Category Archives: Aspects of Isis

Do You Dream of Isis?

The most common Egyptian term for dream was rsw.t, from a root meaning "to awaken." In dream, we awaken in sleep.

In this strange stay-home-and-stay-isolated world right now, many people are reporting changes in their dreaming patterns. More dreams, odd dreams, dreams that are not like their normal dreaming life. Are you dreaming more, dreaming weird? I know I am.

Our Lady is a Goddess of Dreams. People slept in Her temples, hoping for dreams of healing or divination. Interestingly, the most common Egyptian term for dream was rsw.t, from a root meaning “to awaken.” So in dream, we awaken in our sleep…

Does Isis communicate with you in your dreams?

In Egypt, as in most of the ancient world, people definitely paid attention to their dreams. Kings and commoners alike regularly acted on messages received in dream. Sometimes the dreams were clear, the message needing no interpretation. Or a dream might be prophetic, providing information or warnings about the future. Some dreams instructed the dreamer to carry out certain actions; the temples were full of dedicatory plaques to the Deities stating that some action was taken “in accordance with a dream.” Yet these types of dreams were rare—as they are today. Most often, people dreamed in symbols and images that had to be interpreted in order to understand the meaning. For this, one needed a dream interpreter.

(The artwork above was inspired by a dream the artist had of the Temple of Isis in Pompeii. See what her dream was and more of her work here.)

The dream interpreter might be a village wise woman like the one of whom we have evidence from Deir el-Medina. Dream interpreters would set up shop outside the temples—especially during festival days. But most often the dream interpreter would have been one of the priests or priestesses of the Houses of Life at the great temples. Dream Books cataloged dream symbols and their meanings and may have served as resources for the temple interpreters. We have several surviving examples of these dream books.

An artist’s fantasy version of an Egyptian healing temple

In addition to bringing one’s dream to the temples for interpretation, one might also seek a special dream by sleeping in the temple. This sacred sleep is known to scholars using the Latin term incubatio (Greek enkoimesis) and was particularly associated with healing temples and healing Deities, such as Isis, Hathor, and Asclepius. It was a frequent practice in temples of Isis. In fact, the temples of Isis at Memphis and Canopus were quite famous for incubation. The Goddess was known to provide accurate diagnoses and effective prescriptions to those who appealed to Her. Diodorus Siculus records that She

gives assistance in their sleep to those seeking it, visibly revealing her very own presence and her beneficence towards those in need. As proof of these claims they say that they themselves offer not myths akin to those of the Greeks, but visible results: for nearly all of the inhabited world serves as witness for them, seeking to add to her honors because of her manifestation through healings. For appearing in their sleep she gives aid to the sick against their diseases, and those who heed her regain their health contrary to all expectation.

An example of an Isis incubation dream survives from a Greek orator named Aristides. Aristides spent a great deal of time visiting healing shrines due to his chronic illness. (Some have even called him a hypochondriac.) In one of his books, he describes a number of synchronicities surrounding a sacrifice of geese to Isis that was surely part of his pre-incubation rite. Then he gives a hint about his dream, writing that a light came from Isis relating to his salvation.

Another interesting example of incubation in an Isis temple comes from a letter written from Aspasia (470-410 BCE), the hetaira who was so beloved by the Athenian statesman Pericles, to Pericles telling him of her journey to several temples of healing to seek relief for (perhaps) a skin irritation of some kind. On the advice of her physician, she first visited the temple of Isis in Memphis. She writes, “I beheld the statue of Isis and her son Orus, seated on a throne supported by two lions” and says that sebestus (a species of Egyptian date) grew about Her shrine and describes the burning of incense in the morning, myrrh during the day, and cyplis [kyphi?] in the evening.”

Aspasia slept in the temple, but says she found no relief. The problem, according to the temple attendants, was Aspasia’s “incredulity.”

Next she went to the temple of Hygieia at Patras where the Goddess “appeared to me in the form of a mysterious pentagon.” Finally it was Aphrodite Who, in in the form of a dove, cured Aspasia.

I include this interesting anecdote for several reasons: first, to demonstrate that then, as now, the hoped for dream communication may not always come to us; second, that “mysterious pentagon” form in which Hygieia appeared to Aspasia. It is likely that the “mysterious pentagon” was the Pythagorean pentagram associated with Hygieia and used as a symbol of recognition among the Pythagoreans. As an educated woman, Aspasia conversed with philosophers, was a philosopher herself, even being described as “a female Socrates” by one ancient writer. And finally, Who better than Aphrodite to heal a hetaira? For me, Aspasia’s experiences ring true and reflect some of the many and varied ways the Deities can interact—or not—with us.

Isis is also known to call to Her initiates and devotees in dream. In Apuleius’ tale that culminates with his protagonist’s initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, we learn that Lucius must remain in the temple of the Goddess—waiting patiently—until he receives a summons from Isis Herself. Only then, when he knew for certain that Isis had invited him, could he undergo the ceremony of his initiation and further cultivate his relationship with the Goddess.

A Roman image of Isis. Is this what Lucius’ dream Isis looked like to him?

Dream invitation is part of modern devotion to Isis as well. Many are the modern priestesses and priests of Isis who were called to Her service in dream or in vision, which we may think of as a waking dream.

Yet, as always, there are cautions that go along with all this dreaming and visioning. We cannot forget that any information that comes from Her comes through us. The dream or vision-seed of information may come from Isis, but it passes through our human minds and souls, as well as our physical brains and bodies. It’s easy for that seed to be affected by what’s going on with us, in our daily lives and in our spiritual lives. There’s no way to avoid this. The best we can do is to try to develop wisdom and self-knowledge so that we don’t fool ourselves into thinking Isis told us something when we were really just hearing our internal echo chamber. Yet, as long as we can recognize it as our own stuff, this too can be a valuable learning experience.

If we can be honest with ourselves, then when we do have an important dream or vision, we will more easily be able to recognize it. The dream or vision will be more vivid—in our minds, hearts, and memories. We will have a sense of its importance and, at least for us, truth. (Never, ever rely on memory alone; write it down, please. I speak from experience.)

Once Isis has made Herself known to us in our dreams or visions, then it is up to us to take Her up on Her invitation or take up any tasks She may have given us.

Perfumes for Isis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goddess in the present tense…dammit

I do not often rant on this blog, as those of you who have been reading along well know. But you are about to read one. Okay, a tiny one. Sorry. Every now and then, this little rant gets kicked off by reading other writers…people who actually DO have a relationship with their Deities and who yet often do not use the present tense when speaking or writing about their Deities. So now you see where this is going…

If you’ve read Isis Magic or Offering to Isis, you may have noticed that—except when something actually is in the past—I always refer to the Goddess in present tense. In fact, I have been very, very, very, very conscious of doing so.

Because, you see, She IS.

She’s is not a Being Who was but is no more. She is not “just a myth,” some silly old story deserving of the past tense. Indeed, She is All that Is, and Was, and Ever Shall Be. She existed then, She exists now, and She will exist when the rugged, snowcapped mountain that, on a clear day, I can see from my rooftop has become a gentle, green hill.

And I know you know that. Which is why I am so puzzled when I sometimes see modern Pagans, Polytheists, Wiccans, Witches, and insert-your-self-definition-of-choice-here using the past tense about their Deities. The most recent one I saw, and which kicked off this rant, was a witch writing that “Hekate was…”

I am all that was, that is, that ever shall be... — I am all that was, that is, that ever shall be…

It happens most often when telling Their sacred stories, trying to offer a brief “definition” (as if that could be done!) of the Deity, or describing Their relationships with other Deities: “Isis was the Goddess of Magic.” Osiris was the husband of Isis.” Isn’t She still the Goddess of Magic? Isn’t He still Her husband? Now if you said, “To the ancient Egyptians, Isis was the Goddess of Magic and Osiris was Her husband,” that would work. No more ancient Egyptians around today, so what they considered is indeed history. To me, however, Isis IS the Goddess of Magic and Osiris IS Her beloved husband.

In writing of the history of the Isis religion and the many aspects in which She has appeared to humanity, I have always kept in mind that, to the people who worshipped Her then, as well as to those of us who do so today, Isis was and is a Living Goddess. She is not a historical curiosity. She is not a metaphor for our times. She is not feminist wish fulfillment. She is not merely a psychological archetype. She is Divine Love, Life, Magic, Mystery. She is Goddess and She is.
— Isis Magic

And speaking of myths, a myth isn’t something that is false— “oh, that’s just a myth.” No. A myth is a sacred story meant to tell us something about the Deity or Deities of the myth. Myths are “things that never happened but always are,” in the words of the 4th century CE Roman writer Sallustius. Or maybe myths are things that never happened historically, but are eternally true. Ask Joseph Campbell. Or Jean Huston. Or the many others who are doing Work with myths. And remember, just because it belongs to the corpus of the dominant monotheisms doesn’t mean it’s not mythology. Egyptian mythology is. Christian mythology is. Jewish mythology is. They are all sacred stories and they are all mythology.

Most of this, I think, comes from early and ongoing conditioning. Except for those of you young enough to have been born of Pagan parents, most of us were taught in school, from early on, that the ancient Deities were and mythology was. But let’s get over that. May we all just mind our tenses and our mythologies, please?

Can't help it...just found this and kinda love it. — I kinda love this. This was a public dance party in San Francisco, mixed by the Bulgarian artist KINK.

The Is-ness of Isis

But how do we know that Isis is? How do we know that She’s “real”? Must we simply “have faith”? Do we just choose to “believe in” Her? Can we prove Her is-ness?

We can prove Isis’ is-ness, Her reality, exactly as much as any human being can prove the reality of any Deity, which is to say, we cannot. There is no scientific proof for the Divine. There is no infallible book or teacher that holds all the answers to all the questions. Yet this—happily—means exactly nothing when it comes to the truth of Isis’ existence.

This question of belief and faith is much more vexed for those of us in non-mainstream (O how I dislike that designation!) religions. How often have you been asked by some friend or family member or (hopefully) well-meaning stranger, “Well, then, what do Isians—or Pagans or Polytheists or Wiccans or Witches or insert-your-self-definition-of-choice-here—believe?”

And how have you answered?

Many of us involved in alternative spirituality today were reared in one monotheistic religion or the other, most often, Christianity. From early on, we were taught to “believe in” God and Jesus. We were told that a particular book was the Word of God, “proved” that God was real, and explained precisely what He wanted us to do with our lives. In terms of religion, the clergy were to be our role models, the ones whose faith was strong, whose belief was true; we should have faith and believe as they do.

We got used to using those words, faith and belief, when speaking about religion. But perhaps those are not the right words.

For me, what proves that Isis is real is my experience of Her, not my faith or belief in Her. No single book is the touchstone for my spirituality, though I find spiritual truths in many, many books written by many, many wise human beings. I can’t transfer my deep knowing of Her reality to anyone else (though I admit that the exercises and rituals I share with others are attempts to at least set up the conditions that will enable others to discover their own experiences of Her). Nevertheless, experience of the Divine is an individual thing; each one of us must experience Isis for ourselves—even if we do so in a group. Clergy can facilitate. Books can show us a way. The experiences of others can strengthen us in our desire for our own experience of the Goddess. But, in the end, we will not truly know Isis for ourselves until we have our own experience of Her.

When that experience comes for the first time, it may bring awe, tears, joy, pain. When it comes again and again, throughout the many years, I can tell you that it may still bring all those things. But repeated and ongoing experience of the Goddess will also bring a true knowing, a personal gnosis, of Her. No longer operating just “on faith,” now we know Her reality because we have experienced it. No longer just believing, we have discovered Her truth for ourselves and it has become our truth.

Yes, that's it, Goddess, O yes! — Yes, Goddess, O yes!

I am Isis—the Goddess & Her Aretalogies

I very much like this Cosmic Isis by artist Dahlia Khodur. Here’s a link to her FB page.

Let’s talk a bit about the Isis aretalogies.

The aretalogies are those first-person statements in which the Goddess details Her many accomplishments and gifts to humankind. Here’s an except from one in case you need a little reminder:

I am She that riseth in the Dog Star.
I am She that is called Goddess by women.
For me was the city of Bubastis built.
I divided the earth from the heaven.
I showed the paths of the stars.
I ordered the course of the sun and the moon.
I devised business in the sea.
I made strong the right.
I brought together woman and man.
I appointed to women to bring their infants to birth in the tenth month.
I ordained that parents should be loved by children.
I laid punishment on those disposed without natural affection toward their parents.
I made with My brother Osiris an end to the eating of men.
I revealed mysteries unto men.

The word “aretalogy” is, as you may be able to tell, Greek. Arete means “virtues” and logy is from logos, “word,” so aretalogy is “speaking about virtues.” In aretalogy, the Deity is usually speaking in the first person about Her or His own virtues. But that’s not always so. For instance, the Aretalogy of Maronea is not spoken by the Goddess Herself, but by someone whom She healed. In Her honor, he speaks of Her virtues.

Green Isis spreads Her wings over the deceased — I am Isis. I revealed Mysteries unto humankind.

Isis is one of the few Deities for Whom we have quite a number of aretalogies. As with many Things Scholarly, there are disagreements about which of these documents should be considered aretalogies, so there’s no canonical count. But we can think in terms of six to ten. (That does not count the many, many hymns to the Goddess.)

The existing copies of these important documents are all written in Greek and date (we think) from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd or 3rd century CE. Some of the scholars who have studied them have looked for ancient Egyptian precedents for the ideas in them, others believe them to be purely Greek in origin. Dieter Muller, a German Egyptologist who studied the texts extensively, took 56 phrases that refer to Isis in the aretalogies and tried to trace them to their sources. He concluded that nine were, in both form and content, Egyptian in origin, seven were Egyptian but expressed in a Greek way, 24 were of Greek origin, and 16 uncertain, but possibly Greek.

Another scholar, Jan Bergman, traced each of the statements to an original Egyptian concept claiming that the statements cannot be properly understood unless placed in context with Memphite religion and the relationship between the Egyptian Deities and Egyptian royalty. Louis Zabkar, an Italian-born Egyptologist who studied the hymns to Isis at Her Philae temple, believes that the Philae hymns contributed to the content of the aretalogies. In a epilog to his book about Isis’ Philae hymns, Zabkar takes another look at Muller’s work and expands the number of Egyptian-original aretalogical statements to 23, making them almost equal to the number of Greek-original statements. More recent scholars, too, have traced more and more of the self-statements to Egyptian originals.

One of two female figures at the entrance to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; given that the museum opened in 1902, she is probably supposed to be either Cleopatra or Isis — One of two female figures flanking the entrance to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; given that the museum opened in 1902, she is probably supposed to be either Cleopatra or Isis

Two of the aretalogies (from Kyme & Andros) state that they were copied from a stele “before the temple of Hephaestus [that is, Ptah] at Memphis.” Scholars thus sometimes refer to this as the M-text and believe that it could be the original from which all the other aretalogies were either copied or developed.

Some researchers have suggested that the thoughts of a famous Greek atheist contributed to the content of the Isis aretalogies. His name was Prodicus and he was a Greek philosopher (5th century BCE). His idea was that the gods were not divine at all, but were instead brilliant human beings from a primordial time who were so beneficial to humankind that people deified them. We usually hear of this idea tied to the name of a Greek mythographer named Euhemerus (4th century BCE). In fact, we even give it his name: euhemerism. But Euhemerus most likely got the idea from Prodicus.

Euhemerism was one of the ways the ancient Pagan Deities survived in the Christianized West. Since They (or they) were merely human beings, their myths could be retold—and even be used to teach “Christian” virtues. This definitely happened with Isis. (Isis Magic details some of the ways the story of Isis remained a part of the culture during this time.)

But what does all that have to do with the aretalogies? Some scholars (Fritz Graf; Albert Henrichs) suggest that this type of Prodican euhemerism—especially in relation to the cultural gifts of the Deities—was going on in the Eleusinian cults at that time. And, since Isis and Demeter were being equated, the Eleusinian euhemerism was applied to Isis and shows up in the Isis aretalogies. You can see it strongly in the Maronea aretalogy, which may be the oldest of these Isiac documents that we have. (It does not, however, explain the “I-am” structure of the Kyme aretalogy, which is very unlike Greek hymns and, in fact, has exact precedent in Egyptian sacred texts.)

Now, it’s not that the Eleusinians who took up some of Prodicus’ ideas were atheists themselves. We could say that they were merely adopting one of the memes of their day. They liked the idea of their Deity being the source of important aspects of culture and incorporated it.

Some scholars believe the Isis aretalogies were created as propaganda to help spread the gospel of Isis throughout the Mediterranean. At least to some extent, that’s probably so. But there are other ideas, too. I’m reading an article right now that argues they were read aloud as part of initiation into the Mysteries of Isis. To me, the argument isn’t persuasive due to the strict secrecy of the Mysteries. If the aretalogy was recited as part of the key epiphany of the Goddess in Her Mysteries, it would likely have been kept secret rather than carved in stone and set up before the temple of Ptah in Memphis. But it’s an intriguing idea nonetheless.

A priestess making offering; photo by Victor Keppler

Interestingly, we have a dedication from the island of Delos made to Isis and Anubis by an “aretalogos.” If there was a regular priestly function as a Speaker of Aretalogies, perhaps the recitation of an aretalogy was part of the standard worship of the Goddess rather than part of Her Mysteries. Another suggestion is that they were read during Her great feasts.

Whether PR or liturgy, it seems most likely that both Egyptian and Greek elements formed the conceptual basis of the Isis aretalogies. Memphis was one of the places where Egyptian and Greek ideas came together, apparently without rancor. Here, key religious ideas of both Egyptians and Greeks blended, and could have resulted in the M-text.

But I wonder whether personal elements could have figured into the creation of the aretalogies as well. At least some of you have had Her speak to you in this way, telling you of Her arete in first person. It is a powerful experience; not likely to be forgotten. Perhaps you’ve even written it down to commemorate it. Who is to say that our ancient predecessors didn’t do the same?

For—as She has always done—Isis can speak directly to our hearts, telling us Who She Is, and especially Who She Is for us right now.

The Light of Isis

Avocado_Seedling As the days grow longer, a certain soft joy fills me.

By no means has winter here in my part of the Pacific Northwest been harsh. Yet I find that the increasing light releases me, urging me to draw in deep breaths that I didn’t even know I longed for.

