that do for now.
The hieroglyph for the word ka is two upraised arms, perhaps intended to be read as an embrace. For it is through an embrace that ka may be passed, for example, from Atum to His children Shu and Tefnut to protect Them and give Them Their kas. The royal ka—the ancestral power that makes the pharaoh a pharaoh—is passed by an embrace from the old king as Osiris to his heir as Horus.
So we have two aspects of the Deity present in the sacred image during the Daily Rituals: ba and ka. The ba is the Presence and the ka is Life. It is through the ka that the Deity Who is alive in the sacred image receives offerings. You can read more about that here.
These sacred images were taken out in procession during certain festivals. On such occasions, the Deity would also be present in the image—present enough to give oracular responses, and we even have one instance of a man claiming that he was cured of blindness during such a procession. Unfortunately, we don’t have texts of any of the rituals that might re-enliven or “charge up” the image before going out, but we know they existed because the library at Edfu was supposed to contain a book of “all ritual relating to the exodus of the God from His temple on feast days.”
From another temple text, we know that the Opening of the Mouth ritual was performed on statues. The full name of the text is “Performing the Opening of the Mouth in the workshop for the statue (tut) of (Name of person or Deity).” The key part of that ritual was known as netjerty, when the mouth of the image was touched with the adze, a specific craftsman’s tool. Netjerty is formed from the root Netjer (also Nutjer, Neter)—Deity—so we can understand that this part of the rite was a god-ifying part. Much of the rest of the ritual is very similar to the Daily Ritual and its magic, with both ba and ka present.
Other than these references in the Daily Ritual and Opening of the Mouth, there are a few scattered references about the relationship between Deity and image. In the Hibis temple of Amun-Re, all the other Deities are considered aspects of Him as Creator. And, as Creator, He is also the one Who creates His own image. He made it “according to His desire, He having graced it with the grace of His breath…” In the Daily Ritual text that we have for Amun, He is said to be “the tut Who made Their [all the Deities] kas.”
In several similar passages, the creation of the sacred image is attributed to the Deity Who’s image it was. This reminds me of why all the books of Egypt could be said to have been written by Thoth: the scribe, in the act of writing, is in the Godform of Thoth, so the book is written by Thoth. Perhaps the sculptors and artists were supposed to be in the Deityform of the Deity they were sculpting, too. I am imagining an artist, in the Goddessform of Isis, crafting Her image by channeling inspiration from Her.
In what is known as the Memphite Theology, Ptah the Craftsman is the Creator and He creates the bodies—statues—of all the Deities according to Their desire, so that They willingly “enter into” Their bodies and Their kas are satisfied.
At Isis’ temple at Philae, a text says that Isis’ son Horus is the one who established all the temples and made all the sacred images. Horus and Hathor were known to “go out as Their statues” during one of Their festivals. Edfu temple also has passages that say the Deities “unite with Their bas in the horizon—the akhet, that most liminal of liminal places and a very reasonable place to work this transitional magic.
From these and similar clues, we can be sure that a Deity’s ba and ka were understood to be present in Their sacred images. What’s more, Their presence in one temple neither precluded nor diminished Their presence or power in another. Both ka and ba are in divinely infinite supply.
Thus Isis can be alive and present in my shine, on your altar, and on the altars and in the shrines of all those who love Her.
May She bless and be alive in your sacred image always.
Hello, Isiacs!
No new post this Sunday as I am off in the wilds of Ffynnon celebrating the Rites, Devotions, and Mysteries of Hekate for Fall Equinox.
Many blessings of the Equinox to all of you and I’ll see you next time.
In the meantime, here’s a brief video of The Opening of the Ways:
As Weret Hekau, Great of Magic, Isis’ magical “push” can be powerful indeed. If you are inclined to your own magical pushing every now and then (as I am), let me suggest one thing first: connection to Great Isis before any other Work.
Commune with Her about your purpose. Ask Her advice. Many of us are feeling anger right now, and while anger is not necessarily out of place in magic (as you will see in the upcoming tale), it can be blinding and cause us to make mistakes. Centering in Her Divinity will always help us see more clearly.
That said, as you know, Isis is not all sweetness and light. So today, we have an Isis story that shows Her fierce and fiery aspect and which you may not have heard before.
This is a tale of Isis the Avenger and it is from the Papyrus Jumilhac. The only publication of the papyrus has been in French (which is why English readers probably haven’t heard the tale). Via the blessings of interlibrary loan, I was able to borrow the French text.
The Papyrus Jumilac is about 23 “pages” long. It is a Ptolemaic text (approximately 2nd century BCE) but it was found in Upper Egypt and records some thoroughly Egyptian myths. It may have been a sort of training manual for the priesthood of the 17th and 18th nomes and tells stories connected with the local landmarks. Our Isis story from it is a tale of transformations, and in it, Isis changes Herself into a hound, a uraeus serpent, Hathor, and Sakhmet—all in Her pursuit of and revenge upon the murderer of Her husband.
Herewith is the tale of Isis the Fierce:
Set once more regrouped His allies, but Isis marched against them. She concealed Herself in Gebal which is south of Dunanwi, after having made Her transformation into Her Mother Sakhmet. She sent out a flame against them all, seeing to it that they were burned and devoured by Her flame. (It is said to Her, “Hathor, Mistress of the Two Braziers.”) She [Isis] created for Herself there, a place to observe the preparations of the Evil One and His allies. (It is said to Her, “The Temple of the Mistress of the Two Braziers,” and the wab priest of this Goddess is called Ouroumem [the Great Devourer].) Then Set, seeing Isis at Her observation point, transformed Himself into a bull to chase Her, but She made Herself unrecognizable and put on the form of a bitch with a knife at the end of Her tail. Then She began to chase Him, and Set couldn’t trap Her again. So He scattered His semen upon the earth, and Isis said, “It is an abomination to have scattered Your semen like this, O Bull.” His semen grew, in Gebal, in the plants which we call bdd-k3w.
Then the Goddess entered into the mountain which we call Hout-Kâhet, and settled Herself there. After which, She went to the north and, having transformed Herself into a serpent, She entered into that mountain which is north of this nome to spy on the allies of Set as they arrived in the evening. (It is said to Her, “Hathor, Mistress of Geheset.”) The Goddess [Isis] watched the allies of Set as they arrived in the Oxyrhynchite Nome and as they crossed the country to reach Gebal, the City in the East. She pierced them all [with Her fangs since She was in the form of a serpent], and She made Her venom penetrate into their flesh, so that they perished, all together; their blood poured out upon the mountain, and this is why this mountain is called the prsh of Geheset.
The story bears a little commentary to explain some of the features. Isis is pursuing Set in revenge for His having murdered Osiris. It is interesting to note that it’s not Horus the Avenger Who is going after Set, but Isis the Avenger. I’m not sure exactly where the local Gebal is; but we are told that it is south of Dunanwi. Dunanwi is a local God of the 18th Upper Egyptian nome, so perhaps the direction refers to a temple or shrine of the God or the text is using the Deity’s name as a name for the nome itself.
Although Isis’ first transformation is into “Her Mother” Sakhmet, Isis is repeatedly called by the name and epithets of Hathor, a local Goddess of Geheset. Geheset is a mythically powerful place; it hasn’t been conclusively identified with any real place in Egypt, but some scholars believe it may be at modern Komir, on the westbank of the Nile, south of Esna. (Interestingly, Komir was a center of the worship of Nephthys and a temple dedicated to Her has been found there. It is in the 3rd nome, however, south of the 17th and 18th nomes.) The Jumilhac papyrus does contain more information on Geheset. In another passage it says:
“Regarding Geheset, it is the temple of Hathor of Geheset, the house of the Chief of the Two Lands. House of Uraeus is the name of the Divine Booth of Hathor in this place. Isis transformed Herself into the uraeus. She hid from the companions of Set, Nephthys was there at Her side. The companions of Set passed by Her without their knowing. And then She bit them all. She threw Her two lances at their limbs. Their blood fell on this mountain, flowing, and their death happened immediately.”
Now, in the 4th nome, there was a famous Hathor cult center in Pathyris or Aphroditopolis, modern Gebelein. It is reasonably near to the Komir Nephthys temple. If this is the mythical Geheset, then Nephthys being at Isis’ (as Hathor) side makes some geographic sense.
