My sacred image of the Goddess in Her Wadj (Green) Temple
A little while ago, I had the opportunity to be in the same room with several other priestesses of Isis and we were talking about Her (as priestesses of Isis are wont to do).
All of us agreed with this statement: “Isis will kick your ass.” And each of us knew exactly what the others meant by that.
We had all experienced it, you see.
But just in case you haven’t yet had the opportunity to have your own sweet butt kicked by the Goddess, I’ll explain.
She insists…
When you undertake a relationship with Isis, whether that be as a priestess, priest, or devotee, it is more than likely that She will ask something of you. For instance, She might want you to get your physical surroundings in order so that you can create a temple space for yourself. She might want you to quit smoking. She might want you to start a group to teach Her Mysteries. She might want you to create a ritual or a work of art. She might ask you to volunteer at a homeless center. She might insist you learn something particular—or finally see a doctor about that issue you’ve been having.
In my case, She wanted me to write for Her.
Now, I say, “She might want,” but what I really mean is, “She will demand.” Not in a whiny, naggy way, but in an insistent, just-keep-bringing-it-up-to-you way. Like a good mother teaching Her child, the Goddess makes sure that Her request just kinda seems to be in your face all the time…until you do it, or at least until you get started on it.
You remember that thing we were talking about? Well?
But that’s just the surface stuff.
The real ass kicking is what happens as you actually undertake your mission from the Goddess.
You grow—and growth can sometimes be painful. What Isis asks you to do usually has some value in terms of your earthly life (a cleaner house, cleaner lungs), but the secret is that this particular task has also been chosen by Her to help you grow spiritually. This means that it will usually bring up some soul issues (psychology is the study of the soul; you knew that, right?) that you need to deal with in order to be a competent priestess, priest, or devotee.
Lovingly, insistently, persistently, She will help you grow. Please present butt.
And while you’re trying to deal with those little tender spots in your psyche, She will also demand of you complete honesty. Honesty with yourself. You must accept your part in your own problems; and you must accept your greater part in the solution. There’s no hiding, no blaming other people, no whining. (Well, you might whine a little and, in that case, She will always, always comfort you.) This combination of Divine persistence and motherly comfort and kindness creates the space for each of us to truly grow in Her presence.
Personally, I’ve never been sorry when She kicked my ass. I think the priestesses with whom I spoke the other night would agree. How about you?
Perhaps it was coincidence or perhaps it was the hand of Isis, but twice in the past week, the idea of “being joined to one’s star” has been brought sharply to my attention. So today, let’s talk a bit of the Way of the Stars…and especially the way of our own personal star.
Nuet, Full of Stars
In Isis Magic, the Path of the Stars is the path of the Prophetess or Prophet of Isis. (In Egyptian, this would be Hem/et Nutjeret; the Servant of the Goddess.)
Photoshop; but beautiful
On this path, we deal with the important star Sirius (Sothis in Greek, Sopdet in Egyptian), which is the Star of Isis. The Goddess Herself may be seen in the star and sometimes the star is said to be the ba, the manifestation or soul, of the Goddess
We honor Isis in Her singular and beautiful star, but on the Path of Stars, we also work with the idea of a universe filled with millions and millions of stars—stars that are, like us, within the body of Nuet, the Sky Goddess and Mother of Isis.
In the Pyramid Texts, it is clear that the deceased king ascends to the heavens and becomes a star. This ascension also makes him Divine, a god among Gods. He takes his place in the otherworld as a star, sometimes called the Lone Star or the Morning Star.
An image from one of the shrines of Tutankhamon; these mummified Gods are joined to their stars and “receive the rays of Re”
In Utterance 245 of the Pyramid Texts, the Sky Goddess says to the deceased, “Open up your place in the sky among the stars of the sky, for you are the Lone Star, the companion of Hu…” (Hu is one of the great creative powers of Re, “Creative Utterance.” It may be that the Goddess is likening the king to Sia, “Perception,” for indeed he specifically declares himself to be Sia in Utterance 250.) Utterance 248 reiterates the king’s star-nature. He is “a star brilliant and far traveling,” and he has “come to his throne which is upon the Two Ladies [Isis and Nephthys or Wadjet and Nekhbet] and the king appears as a star.” A text from the tomb of Basa, a priest of Min and mayor of ancient Thebes, says of the deceased, “your star be in heaven, your ba upon the earth.”
While the Pyramid Texts are concerned with the king, as time went on, the Egyptian conception of the otherworld got more democratic; everyone could participate and have their own Divine stars.
But if you’ve read any of the Pyramid or Coffin Texts or the Book of the Dead, you’ll know that those sacred texts are not intended just for the dead. The texts tell us that the knowledge they impart is also beneficial for living human beings. “As for him who knows this spell on earth . . . he will proceed to a very happy old age” says one text. Another states that anyone who knows the spell will “complete 110 years of life,” while yet another explains, “it is beneficial for anyone who does it.”
This is an image I took of the same scene from a reproduction of Tut’s shrine that came through town pre-pandemic
The same thing applies to being conscious of or joined to your star. It is not solely a post mortum activity. If our “star” is our Divine Self, the one we will hopefully become after death, then to know our star in this life means that its light can serve as a guide as we move through our current earthly lives. What would my star self do in any given situation?