That is what Light can do.

Many of us have spent so much of our spiritual capital in “accepting our inner darknesses,” that we can forget to take the time to accept our inner illumination as well. If truth be told (and it shall be), it can often be easier to accept the Beautiful Dark than to bathe in the Brilliance of the Light. The Light gives us nowhere to hide. We are ultimately vulnerable before It, obliterated by Its beneficence. Now that’s scary.

Happily, our Goddess—while She is quite at home in the dark—is also a Lady of Light. And though She is quite capable of obliterating us with beneficence, She can also offer us Her Light as the spring sun offers its warm and persuasive light to the seeds and roots that are just now awakening in the muddy earth.

Isis is associated with all the heavenly lights—as you likely know. Our Goddess is indeed a Sun Goddess. She is also seen in the light of Her holy star, Sirius, and even in the light of the moon, at least in later periods.

An oil lamp from Egypt, Roman period. It shows Isis and Harpocrates.

A festival calendar from the temple of Edfu records a summer procession of Isis the Brilliant. During that festival, the image of the radiant Goddess was carried among the people in Her sacred boat, coming to rest in Her boat-sanctuary. There, the calendar text tells us “every kind of good thing is offered to her.” Some modern Kemetic Orthodox groups celebrate this as the Aset Luminous Festival. Participants illuminate paper boats with candles and set them adrift to carry worshippers’ prayers to Isis. In accordance with the ancient traditions, offerings are also given to Isis at this time.

Isis’ temples in Italy may have been particularly well lit. Fifty-eight lamps were found in the temple at Pompeii. In that not-overly-large temple space, that many lamps would have provided a great deal of light. A personal Isis shrine in Pompeii had 20 lamps. Lamps were common votive gifts to Isis as well. In his ancient novel, The Golden Ass, Apuleius describes the lanterns, torches, candles, and “other kinds of artificial light” that were carried in a procession for Isis.

Isis as the Goddess of Light from the Thoth Tarot Deck, art by Frieda Harris. — Isis as High Priestess and Goddess of Light from the Thoth Tarot Deck, art by Frieda Harris.

Surely not all of this illumination was purely practical. Indeed, Apuleius notes that the processional lights were symbols of the heavenly light of the stars in the Goddess’ heaven. He also uses many allusions to light and radiance in telling his readers about Isis. For example, the blessings brought by Isis are described as “radiant” (inlustre). The initiating priest in Apuleius’ story says that, unlike blind Fortune, Isis sees and “illumines the other gods too with the radiance of her light.”

It is also possible that Roman-period priests of Isis may have carried lighted lamps about in daylight as a symbol of the spiritual light bestowed by their Goddess. Seneca mentions a “linen-clad old man” (Isian clergy were notorious wearers of linen) who carried around a lighted lamp in broad daylight. J. Gwyn Griffiths, one of my favorite Isis scholars, thinks this may refer to a priest of Isis.

Just as light can literally dispel darkness, it is frequently a symbol of dispelling spiritual darkness. The Light of Isis illuminates the dark corners of our souls and shines light on our paths as we seek to understand the Divine Mystery. With our ancient sisters and brothers—initiates of the Mysteries of Isis—we can understand that the Light of Isis can help us grow in the brilliant Light of Her love, wisdom, and protection.

The Magic of the Hair of Isis

A beautiful woman with beautiful hair — The charm of beautiful hair

We are not immune to the charms of a beautiful head of hair and the ancient Egyptians weren’t either.

But they took appreciation for hair, especially feminine hair, to a whole new level of magnitude. For them, hair was magical. And, of course, Who would have the most magical hair of all? The Goddess of Magic: Isis Herself.

I have always understood that the long hair of Isis in Egyptian tradition—disarrayed and covering Her face in mourning or falling in heavy, dark locks over Her shoulders—to be the predecessor of the famous Veil of Isis of later tradition. Ah, but there is so much more.

In ancient Egypt, it was a mourning custom for Egyptian women to dishevel their hair. They wore it long and unkempt, letting it fall across their tear-stained faces, blinding them in sympathy with the blindness first experienced by the dead. As the Ultimate Divine Mourner, this was particularly true of Isis. At Koptos, where Isis was notably worshipped as a Mourning Goddess, a healing prayer made “near the hair at Koptos” is recorded. Scholars consider this a reference to Mourning Isis with Her disheveled and powerfully magical hair.

Mourners using various gestures and dishevel their hair — Mourners use various mourning gestures and dishevel their hair

It is in Her disheveled, mourning state, that Isis finally finds Osiris. She reassembles Him, fans life into Him, and makes love with Him. As She mounts His prone form, Her long hair falls over Their faces, concealing Them like a veil and providing at least some perceived privacy for Their final lovemaking. As the Goddess and God make love, the meaning of Isis’ hair turns from death to life. It becomes sexy—remember those big-haired “paddle doll” fertility symbols?

minnakhtjpg1 — A mourning woman with her hair over her face from the tomb of Minnakht

This pairing of love and death is both natural and eternal. How many stories have you heard—or perhaps you have a personal one—about couples making love after a funeral? It’s so common that it’s cliché. But it makes perfect sense: in the face of death, we human beings must affirm life. We do so through the mutual pleasure of sex and, for heterosexual couples, the possibility of engendering new life that sex provides. The lovemaking of Isis and Osiris is the ultimate expression of this. Chapter 17 of the Book of Coming Forth by Day (aka the Book of the Dead), describes the disheveled hair of Isis when She comes to Osiris:

“I am Isis, you found me when I had my hair disordered over my face, and my crown was disheveled. I have conceived as Isis, I have procreated as Nephthys.” (Chapter 17; translation by Rosa Valdesogo Martín, who has extensively studied the connection of hair to funerary customs in ancient Egypt.)

There is also a variant of this chapter that has Isis apparently straightening up Her “bed head” following lovemaking:

“Isis dispels my bothers (?) [The Allen translation has “Isis does away with my guard; Nephthys puts an end to my troubles.]. My crown is disheveled; Isis has been over her secret, she has stood up and has cleaned her hair.” (Chapter 17 variant, translation by Martín, above.)

This lovemaking of Goddess and God has cosmic implications for its result is a powerful and important new life: Horus. As the new pharaoh, Horus restores order to both kingdom and cosmos following the chaos brought on by the death of the old pharaoh, Osiris.

Not only is hair symbolic of the blindness of death and the new life of lovemaking; the hair of the Goddesses is actually part of the magic of rebirth. Isis and Her sister, Nephthys, are specifically called the Two Long Haired Ones. The long hair of the Goddesses is associated with the knotting, tying, wrapping, weaving, knitting, and general assembling necessary to bring about the great Mystery of rebirth. Hair-like threads of magic are woven about the deceased who has returned to the womb of the Great Mother. The Coffin Texts give the name of part of the sacred boat of the deceased (itself a symbolic womb) as the Braided Tress of Isis.

Mourners, probably Isis and Nephthys, throw Their hair over the Osiris

In some Egyptian iconography, we see mourning women, as well as the Goddesses Isis and Nephthys, with hair thrown forward in what is known as the nwn gesture. Sometimes they/They actually pull a lock of hair forward, especially toward the deceased, which is called the nwn m gesture. It may be that this gesture, especially when done by Goddesses, is meant to transfer new life to the deceased, just as Isis’ bed-head hair brought new life to Osiris. It is interesting to note that the Egyptians called vegetation “the hair of the earth” and that bare land was called “bald” land, which simply reiterates the idea of hair is an expression of life.

Spell 562 of the Coffin Texts notes the ability of the hair of Isis and Nephthys to unite things, saying that the hair of the Goddesses is knotted together and that the deceased has come to “be joined to the Two Sisters and be merged in the Two Sisters, for they will never die.”

Isis and Nephthys pull a lock of hair toward the deceased

The Pyramid Texts instruct the resurrected dead to loosen their bonds, “for they are not bonds, they are the tresses of Nephthys.” Thus the magical hair of the Goddesses is only an illusory bond. Their hair is not a bond of restraint but rather the bonding agent needed for rebirth. Like the placenta that contains and feeds the child but is no longer necessary when the child is born, the reborn one throws off the tresses of the Goddesses that had previously wrapped her or him in safety.

The Egyptian idea of Isis as the Long-Haired One carried over into Her later Roman cult, too. In Apuleius’ account of the Mysteries of Isis, he describes the Goddess as having long and beautiful hair. Her statues often show Her with long hair, and Her priestesses were known to wear their hair long in honor of their Goddess.

This is sketched from a coffin from Gebelein, 13th dynasty where either a long-haired female image or a long-haired female is spreading her hair over the deceased. I must find a photo of this...it is freakin' amazing! — This is sketched from a coffin found in Gebelein (now Naga-el Gheria), 13th dynasty. Either a long-haired female image or a tiny long-haired female person is spreading her hair over the deceased. I must find a photo of this…it is freakin’ amazing!

This little bit of research has inspired me to want experiment with the magic of hair in ritual. In Isis Magic, the binding and unbinding of the hair is part of the “Lamentations of Isis” rite (where it is very powerful, I can tell you from experience), but I want to try using it in some solitary ritual, too. I have longish hair, so that will work, but if you don’t and are, like me, inspired to experiment, try using a veil. It is most certainly in Her tradition. (See “Veil” in my Offering to Isis.)

If you want to learn more about the traditions around hair and death, please visit Rosa Valdesogo Martín’s amazing and extensive site here. That’s where most of these images come from…many of which I had not seen before. Thank you, Rosa!

Isis & Min

I’m so used to thinking of Isis with Osiris that I can forget She is also paired with other Gods. Today, we’ll look at one of Them: the God of the Upright Phallus, Min.

ancient-egypt-map1

Isis and Min shared a temple complex at Koptos (Gebtu in ancient Egyptian, Qift in modern). It is in Upper Egypt, near Denderah and Thebes. The site is connected to the Red Sea by the Wadi Hammamat (meaning “Valley of Many Baths), a dry riverbed. The wadi contains important 3,000-year-old petroglyphs; in ancient times, it led to major Egyptian mining areas and was a key trade route.

Koptos is also just across the Nile from Naqada, the site of the pre-dynastic culture that takes its name from the site. What is known as Naqada II (3500-3400 BCE) is the period to which the beautiful statuettes of the “Nile Goddess” or “Dancing Woman” are dated.

These statues are usually identified as Nile Goddesses, but she may be a dancing priestess with her arms upraised...perhaps in the Wings of Isis — The Nile Goddess or dancing woman of Naqada. More on Her here.

Koptos is an ancient, ancient sacred site and probably originally belonged to Min alone. Herodotus reports that the Egyptians considered Him their oldest Deity. Yet by at least the time of the New Kingdom, Isis is prominent there as well and Min becomes assimilated with Osiris. The temple to Isis and Min, the ruins of which we see today, was built under Ptolemy II, with additions made under succeeding pharaohs. There are remains of two more temples on the site. One is the Ptolemaic “middle temple” or “Osiris temple.” The other is a temple dedicated to Geb and Isis, probably begun under Nectanebo II and continued under the Ptolemies. There is literary evidence for a temple of Isis and Harpokrates, but its remains have not yet been found.

One of the interesting things about Koptos is that it was a popular oracular site. You can still see the small chamber to the rear of the Isis and Geb temple in which the entranced priest would sit to deliver the words of the Deity. This oracular chapel was built by Kleopatra VII (the famous one). The tradition of oracles at Koptos did not cease with the coming of Christianity. In a work called Theosophia, we have record of an oracle from Koptos that is ostensibly an Egyptian Pagan oracle, but since it discusses the unity of the Logos and the Father, a number of scholars think it was likely a Christian retrofit. Be that as it may, the point is that the tradition of oracles at Koptos was well established.

The so-called Colossus of Koptos...a predynastic form of Min — The so-called Colossus of Koptos…a predynastic form of Min; they found three of these at Koptos

A particular Isiac relic at Koptos seems to have been a lock of Her hair. A Greek dedication to Her says it is “to the Great Goddess, Isis of the Hair.” We also have a record of a healing prayer made “near the hair at Koptos.” Plutarch explains the tradition for us, relating that when Isis first heard of the death of Osiris, She cut off a lock of Her hair and donned mourning dress. He notes that this is why the city there is called Koptos for some derive the name from Greek koptein, meaning “to deprive.” The cutting of hair is a Greek mourning tradition; Egyptian women simply wore theirs long and unkempt. (Read more about that tradition here.) Nevertheless, among both Greeks and Egyptians, Isis of Koptos was particularly known a Mourning Goddess.

The ancient Greek travel writer, Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, mentions Koptos as the site of a tragedy that befell a man who rashly entered Isis’ sanctuary there without a specific invitation from the Goddess:

I have heard a similar story from a man of Phoenicia that the Egyptians hold the feast for Isis at a time when they say she is mourning for Osiris. At this time the Nile begins to rise, and it is a saying among many of the natives that what makes the river rise and water their fields is the tears of Isis. At that time then, so said my Phoenician, the Roman governor of Egypt bribed a man to go down into the shrine of Isis in Koptos. The man dispatched into the shrine returned indeed out of it, but after relating what he had seen, he too, so I was told, died immediately. So it appears that Homer’s verse speaks the truth when it says that it bodes no good to man to see godhead face to face. (Pausanias, Book X, 32, 10-17.)

Koptos must have had strong magical connections as well. If you recall the story of Setna and the magic book, you may remember that the magic book so coveted by Naneferkaptah was to be found at the bottom of the Nile by Koptos.

At Koptos, Isis is sometimes the mother of Min or Min-Hor, sometimes His consort. When Isis and Min are consorts, Min is the father of Hor-pa-khred, Horus the Child. Min is very much a God of male sexual prowess and thus, of course, fertility. Images of Him almost invariably show Him with an erect penis jutting out at an impressive right angle to His body. In the Coffin Texts, the deceased identified himself with “Woman-Hunting” Min to partake of His potent sexuality.

By the 18th dynasty, Min became associated with Amun and was incorporated into the festivals that were intended to revitalize the king. There is an ancient rite of Min called The Going Forth of Min and sometimes The Going Forth of Min to the Khedju, which may mean a type of ritual garden. During these festivals, the sacred image of the God was carried to a symbolic garden so that the God could bless the fields. This blessing was extended to the pharaoh; he took part in the procession as Horus, while the queen participated as Isis.

Although Min is usually shown in anthropomorphic form as a beautiful black man, at Koptos, He was also worshipped in the form of a white bull. Min is called the Beautiful Bull, the Strong Bull, and the Powerful Bull for the bull has always been a symbol of male strength and fertility.

He, Amun, and Horus are also known by the epithet, Kamutef, Bull of His Mother. The epithet has clear sexual connotations. Originally, it seems to have been an epithet of Horus, which was extended to Min when the two Gods were assimilated. It was further extended to Amun when He and Min were assimilated. It points to a primordial conception of the Divine in which the God is both son and lover of the Goddess. In a hymn to Min, a passage says:

Hail to Thee, Min, fecundating Thy mother; secret are Thy dealings with Her when the heavens are dark.

On a 13th dynasty stela, there is a similar inscription about Horus Kamutef:

Thy heart joins with the king as the heart of Horus joined with His mother Isis when He coupled with Her, flank to flank.

This ancient conception perfectly encapsulates the relationship between Isis and Min at Koptos. They are mother and son (sometimes Min is simply called “Min, Son of Isis” just as Horus is Harsiesis, “Horus, Son of Isis”) and They are lovers.

Min is usually shown with His legs tightly mummy-wrapped together but His penis exposed and ready. A flail is shown over His upraised right arm. The flail forms a “V” over His shoulder into the center of which the God places His upraised hand. Some have seen this as a sexual emblem: the vulva-triangle of the flail penetrated by the God’s penis-forearm. Sure, why not? I like it.

In addition to His bull epithets, Min is also known as Lord of Awe and Great of Love, just as Isis can be called Sweet of Love. (Perhaps She calls Him Lord of Awe at times when He has been particularly Great of Love.) In a hymn to Min from Koptos, He is said to love humankind and therefore He made youths (for fertile sex, of course). He is called Fair of Face and Sweet of Love. He is said to abominate the cutting short of the breath of life. He heals the sick and is “beautiful beyond the Gods.” He is also a Lunar God and Protector of the Moon.

I will admit that I have not, to date, done much to honor Min, perhaps because for me, that type of energy comes from Dionysos, to Whom I am also dedicated. Nevertheless, Isis and Min at Koptos make an intriguing pair. Isis is the Beautiful Mourner, the Goddess of the Disheveled Hair. Min is the Lord of Life Who invigorates human beings and agricultural fields alike. As Death and Life, They make a complete cycle. The Bull of His Mother brings renewal to Her in the form of Their Child. She, in turn, nurtures Him as Min, Son of Isis.

Isis & the Star of the New Year

Some people see Isis in the pale, magical light of the moon. Some see Her in the golden, life-giving rays of the sun. I do find Her there. Oh yes.

But for me, the heavenly body in which I most easily see Her is the star, Her star: Sirius (Sopdet in Egyptian, Sothis in Greek). I can’t help it. 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.

The Star of Isis is at its highest point in the night sky right now

The new year is a special time for those of us who find Isis in the light of Her star. Why so special? Because here in the Northern Hemisphere the Star of Isis reaches its highest point in the night sky at midnight on New Year’s Eve. This means that the Star of Isis can be our New Year’s Star just as the heliacal rising of Sirius was the Star of the New Year for the ancient Egyptians. I find that fact to be a small miracle, a gift of the Goddess that we can unwrap every New Year’s Eve. (For some Sirius science, look here.)

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 I haven’t written about before; 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.

Iset-Sopdet following Sah-Osiris in Their celestial boats

Overall, Egyptian temples have a variety of orientations. A survey team in 2004-2008 actually went to all the temples in Egypt and measured their orientations. They showed that most temples were oriented so that the main doorway 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 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 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 archaeo-astronomers who did the survey I mentioned believe that it may also be oriented to the winter solstice sunrise, an event closely associated with Horus.

The ancient Temple of Satet at Elephantine, nestled amid the boulders

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 as 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 Sothis (Sopdet) and wab-priest of the five living stars” (the planets) and “chief magician of the King of Kush;” this according to an inscription on Isis’ temple at Philae dating to about 227 CE. This 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 2008 study revealed that the largest number of Kushite temples and pyramids were oriented to either the winter solstice sunrise or the rise of Sirius.