In the encounter between Isis and Set, in the form of a bull, Set attempts to rape Isis. We know this because He eventually ejaculates on the ground and Isis castigates Him for having wasted His semen like that. This reminds me of the myth in which Hephaestus tries to rape Athena, but His semen either falls on the ground or on Her leg, which She then wipes off in disgust and tosses it on the ground. The semen fertilizes Gaia and the Earth gives birth to Erichthonius, a mythical ruler of Athens who may have been part serpent. In this case, the semen of Set becomes an unidentified local plant called beded kau; the kau part is the plural of ka or vital essence.
For the final part of the tale, Isis Herself takes the form of the holy cobra, the uraeus serpent. As a great serpent, She kills all of Set’s companions with Her venom. Their blood pours out on the mountain and becomes juniper berries (prsh); there is an Egyptian pun here on juniper berries and the flowing out of blood. In another part of the Jumilhac papyrus, Isis “cut up Set, sinking Her teeth into His back” and in yet another She first transforms into Anubis, “and having seized Seth, cut Him up, sinking Her teeth into His back.” (Is there some connection between Isis transforming Herself into a dog with a knife in Her tail and later into Anubis?)
The myths recorded in the Papyrus Jumilhac are surely much earlier Egyptian stories that the priesthood used to teach their tradition in the temples of the 17th and 18th nomes. There were almost certainly other tales like these, from other nomes, in which it is Fierce Isis Herself Who takes revenge upon the murderer of Her beloved Osiris. I hope someday we will find more of them.
May the Fierce Goddess always protect you and guide your heka.
As we approach the time when night and day, moon and sun come into a brief and beautiful balance, let’s talk about Isis’ lunar and solar natures.
Many modern people first think of Isis as a Moon Goddess. And, it’s true, in later periods of Her worship, She was indeed associated with the moon—and, in fact, that’s how She entered the Western Esoteric Tradition. Yet, this Isis-moon connection isn’t all that new. It first started when Egypt came under Greek rule in the 3rd century BCE, following the conquest by Alexander the Great. To the Greeks, Goddesses were the lunar Deities, so as Isis made Her way into Greek culture and hearts, Her new devotees naturally associated Her with the moon.
But in Egypt, Osiris, Khons, Thoth, and I’ah were the Deities most associated with the moon. Isis, for Her part, was connected with the star Sirius as far back as the Pyramid Texts; the star was said to be Her ba, or soul. Yet Isis is also linked with the sun.
As the Sun was the image of one of the most important Gods to the ancient Egyptians, it should not be surprising to find that Isis, one of the most important Goddesses, also has strong solar connections. In some places—notably, Her famous temple at Philae—Isis was worshipped specifically as a Sun Goddess. Among Her solar epithets are Female Re (Re-et) and Female Horus (Horet).
Isis’ most common solar manifestation is as the Eye of Re, the Uraeus, the Cobra Goddess Who coils upon the Sun God’s brow to protect Him; and Who fights a constant cosmic battle against His great opponent, Apop (Gr. Apophis). An inscription at Philae calls Isis “Neseret [fiery]-serpent on the head of Horus-Re, Eye of Re, the Unique Goddess, Uraeus.” A hymn from Philae calls Her “Eye of Re who has no equal in heaven and on earth.” The Eye of Re is His active power. While He maintains His place in the sky, the solar power—the Eye Goddess—goes forth to manifest His Divine will. In this way, Isis and the other Uraeus Goddesses (such as Nephthys, Wadjet, and Tefnut) are similar to Shakti, the active, feminine Power related to the God Shiva in some Hindu sects. Isis is also one of the Deities Who travels with Re in His solar barque as it moves through the Otherworld. Again, Her function is to protect Him and help battle His foes.
Isis is also associated with the Sun God and the Sun in several of Her important myths. In the tale of Isis and Re, Isis gains power equal to Re’s by learning His secret name, first by poisoning, then by healing the ailing God. In another, with Her magical Words of Power, Isis stops the Boat of the Sun in the sky in order to receive aid for Her poisoned child, Horus.
But it was at Isis’ influential temple at Philae that She was most clearly worshiped as a Sun Goddess and even as the Sun itself. A Philae hymn to Isis praises Her saying, “You are the one who rises and dispels darkness, shining when traversing the primeval ocean, the Brilliant One in the celestial waters, traveling in the barque of Re.” An inscription on the first pylon (gate) at Philae says Isis is the “One Who illumines the Two Lands with Her radiance, and fills the earth with gold-dust.” (Blissful sigh. I absolutely adore this praise of Her…She fills the earth with gold dust.)
Like many other Egyptian Deities, Isis was often envisioned with immortal, golden, solar skin. Some of Her sacred images would have been covered with gold, earning Her, like Hathor, the epithets The Gold and the Golden One. A Philae hymn addresses Her, “O Golden One; Re, the possessor of the Two Lands, will never be far from you.” Some scholars believe that the holy of holies at Philae may have once been gold-leafed so that it always appeared filled with golden, solar light. Wow; to bathe in Her gold dust there!
At Her Philae temple, Isis is first of those in heaven: “Hail to you, Isis, Great of Magic, eldest in the womb of her mother, Nuet, Mighty in Heaven Before Re.” She is the “Sun Goddess in the circuit of the sun disk” and Her radiance outshines even that of Re. At Denderah, She is the power of the sun: “She Who shines as the Right Eye during the day,” and “She Who rises everyday.” She is also the Aten, the Solar Disk itself.
From Her great temple at Philae, Isis’ identity as a Sun Goddess flowed back up the Nile to Her temples at Memphis and Isiopolis in the delta. From there, it entered into the Graeco-Roman culture in the famous aretalogies (self-statements) of Isis. From a papyrus found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, we learn that one of Isis’ many names is Name of the Sun and that She is responsible for the rising of the Sun: “Thou [Isis] bringest the sun from rising unto setting, and all the Gods are glad.” In an aretalogy from Kyme, in modern Turkey, Isis says of Herself, “I ordered the course of the sun and the moon.” And later in the same text She says, “I am in the rays of the sun” and “I inspect the courses of the sun.”
Yet even in Egypt itself, Isis is known to rule both sun and moon. An inscription from Denderah calls Her “the great female Ra in the dual course of the sun and the moon.” She gives birth to the Sun God and His Solar Disk, according to inscriptions now in the British Museum and the temple of Esna.
As a Great Goddess, Isis ever reveals more of Herself to Her devotees. We can see Her in the golden sun and in the silver moon…and of course, in diamond starlight, too.
Part 3
For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking into the history—occult and otherwise—of the unique artifact known as the Mensa Isiaca or Table/t of Isis. And it is, literally, unique. We have no other ancient artifact like it. It is a large bronze tabletop, or perhaps altar top, with Egyptianizing figures and pseudo-hieroglyphs, all expertly crafted in polychrome metals.
Lets dive back in and see what some other writers, thinkers, and magicians had to say about it.
Other Ideas
Following Kircher’s intensive explication of the meaning of the Mensa, it became a subject of much scholarly discussion. For centuries.
In 1719, a monk named Bernard de Montfaucon addressed the Mensa. Montfaucon was a scholar and is credited with helping to develop early archeology. He thought the Mensa described Egyptian religion in some way and found it very symbolical and enigmatic. He went on to describe the Mensa in some detail, seeing almost every figure in it as either Isis or Osiris. Of Kircher’s interpretation, he commented, somewhat snarkily, that he doubted whether any Egyptian had ever thought as he did.
In his Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected, Samuel Shuckford considered the Mensa to have been made before the Egyptians came to worship their Deities in anthropomorphic form because the priests shown kneeling in the border all kneel before animal forms.
William Warburton, a Christian Bishop and writer, came pretty close to modern thinking about the Mensa. He thought it was made in Rome by an Isis devotee due to the odd mixture of hieroglyphs and the fact the Isis is clearly the most important figure. Yet another writer, Paul Ernest Jablonski, thought the central figure was Neith. He saw Isis in a number of the other female figures and thought that the Mensa was a calendar of Egyptian festivals, adjusted to Rome.
The English masonic authority, Kenneth Mackenzie took note of the Mensa because of its three-part division and thus its possible correspondence with three-part craft masonry.