One of the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri even has a specific ritual for learning about “your star,” and which is referred to as “an initiation.” There are quite a number of preparations, but in short, you purify yourself for seven days while the moon is waning. On the night of the dark moon, you begin sleeping on the ground each night for seven nights, waking every morning to greet the sun and to name the Deities of the hours of the day. On the eighth night, you rise in the middle of the night, perform a series of invocations and magical acts, recite the account of creation, and call upon the Great God. When the God arrives, you avoid looking in His face and ask Him about your fate. “He will tell you even about your star and what kind of daimon [spirit] you have…” (PGM XIII 646-734)
We, the many stars in Her heaven
It is well for us to know “even about our star.” For it illuminates the individual life and spiritual path that is uniquely ours, but it also places us in the company of the Divine Ones.
I did a meditation, not too long ago, about the Child Horus in the stillness of the womb of Isis. It came to me that it may be there and then that we are first joined to our stars. But to truly benefit from this starry relationship throughout our lives, we must continually renew, strengthen, and deepen the connection so that our star’s holy light may always inspire and guide us.
We might think of our star as our Star Self or Isis Self. But, like the Goddess Herself, it has many other names as well. It can be called the Higher Self, the Augoeides (“Shining One”), the Holy Guardian Angel, the Higher and Divine Genius, Christ Consciousness, the Atman, the True Self, the Inner Teacher, and many more. And when we are joined to it, we will be our truer and more divine selves.
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
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 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.
A Mongolian shaman making offering
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.
Roman girl making offering
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.
Hebrew priest making offering
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.”
An offering formula from a tomb
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.
The Milky Way arching through the night sky; Nuet, the Secret One
While I have no declared priestesshood for Nuet, She draws me. A lot. In fact, almost anytime I do spiritual work with Her, I am overawed by Her Eternity, Her Depth, Her Beauty, and I want to lose myself in Her.
Nuet is the mother of Isis. And She is also the One Who Bears All the Gods and Goddesses, and so She is called the Mistress of All. She is the Splendid and Mighty One in the House of Her Creation. She is the Great One in Heaven and the “indestructible stars” (that is, the circumpolar stars that are always visible) are said to be in Her.
The Sky Goddess Nuet, full of stars
She embraces the deceased “in Her name of Sarcophagus” and “in Her name of Tomb.” She is the Mistress of the Duat (the Otherworld). She is the Glowing One (as the Milky Way) and in Her we are joined to our stars, Becoming divine. She is the one Who gives birth to us and Who welcomes us back into Her starry body at our deaths. She is Heaven and She is the Otherworld. She is the one Who is “Amid the Iset Temple in Denderah” for She is over Her daughter Isis and Her daughter is both in and of Her.
A most beautiful Nuet
As Nuet gives birth every day, She is the quintessential Mother Goddess. She births the Sun God Re each day and receives him back into Her body, by swallowing Him, each night. She also gives birth to Him yearly at the winter solstice. A cycle within a cycle within the Mother.
The decan stars, by which the ancient Egyptians kept time throughout the night, rise and set within Her heavenly body and so She is also a keeper and regulator of time. In one instance of what Egyptologists refer to as a “shadow clock,” the Hours of the Night are counted off in relation to where the sun is on/in Nuet’s body: First Hour, “hand,” Second Hour, “lip.” Third Hour, “tooth,” Fourth Hour, “throat,” and so on.
Nuet on the interior of a coffin, facing the deceased
Most ancient Egyptian painted representations of Deities show Them in profile. Yet there are a few Who come to us face-forward. The Great Goddess Hathor is famously depicted that way, as is Bes, the God Who is a protector of households, children, and mothers. Interestingly, we also find Nuet shown in this way. Like Hathor, She is a Mother Goddess and like Bes, She is a mighty protectress.
We often find Her on the inside of a coffin, stretched out over the deceased person like the sky, positioned face-to-face with them. This face-forward, face-to-face position is particularly intimate, particularly appropriate for the close relationship with a mother…or a Mother Goddess. Yet facing forward is also a protective stance. We see some of these face-forward Deities holding dangerous beasties (scorpions, snakes, crocodiles) harmlessly in Their hands, demonstrating how They can protect us from real as well as metaphorical beasties. Isis’ son, Horus the Child or Harpokrates, is often shown in this way on what are known as Cippi of Horus.
Nuet has another interesting epithet that is found in the Otherworld books known as The Book of Caverns and the Book of the Earth. Just like the more-famous Book of the Dead, these are magical texts to assist the dead in the Otherworld.
The Secret One with serpents, crocodiles, sun disk, and ram in Her hands facing Geb/Re/Osiris
In these books, there is an important Goddess known as the Secret One, the Shetait. Egyptologists generally believe that this is an epithet of Nuet. As the Secret One, Nuet can be seen, not face-forward, but standing between serpents and crocodiles that She has tamed on behalf of the Sun God (and thus the deceased). Her power over them is in the form of heat or fire. They “stay in their place due to the fire, the heat which is in this Goddess,” says the Book of the Earth. The Book of Caverns says that the Goddess “is secret of form, being in their darkness as a flame to which the gods cannot ascend.” She is thus a fiery Light in the Darkness, a flame that protects and illuminates.
The Secret One holds in Her hands a sun disk and a ram or sometimes a ba-bird, both representing the Sun God, Who is in the process of being regenerated and reborn. The Secret One holds this process in Her hands.