Sopdet rising — The star Sopdet over the head of the Goddess

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 identified 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.

The New Year has always been a time of reorientation and renewal, of oracles, portents, and purifications. As Sopdet, the Ba or Soul of Isis, shines down on us from its highest vantage point, now is a perfect time to undertake our own personal rites of renewal and reorientation. It is a time of clarity as we bathe in Her pure starlight, a time when we may ask for Her guidance. Whatever your favorite divination method, why not do a reading for the New Year now? Or, if you like a more ritualized oracle, try “The Rite of Loosing the Eyes” in Isis Magic. It is a winter rite in which you purify yourself and your temple, then ask Isis and Nephthys as the Eye Goddesses Who Go Forth to bring you news of what the New Year has in store.

May the stars of the Goddesses shine upon you throughout the beautiful winter, this time of purification and becoming — From that magical moment of midnight on New Year’s Eve and for about the next week, Sirius will ride at its highest in the night sky, shining Her Light upon us. I hope you will join me in celebrating Her beautiful presence. Amma, Iset.

Invocation Offerings to Isis

A king offering incense and pouring a libation

It seems we have always made offering to our Deities. Many have also honored their dead with offerings, as the ancient Egyptians did. Our ancestors offered the choicest cut of meat to the Great Hunter Who had helped them in their hunt. They gave the first handful of ripe berries to the Wild Mother Who had guided them to the mouth-watering cache. They shared their holy days and good fortune by offering feasts to their dead. They filled temples with sumptuous meals and beautiful scents for the Goddesses and Gods. They created art in enduring stone and precious metals and offered it to the Divine Houses.

From Christian tithing to Hindu puja to the stargazer lilies I grow and place upon Isis’ altar, we humans continue to make offering. Perhaps there is something of an inborn impulse to do so.

The Seattle Troll; that's a real VW Beetle in his left hand and a real bridge over his head — The Seattle Troll; that’s a real VW Beetle in his left hand and a real bridge over his head

I came across what I take as an example of that innate impulse one day when visiting the Seattle Troll. Large enough to hold a VW Beetle in one hand and staring out of a single, glassy eye, the Seattle Troll lives beneath the Aurora Bridge in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. He was originally a work of art funded by the city, but he has become something more. He has become a Work of Art and now receives offerings from passersby and neighborhood residents.

The day I visited—not a special day, just a weekday like any other—the Troll was supplied with an amazing array of offerings. There were fresh flowers, smoked almonds, jewelry, coins, jams, a bag of fresh cherries, a whole watermelon, a bright pink-orange slab of raw salmon, a whole Dungeness crab, a bar of soap, a pack of cigarettes, two coffee mugs, and two t-shirts. These offerings were fresh, too, the flowers and food as yet unwilted. At first, it looked like someone had temporarily left their picnic. But no. The votives were carefully arranged upon the enormous hands of the Troll. They were clearly presented, and no picnickers were to be found. The items were offerings and nothing less.

Two of the six Devas making continual offering in Hong Kong — Two of the six Devas making continual offering to the Buddha in Hong Kong

I doubt that any of those who offer to the Troll see him as a Deity—at most, he’s a quirky neighborhood spirit. Yet people leave offerings just the same.

Perhaps it’s because when we make offering we are seeking relationship. In the case of the Troll, perhaps we seek connection with the progressive spirit of the neighborhood. Maybe the Troll’s mere existence gave us a chuckle and we offer a gift of thanks, connecting with those who share our amusement or with the Troll’s artist-creators. Perhaps the offerings were intended to be discovered by someone in need, as Hekate’s Supper offerings were meant.

In a divine context, making offering can be a joyful sharing of blessings with the Deity or spirits with whom we have or seek a relationship. As an act of gift giving, offering is a universal way to create the sweet bonds of interconnection and ongoing reciprocity between giver and receiver. Offering encourages generosity in the giver. Some Tibetan Buddhists say that it is this growing generosity in ourselves that pleases the Deities, rather than the actual offerings. Offering can be a meditation, a prayer, a way to honor tradition, an act of devotion, a method of giving thanks, a path to greater openness of spirit.

Making offering was essential to the Egyptian relationship with the Divine while the relationship itself was essential to the proper functioning of the universe. The Egyptians knew that the universal order hinged upon the ongoing, interwoven relationship between Divine and human, natural and supernatural. If human beings failed to provide right worship to the Deities—a significant part of which was the act of making offering—the world would dissolve into chaos and the Goddesses and Gods would not have the energy required to maintain and renew the physical universe. The exchange of energy, the building of relationship made the act of offering an ongoing renewal of the world in partnership with the Deities.

In fact, offering was considered such a key part of the functioning of the universe that there are numerous representations of Deities making offering to each other. From Isis’ temple at Philae, we learn that the Goddess made libation offerings to Her beloved Osiris every 10 days. The temple calendar from Esna notes that She also made offering to Osiris (and to another Deity Whose name is lost) on the 10th day of the first month of the season of Inundation.

In ancient Egyptian temples, the offerings were often food and drink, flowers, incense, perfume, and even special items associated with the particular Deity: jewelry for Hathor, hawk feathers for Horus. Symbolic offerings were given too. The Eye of Horus, for example, could represent many different types of offerings and statuettes of Ma’at were given to represent the offerant’s dedication to upholding the Right and the Just and the True, which is the Being and Nature of the Goddess Ma’at.

But today, I’d like to talk about a particular type of offering, one that may be especially appropriate to Isis as Lady of Words of Power and, as She was called in Busiris, Djedet Weret, the Great Word. Egyptologists today call it an “invocation offering.” Egyptians called it peret kheru, the “going forth of the voice.”

We’ve talked many times about the power of the word in Egyptian practice. Isis conceives something in Her heart, then speaks it into existence. Words can establish, they can move magic, they can nourish and renew the spirit. A Hermetic text from the early centuries of the Common Era expressed the genuinely ancient Egyptian tradition that the quality of the speech and the very sound of the Egyptian words contain the energy of the objects of which they speak and are “sounds full of action.” This is precisely why words are powerful: they contain the energy of the objects they name, which is the energy of original Creation.

Because of their power, many of the most important words were preserved in Egypt’s great temple complexes in structures known as the Per Ankh, the House of Life. Primarily, the House of Life was a library containing information about all the things that sustained life and nourished the soul and spirit—from magic to medicine to religious mysteries.

The sacred words contained in the Houses of Life were sometimes understood as the food of the deceased as well as of the Deities, particularly of Osiris as the Divine prototype of all the dead. One of the funerary books instructs the deceased that his spiritual “hw-food” is to be found in the library and that his provisions “come into being” in the House of Life. A papyrus known as the Papyrus SALT says that the books in the House of Life at Abydos are “the emanations of Re” that keep Osiris alive. An official who claimed to have restored the House of Life at Abydos said that he “renewed the sustenance of Osiris.”

Because of the nourishing and sustaining power of the word, tomb inscriptions not only asked visitors to speak the name of the deceased, but might also ask them to recite an offering formula so that the offerings would be “renewed.” Egyptologists know this as the “appeal to the living.” The deceased assures the living that he or she need only speak the formula with the “breath of the mouth” and that doing so benefits the one who does it even more than the one who receives it.

By speaking the words and naming the offerings, the spiritual essence and magic of those offerings was re-activated and reconnected with its non-physical source so that it could once again feed the spirit of the deceased. It was as if the tomb visitor had given the offerings anew. Since both the human giver and the spirit receiver gained during this process, the act of making offering in this way reinforced and promoted the reciprocal blessings between the material and spiritual worlds.

Thus the peret kheru is an offering where no material object was given, but magically potent words were spoken. Because of the essential spiritual unity of an object, its representation, and the words that describe and name it, the Egyptians considered invocation offerings to be fully as effective and fully as valuable as physical offerings. Invocation offering is a genuine, traditional Egyptian form of offering.

What is the Tyet or Knot of Isis?

two Isis Knots — Two Isis Knots or tyets

The image to the left is the standard form of the amulet known as the tyet or Knot of Isis. It is an open loop of material, tied with a sash that hangs down below the loop on two sides. The tyet looks similar to the ankh, the hieroglyph for “life” except that its elongated crossbar is folded down. In fact, the tyet may be related to the ankh, for the tyet sign is often translated as “life” or “welfare.”

The origins of the amulet are unknown. As a knot, however, its symbolism in Egyptian thought can give us some clues. A knot involves the idea of binding and releasing, the joining of opposites, and, since a knot secures things, protection. Knot magic was well known in Egypt from an early period; an inscription in one of the pyramids states, “Isis and Nephthys work magic on Thee [Osiris] with knotted cords.” In addition to the formula above, the Book of Coming Forth by Day gives several other examples of the magical power of the knot.

Osiris as the Djed Pillar with Isis and Nephthys beside Him as two Tyet Knots

In this one, knots are tied around the deceased to help her 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 Nut, when I first saw Maat, 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, other texts mention seven knots, or tesut, that were tied about the deceased to protect them.

Djed & Tiet — The Knot of Isis is frequently paired with the Pillar of Osiris as in this modern amulet.

The tyet first appears in Egyptian iconography in the third dynasty. It was frequently used in association with the djed pillar of Osiris and so became almost exclusively associated with Isis. Used together, the two symbols could refer to the power of the Goddess and God to engender Life. Because of this, the symbols may also be seen as sexual symbols; the pillar referring to the phallus of the God and the knot to the vulva and womb of the Goddess.

It may have been the combination of the tyet’s connection with life and its association with Isis’ sexuality that led to it being called the Blood of Isis and so being made of red jasper, carnelian, or even red glass. It might represent the red lifeblood a mother sheds while giving birth.

On the other hand, it might represent menstrual blood. Some say the amulet is shaped like the cloth worn by women during menstruation. Others have interpreted it as a representation of a ritual tampon that could be inserted in the vagina to prevent miscarriage. (Read more about that here. ) In addition to blood, the amulet’s red color could represent fire and the Sun—and the living, regenerative properties of Isis the Flame, the Radiant Solar Goddess and Lady of Rebirth.

A Roman-era version of the Knot of Isis worn by the Goddess or Her priestess

In the later Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Knot of Isis becomes familiar as a knot tied into the clothing of the Goddess and Her priestesses and devotees.

The image to the right is a Roman-era Isis and shows the usual way we tend to see the Knot of Isis tied into clothing during the Greco-Roman period.

The Knot of Isis ensemble consisted of two pieces: an under-robe, long or short-sleeved, and an over-mantle that was draped around the body and tied together with a large knot—the Isis Knot—between the breasts. The mantle is often fringed. The mantle shown here has just a little fringe, which you can see a little bit where the ends of the knot hang loose.

The type of New Kingdom woman’s dress that became the model for the Knot of Isis ritual clothing

In Egypt, however, the draped mantle was not quite the specialized mode of dress it became in the Greco-Roman world. In fact, scholars believe that the later Knot of Isis outfit derived from the type of Egyptian dress worn by many queens and noblewomen beginning in the New Kingdom (1570-1085 BCE). (Goddesses, on the other hand, are almost always shown wearing the old-fashioned sheath dress, the kalasiris, which is tight-fitting and held up by two wide straps that, sort of, cover the breasts.)

New Kingdom fashion became more sumptuous. Women’s clothing gained drapery and folds, but because it was often made of very sheer material, you could still appreciate the curves of the wearer’s body beneath. (Egyptian weavers were famed for their ability to create exquisitely fine linen. It was said that it was so fine that it could easily be pulled through a finger ring.)

The New Kingdom dress has material draped over both arms and knotted between the breasts. What we don’t see here is the heavy draping under the breasts that became characteristic of the Knot of Isis costume in later periods. Our beautiful New Kingdom lady has no need of an under-robe. Yet Isis’ Greek and Roman devotees, in their more modest—or perhaps, restrictive—cultures, preferred an undergarment of some kind, usually a simple robe like a Greek chiton.

As time passed and Egypt came under Greek and then Roman rule, Egyptian women would opt for an undergarment as well, either a slim, Egyptian kalasiris or a Greek chiton. There are some Egyptian images in which we can see the undergarment through the diaphanous draped mantle. In the Greek and Roman worlds, with the under-robe standard, the mantle could become shorter and more decorative. The fringe becomes more common and the draping, especially beneath the breasts, becomes more pronounced.

Arsinoe II with Isis knot dress and missing her headdress

It appears to have been the Ptolemaic queens—who were often identified with Isis and Hathor/Aphrodite—who eventually turned the royal knotted outfit into an attribute of Isis specifically. The earliest known instance is Arsinoe II (born 316 BCE) on a monument known as the Pithom stele. There Arsinoe wears the knotted costume and Goddess headdress and is called “the image of Isis and Hathor.”

Arsinoe III is also shown wearing the knotted garment and headdress (see below) and she, too, is sometimes assimilated with Isis, for example, in inscriptions that blessed the queen as “Arsinoe Philadelphus Isis.”

By the time of Kleopatra III, Isis had gained more prominence and the queen became more and more associated with Her. When Kleopatra III gave birth to a son, she was hailed as “Isis, Mother of the God.” What’s more, because the child had the same birthday as the Apis bull, Kleopatra III also became the “Isis cow,” the Mother of Apis. It is more than likely that Kleopatra III encouraged these types of identifications as she was in an intense rivalry with her mother, Kleopatra II, to whom Ptolemy VIII was still married when he also married his niece, Kleopatra III. Talk about complicated relationships. Ptolemies. Sheesh.

It is, as yet, unknown exactly when Isis Herself was first represented wearing the characteristic knot. What seems likely is that, as the Isis-identified queens were more and more often shown wearing the knotted garment, artists naturally took up that same style when creating images of the Goddess Herself. Queens have always been fashion setters.

Priestesses and devotees of the Goddess might then choose to imitate the dress of Isis as they saw it being depicted in the art and temples around them.

To recap: the knotted garment was originally an Egyptian fashion, especially seen on royal and noble women. The Ptolemaic queens, who were Greek but trying to be more Egyptian, adopted the knotted garment as an outfit that Egyptian royals wore. As part of “becoming Egyptian” the Ptolemies promoted the cult of Isis, Osiris/Sarapis, and Horus/Harpokarates. Egyptian tradition already associated the pharaoh with Horus, the son of Isis. To emphasize their Egyptian-ness, the Ptolemaic queens began to associate themselves with Isis and with Hathor. By the end of the dynasty, Isis was the more prominent Goddess and the queens, wearing their Egyptian knotted outfits, were strongly identified with Isis.

What’s more, since there was already a famous knot associated with Isis, the tyet, it was easy to connect the knotted garment with the Goddess of the sacred knot, the Knot of Isis.

At the time when the Ptolemaic queens were identifying themselves with Isis, the Goddess’ worship was being widely disseminated outside of Egypt. Non-Egyptian artists looked to Egypt for the way to portray the Goddess. Naturally, they looked to the queens. They then used the knotted garment, along with other Egyptian symbols, such as the lotus and the crocodile, to indicate that the sacred image they were creating was indeed intended to be Isis Herself.

An incredibly sensual image of a Ptolemaic queen with the knot between her breasts

So that’s the connection between the ancient amulet known as the Knot of Isis and the characteristic knotted garment of the Goddess in the Greco-Roman period. Yet we do well to remember that the Knot of Isis, first and foremost, has to do with Isis’ power as Goddess of Magic; Isis works heka with knots. For those of us who worship Her today, we may see the Isis Knot not only as a visual emblem indicating the Goddess, but also as a symbol of Her magical power to surround, unite, and protect.

Nubian Isis

"The Ethiopians, Africans, and Egyptians know Me by My true name of Queen Isis." — “The Ethiopians, Africans, and Egyptians know Me by My true name of Queen Isis.”

In Apuleius’ story about Lucius’ initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, the Goddess Herself appears in answer to his desperate prayers and gives an aretalogy describing Her powers and names.

In it, She says,

“But the Ethiopians who are illuminated by the first rays of the Sun God as He is born every day, together with the Africans and the Egyptians who excel through having the original doctrine, honor Me with My distinctive rites and give Me My true name of Queen Isis.” (Apuleius, Metamorphoses Book XI, 5; capitalization mine)

By Apuleius’ time, Isis was deeply into Her Myrionymous phase as Lady of the Ten Thousand Names. Yet even then, he knows that the “Ethiopians, Africans, and Egyptians” are the ones who best know Her proper rites and Her true name of Isis. Isis has a deep and abiding relationship with those who know Her in this ancient and authentic way.

So for today’s post, I’d like to tell you something about Isis as She was known in the lands to the south of ancient Egypt, often known as Nubia. The name Nubia comes from an Egyptian term for “gold,” nub. Thus Nubia is the Gold Land. Nubia is (roughly) the ancient kingdom of Kush, with its famous capital city of Meroe, while Ethiopia, to the south and east of Nubia, may be what the Egyptians referred to as the Land of Punt. Today, Nubia is part of southern Egypt and Sudan and some of the people there still refer to themselves as Nubians. You may also recall that in the last days of Philae, it was Nubian peoples such as the Blemmyes and Nobade who continued Isis’ worship at Philae even after the temple was officially closed. In Classical Greece, Kush was called Ethiopia, so in many texts any distinction between Nubians and Ethiopians is unclear. In this post, I’ll use Nubia and Nubian as general terms for the land and peoples to the immediate south of ancient Egypt.

The coffin lid of 25th dynasty Theban Priest, Djeddjehutyiuefankh

Ancient Egypt and Nubia have a complex and interweaving history, at various times dominating and influencing each other. (Egypt’s 25th dynasty was a Nubian one.) During all this co-mingling, some Egyptian Deities came to Nubia, Isis among them. Probably established in Nubia around 1950 BCE (when Egypt was dominant and Nubian royalty adopted much Egyptian custom), Isis has long been a Nubian Goddess.

Isis was known throughout Nubia as The Great Lady of Nubia. In the British Museum, there is an Egyptian healing text in which Isis specifically says of Herself, “I am the Nubian and I have descended from heaven.” The formula is for the cure of poisoning. In the formula, Nubian Isis speaks a spell consisting of a long list of Deities Who come to bring healing to the sufferer. As the Nubian Who descends from heaven, She comes bringing with Her the rich blackness of the heavens, of fertility, and of healing magic. Lana Troy, in Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth & History, suggests that Isis’ Nubian blackness counteracts the painful redness of the poison.