Eliphas Levi & the Mensa Isiaca
Eliphas Levi, a French writer, esotericist, and magician, also had an interest in the Mensa Isiaca. Writing in his History of Magic (1860), Levi said,
The most curious, and at the same time the most complete key to the Tarot, or modern version of the famous Book of Thoth, is found in the Isiac Tablet of Cardinal Bembo, which has been represented by Kircher in his work on Egypt: this learned Jesuit has divined, without being able to establish complete proof, that this Tablet contained a key in hieroglyphics to the sacred alphabet.
History of Magic, Eliphas Levi
(You see, it was the secrets of the Alphabet of Thoth that the Hebrews took with them when they left Egypt…and thus developed Qabalah…which, in Hermetic Qabalah, has correspondences to the tarot.)
Looking at his chart (above) and his description in his book, I am baffled as to how he reached some of his conclusions. For instance, he says there are 21 images in the middle register that correspond to the letters of the alphabet. Surely he must mean the Hebrew alphabet, but neither the French, Hebrew, nor Egyptian alphabets have 21 letters. Second, there’s no way I can count the figures in the middle register that adds up to 21. You?
But perhaps it’s all just too recondite and admirable for me. Or perhaps Levi cheated a bit. Westcott (remember him from last week?) was a big fan of Levi and in his own book on the Mensa, he expanded on Levi’s comments, connecting the images and divisions of the Mensa to various Qabalistic and astrological symbols.
The Secret Teachings of All Ages & the Mensa Isiaca
Manly P. Hall in his Secret Teachings of All Ages introduces the section on the Mensa Isiaca by quoting “a manuscript by Thomas Taylor” that said,
Plato was initiated into the ‘Greater Mysteries’ at the age of 49. The initiation took place in one of the subterranean halls of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The Isiac Table formed the altar, before which the Divine Plato stood and received what was always his, but which the ceremony of the Mysteries enkindled and brought from its dormant state. With this ascent, after three days in the Great Hall, he was received by the Hierophant of the Pyramid (the Hierophant was seen only by those who had passed the three days, the three degrees, the three dimensions) and given verbally the Highest Esoteric Teachings. After a further three months’ sojourn in the halls of the Pyramid, the Initiate Plato was sent out into the world to do the work of the Great Order, as Pythagoras and Orpheus had been before him.
Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
Due to the popularity of Secret Teachings, this statement has been often repeated in various esoteric publications, both print and digital. For the record, there is nothing like this in any of Thomas Taylor’s* published works, nor are there any known records of such details of Plato’s purported initiation. According to the Greek historian and geographer Strabo, Plato studied in Egypt for 13 years, learning geometry and theology. But the description above sounds perhaps a bit too masonic with its three degrees. For the rest of his section on the Mensa, Hall relies mainly on Westcott’s book.
IYNX! A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to this Blog Post
Perhaps it was a subconscious prompting. Or perhaps it really was a meaningful synchronicity. But here’s what’s going on. I keep a folder with blog post ideas. And since the Getty Museum semi-recently put out a paper on their study of the Mensa, I thought, “why not?” What I intended to be one post turned into three. And then I came across a somewhat surprising name in Kircher’s discussion of the Mensa. The name is Hekate.
Where does She come into it? Remember that Westcott remarked that the Mensa’s cosmic scheme is almost identical to that of the Chaldean Oracles? Well, if you’ve got Chaldean Oracles, you’ve got Hekate. She is the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World, and the connector between the Empyrean (heavenly) and Hylic (earthly) Worlds.
And that funny word, Iynx, with which the Mensa’s Isis is labeled? It can be a magical tool—the so-called strophalos, or wheel, of Hekate—a bird used in erotic magic, or a type of Being in the Chaldean system. As a Being, Iynges (plural) are “transmitters” of higher-level energies to the lower worlds. The Hathor-headed pillar in the center of the image (above) is what Kircher says is “Isis under the form of Hekate.”
Isis—as the “Supreme Mind, or Pantomorphous Iynx”—sits in the center of the Mensa, connecting everything and transmitting the Divine energies throughout the Universe.
Why does this matter to me right now? Because I’m preparing to take part in a Fall Equinox festival dedicated to Hekate. I’ve been working with Her for many months now in preparation. And so, with this series of posts, my two Goddesses have come together for me, for now.
A Meditation
As you can see, the Mensa Isiaca, the Table of Isis, has been a screen upon which many have projected their thoughts for hundreds of years. Even as a Roman work of art with incomprehensible hieroglyphs, it has served as an Egyptological and esoteric inspiration. And, I think, it has also shown how things can be symbolically connected, even if that was not the original intent of the work. And though we may not be quite as invested in all ancient religions being the same as Kircher was—still—there is something beautiful and magical in the weaving of those connections.
Honestly, a meditation like Kircher’s could be very worth doing for Isis devotees. For instance, we might pick out an ancient Egyptian image of Isis (like the one at the top of this post) and, in gentle meditation, give a meaning to each and every detail, each and every color the artist used. When we do, we’ll see what connections arise for us and in us. No doubt, it won’t be exactly what the ancient Egyptians intended. But it will be a meditation of deepening and it might help us identify some of our own inner symbolism and how, for us, it connects with Isis.
*Thomas Taylor was an 18th-19th-century English translator and neoplatonist. He was the first to translate into English the complete works of Aristotle and Plato.
Part 2
A Mysterious Artifact
At about the time we first hear about the Mensa Isiaca, non-Egyptians were becoming increasingly fascinated with ancient Egypt. They wanted to discover what the hieroglyphs said. And because it had so many hieroglyphs, the Mensa Isiaca was one of the key sources for such early discovery.
One of earliest to take a specific interest in it was Lorenzo Pignoria, an Italian cleric, antiquarian, writer, and philosopher. In 1605, he published “An accurate explanation of the very Ancient Brazen Tablet, engraved with the Sacred Figures of the Egyptians.”
It includes a drawing of the Mensa, but apparently Pignoria was only able to identify a few of the figures and pronounced himself unable to fully unravel its secrets. Yet now a large-sized reproduction of the Mensa, in convenient paper form, was available to other researchers.
The Secrets of the Egyptians
It was Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar and polymath, who really went to town on the Mensa. He believed it to be from the holy-of-holies of an Egyptian temple and to contain a wealth of mystical secrets.
Kircher’s personal studies spanned most of the arts and sciences of his day, from music to geology, as well as multiple languages, including Coptic. He correctly understood Coptic to be a late form of ancient Egyptian and produced a book on Coptic grammar.
While he was a devout Catholic and a biblical literalist, he also wholeheartedly embraced the Hermetic writings, no doubt influenced by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola before him. He had a keen interest in ancient Egypt and considered Egypt to be the source of all ancient religion, from Greece and Rome to China and the Americas.
Thus, he wanted to understand ancient Egyptian religion because he believed it was humankind’s earliest and that there were underlying harmonies in all religions. Through later, better-documented religions, he believed he could extrapolate information about the Egyptian. According to Kircher, the theologies of Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Proclus, the Chaldeans, and Hebrew Qabalah all had their source in ancient Egypt. He was definitely of the “all the Gods are one God” school…with that one God (eventually) being the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
His key Egyptological work is Oedipus Aegyptiacus, published in 1654. In it, he put his ideas about the connections between ancient religions and Egypt into practice and claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphs—with the Mensa Isiaca and several Egyptian obelisks (still in Rome today) assisting in this endeavor.
There’s quite a lot that could be said about Kircher. His work has been derided because of how much he got wrong. Yet, studying what was available to him, he did indeed get some things right about ancient Egypt. Oedipus Aegyptiacus, along with his Coptic grammar, are now considered some of the very earliest works of Egyptology. Unfortunately, one of the things he got right wasn’t the hieroglyphs. His hieroglyphic interpretations are both highly cosmological, highly Neoplatonic, and completely wrong. It’s all quite complex and I won’t go into it here, except for what he says about Isis.
Kircher’s Isis
In Kircher’s Father-Son-Holy Spirit trinitarian scheme, Isis is—interestingly—the Son. Thus, She is the savior, just as she was in the the Hellenistic world. (Kircher had read his Apuleius.) In Oedipus Aegyptiacus, much of his Egyptian discussion is given under the heading, “The Temple of Isis.” By doing so, he was placing all of his Egyptian interpretations under the purview of the Goddess of Wisdom, our Lady Isis.