The Book of Caverns tells us that the Secret One’s head is in the upper Duat while Her feet are in the lower Duat. The Sun God travels upon Her arms, but at the same time is hidden by Her from the Gods, the akhu (the transfigured, light-filled, effective spirits), and the dead. The process of rebirth is delicate and must be hidden until the proper time. In the Book of the Earth, it is said that “the double ba, he travels Her body.” The double ba is Re when He is joined with Osiris, something that must also happen in the Otherworld in order for the sun to be reborn.
The sun disk about to enter the Secret Place and the Secret One
In Her Name of Sarcophagus, Nuet spreads Herself out over the deceased and is called Shet Pet. Shet Pet is a common epithet of Hers and means “Coverer of the Sky.” With a little bit of the word play for which the ancient Egyptians were so well known, this epithet can also be interpreted as the Secrecy of the Sky (Sheta Pet) reinforcing Nuet’s identification as the Secret One.
With Her doubled snakes and doubled bas, Nuet can also split Herself in two and become manifest as Her two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. Just as Nuet unites the east and west with the arch or Her body across the sky, so Her daughters form a unity as They position Themselves to the right and left of Osiris or They are to be found framing either side of one of the illustrated scenes in the Otherworld books.
The Secret One is, for me, a particularly potent epithet of the Goddess. It tastes of Her Mystery, the great Mystery of Life and Death and Rebirth. It speaks of Her Eternity. It breaths Her Depth and Her Power.
According to Herodotus, the Egyptians never sacrifice cows…
“…for these are sacred to Isis. For the image of Isis is always made in the form of a woman with the horns of an ox, as Io is pictured by the Greeks; and for that reason all Egyptians are alike in treating cows far more holy than other beasts.”
This painting is from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii and shows Isis receiving the “bull-maiden,” Io
Who is Io and how is she (or She?) connected to Isis?
The story of Io is a Greek myth and apparently an ancient one. Here’s the tale:
Io was a priestess of Hera, even the first priestess of Hera, having established the Goddess’ worship in Argos. Io is also a naiad or water nymph, daughter of the River God, Inakhos.
Theoi.com (a wonderful mythology website) tells us that Io, in the Argive dialect, means “moon.” Other scholars have speculated that Io was a Hellenized version of an Egyptian word for both moon and Moon God, Iah.
In the image above (you can click it to see it larger), from Pompeii’s Temple of Isis, we can see that the woman on the left does indeed have horns as in Herodotus’ description, although Isis, on the right with the cobra, does not. Judging by the details in this painting, it appears the Italian Isiacs were trying to maintain the Egyptian flavor of their rites. Note the diaphanous nature of Isis’ robe, as well as the breast-baring robe of the (probably) priestess behind Her, who holds a sistrum. Another figure, probably a priest, holds a sistrum, wand, and situla.
Zeus turning Io into the white cow; art by Leo & Diane Dillon
It seems more than likely that the artist was depicting the Isiac priestess and priest as he had seem them in the temple of Isis.
Anyway, back to our story. Hera’s ever-unfaithful husband, Zeus, falls in love with the lovely lunar nymph Io—either because of her great beauty or due to the spells of a iynx (a magical wheel sacred to Hekate; also known as Hekate’s Top or Wheel).
Io, meanwhile, had dreams that told her she should indeed surrender to Zeus, but when she told her father about them, he decided a second opinion was in order. Yet after consulting the Delphic oracle and the oracle of Dodona (an oracle of Zeus, by the way, so…), the answer remained the same. Thus, Io went secretly to Zeus and they made love. Now betrayed not only by Her husband but also by Her priestess, Hera was, to say the least, not pleased.
To protect Io from Hera’s anger, Zeus turned her into a beautiful white cow. Hera, pretending ignorance of the true identity of the lovely cow, promptly demanded that Zeus give the cow to Her. He could do nothing but comply. To guard Her new possession, Hera brought in Argos, Who had a hundred watchful eyes. Due to His many eyes, Argos was able to keep permanent vigil and was therefore a formidable guardian. But Zeus enlisted the aid of Hermes to help Io escape, which He finally did by killing Argos.
Io, wandering as a white cow by artist William Bottini
Io, still in the form of a cow, made good her escape, so Hera sent a horsefly or gadfly to torment her until she was driven mad. As a mad cow, she wandered and wandered across the world. In her wanderings, she gave her name to many geographic features. For instance, the Ionian Sea is supposed to be named for her. Finally, the white cow, Io, arrives in Egypt.
There she regained her human form—Aeschylus says Zeus healed her—and bore Zeus’ son, Epaphus. Herodotus gives Epaphus as an alternative name for the Egyptian Apis bull. (Some of you may remember that the Isis-cow is the one who gives birth to the Apis bull.)
Other stories have Io, already in human form, kidnapped by Phoenicians or pirates, and brought to Egypt. But Io’s troubles are not yet over, for Hera next ordered the Kouretes (young Divine warriors Who serve the Mother Goddess) to kidnap Epaphus—so once again, Io wandered, this time, searching for her lost son. At last, she learned that the queen of Byblos was raising Epaphus. Io went to Byblos and eventually returned with Epaphus to Egypt where, according to Apollodorus, Io “dedicated an image to Demeter, called Isis by the Aigyptians, as also they called Io herself.”