Diodorus Siculus preserves a Nubian tradition that the Egyptians were actually colonists sent out by Nubia (he says Ethiopia) under the leadership of Osiris. According to this tradition, what was then Egypt was, at the beginning of the world, only sea. It was the silt flowing north down the Nile that formed the land of Egypt. The tradition also says that Egyptian customs and writing are Nubian as well. (Diodorus Siculus, Book 3, section 3) Indeed, archeological investigations reveal this area as one of the world’s oldest civilizations, alongside Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Meroe, they used both hieroglyphs and Meroitic writing, which has been partially decoded.

We find evidence of Isis throughout Nubia, but most strongly in the great city of Meroe and in Wad ben Naqa. Both are cities on the Nile; Wad ben Naqa is about 70 kilometers upstream from Meroe. We also find a strong presence of Nubians at Isis’ great temple at Philae, which became a place of pilgrimage for Nubians during the 25th dynasty when Nubians ruled in Egypt.

From Wad ben Naqa we have a pedestal of King Natakamani and Queen Amanitore that has both Meroitic script and hieroglyphs and which has helped enable decipherment of Merotic so far. The inscription addresses Isis:

“Stay, stay on the great throne, Isis, Mistress of the Underworld, like the living sun-disk in the horizon, in that You let your son Natakamani remain on his throne. Stay, stay on the great throne, Isis, Mistress of the Underworld, as does the moon that grows like an egg in traversing heaven. May it give life to Your daughter, Amanitore.” (My capitalization again.)

It was said that Nubian kings ruled with the Queen Mother, called the Kandake, so Amanitore may have been Natakamani’s mother rather than his wife.

Isis was important especially in Nubian funerary customs and in the kingship. Kings are frequently said to be the Son of Isis or Beloved of Isis. Some inscriptions indicate that it was Isis Who watched over the post mortum transformations of the deceased and eventually gave the Ka (Kha in Meroitic) permission to leave the tomb and go to the Otherworld. Isis was paired with Osiris in relation to funerary customs, in which Osiris served an Anubis-like function as Otherworld guide.

A Nubian aegis of Isis, from about 300 BCE

This inscription on a statue now in the Berlin Museum comes from the Nubian city of Napata and gives us some ideas about the powers of Nubian Isis. (Please note that I have removed the parentheses that the translator inserted to indicate implied words to make it easier to read):

“Give noble renewal, O Isis, to the new vivification. Give renewal, give its erection. Reflect on the patron [that is, the person who dedicated the statue] and guide good prosperity on the good path indeed. Desire patron [I presume this means the patron desires] the bestowal of a rebirth to resound in Henel. Goodness comes into being as an Object of Respect for the patron. Give existence to the new vivification. Go now and give it leave. Fashion wonderment and order, O Isis, you will commence to make wonderment in abundance. The good Supporter even goes to wipe out much non-existence. The hero to behold all. Act now to bear approbation. You give guidance and nourishment. This is done by transmigration; give its existence. The disciple indeed to reflect on Isis the good, she puts on you guidance.

Isis leads. She commences to arrange your transmigration. Arrange now the gifts. The patron of Isis is to be exalted, like new. Spread the bequeathal of the hero in a pile. Rise to arrange and guide us to honor, O Isis. Much praise goes forth, Isis is to also bring authorization for the new vivification. The new vivification to give birth to the Kha anew in truth and dignity. The patron has permission to realize it. Isis is to make it happen…”

In addition to worshipping the Goddess in their own land, Nubians travelled to Philae to honor Isis at Her great temple there as well. We know them from the “adoration graffiti” or proskynema they left at the temple and the surrounding area. Philae is at what was the borderland between Egypt and Nubia. Interestingly, the temple faces south, towards Nubia, which is not the usual temple orientation in Egypt. Excavations have found Nubian-like pottery at Philae, predating the temple there. The earliest certain evidence of Nubians at Philae is from about 690 BCE, during the 25th dynasty.

The Nubians who visited Philae were priests and “agents” of Isis and seemed to have timed their visits to coincide with the Festival of Osiris during Khoiak, which marked His death and renewal as well as the recession of the Nile flood and the time of sowing crops, and the Festival of Entry. They often brought donations of gold and other valuables for the temple there. One interesting inscription says that the envoy was to give ten talents of gold to the Philae priests and their daughters. I wonder if this meant that the daughters were all serving as priestesses of Isis?

Merotic script and Egyptian equivalents — Merotic script and Egyptian equivalent

The Festival of Entry was the time when Isis journeyed to the nearby island of Biga with its Tomb of Osiris to pour milk libations for Him. During this time, the statue of Isis would be taken to Biga to preside over three ten-day Egyptian weeks of offerings. (A weekly version of this Festival took place at Philae, too, but apparently the big one was held once a year and that’s the one attended by the Nubians.)

A good deal of the Nubian graffiti at Philae attests to a personal relationship with Isis as a Goddess Who is disposed to helping the worshipper and Who “hears the petitions of those who are far off.”

The Great Lady of Nubia brings Her healing from heaven, She watches over the transformations of the deceased and brings new vivification, new life, and—as always—She welcomes a deeply personal relationship with Her devotees.

The Divine Bread of Isis

I offer bread to the Goddess — Offering bread to the Goddess

Ahhh. There is absolutely nothing like the smell of fresh bread, hot from the oven. Add butter and I’m in heaven.

Yet with so many of us on gluten-free diets because of gluten intolerance or celiac disease—and with some arguing that eating grain is literally killing us even if we’re not gluten-intolerant or celiac sufferers—well it seems that bread has been both refused and abused of late.

And so today I write in defense of bread—as a worthy offering to Isis and Her Divine family and as a powerful symbol of transformation.

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

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

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

Lady and Lord of Abundance — Lady and Lord of Green Crops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isis and the Waters

With this post about Isis and Her connections with the Waters, I invoke Her life-giving Waters for California and for the beautiful Isis Oasis, which is threatened by fire as I write this. O Lady of the Waters, surround and protect!

In Egypt, the waters of the Nile were (and I suspect, are) sacred. The ancients usually called the Nile simply, “the Great River (Iteru)” or by the name of the Nile God Hapy, though they had other terms for it as well: Sweet Waters, The Circler, and Cooling.

Since the annual Inundation flooding of the Nile was The Thing That Made Life Itself Possible in Egypt, many Deities were connected with the Great Flood in addition to Hapy. (You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?) Yes, Isis is prominent among them.

As early as the Pyramid Texts, Isis is connected to Sopdet, Who, as the star Sirius, is the Herald of the Inundation. As Iset-Sopdet or Isis-Sothis, the Goddess was known to be the bringer of the holy flood because Her beautiful star was seen rising in the pre-dawn sky just before the beginning of the Inundation. In the Coffin Texts, Isis is also the bringer of water, this time to the deceased: “It is Isis who will give me water,” says Spell 473. As a healing Goddess, Isis is called upon the bring cooling water to dampen the heat of inflamed wounds or burns. She was also associated with rain. At Philae, She is “the rain-cloud that makes green the field when it descends.” The calendar in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus notes “Birth of Isis: the heaven rained.”

The Greek travel writer Pausanias relates a story, no doubt told to him by an Egyptian, that it is the mourning tears of Isis that causes the waters of the Nile to rise. As Iset-Meheyet (“Isis the Flood”), Isis is Herself the holy Inundation.

In Isis Magic, you’ll find a number of ways for honoring Isis as Lady of the Waters. For instance, there is a ritual for transforming any water into sacred Nile water for use in your rites, as well as an autumn ritual for celebrating your own “Inundation.”

I recently learned of yet another Nile Goddess Who became assimilated with Isis. She first shows up in Egypt on coins from the last decade BCE and keeps Her place on Alexandrian coinage until 273 CE. She is considered the wife of Hapy. Her name is Euthenia, a Greek name as you can see, and it means “abundance” and “plenty.” In Greece, Euthenia was known as one of the Graces.

The statue of Isis-Euthenia, clearly showing the Knot of Isis

When Euthenia came to Egypt, the Egyptians were not content to leave well enough alone. They started to connect Her with their own abundance-bringing Goddess Isis. We can see this happening in a statue of Euthenia now in the Greco-Roman museum in Alexandria and shown here. Like the famous statues of the Nile in the Vatican and Naples Museums, Euthenia is shown reclining, cup in hand, and surrounded by the child-cherubs known as putti. Like the Nile God, She, too, is leaning on a sphinx. But tied into the front of Euthenia’s robe is—an Isis knot! Just like the ones seen tied into the robes of Isis’ priestesses. So now we clearly have Isis-Euthenia—and an example of the Egyptianizing of a Greek Goddess rather than the Hellenizing of an Egyptian Goddess.

Nile with putti — One of the famous statues of The Nile with His many children; I think this one is in the Naples Museum in Italy

In Greek myth, river Gods often have a plethora of water-nymph daughters. Turns out the Egyptians had a similar idea. The 20th dynasty tomb of Ramesses IX says that “the two daughters of Hapy shatter for you [Re] the Evil Doer.”

And once more we can connect Isis with the Nile, for She, too, is called “Nymph” in the Oxyrhynchus Invocation of Isis.

There is also a famous and sad inscription from a father who lost his daughter Isidora (you see why this caught my attention) in her youth. The inscription is from her tomb wherein her father laments, “Praise Isidora with libations and prayer, the maiden who was abducted by the nymphs. Hail, my child, Nymph is your name…” Scholars are unsure, but this may mean that the girl drowned.

The tradition of the Nile God and Goddess, Hapy and Isis-Euthenia, remained potent far into Pagan-hostile times. In the seventh century CE, under the Emperor Mauricius (who was suspected of having Pagan sympathies), a miracle occurred. From out of the waters of the Nile emerged two gigantic human figures, one male, one female. Some decried this apparition as the work of demons, others took it as a sign that the Great River was both male and female. I don’t know what the rest of this story is, but I will try to find out. I wonder if someone brought up two of the offering statues that were sometimes given to the Nile?

As late as the Medieval Period, a large statue of a woman with a child—surely Isis with Horus—was in the church of El-Mu’llaqa in Old Cairo and was supposed to prevent the area from being submerged in the ongoing annual inundation.

And so we call upon Isis Who brings rain, Who fills the rivers with Her tears, Who Calls the Waters, Who surrounds and protects.

I love these old photos. This one is from the 1890s; the ballerina Vera Karalli in a pose from the ballet, The Pharaoh's Daughter. She is surrounded by The Nile and His many children. — I love these old photos. This one is from the 1890s; the ballerina Vera Karalli in a pose from the ballet, The Pharaoh’s Daughter. She is surrounded by The Nile and His many children.

Isis & Hathor, Together Again

The partially restored Temple of Hathor on neo-Philae (Agilkia) island

On the island of Philae, east of the Temple of Isis, stands a smaller temple to Hathor. The Hathor temple was restored, at least in part, in 2012 and reopened to the public. (Both the Isis and Hathor temples, as well as the other temples of ancient Philae are now on the Egyptian island of Agilkia, aka Agilika, where they were moved prior to the building of the Aswan Dam, which created Lake Nasser and flooded Philae.)

A lovely Hathor head, from a processional boat, now in the British Museum

Compared to the Temple of Isis on Agilkia, the Temple of Hathor is quite small. Reciprocally and interestingly, at Denderah, Hathor’s great Ptolemaic temple complex, there is a similar small Temple of Isis. Clearly, there is a relationship between these two Great Goddesses; so much so that it was required that each Goddess would have a smaller temple near the great temple of the other.

In fact, sometimes that relationship between Isis and Hathor is so close that it’s hard to tell Them apart. Beginning in the New Kingdom, we regularly see Isis wearing the Horns & Disk crown of a Cow Goddess that is emblematic of Hathor. Sometimes Isis also has a small throne on top of the Horns & Disk to indicate that She is indeed Isis rather than Hathor, sometimes She doesn’t. But guess what? Hathor sometimes borrows Isis’ headdress, too.

Again at Denderah, we find a carving of Hathor—and the hieroglyphs confirm that She IS Hathor—wearing the Horns & Disk with the throne on top. It’s a bit hard to make out in this photo, but you can see the throne sitting atop the disk in Hathor’s crown.

Both Isis and Hathor are associated with Horus, Isis as His mother, Hathor sometimes as mother, sometimes as lover. Both are Cow Goddesses and Goddesses of the Sycamore, though Hathor probably has the prior claim on both these symbols. Both are Eyes of the Divine and holy Uraeus Serpents, powerful, fiery, protective and vengeful Goddesses. Thus both can become Sekhmet, that most fierce and bloodthirsty of Goddesses. Both Isis and Hathor are Goddesses of the Otherworld, Goddesses of rebirth and resurrection, Whom the dead ones adore.

Looking just as these correspondences, Isis and Hathor seem interchangeable. Is it so?

I don’t think so. Instead, They are sister branches of the Divine Tree. They are ultimately united in the Tree’s trunk, yet there is a quite palpable difference in the energy feeling of the two Goddesses—at least out in the twigs and leaves of the Tree where we most often experience Them. As you know, I have an enduring dedication to Isis, but in another part of my spiritual life, I also have a strong connection to Hathor.

A beautiful Hathor from Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, by Steve F-E-Cameron (own work, public domain)

Hathor’s energy always has an underlying feeling of excitation, of arousal. It may be sexual, but it doesn’t have to be. Hathor imparts the excitement of living, and thus She is the Great Lady of Love, Joy, Drunkenness, and Dance. Her symbol par excellance is the sistrum, the sacred rattle that is shaken to stir things up. In Egyptian, to “play the sistrum” is iri sekhem, to “do power.” Hathor has something of the maenad in Her, if I may draw from a different cultural metaphor; She’s a bit more wild than Isis, more likely to roar or hiss or spit. O, but She will dance you to ecstasy; She will love you to ecstasy; She will sing you to ecstasy. Perhaps She will also put a bit of Divine terror into your belly while She’s doing it. But then She will turn Those Eyes upon you, those soft, bright, deep cow’s eyes, and She will soothe you, take you in, and make you understand that Love, only Love, is at the heart of the Divine reality.

Of course, Isis, too, inspires passion. She certainly inspires it in me. But that’s not the foundation of Her energy. At Isis’ heart is strength interwoven with the numinous power of magic. Hathor’s tingle is the excitement of life and love. Isis’ tingle is the excitement of magic, of heka. Hers is a deep, sometimes overwhelming, Intelligence; flowering in my mind like stars that blossom into the depths of Space and Time.

And yet, and yet. The Mystery of these two Great Goddesses is such that They can share many or even most of Their symbols, and have a share in each other’s power.

Blessed be the Ladies.

The Knot Magic of Isis

Note the knots in the straps of the Goddess' garment as well as the little loop between Her breasts. — Note the knots in the straps of the Goddess’ garment as well as the little loop between Her breasts.

Feeling the need for some personal protection these days? I know I am. So this post offers a protection rite from Isis Magic that uses magical knots. The ritual can be used for any protective purpose.

But before we get to the ritual, let’s talk a bit more about Egyptian knot magic in general.

In ancient Egypt, magical knots were used to bind and release, join opposites, and— since a knot secures things—protect.

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 her 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.”

A knot amulet found at Hatshepsut's mortuary temple — A knot amulet found at Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple

In addition to these four knots, another text talks about seven knots, or tesut, that were tied about the deceased to protect him or her.

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.

Hapi using a knot to unite the Two Lands

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 thus be used to “surround” or “bind” an enemy—or even tie a curse to them.

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.

The Rite of the Tet (the Knot of Isis)

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); Tet representation in any medium (if desired).

Opening

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.

Priest/ess: 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.

Priest/ess: (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.

Priest/ess: (Touching each piece of cord) Isis protects!

Invocation of the Powers of Isis

Next, invoke the Goddess, raising your arms in Adoration.

Priest/ess: 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!

Tying the Knots

Take up one of the pieces of red cord and move to the southeast corner of the temple. Holding the two ends of the cord in your hands, say:

Priest/ess: 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.

Priest/ess: 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.

Priest/ess: 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.

Closing

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.

Priest/ess: 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.

Priest/ess: I thank You, Isis, in all Thy names of Protection. Hold me ever near You, bound by Your protective knots.

Quit the temple.

Use a simple, overhand knot in this ritual

Goddess in the Present Tense

Someone's beautiful Isis altar... if this is yours, please let me know. I love it! — This beautiful Isis altar was created for Her by Michael Butler Smith. I love it! You can see more of his work here.

If you’ve read Isis Magic and Offering to Isis, you may have noticed that—except when something actually is in the past—I always refer to the Goddess in present tense. In fact, I have been very, very, very, very conscious of doing so.

Because, you see, She IS.

She’s is not a Being Who was but is no more. She is not “just a myth,” some silly old story deserving of the past tense. Indeed, She is All that Was, and Is, and Ever Shall Be. She existed then, She exists now, and She will exist when the rugged, snowcapped mountain that, on a clear day, I can see from my rooftop has become a gentle, green hill.

And I know you know that. Which is why I am so puzzled when I sometimes see modern Pagans, Polytheists, Wiccans, and insert-your-self-definition-of-choice using the past tense about their Deities.

It usually happens when telling Their sacred stories, trying to offer a brief “definition” of the Deity, or describing Their relationships with other Deities: “Isis was the Goddess of Magic.” Osiris was the husband of Isis.” Isn’t She still the Goddess of Magic? Isn’t He still Her husband? Now if you said, “To the ancient Egyptians, Isis was the Goddess of Magic and Osiris was Her husband,” that would work. No more ancient Egyptians around today, so what they considered is indeed history. To me, however, Isis IS the Goddess of Magic and Osiris IS Her beloved husband.

I may have had a tiny rant on this subject in Isis Magic:

In writing of the history of the Isis religion and the many aspects in which She has appeared to humanity, I have always kept in mind that, to the people who worshipped Her then, as well as to those of us who do so today, Isis was and is a Living Goddess. She is not a historical curiosity. She is not a metaphor for our times. She is not feminist wish fulfillment. She is not merely a psychological archetype. She is Divine Love, Life, Magic, Mystery. She is Goddess and She is.