Since I don’t read Latin, when it comes to Kircher’s interpretations of the Mensa, I’m going to rely on W. Wynn Westcott’s translated quotes and discussion of Kircher’s text in his own book on the Mensa, The Isiac Tablet. Westcott was very much a fan of Kircher’s interpretation of the Mensa—and added his own interpretations as well.
Kircher’s and Westcott’s Isis
Westcott says that the philosophy and theosophy Kircher associates with the Mensa Isiaca is almost identical with that of the Chaldean Oracles, an important text to Neoplatonists, now only known from quotes in other works. And furthermore, that it also has much in common with the Hebrew Qabalah. Here, he quotes Kircher’s explanation of the Mensa:
The universe is regulated from the Paternal Foundation through three triads; this Foundation is variously called The Iynx, Soul of the World, the Pantomorphous Redeemer, and by Philo, the Constructive Wisdom, and exists in the perfection of triads of Pater, Potentia, and Mater, or Mens, the Father, the Power, and the Mother, or Design: coexisting with Faith, Truth, and Love.
Westcott, in The Isiac Table, quoting Kircher in Oedipus Aegyptiacus
Kircher is talking about the figure of Isis in the center of the Mensa as the Paternal Foundation. She is Isis and She is the Iynx, the Soul of the World, and the Panomorphous (All Formed) Redeemer. He goes on to say that the figures around Her are administrators of the Divine power in various spheres, such as the zodiac, the planets, and the winds.
Later, he says the central seated figure of Isis is “the Supreme Mind, or Pantomorphous Iynx Multiform Sphynx or Logos, Word, or Soul of the World, and is placed here in the middle, as in the Centre of Universal Nature.”
Isis’ enthroned posture means dominion and power; the dog on Her throne (looks more like a cat to me) is because “the Isiac Iynx is associated with the Dog Star, Sirius.” Her winged clothing “denotes the sublime velocity of the higher powers.” Each and every detail of the image is given mystical significance. (It’s a lot, so I won’t include it here. What’s more, almost every figure in the Mensa, he considers to be a form of Isis…She’s pantomorphous, after all.)
Some things he gets right. For instance, he says the disk and scarab represent the sun. Other things don’t match what we know about Egyptian symbolism, but gain meaning through Kircher’s mystical exercise. For instance, the alternating black and white stripes on the lotus-form columns represent the ups and downs of earthly life, which Isis as “the mother of Universal Nature” rules.
All in all, Kircher’s decoding of the Mensa Isiaca reveals cosmic Mysteries containing the Wisdom of the Egyptians, with Isis in Her many forms guiding and controlling the multifaceted Universe throughout.
Kircher Isn’t the Only One
The importance Kircher gives to Isis, and his ongoing influence, especially in esoterica, is one of the keys that helps us understand why Isis continued to be such an integral part of the western spiritual imagination. Through works such as Kircher’s, She remained an important part of the Western Mystery Tradition.
Well, I’m at the end of this post and we’re still not quite to the end of this exploration of the Mensa. I thought I’d be able to do it in two, but it looks like three will be the charm. So next time we’ll look at what some other historians and occultists had to say about the Mensa. And I’ll tell you about a weird synchronicity that happened for me in relation to these posts.
Have you ever heard of the Mensa Isiaca?
Did this mysterious Isiac artifact serve as the altar when Plato received his initiation into the Egyptian Greater Mysteries in a secret, subterranean hall beneath the Great Pyramid? Was it an altar top from a Roman Temple of Isis? Was it a repository of ancient occult lore? A key to the hieroglyphs? Or the tarot? Perhaps it was just a rather expensive piece of home decor for a rich Roman with a penchant for Isis?
All of these things have been suggested as the ultimate identity of this significant Isiac artifact. It has quite the history…and some legit mysteries, all of which we take a look at as we try to find out more about this literally unique artifact—and discover what it has meant in the long story of the worship of our Goddess Isis.
As you may have guessed, “Mensa Isiaca” is Latin. It means “Table (or Tablet) of Isis.” It’s also known as the Bembine Table of Isis. I’ll explain why in a bit.
First, what is it?
The Mensa Isiaca is a large bronze tabletop inlaid with polychrome metals—that is, a variety of colored metals—featuring Egyptian figures in a selection of typical Egyptian-style poses, all surrounding the central, enshrined figure of Isis. Or at least She has always been taken to be Isis due to the popularity of the Goddess during the period of the Mensa’s creation, sometime between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE. And it was almost certainly made in Rome.
The reason we cannot be absolutely sure the central figure is Isis is that, while the Mensa includes hieroglyphs, they are only pseudo-hieroglyphs and cannot be read. They are decoratively placed near the figures, as well as around the lip of the Mensa and the borders that separate its three surface registers. So, unfortunately, they cannot help us clearly identify the figures on the Mensa. The Mensa’s later interpreters, however, did not know this and spent a good deal of brainpower on trying, unsuccessfully, to decipher the glyphs.
The art style is all very Egyptian, in the Hellenistic mode. In other words, the images look very much like the ones found in many of the Hellenistic-era temples we see in Egypt today. It’s that slightly softer style you see at Denderah rather than the older, crisper style at Abydos.
But before we go further, you may be wondering what the Mensa Isiaca looks like; click for a larger image:
I hadn’t remembered how large the Mensa Isiaca was until I read a recent article with results from an intensive study of the Mensa while it was on loan from Italy’s Turin Egyptian Museum to the Getty Museum in L.A. At almost 50 inches wide (126 cm) and 30 inches tall (75.5 cm), it is decidedly table-sized rather than tablet-sized. It also has a slightly-over-2-inch lip on all sides of the table. I had been picturing it as something a bit more portable. But no. It’s of an impressive size as well as being an impressive work of art.
While at the Getty Museum, researchers took advantage of new technologies that enabled them to study the Mensa Isiaca in new depth and non-invasively.
A striking feature of the Mensa is its polychrome inlays. Earlier in the Mensa’s history, some of the more colorful inlays had been described as enamel. Others suggested that the beautiful variety of colored metals were the result of Egyptian alchemical experiments. Researchers found that the metalsmiths used at least seven distinct alloys, including silver, gold, black bronze, and a variety of different copper and zinc alloys. They achieved colors from red, yellow, orange, and brown to blue-grey. Each figure is intricately outlined in silver or black bronze wire. The Mensa is in remarkably good shape and shows no signs of ever having been buried. In other words, it has remained in someone’s hands throughout its lifetime.
Polychrome metalwork was a specialty of Egyptian craftspeople; we have examples from at least the 18th dynasty and researchers now think the technique was much more widespread than they had previously believed. Thus, the Mensa Isiaca was created using techniques that were genuinely Egyptian—even if the craftspeople didn’t know hieroglyphs (many didn’t by that time). Due to the excellence of the work and Egyptian mastery of those techniques, my guess is that is was created by Egyptian metalsmiths working in Rome, perhaps with Roman smiths. But we have no proof. It could also have been made by Roman smiths in an Egyptianizing style.
If you’d like to read all the details about the Getty investigation into the physical properties of the Mensa Isiaca, here’s the link. (Most of the images in this post are from this article.)
What is its history?
There is no historical mention of the Mensa Isiaca until after the sacking of Rome in 1527. Some of the unpaid-for-a-long-time forces of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, overran the city of Rome and went on a rampage of destruction, looting, and killing.
The Mensa was likely kept in one of Rome’s palaces prior to the sacking. Afterwards, it came into the hands of a blacksmith or ironworker who eventually sold it to Cardinal Bembo—after which it was known as the Bembine Table (or Tablet) of Isis. Bembo was an Italian scholar, trained in Neoplatonism and intensely interested in his country’s history. In later life, he was made a cardinal in secret. He is buried in the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva basilica, part of which lies over the older Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius.
The Mensa remained in Bembo’s hands until after his death. Then, it came into the possession of the Dukes of Mantua, who kept it in their museum until 1630, when Mantua was besieged and also sacked. We don’t know how, but it next came into the hands of Cardinal Pava, who gifted it to the Duke of Savoy, who eventually gave it to the King of Sardinia in 1730. In 1797, French troops brought it to Paris, where it was exhibited in the Bibliothèque Nationale. With peace between France and Italy, it was returned to Turin. Today, Turin is the site of Italy’s Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) and the permanent home of the Mensa Isiaca.