The Hesat or White Cow, identified with both Hathor and Isis
Despite a few Egyptian-ish details in Io’s tale, Io’s connection with Isis, or even identification with Her, may, at first, be a bit puzzling. Yet, there are a number of correspondences between Isis and Io. The theme of searching for a loved one, pursued by an enemy is common to both. In fact, both wander twice. Both appear as white cows. Both are associated with the moon. Both are aided by the God of Knowledge; Hermes in the case of Io, Thoth in the case of Isis. In Plutarch’s later version of the Isis-Osiris myth, Isis finds Osiris’ body in Byblos. Io finds her son in Byblos. And in Apuleius’ tale of initiation into Isis’ Mysteries, the theme of being returned to human form after suffering trials in the form of an animal applies to Lucius in Apuleius’ tale and to Io in Her many myths. A 10th century CE lexicon or encyclopedia, known as the Suda (or Suidas), makes the identification complete under the entry for Isis:
Isis: She is called Io. She was snatched by Zeus from Argos and he, fearing Hera, changed her first into a white cow, then into a black one, and then into a one that was violet-coloured. After wandering around with her, he came into Egypt. The Egyptians, then, honour Isis, and for this reason they carve the horns of a cow on the head of her statue, alluding to the change from maiden to cow.
An image of Isis with a lunar crescent crown and tiny Io-like horns protruding from Her forehead; photo by Galdo Trouchky.
It is always interesting to me that when we first see the connections drawn by the ancients between the Deities (for Io becomes a Goddess), we can, at first, find them to be something of a stretch.
Yet if we follow the trail a bit more, the associations become much less strained. Io is certainly a case in point. When we look deeper into the myths and stories, we find the holy correspondences. We see the sacred connections. We glimpse a little more of the Divine interweavings that underlie and interpenetrate all things.
NOTE: It turns out that Io was one of the most frequently cited identifications with Isis in Roman literature. In other words, they were understanding Isis through the story of Io. Some of the Roman poets, separated from their lovers by the Isiac requirement for sexual abstinence before specific rites, complained rather bitterly about said separations. And to tell the truth, they were kinda jerks about it.
Ahhh, light finally balances dark. Things are stirring, stirring, stirring everywhere. The flowerbeds and backyard in general are screaming for my attention.
Even in this weird time of pandemic that we are living through, I am blessed in that my Equinox is full with rituals and people…even if they are still all on zoom.
So this post is a repost about Isis and the egg. It seems right…and I still do get a bit melancholy in the spring. Hopeful, but a little bit melancholy, too.
Do you know what I mean?
Beautiful Robin’s egg blue eggs
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.
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.”
An egg-filled nest from Tutankhamun’s tomb
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.
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.
Offering baskets full of eggs
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.
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, 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.
Breathe…
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, you are in being; behold, you are knit together; behold, you have broken the egg!”
Isis’ name with the egg determinative that indicates “Goddess”
While some of us are under a crazy last-gasp-of-winter storm, lucky ones (like me) are enjoying a first-breath-of-spring day.
The coming of the light, the green uprisings from the dark earth, the deep, needed breath. These things open us, make our spirits expand, and give us hope—even as we and the world still struggle with a historic pandemic.
Do you feel it? Even now? Even today, as things are? I hope you do. I wish for you that you do, just as we human beings always have…
The ancient Egyptians certainly knew that feeling and celebrated it. In his essay “On Isis and Osiris,” the Greek priest Plutarch mentions an Egyptian festival that he says marked the beginning of spring and was called ‘The Entry of Osiris Into the Moon.’ Here’s what he says about it:
Further, on the first day of the month of Phamenoth they hold a festival, which they call ‘The Entry of Osiris into the Moon,’ for it is the beginning of spring. Thus they locate the power of Osiris in the moon and say that Isis, as the creative principle, has intercourse with him. For this reason they also call the moon the mother of the world and they believe her nature to be both male and female since she is filled and made pregnant by the sun while she herself in turn projects and disseminates procreative elements in the air.
Plutarch, “On Isis and Osiris,” 43
In his discussion of this passage, Egyptologist J. Gwyn Griffiths notes that there is no festival by that name in any known Egyptian calendar.
Isis and Nephthys in a boat with Osiris. I believe this is the image to which Griffiths refers.
The closest thing is a temple carving from Denderah that shows Osiris in a boat with Isis and Nephthys and explains that Osiris is “entering into the Left Eye.” The Left Eye, as you may know, is usually an Egyptian designation for the moon. In the Denderah text, spring is not mentioned, but Osiris is said to do His entering on the 15th of the month, that is, at the full moon.
Plutarch is seeing things in a Greek way, with Isis as a lunar Goddess and Osiris in a solar aspect. But for the Egyptians, the moon was associated with Gods—Thoth, Iah, Khonsu—not Goddesses. And though Osiris is united daily with the Sun God Re in the Underworld, He too is more associated with the moon than the sun.
Nevertheless, in this case, it seems we should be envisioning a solar Osiris as He enters into and unites with the moon—thus establishing His power there—in order to create the brilliant light of the full moon (if we can include the Denderah text in our understanding).
Osiris-Iah, Osiris the Moon
Yet there is a slight problem. Plutarch says that this festival happens on the “noumenia tou Phamenoth,” the new moon of the spring month of Phamenoth. And indeed, the Egyptian lunar calendar, the temple calendar, starts with the new moon. This would mean the minuscule bits of evidence we have for this festival of Osiris entering into the moon are in conflict. Does the God enter at the new moon or full?