And speaking of myths, a myth isn’t something that is false—”oh, that’s just a myth.” No. A myth is a sacred story meant to tell us something about the Deity or Deities of the myth. Myths are “things that never happened but always are,” in the words of the 4th century CE Roman writer Sallustius. Or maybe myths are things that never happened historically, but are eternally true. Or ask Joseph Campbell. Or Jean Huston. And remember, just because it belongs to the corpus of the dominant monotheisms doesn’t mean it’s not mythology. Egyptian mythology is. Christian mythology is. Jewish mythology is. They are all sacred stories and they are all mythology.

Okay. I’m done. Enough said. And may we all mind our tenses and our mythologies.

The Is-ness of Isis

But how do we know that Isis is? How do we know that She’s “real”? Must we simply have faith? Do we just choose to “believe in” Her? Can we prove Her is-ness?

This question of belief and faith is much more vexed for those of us in non-mainstream (O how I dislike that designation!) religions. How often have you been asked by some friend or family member or (hopefully) well-meaning stranger, “Well, then, what do Isians—or Pagans or Polytheists or Wiccans or insert-your-self-definition-of-choice—believe?”

And how have you answered?

We got used to using those words, faith and belief, when speaking about religion. But perhaps those are not the right words.

For me, what proves that Isis is real is my experience of Her, not my faith or belief in Her. No single book is the touchstone for my spirituality, though I find spiritual truths in many, many books written by many, many wise human beings. I can’t transfer my deep knowing of Her reality to anyone else (though I do admit that the exercises and rituals I share with others are attempts to at least set up the conditions that will enable others to open up to their own experiences of Her). Nevertheless, experience of the Divine is an individual thing; each one of us must experience Isis for ourselves—even if we do so in a group. Clergy can facilitate. Books can show us a way. The experiences of others can strengthen us in our desire for our own experience of the Goddess. But, in the end, we will not truly know Isis for ourselves until we have our own experience of Her.

The Great Mother, Her Mother, and Her Mother’s Mother

Isis the Mother and Her Holy Child Horus — Isis the Mother

A friend of this blog asked a very interesting question. She asked how we can reconcile the idea that Isis is both Mother of All with the idea that Isis has a mother Herself. It’s a question I’ve been wanting to work on ever since it was asked, so with this post I’m finally getting around to it.

It’s a very interesting question because it has to do with our conception of the nature of the Divine and Divine Beings in general.

So how do we start to look at this?

For me, history is always a good place to begin. It gives us a useful foothold to know what our ancestors thought about these things; after all, when it comes to Divinity and Divine Beings, we human beings have been thinking about this for a very long time indeed.

Atum arises from the Nun, the primordial waters of No-Thing-Ness

Erik Hornung’s Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, the One and the Many is a key text for understanding the nature of the Divine in terms of ancient Egypt. Hornung writes that the Egyptians had a multiplicity of approaches to the Divine and only when taken together can we see the whole picture. For them, he says, everything came from One because the non-existent is One, Undifferentiated Thing. Once something becomes existent, it also becomes multiple.

We see this in the Heliopolitan myth in which Atum comes forth from the Nun, the non-existent, the inert, and immediately begins generating other Deities through an act of masturbation: first Shu and Tefnut, Who beget Nuet and Geb, Who beget Isis, Osiris, Set, and Nephthys.

And so we meet Isis, Her mother Nuet, and Her mother’s mother Tefnut. And there may even be a great grandmother present, for when Atum came into existence, He was both masculine and feminine; His “shadow” or “hand” (the one He used to masturbate) is the Goddess Iusaaset or Iusâas Who is said to be the Grandmother of all the Gods.

Another important characteristic of the Divine in ancient Egypt is Its fluidity. Hornung says of the Egyptian Deities, “They are formulas rather than forms, and in their world, one is sometimes as if displaced into the world of elementary particles.” Deities may be combined with one another or split off from one another; one Deity can be the ba or soul of another; They can even be assimilated with foreign Deities without losing Their essence. “But wherever one turns to the divine in worship, addresses it and tends to it in cult” Hornung writes, “it appears as a single, well-defined figure that can for a moment unite all divinity within itself and does not share it with any other god.”

Isis protected by the Vulture Mother — Mother Isis, nursing Horus and protected by the Vulture Mother

The primordiality of Isis is attested on the Great Pylon of Her graceful temple at Philæ. The Ptolemaic passage states that Isis “is the one who was in the beginning; the one who first came into existence on earth.” In the Coffin Texts, Isis is invoked with a group of Deities considered to be the most ancient: “O Re, Atum, Nu, Old One, Isis the Divine…” (Formula 1140). She is called Great Goddess Existing from the Beginning, Great One Who Initiated Existence, and Great One Who Is From the Beginning. Her very name, Iset or Throne, speaks to Her ancient nature.

By the time of the New Kingdom, Isis is routinely called Mother of All the Gods. Then, with Her worship spreading throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, Apuleius can write that Isis “brings the sweet love of a mother to the trials of the unfortunate,” while a Latin dedicatory inscription sums up Her all-encompassing nature: Tibi, Una Quae es Omnia, Dea Isis, “Unto Thee, the One Who art All, Goddess Isis.”

So now we have ancient attestations both of Isis’ primordiality and of Her generation from Her parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. How do we resolve it?

If we are among those who are uncomfortable with paradox, I’m afraid there may be no satisfying reconciliation between these two ideas. If it has been deeply ingrained that there can only be one right answer—especially when it comes to spiritual questions—then it may seem impossible for both these things to be true. After all, they contradict each other. At the very least, we should be able to pick one as the “right” answer. At the very most, we may decide the contradiction means both things must be false.

And yet we have already seen that, at least to the ancient worshippers of Isis, both things were indeed true.

This is what paradox is; and religion is absolutely rife with it. Why? Because most religions, or spiritualities if you prefer, involve Mystery. Mystery is at the very core of the Divine and paradox is one of Its favorite languages. Yet this is not to say we should simply throw up our hands up and say, “Goddess works in mysterious ways” and quit thinking about it.

Quite the opposite in fact. Paradox invites thought. It is intended to teach. So what can we learn from our paradox: Isis is Mother of All, yet She Herself has a mother?

Originally an illustration for a book of pseudo_Indian love poetry, this lovely illustration by Byam Shaw, 1914, captures something of Nuet and one of Her Holy Children — Originally an illustration for a book of pseudo-Indian love poetry called *The Garden of Kama*, this lovely illustration by Byam Shaw, 1914, captures something of Nuet caring for one of Her Holy Children

Let’s look at it through that ancient Egyptian lens that shows us a multiplicity of approaches to the Divine.

One way we can approach is as the Heliopolitan myth does: Isis is part of a Divine family. By being so, perhaps She is better able to understand human beings when we come to Her with our own familial problems. Her family relations make Her more suited to be a Soteira, a Savior Goddess, as She was known throughout the Mediterranean world.

We can also learn some important things about Isis through Her family relations. Isis is the daughter of Heaven (Nuet) and Earth (Geb). She is married to the Underworld God, Osiris, and is Herself a Goddess of the Underworld. Thus Isis is intimately connected to All That Is; She walks in all the Worlds.

Another approach to our paradox is through the fluidity of the Egyptian Deities that we talked about. If They can combine or split at will, or if one can become the ba of another, why can’t Isis be at once a Great Mother Herself and the daughter of a Great Mother?

Yet another approach is to open our hearts toward Isis in worship and experience Her for ourselves. Then, as Erik Hornung explained, Isis “appears as a single, well-defined figure that can for a moment unite all divinity” within Herself; She is the One Who is All, and She is the Mother of All.

By combining these approaches, and tolerating a little paradox, we learn more about Isis than we ever would have by restricting ourselves to a single position alone and Isis reveals Herself ever more as the Great Goddess She is.

Isis is all things and all things are Isis

Isis Rising

One of my favorite tarot images, Isis as The Star in the Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett — One of my favorite tarot images: Isis as The Star in the Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett

Yes, yes, yes. It is getting to be that time. That time when She rises early, early in the dawning light. It’s the best thing that happens in August as far as I’m concerned. While everything else starts to crisp in the late summer heat, I am refreshed in Her rising power.

Here in Portland, Oregon in 2019, Sirius rises at 4:31 in the morning of August 23rd. Further south, She rises earlier. It all depends on your latitude. You can calculate Her rising in your area here with this online calculator. If you’d like to celebrate Isis’ birthday, then it would be two days before the rising of Sirius, in this case, August 21. So Isis is a Leo (at least at this latitude.) And well, She is Isis-Sakhmet, after all.

Some people see Isis in the pale, magical light of the moon.

Some see Her in the golden, lifegiving rays of the sun.

I do find Her there. Oh yes.

Overall, Egyptian temples have a variety of orientations. A recent-ish survey (2004-2008)—that actually went to all the temples in Egypt and measured the orientation; genius, no?—shows that most temples were oriented so that the main doorway 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 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.

The original temple of Satet on Elephantine; made of mudbrick nestled among the natural boulders

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 as 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 according to an inscription on Isis’ temple at Philae dating to about 227 CE. This 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 2008 study revealed that the largest number of Kushite temples and pyramids were oriented to either the winter solstice sunrise or the rise of Sirius.

On the horizon, She rises, with Orion/Osiris above

If you are, like 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. 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.

Isis, Mistress of the Pyramids

There is a most interesting inscription on an artifact known as the Inventory Stela from the Giza Plateau.

It has caused a lot of excitement, especially among those who believe that the Sphinx and Pyramids are older than the fourth dynasty period to which Egyptologists usually attribute their construction.

You’ll immediately see why I was interested. Here’s what it says according to the great Egyptologist Gaston Maspero’s translation of the stele:

Live Horus the Mezer, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, given life. He made for his mother Isis, the Divine Mother, Mistress of the Western Mountain [that is, the necropolis], a decree made on a stela, he gave to Her a divine offering, and he built Her a temple of stone, renewing what he had found, namely the Gods in Her place.
Live Horus, the Mezer, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, given life. He found the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, by the side of the cavity of the Sphinx, on the northwest side of the House of Osiris, Lord of Rostaw, and he built his pyramid beside the temple of this Goddess, and he built a pyramid for the King’s Daughter, Henut-sen, beside this temple. The place of Hwran-Hor-em-akhet [that is, the Sphinx] is on the south of the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, and on the north of Osiris, Lord of Rostaw. The plans of the Image of Hor-em-akhet were brought in order to bring to revision the sayings of the disposition of the Image of the Very Redoubtable. He restored the statue all covered in painting, of the Guardian of the Atmosphere, who guides the winds with his gaze.

He made to quarry the hind part of the nemes headdress, which was lacking, from gilded stone, and which had a length of about 7 ells [3.7 metres]. He came to make a tour, in order to see the thunderbolt, which stands in the Place of the Sycamore, so named because of a great sycamore, whose branches were struck when the Lord of Heaven descended upon the place of Hor-em-akhet, and also this image, retracing the erasure according to the above-mentioned disposition, which is written {…} of all the animals killed at Rostaw. It is a table for the vases full of these animals which, except for the thighs, were eaten nears these seven gods, demanding {…} (The God gave) the thought in his heart, of putting a written decree on the side of this Sphinx, in an hour of the night. [That is, the pharaoh had a dream from the Sphinx that he should do this.] The figure of this God, being cut in stone, is solid, and will exist to eternity, having always its face regarding the Orient.

The rest of the stele is taken up with a list of the sacred images of the Deities that Khufu restored within the Temple of Isis. The largest part of the stele is an inventory of these images, which is why it is known as “the Inventory Stele.”

Pretty cool, huh?

What excites me, of course, is the Temple of Isis reference and the title “Mistress of the Pyramid.” What excites most of those who get excited is that the stele—supposed to have been carved by Khufu’s fourth-dynasty sculptors on the king’s orders—says that the Sphinx was already there! What’s more, apparently the little Temple of Isis was there even before Khufu built his Great Pyramid.

Alas, most Egyptologists agree that the stele is an archaized work, probably created sometime between the 25th and 26th dynasties, during a period when Nubian kings were trying to revitalize Egypt by harking back to its Old Kingdom glory days. The style of art and writing point most clearly to the 26th dynasty. Key to the evidence is that we have no reference to “Hwran” and “Hor-em-akhet” as names for the Sphinx until the 18th dynasty.

As for the Temple of Isis, it was originally a funerary chapel associated with the pyramid of Henutsen, Khufu’s half sister or, as the Inventory Stele says, “king’s daughter.” It was “found” by the pharaoh Pasebekhanu in the 21st dynasty and either converted into a small Temple of Isis at that time or, because the pharaoh either had or believed he had found the remains of an earlier Isis temple, had it refurbished as one. There Isis was worshipped as Lady of the Pyramid (or perhaps, Pyramids) until the Roman period. We even have evidence that Her cult had its own priesthood.

Prior to the Inventory Stele, we find Isis on a Giza stele of Prince Amenomopet, a prince of the 18th dynasty. She is found on the so-called Stele C found in the Sphinx Temple and which shows the Sphinx and Isis, wearing the Horns and Disk Crown and within a shrine, receiving offerings from the prince. The image is captioned, “Isis, the Great, the Divine Mother, Queen of the Gods, One in Heaven, Who Has No Equal, the Elder [daughter of] Atum.” Dating on the stele is controversial (so what else is new in Egyptology?), but if the 18th dynasty is accurate, then Isis and the Sphinx are being worshipped together at Giza by at least that time.

After this period, we have a number of other Giza inscriptions that include Isis. Some that list Her with other Deities, notably Osiris and Horus, some that indicate that She was being worshipped alone. So it would seem that there was an active cult of Isis at Giza from at least the 18th dynasty. There is also evidence of private devotion at the Temple of Isis; a number of votive plaques have been found there as well. (By the way, all of this has been gathered together by Christiane M. Zivie-Coche in her book Giza Au Premier Millenaire Autour du Temple D’Isis, Dames des Pyramides; I’m struggling through the French, so bear with me.)

We also have several fragments of columns, probably from the Ramessid era, but which were reused in the Third Intermediate Period by Pharaoh Amenemope, on which the king offers wine to Osiris and Isis, Who is identified specifically as Lady of the Pyramids. Because the column was reused, we can’t be sure whether that epithet goes back to the Ramessid period or only began being used in the 21st dynasty. But from then on, one of the Goddess’ epithets is Mistress or Lady of the Pyramids, which likely refers to Her function of protecting the pyramids and the Osiris-kings in them, and surely to Her power to safeguard their rebirths as well.

Another view of the Temple of Isis — Another view of the Giza Temple of Isis

Interestingly, a graffito on Henutsen’s pyramid from (probably) Egypt’s late period says that the pyramid is the burial place of Isis. Oriented to the south, it faced the symbolic burial place of Osiris, Lord of Rostaw.

Much later, in the mid 1500s, writer André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) continued the tradition of Isis with the Sphinx writing that the Sphinx has “the head of a colossus, caused to be made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter”. (This refers to the Isis-Io connection; Io is the daughter of Inachus, the River God. Zeus fell in love with Io. You can read the whole story here.)

I’ve never been much interested in pyramids or mummies or pharoahs. It was always the Deities for me. Guess that’s why I missed this epithet of Isis previously. Just goes to show, there’s always something new to learn about Her.

Are You Feeling Lucky?

Do you believe in luck? Chance? Fate? Karma? Destiny?

For a minute, I thought that horseshoe on Lady Luck's head was an Isis crown...but that actually wouldn't be too far off. — For a minute, I thought that horseshoe on Lady Luck’s head was the Horns & Disk crown.

In some way or another, little or large, most of us do. We often discover the notion of good luck and bad luck as kids playing games. Grown ups playing games, such as sports figures, might have a lucky pair of socks or some other talisman they keep close by. As business people, we might wear a favorite suit to an important meeting; we look good in the suit, we feel more confident, and perhaps we boost our luck. And how many of us have not looked up our daily horoscopes from time to time to see what fate has in store for us?

As a general rule, I’m of the “you make your own luck” school. And yet I know people who don’t seem to be doing anything obviously wrong, but who have spectacularly bad luck—as well as those who seem to be doing everything wrong, yet stumble into some amazing piece of good luck.

Ancient peoples seem to have had a keen sense of luck or fate in their lives. Perhaps it was because they were living with a more constant awareness of their Deities, expecting Their intervention in both worldly and otherworldly matters. This tends to be true of very religious people today as well. And it tends to be true of those of us who have specifically invited the Deities into our lives.

There are an number of ancient Egyptian Deities associated with luck and fate. At the birth of a child, the Seven Hathors would speak the various events (usually the bad ones) in the child’s life, They also declared her lifespan and manner of her death. Meshkhenet, the Birth Goddess, named the child’s fate and the work he would do. Renenutet, the Cobra Goddess, ordained how prosperous she would be. The God Shai, “Destiny,” also ruled over the child’s lifespan and “what is ordained” for him. You may be familiar with the famous Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days in which one is advised not to even go out of the house on the bad-luck days. How seriously anyone took advice like that, we don’t know.

A small Roman statuette of Isis Fortuna; She's looking a bit burdened under that headdress of abundance. She also carries the Wheel of Fate and, I think, a cornucopia. — A small Roman statuette of Isis Fortuna; She’s looking a bit burdened under that headdress of abundance. She also carries the Wheel of Fate and, I think, a cornucopia.

In the wider Mediterranean world, the Greeks invoked the Goddess Tyche as the Luck Goddess, while the Romans propitiated Her as Fortuna. We know of Tyche as a Goddess, not just a concept, as far back as the 8th century BCE. From that time on, She becomes more and more of a Divine personality. Both Tyche and Fortuna could be personal Deities, governing the life of the individual, as well as community Deities, ruling the fate and fortune of a city or empire. Every Roman emperor kept an image of Fortuna in his sleeping quarters in hopes of bringing good fortune to his reign.

Of course, not all fortune is good as any human being can tell you. Ancient epitaphs describe Tyche and Fortuna as perverse, cruel, and “hating the brave.” Nonetheless, there were always those who tried to steer chance or change a bad fate. They did this by appealing to the Deities, sometimes by undergoing Mystery initiations, and through the use of magic.

And here is where Isis comes into our story—as Goddess of Magic and Lady of the Mysteries. Over time, Isis came to be either associated with or assimilated to most of these Luck Goddesses and Gods. But as Goddess of Magic, Isis is never Blind Fate. She never demands one simply accept one’s given lot. Isis has the heka, the magical power, to move fate. The Goddess of Magic, the Lady of Mysteries is Fortune Who Sees; She is Destiny With Power. As the Great Enchantress, Isis is a major league Fate Changer.