In Westcott’s book about the Mensa (see the image above), he notes that a guidebook for travelers to northern Italy by John Murray, published in 1863, mentions the Mensa and gives an unattributed history. Murray says that the Mensa was originally found on Mount Aventine in Rome where once stood a temple of Isis and suggests it was made during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. This period for its creation is entirely possible since Hadrian’s reign roughly matches the current scholarly dating for the Mensa Isiaca—and Hadrian himself was quite the Egyptophile. As far as I can tell, none of the known Isis temples in Rome was on the Aventine hill. But then, much of the Aventine is unexcavated since it is covered with many homes.
What is the Mensa Isiaca’s occult significance?
That’s enough of historical history (as far as we know it) for now. Its occult history is much more interesting. The Mensa Isiaca has been an inspiration to occultists for centuries and was believed to contain the deep secrets of ancient Egyptian mysteries and magic. We’ll get into that fascinating subject next time in Part 2.
For me, there are two things that make August wonderful, here in Portland, Oregon. One of them is all the produce that I can go pick on Sauvie’s Island, fresh from the farmers’ fields. (My countertops are full of peaches and tomatoes right now and peppers are on the way.) The other—and the more important for us local Isiacs—is the heliacal rising of the Star of Isis, Sirius.
While everything else starts to crisp in the late-summer heat, I am refreshed in the cool morning of Her rising power.
Now some of you may be saying, “wait, wait, I thought that happens in July.” It could. When you are able to see Her heliacal (“before the sun”) rising depends on where on this globe you are.
Here in Portland, Oregon in 2023, Sirius rises at 4:31 in the morning, Local Solar Time, on August 23rd. Further south, She rises earlier. It all depends on your latitude. You can calculate Her rising in your area with this online calculator. The calculator results are in Local Solar Time. It gives you star rise and sun rise in LST.
There is some difference between clock time and Local Solar Time. But check the time of sunrise locally and you can work backward from there. In my case, I’ll want to be at my point of observation about 5:30 in the morning, about an hour before local sunrise. And this year, for once, it may be clear enough to see Her rise.
While Isis has connections to both the sun and the moon, the heavenly body in which I most easily see Her is the star, Her star: Sirius (Sopdet in Egyptian, Sothis in Greek). And it isn’t just because of Her strong ancient connections with the Fair Star of the Waters, the Herald of the Inundation. It’s something about the way my particular spiritual “stuff” fits with Her particular Divine “stuff.” Her diamond starlight draws me, lures me, illuminates my heart and mind.
I fell in love with Her as Lady of the Star the first time I saw Sirius through a telescope. As I watched, Her brilliant star sparkled with rays of green and blue and pink and white. It was incredibly, unutterably beautiful. It was alive. And pure.
Likely, you already know why Sirius was important to the ancient Egyptians, so I won’t repeat that here. But I would like to add a few interesting bits about Sirius that you may not know about; in particular, the orientation of some Egyptian temples and shrines to Sirius at the time of their construction. For instance, the small Isis temple at Denderah and Isis’ great temple at Philae seem to have been oriented toward the rising of Sirius. Philae may even have a double stellar orientation: one axis to the rising of Sirius, one to the setting of Canopus.
Overall, Egyptian temples have a variety of orientations. A survey of temples taken between 2004 and 2008—that actually went to the temples in Egypt and measured the orientation—showed that most temples were oriented so that the main entrance faced the Nile. But not only that. It seems that the temples were also oriented toward other astronomical events, most especially the winter solstice sunrise, which of course makes very good sense as a symbol of rebirth.
Orientation to Sirius is rarer and harder to be certain of since the earth’s position in relation to the stars has shifted over the millennia.
A Horus temple, called the “Nest of Horus” on the summit of the highest peak of the Hills of Thebes, seems to have been oriented to the heliacal rising of Sirius around 3000-2000 BCE. Nearby, an inscription carved in rock during the 17th dynasty (1580-1550 BCE) records the observation of just such a rising of Sirius. This high place would have been ideal for Horus in His nest to await the coming of His mother Isis. On the other hand, the archaeoastronomers who did the survey I mentioned believe that it may also be oriented to the winter solstice sunrise, an event closely associated with Horus.
Another temple that may have a Sirius orientation is the archaic temple of the Goddess Satet on the island of Elephantine. The original temple was built amidst the great boulders on the island and really is quite simply the coolest temple ever. It seems that when it was built (around 3200 BCE) the rising of Sirius and the rising of the winter solstice sun were at the same place—so it could have been built to accommodate both important astronomical events.
After the initial study, the same team followed up with a survey (in 2008) of some temples in the Fayum that they hadn’t been able to study before as well as temples in Kush. They found generally the same results except for the Nile orientation since many of these temples were built far away from the river. They made note of a son of a Priest of Isis, Wayekiye, son of Hornakhtyotef, who was “hont-priest of Sopdet” and ”wab-priest of the five living stars” (the planets) and “chief magician of the King of Kush.” This is from an inscription on Isis’ temple at Philae dating to about 227 CE. It emphasizes the importance and sacrality of the study of celestial objects and events to the kingdom and it is quite interesting that this was the work of the Chief Magician. This study revealed that most Kushite temples and pyramids were oriented either to the winter solstice sunrise or the rise of Sirius.
Another interesting thing the study found was that by the time of the New Kingdom, in the 34 temples that were unmistakably dedicated to a Goddess—specifically Isis or a Goddess associated with Her—the most important celestial orientation point was the rising of Sirius. But, in addition to Sirius, the star Canopus was also a key orientation point. According to their data, Goddess temples in general were more frequently aligned with these very bright stars, Sirius and Canopus, while God temples were more often oriented to key solar-cycle events. Isn’t that interesting?
If you are, as I am, feeling the anticipation of Her rising later this month, you might like to do some ritual. The Opening of the Ways is always good. You could use it as an invitation to Her. Or try a simple meditation, allowing yourself to yearn for Her coming. Waiting for Her and wanting Her is sometimes a very good exercise. You might set out a vessel of water (a shiny silver one is nice) on the night of Her rising, let it be charged with that rising energy in the dawn, then use it as part of your holy water for purification. I have just such star water that I use waiting in my shrine right now.
Last time, we talked about the Egyptian ba—very loosely translated as the soul. When represented in tombs, the ba is shown as a human-headed bird, often a falcon or hawk, and bearing the face of the person to whom it belongs.
With their power of flight, birds have always been magical creatures to us flightless human beings. Not only in Egypt, but in many cultures throughout the world, birds of various types have been associated with death and the afterlife. In some cases, birds (especially the owl) are seen as harbingers of death. Sometimes, birds are psychopomps, guides of the dead, showing the newly-disembodied human soul or spirit the correct path to the Otherworld. Researchers have suggested that the concept of birds as spirits of the dead that have returned to earth is almost universal.
But more often than being harbingers of death, birds are associated with the idea of transcendence and rebirth, as they decidedly were in ancient Egypt. The innermost coffin was sometimes referred to as “the egg,” so you can see the power of this idea almost immediately. In the funerary literature, we also find birds in connection with the so-called “transformation” spells, which are designated in the texts by the verb kheper, “to become.” So once again, we come to that important word.
As you already know, our Goddess Isis is often depicted in birdform. She is the hawk, falcon, kestral, or swallow protecting the body of Osiris, and thus all the dead, with Her powerful wings. But sometimes, She is also shown as a human-headed falcon. In this case, we are being shown Her powerful ba kheper. If you recall last week’s post, you’ll remember that in the earliest Egyptian records, the ba is a Divine Force. That Divine Force is what we are intended to see when we find Isis in this form. It is Her Great Ba that is with us.
From an inscription at Denderah, we are told that Isis is “She Whose Ba (-Power) is Great” and “She Whose Ba is Great Among the Gods,” and even “She Whose Ba is Greater Than All the Gods.” Human beings recognize the power of Her ba: “those on earth bow to Her Ba.” (And, it is often the ba of the Deity that was understood to inhabit the Deity’s sacred image; sometimes the ka, too, but mostly the ba.)
Isis is also among the Great Goddesses Who are called Ba-et Goddesses. As a Ba-et Goddess, Isis’ ba-power is understood to be exceptionally powerful among the bau (plural) of all the other Deities. Isis is “She Who is More Mighty (Ba-et) than the Gods.” She is especially powerful in the sky: She is “The Mighty One (Ba-et) in the Sky,” “The Mighty One in the West and the East,” and She is “The Mighty One of the Bau Souls.”