If we just look at what Plutarch says, then Osiris enters into the new moon and Isis, the Creative Principle, unites with Him in sexual intercourse. She becomes the Mother of the World; Isis the moon is filled and made pregnant by the Osirian sun. During this time, the moon is both male and female since Isis and Osiris are united in it. But pregnancy is a process of growth. Could both of our tiny bits of information be right? What if the festival was not meant as a one-day event? What if the 14 days from new moon to full were envisioned as a sort of spring break retreat for the Goddess and God? They come together, make love, and 14 days later the full, round, and shining evidence of the Goddess’ pregnancy can be clearly seen. It’s just speculation, but it does provide some coherence between the few pieces of evidence we have for this festival.
Isis & Osiris as lovers from Kris Waldherr’s Lovers Path Tarot
Whatever the case, I very much like the idea of a spring sexual rite for Isis and Osiris. In fact, it was this intriguing Plutarchian reference that inspired the multi-day rite of sacred sexuality in Isis Magic called (yes, of course) ‘The Entry of Osiris Into the Moon.’
Plutarch’s essay is also responsible for the idea that Isis and Osiris were so in love with each other that They made love while still within Their mother Nuet’s womb. He writes, “Isis and Osiris were enamored of each other and consorted together inthe darkness of the womb before Their birth.” Perhaps Their coming together at the first of spring each year may be seen as a kind of return to the womb of the Great Mother for renewal of both Deities as well as humankind…the very same renewal we all feel every spring.
What’s more, as famous lovers, Isis and Osiris are also to be found in the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri (Papyri Graecae Magicae, abbreviated PGM) in a variety of old-fashioned love spells. While many of the so-called “love” spells in the papyri are coercive and more like magical roofies than what I would call “love” magic, there is one I particularly like because it seems the lover does want love and not just sex from the object of his desire.
Union of the Moon and Sun
In a spoken part of the spell, the lover says, “The Goddess in heaven looked down upon him, and it happened to him according to every wish of his soul. [Name of the lover] says: From the day [and] from the hour, I [name of the lover] do this act to you; you will love me, be fond of me, and value me . . . [until] I die. O Lady, Goddess Isis, carry out for me this perfect charm.” The rite takes place before sunrise, as the lover anoints himself with myrrh, “the myrrh with which Isis anointed when She went to the bosom of Osiris.” As the sun rises, the lover asks Isis to wake up his beloved and again to “carry out this perfect charm.”
If you’re feeling in need of a love spell yourself, here’s one to try.
And so, with loving thoughts, I wish you blessings of the coming season of wild uprisings, renewed love, and new life in whatever best form it takes for you. We all need it and we all deserve it.
I very much like this Cosmic Isis by artist Dahlia Khodur. Here’s a link to her Instagram.
In Egypt, She was called T3 w’t (Tah Uwah-et), “The Only One.” In Greek, this same epithet of the Goddess became Thiouis (Thee-oou-iss). (For some reason, I really like “Thiouis;” I have a chant I like to use with that epithet for Her.) The way some Romans expressed this concept may be summed up in a graffito found on one of the walls of the Temple of Isis in Rome: Una, quae es omnia, Dea Isis, “Being one, Thou art all, Goddess Isis.”
Strange in a polytheistic world, isn’t it?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
It could be confusing to those of us who have been born into a culture steeped in the singularity of the one male Deity. But that was very far from the experience of the ancient world. They were used to dealing with any number of Deities—as well as other Divine beings. The face of the Divine could be seen and sensed in many ways and many places and be known by many names…as we are seeing again today, even though cultural elements struggle against it.
In ancient Egypt, Isis is the Only One and the Unique One; but so are other Deities. Re is the Only One and the Unique One…and so are Atum and Ptah and more.
Erik Hornung in Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt explains this as each Deity being considered unique in Her or His own way. But it may be more than that. There are Egyptian texts, especially the wisdom literature, that simply refer to “God.” This may have been purposely vague so that the student of wisdom could “insert your God here.” Or it may have been an expression of what is today know as henotheism (the term was only coined in the 1800s) which is devotion to one particular Deity without denying the reality of all the rest of Them. We also know that multiple Egyptian Deities could form a unity—and even be referred to with a singular pronoun. For example, in some mortuary literature, Ptah-Sokaris-Osiris is invoked “that He may give…” Atum, when He brought forth Shu and Tefnut was said to have been “One Who became Three.”
Many petals, one flower
Jan Assman, in The Price of Monotheism, discusses what he calls “the Mosaic distinction,” the concept that my God is the One True God and every other Deity is a “false god” and he names the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton as its first known practitioner. Assman also makes the interesting observation that following Akhenaton’s “revolution,” as the old Deities were restored to worship, Akhenaton’s influence nevertheless continued to be felt as the idea of a Hidden Deity Who existed behind and was expressed in all the other Deities came into prominence. He calls this development “evolutionary monotheism” and notes it in the mature stages of polytheism not only in Egypt, but in Mesopotamia, Greece, and India as well.
Thinking through the complexities of poly-mono-heno-pan-and-all-the-other-theisms out there is a worthy meditation for today’s devotees of Isis. For if we look back to the traditions of ancient Isiacism to instruct or inspire our modern devotion at all, then we will inevitably find ourselves confronted with the puzzle. How is Isis The Only One and yet part of a pantheon? What does that mean to my personal devotion to the Goddess? If I am a priestess or priest of Isis, must I also serve other Egyptian Deities—or should I specifically not serve others in order to serve just Her? In what way is Isis a Divine Unity and thus All?
As we meditate on these things, we will likely find our own answers…at least for now. Personal answers to questions like these can change over time as we discover, experience, and learn more about ourselves and about our relationship with Her.