This is reflected in the fact that Isis was invoked not merely as Tyche, Luck Itself, but as Agathe Tyche, Good Luck. In fact, of all the Goddesses in the Mediterranean world, Isis was the one Deity with Whom Agathe Tyche and Fortuna were most consistently assimilated.

Isis as Agathe Tyche and Osiris as Agathos Daimon in serpent form — Isis as Agathe Tyche and Osiris as Agathos Daimon, both in serpent form

As Agathe Tyche, Isis was considered the “luck” of a number of port cities, particularly Alexandria where She was paired with Agathos Daimon, “Good Spirit,” Who was identified with both Sarapis and Osiris. Legend had it that Tyche gave birth to a Divine figure called Isityche Who was said to symbolize the combination of Divine Providence and Chance. As you can easily see, Isityche is none other than Isis-Tyche. In this combined Divine figure, “Isis” represents the wise guidance of the Divine, while “Tyche” represents mere Chance. Isityche is once again a Fate Who Sees and it is the “Isi” part that makes that so.

Isis’ role as Savior Goddess also connected Her with Agathe Tyche. As far back as the 5th century BCE, the Greek poet Pindar calls Tyche a Savior Goddess, especially of those at sea. Isis Pelagia, “Isis of the Sea,” is also a savior as She brings Her charges to safe harbor, both literally and spiritually.

In some places, Tyche was associated with Nemesis, the Goddess of Divine Retribution. Thus Nemesis is the Goddess of Earned Fate. One of Isis’ many names was Nemesis and Isis Nemesis was commonly known by the 2nd century CE. There was a statue of Isis Nemesis on the holy island of Delos. And once again, Isis Nemesis is not a blind fate. If She sent ill luck your way, you probably deserved it.

As you might expect, Lady Luck was also connected with the heavens and with astrology. In a Mithraic document, reference is made to the Seven Tyches of the Sky, meaning the seven planets that rule astrological destiny. By the time of Isis’ famous Mysteries, the Goddess was known to rule the cosmos as She “of the black garments and seven stoles.” The seven stoles refer, no doubt, to the seven planets.

I mentioned earlier that initiation into the Mysteries was one way people might seek to change their fate. This was certainly true of the Mysteries of Isis. Since Isis rules fate, She can also change fate. In Apuleius’ tale of initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, as Lucius is about to be rescued from his asinine state by a Priest of Isis with a garland of roses, Lucius sees the flowers not only as his salvation by Isis, “but, oh, it was more than a garland to me, it was a crown of victory over cruel Fortune, bestowed on me by the Goddess.”

Dear Isiacs, know that your Tyche, your Fortuna is Isityche and Isis Fortuna and that She is most decidedly not blind, although She will kick your ass when you need it. (And we all do now and then, don’t we?) And so, I wish you always, Good Luck.

The Blood of Isis

A classic Blood of Isis amulet, with the name of the deceased inscribed thereon — The Blood of Isis amulet, with the name of the deceased

The ancient Egyptian amulet of the Tiet (also Tyet or Tet) is also known as the Girdle of Isis, the Buckle of Isis, the Knot of Isis, or the Blood of Isis. Appropriately, the amulet was often made of blood-red jasper, carnelian, or even red glass. (Red glass, by the way, is a precious material and quite difficult to make; the red color comes from the addition of gold to the molten glass.)

When paired with the Djed of Osiris, the Tiet can be seen as the feminine symbol of the Goddess’ womb just as the Djed can be seen as the masculine symbol of the God’s phallus.

The redness of the Tiet may represent the red lifeblood a mother sheds while giving birth. On the other hand, it might represent menstrual blood. Some say the amulet is shaped like the cloth worn by ancient Egyptian women during menstruation. Others have interpreted it as a representation of a ritual tampon that could be inserted in the vagina to prevent miscarriage. In this case, it would have been the amulet Isis used to protect Horus while He was still within Her womb. For a whole post on the Knot of Isis, click here.

The Goddess’ blood that is our topic today is the red blood of menstruation, in Egyptian hesmen. A menstruating woman is a hesmenet. If the interpretation of the Knot of Isis as a menstrual cloth or tampon is correct, we may be well within our rights to consider Isis as the patroness of women during their monthly menstruation as well as a special patroness of women during the fertile period of their lives, this is, while they are still menstruating regularly.

Women and girls preparing for a banquet from the Tomb of Rekhmire

A young woman’s first menstruation is a sign that she is now mature enough to become pregnant, thus the ancient Egyptians considered menstrual blood to be very potent. One of the methods a woman might use to encourage her own pregnancy was to rub menstrual blood on her thighs. The Ebers papyrus notes that the blood of a young woman whose menses have just come could be rubbed on the breasts, belly, and thighs of a woman whose breasts were too full of milk, “then the flow cannot be to her disadvantage.” Menstrual blood might also be used to anoint infants to protect them from evil. Could it be that the Tiet amulet was developed as a more convenient way to protect children, and by extension adults, from harm through the menstrual Blood of Isis?

We have very little from ancient Egypt about women’s menstrual customs. There is one precious mention on an ostracon (piece of pottery used as a writing surface) that scholars believe originated in Deir el-Medina, the workers’ village outside the Valley of the Kings. It says,

Year 9, fourth month of inundation, day 13. Day that the eight women came outside [to the] place of women, when they were menstruating. They got as far as the back of the house which […long gap…] the three walls …

The Tiet and the Djed, symbols of Isis and Osiris

From this reference, scholars infer that ancient Egyptian women, like many women throughout the ancient world (as well as some in the modern world) separated themselves from the rest of the village during their menstrual periods and went to “the place of women.” What’s more, at least eight women from this village were on the same cycle. But I wonder why this common, monthly event was significant enough for someone to write it down? As far as I can tell, no one has a guess.

None of the “places of women” have been found for certain, though there are several small structures on the outskirts of Deir el-Medina that could possibly fit the bill. Interestingly, at Deir el-Medina, the menstruation of wives or daughters is sometimes given as a reason for the man’s absence from work. The weird thing about this is that, if a man could be absent every time a wife or daughter had her period, he’d be absent at least two extra days per month…and we don’t find that many absences recorded. This has led some researchers to suggest that only in exceptional cases, for example if the woman was incapacitated by her period, could the man be absent to take care of the regular household chores.

Model of a home at Deir el-Medina; looks pretty pleasant

The other reference to a place of menstruation comes from much later—in the Ptolemaic period—when we find a reference to a “place beneath the stairs,” actually within the home, as the place of menstruation. This room must have been reasonably common for we find reference to it in a number of documents related to the sale or purchase of a home. I am imagining some ancient realtor noting the lovely little “place beneath the stairs” as a selling feature of the house. (It should be noted that a woman was the seller in at least one of these real estate transactions and in another, a woman was the buyer; more evidence of women’s relatively high status in Egypt.)

In a house in Amarna, in just such a place beneath the stairs, archeologists found two model beds made of clay, parts of two female figurines, and a stela depicting a woman wearing a cone on her head while leading a young girl before the Goddess Taweret. That all seems pretty clear to me; this is where women go to menstruate and where they celebrate the coming of age of young women, who are being introduced to Taweret, the hippopotamus-form Goddess of pregnancy and childbirth.

Egyptian woman and man taking sustenance in the otherworld — Egyptian woman and man taking food & drink from the Tree Goddess in the Otherworld

These special places for menstruating women seem to indicate a taboo around menstruation; the women absented themselves from the village or stayed in a special room. We also have lists of bwt, prohibitions or “evil”, in the 42 Egyptian nomes and some of them include menstruation and menstruating women—along with things like a black bull, a heart, and a head. We’re not sure in what way any of these things were to be prohibited; perhaps by keeping them out of the nome? At any rate, menstruation in these cases was seen as something negative.

There does not seem to have been a notion of actual pollution around menstruation or menstruating women, however. Contact with a menstruating woman was not dangerous to a man, even though she was bwt in some nomes. In fact, some scholars think it was the menstruating woman who needed protection during her period. Thus, in the case of the absent workers of Deir el-Medina, the workers stayed away from the death-touched tombs in which they were working in order to protect their menstruating female relatives. Conversely, the Egyptians may have wanted to prevent the non-pregnancy/fertility of a menstruating woman from touching the cosmic womb of the royal tomb through her male relative, and thus rendering it magically ineffective.

Interestingly, it may be that menstruation was also associated with cleansing. Hesmen is not only the word for “menstruation,” but is also found with the meaning “purification.” It was also a term for the ritual cleanser par excellence, natron.

From the evidence, menstruation in ancient Egypt had both positive and negative connotations. On the one hand, it was a sign that a woman could become pregnant—something most women desired—and it was used as a potent protection or cure. On the other hand, if one was menstruating, one was clearly not pregnant at the time, so menstruation might be incompatible with work on the magical womb of the tomb, which must be kept fertile at all times.

I think many women would agree with this ambivalent attitude toward their periods. Having a period is at once a beautiful confirmation of connection with the cycles of Nature and the Great Goddess, and it can be a painful and messy time, too. In whatever way we are currently experiencing those cycles, we can be sure that the protection, as well as the shared female experience, of the Holy Blood of Isis is with us. I don’t know about you, but I think I may put on my Tiet amulet today.

Isis, Lady of the Holy Cobra

This is one of the most popular posts on this blog. I don’t really have an update on this one, except to say that I still don’t have a snake. Though I know people who do, so I can get my snake fix.

o-SNAKES-facebook — I know, it’s not a cobra…just a very cool snake

We are repelled by them. We are fascinated by them.

Beautiful. Elegantly simple. One long muscle sheathed in glossy scales, some like brilliantly colored living jewels, some darkly and dangerously camouflaged.

There was a time when I really, really, really wanted a snake. I did my research. I discovered which kinds were likely to make the best “pets,” if I can even call them that, and how to care for them. Heck, both my Deities have serpentine connections; I should have a snake.

But in the end, I didn’t get a snake. We already had a fierce black cat and I figured the cat and the snake would pretty much drive each other crazy. Plus, I didn’t want to keep frozen baby mice in the freezer as snake food. Eeesh.

While I may occasionally see a little garter snake in my backyard (and if I come upon it unaware, it can still give me a tiny shiver), the ancient Egyptians came across serpents much more frequently.

The impressive Egyptian cobra can grow to 8 ft. in length — The impressive Egyptian cobra

No doubt that’s why serpents of all kinds played important roles in Egyptian mythology—as well as in Egyptian daily life. In myth, serpents were known to be both protective and harmful. In daily life, they were most often frightening due to the many extremely poisonous snakes that make Egypt their home. Two of the most important of these are the Egyptian Cobra, a big, aggressive serpent that can grow to more than two yards in length, and the now-rare Black-Necked Spitting Cobra that can spit blinding venom into its victim’s eyes at a range of more than three yards.

The Black-Necked Spitting Cobra spitting

In ancient Egyptian art, the cobra is most often represented as the uraeus, the fiercely protective serpent seen guarding the foreheads of Deities, kings, and queens. As the uraeus, the cobra is a positive presence, a symbol of the power and protection of the Deities. Uraeus is a Latinized version of the Greek word ouriaos, which is itself a version of the Egyptian word uraiet, which indicates the rearing, coiled cobra. The root word has to do with rising up or ascending, so that uriet, a feminine word, can be interpreted as She Who Rears/Rises Up. The root word is also used to refer to the upward licking of flames. And indeed, the uraeus is often depicted spitting fire. This serpent fire represents both magical fire and the burning pain of the serpent’s venom.

Isis from Abydos wearing a uraeus crown (upholding the horns and disk) and a holy cobra upon Her brow

In the Book of Amduat, an Otherworld guide, twelve cobras blast their fiery breaths to illuminate the paths of the Otherworld for the deceased. In other texts, huge cobras are seen spitting poison in the faces of enemies of the deceased. The uraeus cobras are usually Goddesses, which like the Hindu Shakti, are the active powers of the male Deity on Whose forehead They often sit. Uraei are also sent out as the Eye of the God; so to the cobra’s association with fire, we can add the symbolism of the powerful Divine Eye. With the Egyptian emphasis on transformation and renewal, the cobra’s ability to shed its skin and emerge renewed was symbolically important as well.

Although both Egyptian Goddesses and Gods wear cobras as part of their headdresses, mainly (but not exclusively) Goddesses have a cobra form. In fact, the cobra hieroglyph was often used as a determinative when writing the names of Goddesses or priestesses; and showing a cobra within a small enclosure could indicate the shrine of a Goddess. Cobra Goddesses are numerous in Egypt. The most prominent is Wadjet, the Green One. She is the tutelary Deity of Lower Egypt and one of the Two Ladies Who represent the Two Lands of Egypt. The Harvest Goddess, Renenutet, is a Cobra Goddess, as is Meretseger, She Who Loves Silence, the Goddess Who presided over the Theban necropolis.

This Egyptian image from about the 2nd century CE shows Isis with a serpent body as Isis-Thermouthis

As a fiery and protective Goddess, Isis also takes the form of a cobra. Sometimes She is the Eye of Re, the cobra-formed, solar power of the God. Sometimes She and Nephthys are shown as two cobras and replace Wadjet and Nekhebet as the Two Ladies of Egypt. Sometimes She is Isis-Thermuthis, a Hellenized form of Isis-Renenutet, the cobra harvest protector.

In Egyptian iconography, cobras are commonly found on Isis’ headdress, while in Greece and Italy, Isis could be shown holding a cobra, or with a cobra wrapped about Her arm. In the Graeco-Roman period, a cobra-formed Isis is paired with Her Graeco-Egyptian consort Serapis (and sometimes Osiris), also in a serpent form. As serpent Deities, Isis and Serapis are Agathe Tyche (Good Fortune) and Agathos Daimon (Good Spirit), and were considered the special protectors of Alexandria. Household serpents, called thermoutheis (pl.) from the name Isis-Thermuthis, were known to be the messengers of Isis.

Isis is also associated with the cobra in one of Her most famous myths. In the tale, Isis decides to gain power equal to Re’s. The Sun God is old and drools as He continues along His path in the sky. So the Goddess takes up some of His saliva, mixes it with Earth and forms from it a holy cobra which She places along Re’s path. The next day when Re passes by, the holy cobra bites Him. Re experiences pain like never before. He calls upon the Goddesses and Gods to help Him, including Isis. She reveals that She can cure Re if He tells Her His True Name, the most potent magical name in the universe. After much stalling, He eventually relents and tells Isis His Name. The Goddess heals Re and renews Him so that He can continue on His path through the heavens; meanwhile She gains power for Herself—through the magic of a holy cobra. (Please see my discussion of this important myth in Isis Magic and here.)

Have you ever handled a serpent, felt it coil about your wrists or up your arms, exploring with its flicking tongue? If you have, you have touched the beauty of Isis in one of Her most compelling and awe-striking forms.

Isis & Kore Kosmou, Part 2

For those of you just dropping by, we’re discussing a fragment of an ancient text entitled Kore Kosmou. In it, Isis is the Divine Teacher and She instructs Her “Wondrous Son” Horus in spiritual truths.

So let’s start with the title of the text. Unlike some other ancient texts, it actually does have a title: Kore Kosmou. The simplest translation is Virgin (or Maiden) of the World. “Kore” is “girl, maiden, virgin,” as, for example, Persephone is called Kore—Maiden or Daughter—to Demeter’s Meter—Mother. Kosmou is “of the world, universe.”

Oh, but it ain’t that simple.

As is so often the case when discussing Things Ancient, interpretations vary. In fact, as far as I’ve seen, there has yet to be a single agreed-upon scholarly interpretation of the title, though they all have something to offer us.

So let’s have a look. First of all, who is this Virgin, Maiden, or Daughter of Whom we speak?

The most obvious answer is that She is Isis. Isis is the teacher in this text and She, like so many Egyptian Goddesses, has a youthful Form. In a Hymn to Osiris, Isis is even called the Great Virgin/Maiden (hwn.t or hunet). She is also a Divine Daughter, the daughter of Heaven, Nuet, and of Earth, Geb. What’s more, if the dating of the text to 1st-3rd century CE is correct, Our Goddess is by that time considered a kosmokrator, a universal ruler, so it’s no stretch to consider Isis to be the Maiden of the Universe in the title.

So, problem solved?

Oh, heck no.

What if the Virgin of the Universe isn’t Isis at all? It may be that the Virgin is Nature Herself. Nature is sexually virgin in the tale. She creates Her own abundance from seeds which She Herself supplies to the Sole Ruler and which the Sole Ruler then returns to Her in order to start the chain of fruitfulness upon the earth. We also find identification of Kore with Nature in another Hermetic text, the Perfect Discourse. That text reiterates that the Creator “does not possess the nourishment for all mortal living creatures, for it is Kore Who bears the fruit.” The text is, after all, a creation story, so perhaps the title refers to the creation of the Virgin Universe.

On the other hand, Isis Herself may certainly be considered to be Nature. Plutarch calls Her “the female principle in Nature” (On Isis & Osiris, 53). We have also discussed the idea that Isis’ name of “Throne” may refer to Her as the Original Place of Being. So perhaps we are intended to understand that Isis, Nature, and Kore Kosmou are one.

And that’s all fine. But now we come to the more interesting interpretations.

They revolve around another meaning of the word kore. For it also means “pupil,” as in the pupil of the eye, that black, liquid, bottomless center in the center of the eye.

Now at first, that seems rather strange. How can a maiden and the pupil of the eye be related concepts? But it turns out that many cultures have an expression for the pupil that translates as “the girl in the eye.” In fact, according to ethnologists who’ve studied such expressions, about one-third of the languages in the world have a term for the pupil of the eye that refers to a small human or human-like being. For example, Spanish speakers call the pupil the nina del ojo, the “girl of the eye,” which ultimately derives from Latin, which had the expression: pupilla, the “little girl” of the eye. (“Figurative Language in a Universalist Perspective,” Cecil H. Brown and Stanley R. Witkowski, American Ethnologist, Vol. 8, No. 3, Symbolism and Cognition (Aug., 1981), pp. 596-615.)

The Eye of Horus with its deep, black pupil

The origin of the expression is probably the fact that when we look into someone’s eyes, we can see a tiny reflection of ourselves in the black mirror of the pupil.