This last title likely refers to Isis’ status among the Deities—a Great Ba among Great Bau. But I wonder if we might also take it as a reference to Her care of the human bau, souls, who are under Her wings.
It is Isis Who initiates the human ba into its new, transformed existence without the living body of the deceased. She is the Lady of All in the Secret Place—the Otherworld—and She is asked by the deceased in the Coffin Texts to, “spiritualize me, O You who split open my mouth for me and Who guide my soul on the paths of the Otherworld.” We are told that “Isis rejoices when She sees you (the deceased)” in the Otherworld and reciprocally, that the dead (as Osiris) rejoice when they see Her, for they know they can count on Her help in their renewal.
Isis also bestows upon the deceased power and awe so that enemies of the deceased are easily fended off. The dead are told that they are possessors of “the fear (awe or power) that went forth from Isis to Horus.” While the texts do not explicitly say so, it seems to me that Isis may have endowed the deceased with some of Her powerful and “awe-full” ba-power. In another Coffin Text, the deceased is told that “the power of Isis is your strength” and that the dead one is “more spirit (akh)-like and more soul (ba)-like” than the Southern or Northern Gods.
Isis’ concern with souls continued as Her worship entered the Graeco-Roman world. She becomes known as a Mystery Goddess—and the Mysteries were always about the Mysteries of death, rebirth, and often, the saving of souls. In Isis’ famous Mysteries, initiates learned what lay before them in the afterlife so that they lost their fear of death and could live more fulfilling lives on earth. In fact, Isis was specifically known as a Savior Goddess, which not only pertains to Her ability to initiate our souls into the Mysteries of Death and Rebirth, but also to Her saving grace in our day-to-day lives.
In a Hermetic treatise, the Kore Kosmou (“Virgin of the Universe”), Isis continued to be associated with souls. (Read more about the Kore Kosmou here, and here, and here.)
In this text, Isis describes for Horus how human souls were created and how She and Osiris devised the “magic of the prophet-priests” so that our souls could be nurtured by philosophy and our bodies could be healed by the magical arts. Other Hermetic texts depict Isis teaching about reincarnation and the true nature of our souls.
From the earliest to the latest periods, Isis has been the Lady of Souls. She has, and is, an extremely powerful ba Herself and always, always maintains Her concern with and knowledge of souls.
What is your concept of the soul?
It’s one of those things that we often talk about, but we don’t have a firm definition of what—exactly—it is. Is it the divine part of ourselves? Is it the immortal part that survives after death? Is it some kind of “essence” of ourselves? Is it our inner life, our thoughts, feelings, passions? Do only human beings have one, or do other beings and things have one, too? Is it what animates us, what makes us alive? In Latin, the word for soul is anima and modern languages like French and Spanish have words for soul (âme and alma) that come directly from Latin.
The English word derives from Old English sawol and is related to a number of similar old-European words. Psychology, the study of the psyche—Greek for soul—thus involves the study (or literally, “speaking about,” –ology) the soul. So psychologists and psychotherapists are concerned with healing the soul.
Most people, throughout the world, have some sort of concept of something like the soul. Yes, of course, the ancient Egyptians did, too. And yes, of course, Our Lady Isis has an intimate concern with souls.
Those of you who have been reading this blog probably already know that the ancient Egyptians did things a little differently. And you may already know that they had a broader concept of what goes into making up the full nature of the human being. These are words like ka, ba, akh, khat, ren, ib, and shadow. We find these terms numbering from about five on the low end to about sixteen on the high end. Often, you will see them referred to as “components” or “parts” of the human being, both in life and afterlife. That’s not quite right, so more-modern scholars will call them “aspects” of the human being. This is much closer.
But I just learned today, that there is an Egyptian word that is not only appropriate and which at least some learned Egyptians seem to have used as the collective term for these aspects. The word is kheperu.* It means “forms, transformations, manifestations” and oh-so-much more. It is found in the name of the Sun Scarab God, Khepri or Khepera. As a verb, it means “changing, transforming, becoming.” The root also has to do with creation, birth, and rebirth.
What I learned is that in some examples of the funerary literature, you will see a list of the familiar aspects of the human being, but with the word kheperu at the end. Scholars think that the word kheperu—transformations—at the end was meant to sum up all the preceding aspects. Why is this important? Because it confirms that the kheperu of a person should not be understood as discreet or disjointed “parts” of the human being. But rather that the ancients understood them to be forms or ways of being that the human being could transform into during different aspects of their life/afterlife journey.
Today, I’d like to focus on just one of these kheperu: the ba.
We have come to use the word “soul” to translate ba because way back in the 4th century CE, a writer name Horapollo (a perfect Egypto-Greek name if ever there was one) so translated it. Horapollo was a Greco-Egyptian intellectual who wrote a book, in Greek, on the meanings of the hieroglyphs. In addition to giving us the ba = psyche equation, Horapollo also connected the ba with the heart, for, he said, the Egyptians say that the soul resides in the heart.
Here’s Horapollo’s entry on The Soul:
That the hawk is a symbol for the soul is clear from the interpretation of its name. For the hawk is called by the Egyptians Baieth. If this name is divided, it means “soul” and “heart.” For Bai is the soul and Eth is the heart. And the heart, according to the Egyptians, contains the soul. Hence the interpretation of the combined name is the “soul in the heart.” Wherefore the hawk, since it has the same character as the soul, never drinks water, but blood, on which the soul is nourished.
The Hierogliphics, Book I, entry on The Soul
We may also note that in Book II of Horapollo, the symbol for the human soul is a star—as well as a symbol for a Deity, twilight, night, and time, all of which is true enough. Remember that by the 4th century CE, a lot of the traditional knowledge about the sacred writing had been lost. So it’s likely that what Horapollo reports is what was current in his day.
Ba is an extremely complicated concept in ancient Egypt (and don’t get me started on ka!) Like so many other things, it too, changed over the millennia. Scholars are still trying to figure out precisely what it meant. But happily, we do know some things, so we’re not completely in the dark.
In the earliest Egyptian texts, the ba appears to be a Divine force. The word seems to refer to a manifested spirit, usually the manifestation of a Deity. The ba of a Deity could appear as a natural force—the wind is the ba of Shu—or in the form of a sacred animal. For instance, the Apis bull of Memphis was considered the ba of, first Ptah, then Osiris; the Hesis cow, mother of the Apis, was considered the ba of Isis. What’s more, one Deity could be the ba of another. Osiris and Heka are bas of Re; Sothis is the ba of Isis. By the end of the Old Kingdom, the concept of the ba was understood more broadly. Everybody—and some things as well—had one. Post Amarna, every Deity and everything could be considered a ba of Amun/Amun-Re.
When it comes to human beings, generally, the ba was thought to be a non-physical aspect of a person that comprised their personality or character. The impression one makes on others is because of the nature of one’s ba. The ba is also a form or manifestation—a kheper—of the human being in the spiritual realm. After death, a human being’s ba could take on super-human power; not as powerful as a Deity’s, but powerful.
In tombs, the ba of the deceased person is usually shown as a human-headed bird, often a hawk like Horapollo says. Sometimes the ba-bird also has human arms and hands. With it’s human face, it is linked to the individual human being and reflects the personality or character of the person. Yet its birdform gives it the ability to move between the worlds. And because it can enter into the spirit world, it knows things beyond normal human knowledge. Thus it can also serve as a counselor to human beings while we are still alive. We have a piece of ancient literature in which a man is in a dispute with his ba over whether or not he should commit suicide. Egyptian wisdom literature also advised people to do good in life in order to feed their bas.
Well. I see that this post has gotten a bit long and I haven’t even brought in Isis, She Who “guides my soul on the paths of the Netherworld.” So we’ll continue this soulful discussion next time and learn the may ways that Isis is connected with the powerful ba.
* In Isis Magic, I use the term Kheperu for the various forms of the Deities as well as the magical technique of “Taking on the God/dessform.”
I am slightly obsessed with knots in Egyptian magic. The basic idea is fairly simple: tied knots bind and untied knots release. Beyond that, knots can unite opposites and—since a knot secures things—protect.