The return of the light, here and now—in mid-winter—is always a hopeful time. And I do feel hopeful; more now than in the past year. When more light fills our eyes, breath comes a bit easier and hope may come to our hearts.
Isis is like that: a deep, hopeful, uplifting breath. It is one reason that She is, among so many other things, a Lady of Light. She is found in the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars. She is found in light itself.
In ancient Egypt, they held Festivals of Lights in which the entire town or city would light oil lamps that would burn throughout the night—entirely equivalent to our own stringing of lights at Halloween, Yule, or the Winter Festival of Lights that my own city of Portland puts on every February. In Egyptian homes, it was in the space before the main gate of the house that a lot of a family’s festival activity—from lamp lighting to barbecuing and feasting, would take place. I assume this enabled everyone to celebrate together and to see each other do so. In my imagination, I envision Egyptian neighbors vying with each other over elaborate displays of oil lamps.
The historian Herodotus (5th century BCE) writes about an ancient Festival of Lights at Sais, the city of Neith. He says:
“At the times when they gather together at the city of Sais for their sacrifices, on a certain night they all kindle lamps many in number in the open air round about the houses; now the lamps are saucers full of salt and oil mixed, and the wick floats by itself on the surface, and this burns during the whole night; and to the festival is given the name Lychnocaia (“Lamp Lighting”). Moreover those of the Egyptians who have not come to this solemn assembly observe the night of the festival and themselves also light lamps all of them, and thus not in Sais alone are they lighted, but over all Egypt: and as to the reason why light and honour are allotted to this night, about this there is a sacred story told.”
—Herodotus, Histories, Book II, Chapter 62
An oil lamp from Egypt, Roman period. It shows Isis and Harpocrates.
Sais was one of the sacred cities in which Isis was said to have buried a piece of Osiris’ body. There, possibly at a sacred lake at Neith’s temple, an Osirian passion play was enacted at the same time as one of these festivals of illumination. (Just to be clear, this Egyptian festival was in summer, not at mid-winter…but was a festival of light nonetheless.) And, you may know, that at Sais, Isis and Neith were assimilated, so having Osirian festivals at Neith’s temple would not have been a stretch for the ancients.
I’ve read in a couple places that the “sacred story” attached to the Sais festival to which Herodotus refers was that the lights were to assist Isis in Her search for the body of Osiris. Unfortunately, nobody has footnoted this reference, so I’m not sure if it’s something ancient or simply a modern scholar’s best guess. I love the idea of the whole town assisting Isis in Her search with light…and it makes sense given the passion play and grave of the God at Sais. What’s more, the Egyptians usually did have a mythic model for ritual activity, but I still haven’t found out who originated that explanation. I’ll let you know if I do.
We also know of ancient Egyptian festivals of light at the New Year and on the five epagomenal days that led up to it. On these days, the birthdays of Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys were celebrated and lights were placed in tombs for the dead. A temple calendar from Edfu tells us of a summertime procession for Isis the Brilliant. That festival is celebrated by modern Kemetics as the Aset Luminous Festival. And so there are more lights for the the Lady of Light.
Now let’s leap forward in time some hundreds of years and move from Egypt to Rome.
The illustration for the month of August from the Calendar of Philocalus
The 4th-century-CE Calendar of Philocalus lists a festival called the Lychnapsia on August 12th. It was, of course, a lamp-lighting festival. The scholars who have studied it seem reasonably certain that it was an Isis festival because a.) the August 12th date of this lamp festival is at roughly the same time as the great Egyptian Festival of Lights at the epagomenal birthdays of the Deities and b.) Isis was so extremely popular in Rome that anything Egyptian would have also been considered Isiac.
Furthermore, the theory is that the August 12th date (due to some calendrical calculations with which I will not bore you) corresponded to the 4th epagomenal day—and the 4th epagomenal day is the birthday of Isis. So, in 354 CE, Isiacs could celebrate the birthday of Isis by the lighting of lamps in Her honor.
But we need not wait for the summer birthday of the Goddess or the procession of Isis the Brilliant to honor the Lady of Lights with light. After all, the Egyptians celebrated illumination festivals at a number of different times during the year.
My home altar illuminated for Isis
And so I have a modest proposal: a Festival of Lights for Isis as the light-bringing Lady of the Deep Breath. In this mid-winter time, as Her solar light begins its return and Her warming breath infuses our bodies and stirs our souls, as the Green Goddess’ green shoots struggle to be born even while covered with a silver layer of snow, so let us breathe Her in and celebrate, yet another, new beginning.
Such interpretations and updating of our traditions is precisely what we human beings have always done. It enables us to connect with the richness of the past and also to have traditions that continue to make spiritual and emotional sense to us. No doubt, the festivals for Isis changed over time. No matter how conservative the ancient Egyptians were, still, things change. They changed over time within the borders of Egypt, and then when the worship of Isis came into the wider Mediterranean area, things changed even more. People who came to love Isis celebrated Her in ways rooted in tradition, but which made spiritual sense to them in their day, too.
I therefore invite you to join me in a small, new, mid-winter festival for Isis, Lady of the Dawning Light, Mother of the Deep Breath, Queen of Hope. Light a candle, a torch, a tea light. Watch the flame. Feel the light. And breathe Her breath with me.