The ancient Egyptians had this expression, too. Pyramid Text 155 says to Osiris, “Take to thyself the damsel [girl] who is in the eye of Horus; open thy mouth with her.” (That is Samuel Mercer’s translation; Faulkner translates it “pupil of the eye of Horus.” It is both.) Later, the expression was simplified to “the girl in the eye” and then just “the girl” so that by the time the Kore Kosmou was written, the pupil was frequently just called “the girl.” And yes, the Greek in which our text was written also has the expression: the pupil of the eye is the kore.

Not every language in which this expression occurs sees a girl in the pupil; some see babies, little men, or even angels. But in Egypt, it was a hunet, a young woman. Why?

This is pure speculation, but when it comes to the Eye of Horus, perhaps it is because His mother Isis is the young woman Who is reflected in His own Child God’s eye. Or perhaps it is because of the power of the Uraeus “Eye” Goddesses in Egypt.

There are many myths in which the Divine Eye goes forth in the form of a powerful Serpent Goddess, usually as a great protective power.

Isis is among these Goddesses of the Eye. In the Festival Songs of Isis & Nephthys from the Bremner-Rhind papyrus (Faulkner translation), Isis protects both Osiris and Horus and She is “Mistress of the Universe, Who came forth from the Eye of Horus, Noble Serpent which issued from Re, and which came forth from the pupil in the eye of Atum when Re arose on the First Occasion.”

But there are more mysteries of the eye. A praise of Amun-Re from Hibis demonstrates the power and mystery of the Divine Eye: “O Amun-Re Who hides Himself in His iris/pupil, Ba Who illumines by means of His oracular wedjat-eyes, Who manifests a manifestation: sacred one Who cannot be known. Brilliant of visible forms, Who hides Himself with His mysterious akh-eye: mysterious one, Whose secrets cannot be known.”

As the physical eyes are the organs of perception of the light of the sun and the moon, so the Divine Eyes can illuminate or conceal the deep Mysteries hidden within Their depths, most especially at the core, in the pupil, in the deepest, yet most reflective, part of the eye. For in the darkness of the pupil of the eye lies concealed spiritual illumination.

Thus it seems that the title of our text may also be translated as Pupil of the Eye of the World/Universe and that, as would-be initiates, we should understand the blackness of the pupil to conceal spiritual light. And indeed, in the Kore Kosmou, the Hermetic teacher Isis, begins the process of illuminating Her Wondrous Son, Horus, Who is Himself the possessor of Egypt’s most important eye, the talisman of talismans, the offering of offerings, the Eye of Horus.

The Kore Kosmou teaches about creation, and souls, and reincarnation, and the nature of Divinity. It reveals Mysteries—but not yet all of them—to the Hermetic student, Horus. Thus a title like Kore Kosmou, with its hidden meanings, is quite appropriate to this teaching text.

Isis is the Girl in the Pupil of the Eye. As a Holy Cobra Goddess, She comes forth from the Pupil of the Eye of Atum and She is a Divine Eye Goddess Herself. She knows the secrets of the darknesses of the kosmos (cosmos), a word that not only means “world” or “universe,” but also order, and so perhaps even Ma’et. Thus She is the one Who can appropriately reveal—or conceal—the Mysteries of the creation, ordering, and structure of the universe and the souls within it.

So it seems I am not yet done with the Kore Kosmou. I’m still researching and reading and I think I shall perhaps have some more to say on this subject next time.

The Kore Kosmou, the Pupil in the Eye of the Universe

But on the other hand, perhaps we should understand Horus as the Pupil of the Eye of the World; He is, after all, the student or “pupil” of His mother. And yes, that word is related, too…

Isis & the Kore Kosmou, Part 1

Yes, we are in the realm of the Hermetica; — “As Above, So Below” is probably the most well-known Hermetic axiom

My chat with Janus and Domonic of The Magician and the Fool podcast has been published. We had fun talking about a wide range of Isis topics. You can listen here.

This week, I’m starting a 3-part series on an ancient text known as the Kore Kosmou. When this post was first published, it was in answer to a request and a question from a friend of this blog, Andrea, about this particular text…

But first, some background.

The Kore Kosmou is one of the Hermetic texts and it follows the common pattern of a dialog between teacher and student. In the Hermetica, most often the teacher is Hermes Trismegistos and the student Asclepios, Ammon, or “Tat,” the son of Hermes. In the Kore Kosmou, Isis is the teacher and Her son, Horus, is the student.

Certainly, there were many more Hermetica than what has come down to us. It also seems likely that there were once more Isis-as-teacher texts than just the Kore Kosmou and the few fragments we have. This, of course, would make a great deal of sense: Isis and Thoth-Hermes—Egypt’s two great and wise Magician Deities—serving as the main Hermetic teachers. It is interesting to note that, as time goes on, more and more scholars are recognizing the genuinely Egyptian elements that are such an important part of the Hermetica. More on that later.

But in case you’re not familiar with Hermeticism and the Hermetica, here’s a brief introduction and then we’ll delve into Andrea’s question about the Kore Kosmou and discuss what the text contains.

Hermeticism & the Hermetic Texts

Hermes Trismegistos as a human sage, from the Siena Cathedral

Hermeticism began as a late Pagan branch of esotericism and was one of the many products of the meeting of the ancient Hellenic and Egyptian cultures in the centuries surrounding the beginning of the Common Era. The primordial and venerable religion of Egypt, its ancient wisdom, and its eternal magic combined with the dominant Greek culture, religion, and philosophy to produce a powerful mix that continues to influence esotericism to the present day.

Hermeticism’s most fertile home was the great syncretic Egyptian capital city of Alexandria—a city that had honored Isis from its inception and which left an indelible stamp upon the Hermetic tradition. As religious wisdom and philosophy flowed into Alexandria from many cultures, it likewise flowed into Hermeticism. In addition to Egyptian and Greek Paganism, Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and Iranian Zoroastrian all added to the Hermetic amalgamation.

Thoth; Trismegistos' Egyptian original — Thoth; Trismegistos’ Egyptian original

The Hermetic texts address a wide range of topics, including cosmic principles, the nature and orders of Being and beings, the human desire to know the Divine, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine, among others.

Scholars generally place the individual texts of the Hermetica in one of two camps: the philosophical and religious Hermetica, or the technical—that is, magical or theurgic—Hermetica. The main philosophical Hermetic texts that have come down to us are contained in the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of approximately 17 treatises written in Latin and Greek. The exact date for the composition of the texts is unknown, but they are usually thought to be dated to the second or third centuries CE. Technical Hermetica range more broadly, and are tentatively dated to a period spanning the first century CE to the fourth. It is quite possible, however, that at least some of the texts were based on significantly earlier models.

We’re not sure when the Kore Kosmou was written either. In 1909, Egyptologist Flinders Petrie suggested that it could be as old as 510 BCE and thus is the oldest of the Hermetic texts. Frankly, it doesn’t feel quite that old to me and although it can be considered one of the most “Egyptian” of the Hermetica, it has enough in common with the other texts that the 1st-3rd centuries CE date seems more right to me.

So What Was the Question?

You know. This guy. — God the Father, from the Sistine Chapel

Andrea wanted to know what I thought about the androcentricity of the creation story told in Kore Kosmou. And it definitely is androcentric. The Supreme Creator is a He and a Father. “Nature,” the product of Creation, is a beautiful feminine Being. So there ya go; stereotypes all around.

But there’s absolutely nothing special about that. It’s just the usual sexism of the day.

As a woman reading the ancient esoteric texts, I almost always have to mentally “translate” or interpret them for myself. Is the author talking about human men or humankind? Are women intended to be included in this, that, or the other statement? Were women even worth bothering about in the author’s eyes? If there is an encounter with a feminine Divine Being in the text, does the same spiritual dynamic apply to women or would a woman have an encounter with a masculine Divine Being?

This is true of…well…just about every ancient text I’ve ever read, no matter the tradition. Not only must I puzzle through the meaning of the ancient author, but then I must try to discover whether or not it was intended to relate to me as a female seeker. (And all of this applies to heterosexuals; how much more translation is required if you’re LBGTQ?) So I grit my teeth and try to ignore the sexism to find the underlying spiritual meaning. Some days are better than others but, I must admit, it does get tiresome.

Okay, I’m done now. With that small rant duly ranted, let’s discover what’s in the Kore Kosmou.

As it is my opinion that the Ultimate Divine is ultimately beyond gender, as I summarize the text, I shall be using the term “Creator” and “Sole Ruler” (both of which are in the original text) instead of Father, Craftsman, God, or the masculine pronoun when referring to the Ultimate Divine. All other Deities retain Their traditional, textural pronouns.

What’s in the Kore Kosmou?

Give heed, my son Horus, for you shall hear secret doctrine, of which our forefather Kamephis was the first teacher. It so befell that Hermes heard this teaching from Kamephis, the eldest of our race. I heard it from Hermes, the writer of records, at the time when he initiated me in the Black Rites [possibly alchemy], and you shall hear it now from me…

—Kore Kosmou, Walter Scott translation

This is how Isis begins Her dialog. She then describes for Her son the creation of the Universe, the Elements, and Nature. Nature is the most important female character in the story and is described as “a being in woman’s form, right lovely, at the sight of whom the gods were smitten with amazement.”

Isis next describes how the Souls—which are Divine and share with the Creator the ability to create—were made and how they became too proud of their creative ability, overstepping the bounds the Creator decreed for them.

To punish the Souls for their pride, the Souls are placed into human bodies by Hermes Trismegistos on command of the Sole Ruler. Yet the Creator is merciful. As consolation to the imprisoned Souls, the Creator allows them to forget their heavenly origins, to receive blessings from the Deities, and to return to the Heavens provided they do good upon earth.

Theres a band called Kore Kosmou...and they have a gorgeous album cover — There’s a band called Kore Kosmou…and they have a gorgeous album cover

Nevertheless, once the Souls are embodied, they began to fight amongst themselves, killing each other and polluting the world, so much so that the Elements complain to the Creator. The Creator bids the Elements to return to Their work, for help is on the way.

And so the Creator sends Isis and Osiris, Who are “the efflux” of the Divine, to help create order, religion, and civilization.

The Goddess and God bring “that which is Divine” into human life, thereby putting a stop to savage slaughter. They establish the rites of worship on earth, consecrate temples, and give human beings food and shelter. They introduce the oath and law and justice. They teach the art of mummification. They discover the cause of death by finding that the life-breath eventually returns to its place of origin. They learn the ways of the Spirits and inscribe the secrets on stones for human edification. They devise the “magic of the prophet-priests” so that human souls can be nurtured by philosophy and human bodies can be healed by the healing art.

Having brought all these Divine blessings to earth, Isis and Osiris are allowed to return to heaven after speaking a hymn. Horus asks to learn the hymn…and that is, unfortunately, where the text breaks off.

Isis and Osiris, from a stele now in the Louvre, photo by Rama

Another fragment seems to pick up the tale and has Isis answering Horus’ questions about the nature of the many types of Souls, how they are differentiated, and how they become intelligent.

In the surviving Hermetica, Isis often concerns Herself with Souls; an interest continuing from Her early function as a funerary Goddess and a guide and protector of the dead. In other Isis-to-Horus fragments, Isis teaches about reincarnation and the nature of Souls. In their Isian and Hermetic concern with the journey of the Soul after death, the texts resonate with the power of the ancient Egyptian tradition from which they, in part, derive.

Read It for Yourself

If you’d like to read the whole text for yourself, you can find the G.R.S. Mead translation here. And the Kingsford-Maitland translation here. Both of these translations are in the public domain, which is why you find them online. Mead’s is overly poetic in true Victorian fashion and Kingsford & Maitland had their own agenda. Of the translations I know of, the Walter Scott version seems best to me, though he is criticized for some of the “corrections” he made. It, however, is not in the public domain, so you won’t find it online. Always remember; translation is an art, not a science.

But it seems that I’m not quite done with the Kore Kosmou. So next time, we’ll talk about some of the genuinely Egyptian elements in the text and find out how it may indeed be the most “Egyptian” of the Hermetica.

Iset Mystikê?

An early Greek Kore, looking very Egyptian, complete with braided wig

I’m going to be talking with Janus Sunaj and Domonic of the Magician and the Fool podcast next week about the Mysteries of Isis…and probably some other things, too. I’ll let you know when the podcast is available. In the meantime, here are some speculations about Isis, Egypt, Greece, and the Mysteries…

Most modern scholars now accept the influence of ancient Egypt on ancient Greece. We are finally able to take ancient Greek writers a bit more seriously when they tell us that—well, yes—the fractious city-states of Greece were indeed impressed and influenced by the ancient-even-then, ever magical, amazingly unified, and seemingly peaceful land of Egypt.

Hey, nobody operates in a cultural vacuum and the ancients didn’t either.

Writing in the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus told his readers flatly that in the Egyptian language Demeter is Isis. In fact, he seems convinced that most of the names of the Greek Deities and many of the Greek religious rites came to the aboriginal Greeks, the Pelasgians, by way of Egypt. Among these rites are the famous Greek women’s rites of Demeter called Thesmophoria.

In his essay On Isis and Osiris, the Greek priest Plutarch remarks that “Among the Greeks also many things are done which are similar to the Egyptian ceremonies in the shrines of Isis, and they do them at about the same time.”

One of the Eleusinian priests, the Dadouchos

Diodorus Siculus, a Sicilian historian, records that Erechtheus, the mythical king of Athens, was himself Egyptian and it was he who instituted the Eleusinian rites after obtaining grain from Egypt during a Greek famine. He also said that the Eumolpids, the family that traditionally ran the Eleusinian Mysteries, were of Egyptian priestly stock.

How seriously should we take this? Could there be an Egyptian seed at the center of the defining Mysteries of ancient Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Kore?

It is quite true that we have no incontrovertible proof of an Egyptian origin of the important Eleusinian Mysteries. We do, however, have interesting footprints to follow up. We know for certain that either Egyptians were at Eleusis or that Greeks brought Egyptian talismans to Eleusis for Egyptian scarabs and a symbol of Isis, which date to the ninth or eighth century BCE, have been discovered there. The eighth century is the time to which the Eleusinian rites are usually dated, though it is likely that their true origins go back further, even if the rites were not in the form they eventually took.

Greek Bee Goddess...in what looks like an Egyptian nemyss — Greek Bee Goddess…in what looks like an Egyptian nemyss.

The correspondences between the Eleusinian myth and the Isis and Osiris myth as related in Plutarch are notable: the search for a missing Divine Beloved, the mournful aspect of the searching Goddess, the connection of the Beloved with the Underworld, and the (possible in the case of Eleusinian myth) birth of a Divine Child. Plutarch’s 2nd century CE rendition of the story is usually seen as Demetrian influence on Greco-Egyptian Isis and Her Greco-Roman Mysteries. But what if it was the other way around?

There are scholars who have traced magical formulae from Egypt to Greece, then followed them as they returned from Greece—changed—to be re-adopted in Egypt at a later period. Perhaps something like that happened with the Eleusinian/Isis-Osiris myth. While the basis of the myth—missing Beloved, searching, mourning, finding—may have its roots in Egypt, by the time it came back to Egypt, it had been changed. For instance, the “weeping at the well” incident in both the Demeterian myth and Plutarchian Isis myth is not found in any Egyptian rendition of the Isis and Osiris tale. It would indeed seem that this revised piece of the story was adopted from Demeter’s myth into that of Isis.

While this is speculative, it’s not just me speculating. There are actual scholars thinking along these lines. One of them is the highly controversial Martin Bernal (author of Black Athena, which traces African origins for a great deal of Greek culture). The much less controversial Walter Burkert has something to say about eastern influence, too, in his The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Even scholars of a more classical bent admit the influence of Egypt on early Greece, especially in matters of religion.

Bernal’s work as a whole should not be dismissed just because he goes too far in some cases. In my opinion, overall he’s right: Egypt particularly, as well as other long-established near eastern nations, exerted a huge influence on early Greece in its formative stages. Once Greece became established, of course, it developed its unique culture. But again, no culture exists in a vacuum. We are all influenced by each other.

The entrance to the Eleusinian sanctuary today

Bernal spends a lot of time making etymological connections (etymology is the study of word origins) which are, at the very least, interesting. For instance, there are a number of Eleusinian terms that have no Indo-European cognates, yet can be explained in terms of ancient Egyptian or West Semitic. I won’t go into all the details because, if you’re not an etymologist, you might start to snore. One of these terms is the word “mysteries” itself. While it is usually explained as coming from an Indo-European root that refers to “closing the mouth” or staying silent, Bernal suggests that it might be better and more directly explained by an Egyptian root that refers to secrecy.

In this scenario, “mysteries” is derived from ancient Egyptian em sesheta (you can see the “m” and “s” sound there), meaning “in secret.” Sesheta, “secret,” was a word often used in relation to the Isis-Osiris rites, as well as other Egyptian rites.

Bernal also make connections between Greek words associated with the Mysteries and other Egyptian words, but frankly, I don’t have enough etymological background to judge. For instance, Bernal offers a connection between the Greek root of telete (initiation), which also means “completion” with the Egyptian djer, meaning “limit, end, or entire.” (You may recall this word from our discussion of Nephthys as the Lady of the Limit during the last few weeks.)

The Hierophant from the Thoth tarot deck; the Hierophant is the High Priest at Eleusis, and of the Eumolpid family

As I mentioned earlier, Diodorus Siculus recorded the tradition that the Eleusinian priestly family, the Eumolpids, were originally Egyptian. The ancient Greek scholar Apollodorus said that the Eumolpids were from Eithiopia. Apparently the Eumolpids themselves believed they had Egyptian origins, while others said they were from Thrace. Bernal suggests that the name Eumolpid, as well as the name of the second Eleusinian priestly family, the Keryxes, who served as Sacred Heralds, have plausible Afroasiatic origins. In fact, he thinks that Greek keryx comes from Egyptian qa kheru, “high or loud of voice.” And that, if true, is extremely cool.

Of course, the big thing that may have come to the Greeks from Egypt is the idea of a blessed life after death. In the work of early Greek poets like Homer, the afterlife is a place of wan grey ghosts and no joy. Where did the idea of a joyful afterlife—for initiates, anyway—come from? Surely, surely it was influenced by Greece’s neighbors to the south, where they were well-versed in the ways of the afterlife and its joys, assuming one knew the proper passwords and pathways. It seems likely that this knowledge, which would have been sesheta until Books of the Dead became more widely available for everyone in Egypt, could have been turned into a Mystery cult at Eleusis, where a Goddess searched for a missing Beloved, eventually found Her, though She was forever changed having become the Queen of the Dead, and then bestowed the Mystery of a blessed life after death on Her initiates.