Working magic, heka, is sometimes described as weaving or knitting, which is just another form of knotting. The deceased person is said to be “knit together in the egg” prior to rebirth. Some texts say that the head of the deceased is “knit on.” The concept of weaving or knitting magic—bringing the strands of magic together to create or preserve—makes complete and utter sense to me. There is a delicacy and precision that weaving and knitting requires.
Knot magic was well known in Egypt from an early period; an inscription in one of the pyramids states that Isis and Nephthys work magic on Osiris “with knotted cords.”
The Book of Coming Forth by Day also gives several examples of the magical power of the knot. In one, knots are tied around the deceased to help them come into the presence of the Deities: “The four knots are tied about me by the guardian of the sky [. . .] the knot was tied about me by Nuet, when I first saw Ma’et, when the gods and the sacred images had not yet been born. I am heaven born, I am in the presence of the Great Gods.”
In addition to these four knots, another text talks about seven knots, or tesut, that were tied about the deceased to protect them.
The power of the magical knot is in its ability to both unite and “surround” things. The tied knot is a symbol of the coming together of two things in perfect wholeness, a condition that promotes a positive outcome.
A passage in the Coffin Texts says that when the hair of Isis is knotted to the hair of Nephthys, the Two River Banks (that is, the land of the living and the land of the dead) are united. Tying a knot could also refer to sexuality; the perfect coming together of two people in an act of creation. We still “tie the knot” when we get married.
Furthermore, because the two ends of the cord used in tying a magical knot symbolically go all the way around something, they “surrounded” that thing. Thus knot magic could be used to “surround” or “bind” an enemy—or even tie a curse to them.
In the Book of the Dead, formula 42 in Budge, the knot appears as a kind of seed. The deceased is said to be “the knot within the tamarisk tree, beautiful of splendor more than yesterday.” This surely refers to Osiris within the tree prior to His resurrection.
And, of course, the famous Knot of Isis is a magical knot. In most cases, it is protective and associated with renewal and resurrection. As time passed, it became a must-have amulet for all mummies and was usually placed on the upper torso.
In the ritual that follows, we are using the knots to surround with protection. We call upon Isis primarily, but also Nephthys, Neith, and Selket as the four Goddesses often found guarding the four corners of a shrine as well as the four Sons of Horus, Who in turn protect the canopic jars.
About the Rite: In this rite, you will magically tie a protective knot around yourself (or around anything you wish to protect). The ritual draws upon sources in the Book of Coming Forth by Day and is, in part, adapted from an ancient rite for consecrating the Tet amulet.
Temple Arrangement: Altar at center; all tools on altar.
Ritual Tools: Nile water in Lotus Cup; petals from lotus, lily or rose flowers; Isis incense in censer; six pieces of fairly substantial red cord, each approximately one foot long (if you can’t find red cord that is thick enough, use white rope); Knot of Isis representation in any medium (if desired).
Purify and consecrate the temple and yourself according to the formulae of the House of Isis. Return to the altar, take up the lotus (lily or rose) petals and elevate them.
Ritualist: O, you Souls of Life, Lotus Dwellers, Breathers, you of the Pure Air from the Wings of Isis, I have come for you. By the Blood, by the Power, by the Magic of Isis, establish yourselves within these petals. (Vibrating onto petals) ISET NEF!
Place some of the petals in the chalice.
Ritualist: (Addressing petals) I know you, you shining flowers. Your name is “Life Is In It”. Your name is “Protection”. Your name is “Peace Bringer”.
Place the pieces of red cord upon the altar and anoint each of them with the Nile water with flower petals in it.
Ritualist: (Touching each piece of cord) Isis protects!
Next, invoke the Goddess, raising your arms in Adoration.
Ritualist: I call the power of my Mighty Mother Isis. I call Her strength to me. For I shall knot the cord, the Knot of Isis, and the power and peace of Isis.
O Isis, my Mother, I call You!
I call You with the breath of my body (breathing out).
I call You with the beat of my heart (touching chest).
I call You with the pulse of my life (touching wrists).
I call You with the words of my mouth (touching mouth).
I call You with the thoughts of my mind (touching forehead).
I call You Power. I call You Life. I call You Protection.
I call You, Isis!
Take up one of the pieces of red cord and move to the southeast corner of the temple space. Holding the two ends of the cord in your hands, say:
Ritualist: You have Your Blood, O Isis. You have Your Power, O Isis. You have Your Magic, O Isis. The Blood of Isis and the Strength of Isis and the Words of Power of Isis shall be mighty to (state what you wish to protect) against all that would cause harm.
With strength and intention, tie a knot in the cord and set it in the southeast corner of the temple.
Ritualist: By the Power of Isis, I have knotted the cord.
Repeat this same procedure in the southwest, northwest, and northeast of the temple, above your head (leave the cord on the altar), and upon the ground (leave the cord at the foot of the altar).
Stand west of the altar, facing east. Make the Sign of the Wings of Isis.
Ritualist: O Isis and all You mighty Goddesses of Protection, I call upon You to guard (state what you wish to protect) as You did guard Osiris Himself, as You did guard Horus the Child.
Isis, Mighty Magician; Nephthys, Lady of Life; Neith, Primal Mother; Selket, Powerful One—tie the Knot of Isis against all harm. Keep it away! Restrain it! Let it not come near! O, Isis and all You Goddesses of Protection, grant Your peace and protection.
If you wish to meditate or do other work, this is an excellent time to do so.
If this is a ritual for protection from some outside threat, leave the tied knots in the temple for as long as desired or needed and conclude the rite by making the Sign of the Wings of Isis at the altar and speaking the last line.
If this rite was worked simply to create peace for meditation, you may untie the knots when you are finished by simply going to each knot in the order you tied it and untying it.
Ritualist: I have untied the knot. Be in peace, O You Blood and Power and Magic of Isis. Be in peace.
Take each piece of cord to the altar. [Skip to here if you are leaving the Knots tied.] At the altar, make Sign of the Wings of Isis.
Ritualist: I thank You, Isis, in all Thy names of Protection. Hold me ever near You, bound by Your protective knots.
Quit the temple.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
We’re not quite there yet, but I thought you might like to have this small rite early in case you’d like to find a special outdoor place to celebrate the coming solstice.
In Egypt, about 3000 BCE, at the latitude of ancient Memphis, the summer solstice coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the star of Isis, the beginning of the all-important inundation, and the coming of the new year. It was a time of joy as people anticipated the coming harvest and other blessings from the Divine Ones.
In this rite, we celebrate with gratitude the fullness of summer in the dawning light of our closest star, the sun. Yet we also know that the ba of Isis—in Her holy star Sirius—is also present with us, though still unseen by most of us in the northern hemisphere.
And, of course, Isis is a Sun Goddess, too.
Stuff You’ll Need
For this rite, you’ll need Nile water and a vessel, a flowery incense and something to safely burn it in, your sistrum, and a ripe avocado or sweet, juicy fruit like a peach, and something to cut it with. You’ll be eating the fruit in offering communion with Her, so make it something you like.
Your Temple Space
Ideally, this is an outdoor space where you can see the sun rise on summer solstice. Make sure you arrive before sunrise. If not possible, you can also do this indoors, visualizing the sunrise.
Arising
Rattle your sistrum softly at your heart. As you see the sun rise, stand and open your arms like the wings of Isis.
Ritualist: (Vibrating softly) ISET-RE, ISET-SOPDET! (Speaking softly) I welcome You with open heart into Your abode (moving your hands to cross upon your heart).
Purifying the Heart
Pour the Nile water into the vessel. Sprinkle water upon your own body, paying special attention to your heart.
Ritualist: Purify, purify, purify, purify! I am purified by the Mother of Rivers, the Lady of the Living Waters. Into Her care I release al pain, all anger, all frustration, all regret—all the sorrows of my heart. (Breathe deeply and repeat until you feel that it is so.)
The temple of my heart is made new, purified and opened unto Isis, the Lady of Abundance.
Awakening the Heart
Take up the sistrum again, light the incense. Rattling the sistrum softly at your heart (so much the better if you can feel the vibrations of the sistrum), say,
Ritualist: In the name of Isis-Re, in the name of Isis-Sothis, my heart awakens. (Breathe deeply and repeat until you feel that it is so.)
Be seated comfortably. Now listen and hear. Listen to the dawn and find the heartbeat of the Great Goddess Isis. Her noble heart beats all around you. In the awakening song of birds. In the wind moving through grass and trees. In the waters. In the deep earth.