Isis is one of the few Trickster Goddesses and I kinda like that about Her…
Ah, the Trickster Deity. The one Who shakes things up, Who always has creative, boundary-crossing solutions to problems. The Trickster breaks the rules, makes us laugh, often embraces The Other by shapeshifting. The Trickster’s tricky ways can have unintended consequences; often unexpectedly positive, sometimes not so much. The Trickster is clever, of mind and of speech, talking us into doing things we might not normally do. The Trickster is also—usually—a male Deity.
Artist Thalia Took’s rendition of Laverna
There’s Hermes, Who stole Apollo’s cattle while still a toddler; and once Apollo got over Himself, He had to admit it was kinda funny and pretty cute. In Native American myth, we meet Coyote, Whose interference made human death permanent and Who is always angling to sleep with the women. In Welsh myth, there is Gwydion Who tricks His sister Arianrhod multiple times to get Her to accept Her son, Lleu. There’s the Spider God, Anansi of West African lore, Who trickily captured some of the most dangerous beings in all of Africa in order to win His powerful stories from the Creator. And, of course, there’s the troublemaker, Loki of Norse myth. He’s so tricky, on at least one occasion, He changes genders to get the job done.
Trickster Goddesses are fewer and farther between. We have the Greek Eris with Her golden apple tossing, though generally, She’s more the Goddess of troublemaking and disharmony. The Roman Laverna is a true Tricksteress, Who tricked a number of people out of their property then got off on a technicality, thus becoming the Goddess of pickpockets and thieves. Yet these are fairly minor Goddesses. In fact, the only major Goddess I know of Who is a genuine Trickster is Isis.
We already know how Isis tricked the Sun God Re into revealing His True Name. But a lesser-known myth really shows Her Trickster stripes. Here’s the story as told in Isis Magicand which comes from the probably-New Kingdom Chester Beatty papyrus:
Finally, the day came when Horus was old enough to be taken before the Tribunal of the Gods and Goddesses to claim His father’s throne. Almost immediately, Shu the Lord of the Firmament said that Horus’ petition should be granted. Thoth wholeheartedly agreed and He brought out the Holy Eye of Re.
Isis was overjoyed. She called out to the North Wind, “Wind, blow! And carry the news to the Underworld and to Osiris, the father of our new king!”
But Neb-er-Djer, the Lord of the Utmost, was displeased and He grumbled about the quick decision. The Deities of the Ennead of Heliopolis all quickly put down His objections saying that it was useless to object since Horus had already taken the Royal Name and was wearing the White Crown of Osiris.
Now Set spoke up, “Since Horus has already taken what is not rightfully His, I ask that Ye Gods and Goddesses throw Him out to Me. Let Us see if He is worthy of His high office. Let Him fight with Me!”
A modern rendition of fiery Set
A great argument now ensued. Thoth spoke for Horus. Re-Horankhti spoke for Set. All the Gods and Goddesses spoke for one or the other. And this contention between the two Gods continued in the Tribunal for 80 years, until all the Deities were tired and bored and cried out, “What can we do? How can we settle this?” But Wise Isis bided Her time.
It was decided that Thoth should write a letter to the Great Goddess Neith on behalf of the Tribunal. She, They believed, would know what to do. So Thoth wrote to Her—a beautiful letter full of praises for Neith and polite concern about the welfare of Her son, Sobek the Lord of Crocodiles. At the very end of the letter, Thoth finally asked what They all wanted to know: to Whom should the throne belong?
The Great Goddess straightaway gave answer to the Tribunal. “Give the throne to Osiris’ son, Horus,” She wrote, “and do not commit any injustice or I shall be angry and the sky will fall upon the earth.” Furthermore, Neith instructed the Deities that They should compensate Set by increasing His property two-fold and offering Him Anat and Astarte, the Goddesses of Phoenicia, as wives.
All the Gods declared that Neith was obviously right; all but Neb-er-Djer who started the whole argument over again. Soon the Deities were fighting once more, some agreeing with Horus, some with Set.
…and an ancient one
At this, Isis finally became furious. Her anger rose up. Then She Herself rose up, standing at Her full height as fury and flame emanated from Her Divine Form. In the names of Neith and of Ptah-Tanen, the Lord of the Earth, Isis swore a mighty oath. At the words of the Lady of Magic, the Gods were afraid and backed down, placating Her and agreeing that all She had said would be done and that Horus would receive His throne with no more ado.
When Set heard this, it was His turn to be angry. He threatened to take His mighty scepter, which no one could wield but Himself, and kill one of the Deities each day. Further, He said He would no longer negotiate with the Tribunal as long as Isis was a member of it.
So Re-Horankhti secretly said to the Tribunal, “Come over to the island in the river. There We can make Our decision in peace for We shall tell Anti, the ferryman, not to ferry over any woman who even looks like Isis.” The Deities agreed and crossed over to the island where They sat down to eat a meal of barley bread.
Isis learned of Their plan, of course, and She uttered magic words of transformation. Instantly, Isis changed Herself into an old, bent woman, a crone mother. As Anti the ferryman sat on the shore by his boat, he saw what he believed to be an old woman approach him.
The ferryman requires his fee
“Hail, ferryman,” said the old woman. “Take me across so that I may take this jar of flour to the boy who has been herding cattle there for the past five days. The poor boy will be very hungry by now.”
“No, old mother,” said Anti, “I have been instructed to take no woman across the river.”
The crone laughed, “Surely you were told not to take any woman who looks like Isis across the river. Do I look like Isis?”
Indeed, thought Anti, this old woman did not look like the beautiful Goddess Isis. “All right then. What will you give me to take you across, old mother?”