And we haven’t even gotten to the harmonies between Isis and Demeter, which are much more interesting than just Their “Mother Goddess” connection. Perhaps we’ll go there next time.

The monumental head of Isis-Sothis-Demeter from Hadians Villa, now in the Vatican Museum — The monumental head of Isis-Sothis-Demeter from the Roman Emperor Hadian’s Villa, now in the Vatican Museum; I have seen Her in person and She is wow.

What does the rudder have to do with Isis?

An Egyptian rudder with seeing eyes and lotus decoration — An Egyptian rudder with seeing eyes and regenerative lotus decoration

As a river-dependent civilization, ancient Egypt was quite familiar with the rudders used to steer boats.

So it is perhaps no great leap to see the guiding rudder as a symbol of the greater guidance of the Divine.

Just as Egyptian pilots steered their earthly boats with these rudders, so they became a symbol of guidance and direction in the afterlife. And so may we also take them as a symbol of guidance in our spiritual lives as well as our everyday lives.

In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, for example, the deceased prays that Horus, the son of Isis, will be in charge of the rudder of his funerary boat and that Thoth and Ma’et will be beside Him. In other words, he prays to be guided by the strength of Horus and the wisdom of Thoth and Ma’et.

When depicted in the funerary books, these Divine steering-oars are often decorated with the Eyes of Horus, representing the power of the Sun and Moon, and the blue lotuses of rebirth. In a group of four, the oars represent the four cardinal directions.

The seven Cows of Heaven and Their Bull, with rudders — The seven Cows of Heaven and Their Bull, with four rudders representing the directions

The rudder is also connected with the concept of abundance. In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the deceased prays to the rudders of the directions asking them to grant bread, beer, offerings, provisions, long life, prosperity, health, and joy. Furthermore, directly following this prayer to the rudders is the formula of the Divine Cows and Their Bull. It, too, has to do with provisions in the afterlife, as well as rebirth from the Divine Cow. The proximity of the formulae of the Divine rudders and the Divine bovines, as well as their similar subject matter, indicates a relationship between them. Not only do both have to do with abundance and life, but also, like the four rudders, the four legs of the Divine Cow we sometimes associated with the four directions.

Isis guides the boat of the deceased in the Otherworld

Both cow and rudder are, in turn, related to Isis. She is the Divine Cow Who gives abundance and rebirth and She is also a Goddess Who guides. In Egyptian texts, Isis is one of the Deities Who guides the Sun God’s boat. In later Graeco-Roman sources, Isis is specifically connected with the symbol of the guiding rudder. As Isis Pelagia, Isis of the Sea, the Goddess was known to steer the ship of life with Her sacred rudder. Mariners of all kinds invoked Her guidance and protection as they crossed the Mediterranean, braving its many dangers.

In the Mediterranean world, the symbolism of the rudder continued to embrace the ideas of abundance and prosperity. In Hellenic lands, the rudder was a symbol of Agathe Tyche (“Good Fortune”). In Rome, it was the emblem of the Goddess Fortuna—and both Goddesses were intimately connected with Isis. In fact, of all the Goddesses in the areas influenced by Greece and Rome, Isis was the one Deity with Whom Agathe Tyche and Fortuna were most consistently assimilated.

As Agathe Tyche, Isis was considered the “luck” of a number of port cities, particularly Alexandria. In fact, Her headdress emphasizes her connection with cities. As guardian of cities, Tyche wears an elaborate crown shaped like city walls. Legend had it that Tyche gave birth to a Divine figure called Isityche Who was said to symbolize the combination of Divine Providence and Chance. As you can easily see, Isityche is none other than Isis-Tyche. In this combined Divine figure, “Isis” represents the wise guidance of the Divine, while “Tyche”—sometimes depicted as blind—represents unseeing Chance.

The Roman version of Agathe Tyche was the Goddess Fortuna. She was extremely popular throughout the Roman world. Every Roman emperor kept an image of Fortuna in his sleeping quarters in hopes of bringing good fortune to his reign. Anyone with particularly good or bad luck was said to have their own “Fortuna.” Fortuna even had Her own oracular shrines. Her symbols include the Wheel of Fate, a sphere representing the World that She rules, the cornucopia of plenty, and a rudder with which She steers Fate. When Fortuna is depicted specifically as Isis Fortuna, She also wears the horns and disk crown of the abundant Egyptian Cow Goddess; thus reuniting the Egyptian symbols of cow and rudder in the figure of the Goddess Isis.

Isis Fortuna from the Temple of Isis, Pompeii — Isis Fortuna with rudder, from the Temple of Isis, Pompeii

Like Tyche, Fortuna was often said to be blind. And, in fact, it may have been precisely because of this that Isis became so strongly tied to both Tyche and Fortuna. The Goddess Isis was well known to be the very opposite of blind. She is specifically a Goddess Who sees and understands the needs of Her worshippers. By invoking not just blind Tyche or blind Fortuna, but Isis Tyche and Isis Fortuna, one was invoking a seeing Fate—a more auspicious Fate steered by a skillful Mistress of the Rudder, the wise Goddess Isis.

Whether as the Divine Cow Goddess Who gives provisions and rebirth or as the guiding Goddess of the rudder and the cornucopia, Isis goes before us, guiding and leading us to abundance in all things. May She bless you. May She steer you toward that which you most desire. May She help you grow in strength and beauty of soul. Amma, Iset.

The Blood of Isis

When paired with the Djed of Osiris, the Tiet can be seen as the feminine symbol of the Goddess’ womb just as the Djed can be seen as the masculine symbol of the God’s phallus.

The redness of the Tiet may represent the red lifeblood a mother sheds while giving birth. On the other hand, it might represent menstrual blood. Some say the amulet is shaped like the cloth worn by women during menstruation. Others have interpreted it as a representation of a ritual tampon that could be inserted in the vagina to prevent miscarriage. In this case, it would have been the amulet Isis used to protect Horus while He was still within Her womb. For a whole post on the Knot of Isis, click here.

Year 9, fourth month of inundation, day 13. Day that the eight women came outside [to the] place of women, when they were menstruating. They got as far as the back of the house which […long gap…] the three walls …

Isis, Mistress of the Pyramids

I’m out with my thiasos this weekend, so am posting this a bit early. I hadn’t known that there was an Isis temple at Giza. But, yep, there is.

There is a most interesting inscription on an artifact known as the Inventory Stela from the Giza Plateau.

You’ll immediately see why I was interested. Here’s what it says according to the great Egyptologist Gaston Maspero’s translation of the stele:

Live Horus the Mezer, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, given life. He made for his mother Isis, the Divine Mother, Mistress of the Western Mountain [that is, the necropolis], a decree made on a stela, he gave to Her a divine offering, and he built Her a temple of stone, renewing what he had found, namely the Gods in Her place.

Live Horus, the Mezer, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, given life. He found the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, by the side of the cavity of the Sphinx, on the northwest side of the House of Osiris, Lord of Rostaw, and he built his pyramid beside the temple of this Goddess, and he built a pyramid for the King’s Daughter, Henut-sen, beside this temple. The place of Hwran-Hor-em-akhet [that is, the Sphinx] is on the south of the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, and on the north of Osiris, Lord of Rostaw. The plans of the Image of Hor-em-akhet were brought in order to bring to revision the sayings of the disposition of the Image of the Very Redoubtable. He restored the statue all covered in painting, of the Guardian of the Atmosphere, who guides the winds with his gaze.

Isis protecting Osiris

He made to quarry the hind part of the nemes headdress, which was lacking, from gilded stone, and which had a length of about 7 ells [3.7 metres]. He came to make a tour, in order to see the thunderbolt, which stands in the Place of the Sycamore, so named because of a great sycamore, whose branches were struck when the Lord of Heaven descended upon the place of Hor-em-akhet, and also this image, retracing the erasure according to the above-mentioned disposition, which is written {…} of all the animals killed at Rostaw. It is a table for the vases full of these animals which, except for the thighs, were eaten nears these seven gods, demanding {…} (The God gave) the thought in his heart, of putting a written decree on the side of this Sphinx, in an hour of the night. [That is, the pharaoh had a dream from the Sphinx that he should do this.] The figure of this God, being cut in stone, is solid, and will exist to eternity, having always its face regarding the Orient.

Pretty cool, huh?

Isis & the Egg

Spring! So many flowerbeds to weed... — Spring! So many flowerbeds to weed…

The equinox has come and gone. Light now overbalances dark. Things are stirring, stirring, stirring everywhere. The flowerbeds beg (or is that screaming, I hear?) to be weeded and about a million springtime chores fill my ever-burgeoning To Do List.

Yet I’m feeling a little melancholy.

You, too?

Sometimes, when I’m feeling like this, I’ve found that it can be a sign that I’ve drifted a bit from my core—from Her—and that what I really I need to do is to reweave our connection. Rather than expanding as the flowers of spring so beautifully urge us to do as they break forth from the dark and muddy womb of the earth, what I need to do is pull in a bit.

Beautiful Robin's egg blue eggs — Beautiful Robin’s egg blue eggs

Fortunately, in addition to spring’s pink, yellow, and purple floral heralds, there is another springtime symbol that is almost as ubiquitous and which may be more appropriate to my inward-turning state of mind: the egg.

Like human beings always have, the ancient Egyptians knew and valued this important symbol. Indeed, one of the euphemistic names for the innermost sarcophagus (the one right next to the mummy) was “the egg.” For them, the coffin was merely the eggshell protecting human beings until they were ready to break free and be reborn as a Shining One among the Deities.

Geb, father of Isis, with the goose upon His head

As daughter of Geb (the Earth God, one of Whose symbols is the goose), Isis is called “the Egg of the Goose.” Yes, I know. God. Egg. But it is what it was, and, by tradition, Isis is the Divine Egg of Her father.

Yet Isis is a Bird Goddess Herself and has eggs of Her own, most notably Horus and the Horus-king. In the Pyramid Texts, Isis discusses with Nu, the God of the primordial abyss, how the king will be reborn by breaking out of his egg. (Remember that this is the name for the innermost sarcophagus.) First Nu states that Isis has borne and shaped the king within the egg, then asks how the Deities shall break the egg so that he can be reborn.

Isis answers, telling Nu about all the Divine help the king will get and eventually declaring, “Behold, the king is in being; behold, the king is knit together; behold, the king has broken the egg.”

After breaking out of his egg, the king is reborn, flying up from the nest like a young bird beneath the watchful gaze of his mother Isis. We find these kinds of references to the deceased as a chick in the egg throughout the funerary texts.

An egg-filled nest from Tutankhamon's tomb — An egg-filled nest from Tutankhamun’s tomb

As they are for us, eggs were a primary food for the ancient Egyptians. So naturally, eggs were given to both Deities and the dead as food offerings. We also find examples of decorated ostrich eggs in some tombs.

Even in the later period of Isis worship, eggs continued to play their part. When Apuleius describes the purification of the Isis ship during the Navigium Isidis, he says that fire, sulfur, and an egg were used. While fire and sulfur are common instruments of purification, some scholars think the egg was added because of the importance of the egg in Egyptian symbolism.

But right now—where we are right now—the egg is not yet cracked. It lies with its spring-colored companions in the grass-filled woven nest. The chick is yet quiescent. Perhaps that chick, that Isis-kite-to-be, is me. If you like, it can be you, too.

For while everything around us seems to be breaking out of its the shell, we are still within ours, humming our pre-birth song, dreaming of our Mother, still feeling Her warmth around us.

Black kite chicks hatching from their eggs; image © Jose Luis Gomez de Francisco / naturepl.com, from Arkive.org

We breathe, slowly and carefully, our eyes closed. We put our left forefingers to our lips and let is rest there. Is this the gesture of a child sucking on its finger? Is it a gesture of silence as later devotees of the Goddess believed? It doesn’t matter. It is a gesture that brings us in and quiets us. We envision the eggshell surrounding us, protecting us, as we prepare for our own true awakening of spring.

But for now, we simply float in our egg, feeling the warmth and the presence of Our Mother Isis. Her feathers cover us. She protects us. She is infinitely patient as She awaits our birth. It will take exactly as long as it takes. She has all the time in the world to wait for us.

And as we feel Her infinite patience, we are also aware of the living cord that connects us to Her, an umbilical woven of magic that is the bond between us. This is the sacred magic of the Knot of Isis, the bond that connects the Great Goddess Isis with all Her children, whether they are within the egg or have already struggled out of their shells and are emerging in all their bewildered beauty.

But at some point, for us, the time comes. We are at last ready. We shift and try to spread our wings. We peck at the eggshell about us, cracking it. Light comes forth as we break free, emerging from the warm confinement of the egg into the pale, damp-bright, flower-scented air of spring. As we shake off the last bits of shell, Isis cries out for us: “Behold, she is in being; behold, she is knit together; behold, she has broken the egg!”

Isis name with the egg determinative that indicates "Goddess" — Isis’ name with the egg determinative that indicates “Goddess”

Sacred vessels of the Goddess Isis

"To London, at the Temple of Isis" — “To London, at the temple of Isis”

It is finally spring. And here in the Pacific Northwest, we are having a classic one. Last weekend sunny and 70, this one wet and 50. For some reason (probably as I have been planting), this reminds me of vessels. So I hope you will enjoy this little excursion into some of the sacred and sacred-ish vessels associated with the Isis…

There is a very famous jug found in what is now Tooley Street in the Southwark borough of London. It doesn’t look like much; it’s about a foot high, just terracotta, with a graffito scratched on its surface. The jug is dated to the latter part of the 1st century CE.

It’s important because of what that graffito says. It says,”LONDINI AD FANVM ISIDIS,” that is, “To London at the temple of Isis”. Thus it confirms the existence of a temple of Isis in ancient London. One more reference to the temple has been uncovered locally as well. It’s a 3rd century CE altar (which had been used as part of a wall) with an inscription that states that the Isis temple had fallen down due to age, but had now been restored.

Together, these finds are the only certain evidence of an actual Isis temple anywhere in Roman Britain. (There are other artifacts—figurines, hairpins with Her image—that indicate Her presence in London, but nothing else about a temple.)

An Italian terracotta showing Isis with Harpocrates and Anubis. Her London devotees may have owned similar votive images.

The jug has been presumed to be a wine jug that may have belonged to a tavern near the temple, perhaps even a tavern dedicated to Isis. There is archeological precedent for taverns being located near temples as well as for being dedicated to Deities.

Other scholars have wondered whether the jug may have belonged to the temple itself. In particular, some have suggested that it may have been part of the feasting that would take place at temples by the religious associations who tended them. There is precedent for this, too.

Back in Egypt, demotic texts speak of “Days of Drinking” that became a term for the meetings of such groups. In Egypt, the groups were probably influenced by Greek symposia, meaning “drinking together,” and thiasoi, which were voluntary religious associations like our modern covens as well as larger organizations like the Fellowship of Isis. Yet there was native tradition, too. A scholar who studied this believes that the demotic name, Days of Drinking, may derive from one of the ancient Egyptian lunar festivals, which would no doubt include feasting and drinking as well.

A model of Londinium in the 1st century CE, from the London Museum

Such an association of Isiacs would not have been out of place in Roman London. We find them throughout the Empire. Archeologists have also found several other jugs inscribed with Isis’ name from other parts of the Empire.

I haven’t been able to find out whether anyone has actually tested residue from the Southwark jug to discover if it ever contained wine, but it sure looks like a classic wine jug—whether for use as part of the religious festivals at the temple or by the tavern next door.

The Southwark jug is, of course, not the only vessel with which Isis is connected. By the Late Period, She is especially associated with what is usually referred to as a situla, a container for sacred liquids. Many representations of Her show a sistrum in one hand and a situla in the other, some of these situlae conspicuously breast-shaped.

The situla is not exclusive to the religion of Isis. From approximately the 19th dynasty onward, these small ritual buckets, washeb in Egyptian, were used to carry offerings of Nile water or milk in the cults of many Egyptian Deities. A text from Denderah that describes rites for Osiris specifically mentions a “situla of gold.” Situlae were usually decorated with scenes involving fertility, nourishment, or the cult of the specific Deity for Whom there were being used.

Scenes on the situale might include images of the nurturing Cow Goddess, images that suggest fertility, such as the plump Nile God or a Child God on a lotus, or sexual images such as the ithyphallic God Min. It seems clear that the breast or womb-like vessel was associated with the nurturing, fertile, and sexual aspects of the Divine—and thus very appropriate to Isis.

While the situla is spoutless, a different type of spouted vessel is also connected with Isis. It is the urnula or hydreion. It is from a later period and found in Isiac representations outside of Egypt.

Roman priestesses and priests of Isis, the urnula is carried by the priestess on the far right — Roman priestesses and priests of Isis; urnulas are carried by the priestesses on the right and left, situlae are carried by the priests

Nonetheless, it was always made to look Egyptian, decorated with Egyptian scenes and hieroglyphs and usually with a rearing cobra on the handle. The urnula was specifically for carrying sacred water, especially sacred Nile water. We don’t know for certain, but it most likely was used to pour libation offerings to the Goddess. In Apuleius’ novelized account of initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, he says that the vessel “represented the Highest Deity.”

A charming vessel in which to store "the milk of a woman who has borne a son" — A charming vessel in the shape of mother and child; it held human milk, which was used in healing medicines

I have argued in Isis Magic, that Isis is one of the Great “Container” Goddesses, that is, one of the Great Mother Goddesses Who Contain All Things.

The concept of the Mother as Great Container is easy to understand. Like the human mother who contains the child and, once born, the milk to nourish it, the Great Mother contains all creatures and provides sustenance for them through the blessings of nature. Judging by the numerous gynomorphic vessels that have been found throughout all regions of the world, the concept of Great Mother as Container of All appears to have been common throughout the prehistoric world.

So, from a specific Isiac vessel, we can take our exploration of Isis to an expanded and more symbolic level. She is at once the Goddess celebrated in feasting and drinking together and She is the Lady of the Vessel and the Great Vessel Herself. She is the All-Containing One Who gives us life and nourishment, in life and in death.