Find the heartbeat of Isis.
Now, touch a pulse point on your own body and find your heartbeat.
Attune your heartbeat to Hers, slowing or speeding up as needed. (Just do the best you can; it doesn’t have to be perfect.)
Ritualist: (Speaking softly to yourself and to the Goddess) Iset Ib, my heart’s desire. Her heart. My heart.
I am aware in my heart. I am in power in my heart. I am aware and in power in my heart, which is the heart given to me by my mother (stating the name of your human mother)—and by my Great Mother Isis.
Iset Ib, my heart’s desire. Her heart. My heart.
I am intelligent in my heart. I am compassionate in my heart. I am intelligent and compassionate in my heart, which is the heart which drums in rhythm with the heart of Great Isis.
Iset Ib, my heart’s desire. Her heart. My heart.
I am alive in my heart. I am full in my heart. I am alive and full in my heart, the center of all Being, the beginning of all Becoming. I am alive and full in my heart, and my heart knows all the joys and pleasures of my life.
In the fullness of my Being, I am Becoming joyful. Isis arises—all is well. Isis comes—peace returns. I am sitting in the Throne of Abundance. Once again, I attune my human heart to Her Divine heart (pausing to do this).
Now speak aloud at least ten things for which you are grateful. If you can name more than that, do so. Let yourself feel joy, satisfaction, pleasure, or pleasant surprise as you name each thing. Take time to re-attune your heart to the Goddess’ heart between each thanksgiving. When you are finished, continue:
Ritualist: Iset Ib, my heart’s desire. Her heart. My heart. I am aware in my heart and I am grateful in my heart. You have blessed me, Isis, and I bless You. Amma, Iset. Grant that it ever be so.
Communion of the Heart of Isis
Take out the avocado (or other fruit) and look upon it.
Ritualist: This fruit is the fruit of the holy persea tree, sacred unto Isis. It is the fruit of the tree from between whose branches rises the Soul of Isis—Sothis—and the Face of Isis—the Sun. The wise say that the sacred persea bears the Heart of Isis (elevating fruit), therefore when I hold this persea fruit in my hands, I hold the Heart of the Goddess. Rich and sweet, the persea fruit is indeed the Heart of the Beautiful One, the Heart of Abundant Summer.
Cut the fruit into five pieces and lay them upon the altar like the five-rayed Star of Isis.
Ritualist: O Isis-Re, O Isis-Sothis, You shared with me Your sacred heart (eating one piece of fruit). Spirit is joined to spirit (eating another piece of fruit). Mind is joined to mind (eating another piece of fruit). Soul is joined to soul (eating another piece of fruit). Body is joined to body (eating the last piece of fruit). Heart joined to heart (crossing your hands over your heart).
Closing
Take up the sistrum and, beginning at your heart, rattle it in the four directions, above you and below you.
Ritualist: O Isis, You have filled my heart. You are indeed the Lady of Abundance.
Take up the vessel of water. Holding it at your heart, sprinkle water in the four directions, above you and below you.
Ritualist: O Isis, I ask that my heart remain open to Your heart, this day and every day. Amma, Iset. Grant that it be so.
Face east and the rising sun and the hidden star. Open your arms like the wings of Isis, then close them over your heart. Remove all traces of your presence, then depart in peace.
NOTE: This is a shortened version of the summer solstice rite from Isis Magic. For the more complete rite, see pages 344-351 in the second edition.
You might remember from last week all those Athenians who had themselves represented on their grave steles in specifically Isiac garments. In fact, one-fifth of all the grave steles from the period when Athens was ruled by Rome are women in Isiac dress. There are also steles for several Isiac men, but it’s mostly women.
In Athens.
For a non-Greek Goddess.
I’m reading a scholarly article now that suggests that this way of having themselves represented in death was an Athenian response (perhaps unconscious) to Roman imperialism. The idea is that these people chose to represent themselves as “other” than the standard Greco-Roman way because it let them preserve some of their individuality and personal power (as well as cultic status) in an era when they felt they had little of it politically. (And, of course, these were mostly women, people who have had little political power at the best of times, in ancient society and now in many places.)
In other words, these people were rebelling against Roman societal rule in a way that helped them fashion new and more complex selves—and Isis helped them do it.
Although you still see Isis described as “the ideal wife and mother”—which often has the connotations of 1950s housewife—I’ve always thought of Her as rather rebellious in that She does what She wants to do, not letting anything stop Her.
That’s why I was taken aback when a friend once remarked to me that she couldn’t get into Isis because of the subservient way She went around “picking up after Osiris.” My friend was, of course, referring to the main Isis-Osiris myth in which Isis travels the length and breadth of Egypt to find and conduct proper funeral rites over the scattered pieces of Her murdered husband’s body.
For its day, I have always considered the ancient myth of Isis to be pretty darned feminist, modeling both feminine power and independence. My own feminism is one of the reasons I began exploring Goddess in the first place.
So my friend had seen the Isis-Osiris myth as just another “woman-taking-care-of-her-man” story, while I’d seen it as the opposite: a tale of the reversal of stereotypes. Instead of the prince saving the princess, the princess had to save the prince, put him back together, and give him renewed life.
We were both right, of course. A myth speaks to us however it speaks to us. Yet, I do think that Isis and Her cycle of myths, especially when you include the important Isis & Re story, provide a proto-feminist model.
Part of the credit for this goes to ancient Egyptian society. While we should have no illusions that men and women were true equals in Egypt, still they were more equal in Egypt than in any of Egypt’s Mediterranean neighbors. In Egypt, women could hold and sell property; they were considered (at least theoretically) equal to men before the law; they could instigate lawsuits; they could lend money; and although it was unusual, a woman could live independently, without a male guardian. In contrast, Greek and Roman laws firmly relegated women to control by their husbands or male relatives and provided little economic or legal protection to women.
So when Isis’ myths depict Her acting autonomously for Her own ends or wielding power, this type of female behavior was not as strange in Egypt as it was in the rest of the Mediterranean world. Another example of Isis wielding power are the tales of Isis as warrior that we have from the tales in the Jumilac papyrus.
Even when Egypt was ruled by non-natives under the Ptolemies (from 305 to 30 BCE), the native Egyptian respect for the feminine and The Feminine seems to have crept in. By the end of the dynasty, the historian Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) could write that due to the success of Isis’ benevolent rule of Egypt (while Osiris was on His mission to civilize the world):
…it was ordained that the queen should have greater power and honor than the king and that among private persons the wife should enjoy authority over her husband, the husbands agreeing in the marriage contract that they will be obedient in all things to their wives.
Diodorus Siculus, Book II, section 22
This wasn’t true, but it is interesting that that would be the impression that Diodorus received when visiting Egypt and speaking to Egyptians.
I’m also reading an article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies by Rachel Evelyn White about women in Ptolemaic Egypt that discusses the possibility that the family tomb may have been the property of a female heir, and which was likely a holdover from ancient Egyptian tradition. This is based on some Egyptian contracts of the time combined with the fact that this was specifically the case among the nearby Nabataeans. If so, this could be one of the bases for retained female power in Egypt, as well as giving women another connection with Isis as the provider of proper burial and funerary rites. It may also point to very ancient matrilineal traditions in Egypt.
We should also recall that in several of the remaining Isis aretalogies, the Goddess declares women’s equality with men. What’s more, the relationship between women and men is meant to be friendly and loving—like the relationship modeled by Isis and Osiris. The aretalogy from Maronea states that Isis established language so that men and women, as well as all humankind, should live in mutual friendship.
In a later Hermetic text entitled Kore Kosmu, Isis explains to Horus the origin and equality of male and female souls, declaring that:
The souls, my son Horus, are all of one nature, inasmuch as they all come from one place, that place where the Maker fashioned them; and they are neither male nor female; for the difference of sex arises in bodies, and not in incorporeal beings.
Scott, Walter, Hermetica, Vol. 1 (Boulder, Colorado, Hermes House, 1982), p. 499-501.
The Oxyrhynchus Invocation of Isis states it quite plainly: “Thou [Isis] didst make the power of women equal to that of men.” I know of no other ancient texts that lay out the message of equality so strongly as is done in the Isis aretalogies and hymns.
And so, I honor Our Lady, Isis the rebel and Isis the feminist.