“I will give you this bread,” said Isis.
Anti laughed, “What is a loaf of bread to me? Do you think that I shall go against the order of the Gods for a loaf of bread?”
“Then I will give you this gold ring,” the disguised Goddess said as She took the ring from Her finger.
To this rich payment, Anti agreed, and he took Isis to the island.
Isis the maiden
When She arrived, She walked in and out of the trees until She saw the Tribunal eating bread with Neb-er-Djer. Set was there, too, and He caught sight of Her there in the trees, but He did not recognize Her because of the distance between them. Seeing that Set had noticed Her, Isis once more spoke magic words and transformed Herself into a maiden of unearthly beauty.
She moved into the open a little to let Set more clearly see Her beauty, then She turned and walked into the forest. Set’s heart instantly grabbed hold of Him. He could eat no more of the God’s pale bread. He could breath no more unless He could breathe the breath of this maiden. He left the Gods to search for her.
Hiding behind a tree, Set called out to the maiden, “Come to me, O beautiful one, O lovely girl. I am a God and I am waiting for you.”
Isis let Herself be seen fully now, glittering tears trembling upon Her blushing cheeks. She wept, “For me, Thou waitest in vain, Divine Lord. I was the wife of a cattle-keeper and I bore him a man-child. Then my husband died and our son became cattle-herd. But a stranger came and he threatened to beat my son and take his cattle and cast him out. I am distraught, my Lord! O what shall I do, my strong Lord?” The maiden looked up at the God hopefully, “Could it be that Thou wilt act as his deliverer?”
Isis transforms into Her sacred raptor, the Kite
Set’s heart again spoke to Him—as did His loins when He imagined the young woman’s gratitude for His aid. Indignantly, He said, “What! Shall the cattle be given to a stranger when the good son of the farmer lives! This is an outrage! This stranger should be beaten and cast out and the son should be set in his father’s place.”
In an instant—before Set could tell what was happening—the beautiful young woman transformed Herself into the Kite of Isis and flew like the wind to the top of the tree.
“HA!” She screeched in Her kite’s voice. “Now it is Thou who shouldst weep, My Lord! Thine own mouth hath condemned Thee. Thou hast passed judgment upon Thyself. There is nothing Thou canst do to prevent it!”
Then Set knew Who the Kite really was. He knew He was ruined. He burst out in angry weeping and ran to His ally, Re-Horankhti, and related the whole tale. But Re-Horankhti agreed with Isis. “Verily, Thou hast passed judgment upon Thyself, even as She said.”
In His rage, Set had the unfortunate ferryman strung up and beaten upon the soles of his feet until he no longer had any soles.
In this story, we see Isis in full shapeshifting Trickster Mode. Isis tricks the unfortunate, yet greedy, ferryman with Her innocent old lady routine. She tricks Set as a blushing young widow, seducing Him to Her side. In this single story, Isis shows Herself as a maiden (the young widow), as a mother defending Her son in the Tribunal, and as an old woman—as well as in the form of Her sacred bird, the kite.
Yet Isis’ trickery is in service to Mâet, what is Right. She ensures Horus inherits what is rightfully His. She ensures Set does not. And She teaches that greed is, in fact, not good.
Even this does not exhaust the Egyptian myths in which Isis appears as a Trickster. But this post is long enough, so we’ll leave other tales to other times…
We need to know that we are not alone in our pain and outrage. And we are not.
For right now, our Goddess hears us. She knows our hearts. She, too, has mourned. She, too, has raged. She, too, has feared. She understands us when we bring our hollow hearts and roiling bellies to Her.
She will hear us, hold us, advise us. In time, She may even heal us.
But before that healing, we must feel what we feel. The God has died and He must be mourned.
We can share the burden of our feelings with others who mourn with us. We can share them with our Deities, with Her.
Yet at some point, the mourning time will pass. And what will we do then?
If we would follow Her, then what we must do is rear the fatherless Child. We must continue taking action. We must continue our Work.
Though we see the enormity of the problems, let us not despair; there is hope; there is opportunity. Instead, let us renew our dedication to our Deities and our spiritual work, for this will strengthen our souls. Let us renew our support of progressive institutions with our dollars. And let us continue to work with others in progressive organizations for the changes we want to see.
Our Goddess is strong and practical; let us follow Her in this wisdom.
But if—right now, at this time—you mourn, it is well. Make an offering to Isis of your mourning. She will receive it from you…
This is a gift I bring before the Beautiful Mourner, Isis the Weeper Who Transforms: an invocation offering of mourning.
I offer You, Isis, my mourning for there is nothing else I can do with it. How is it that something so empty can be called pain-full? I am abandoned in an ocean of pain so deep that there is nothing else. My tears are nothing but more salt for that bitter sea. My grief is nothing but a hole in my belly. I cannot breathe. I have no breath. There is no air. My mind is blank, unable to receive the words that are pushed at me. My heart? I have no heart.
Mourning is what we do when the loss is so great that we can do nothing else. Each of us who mourns has her or his own share of this hollow pain. But it is the pain of one human being at one time, in one place. You, Isis, You hear the cries of the world. You feel each heart breaking, You know every human cruelty.
The sorrows of a Goddess are deep. What then is my mourning compared to Yours?
Listen, O Isis, to the words of Mourning: “I am offered unto Isis for She is the Well of Mourning. She absorbs me and takes me into Her vastness. I am dissolved in infinity. I am mixed with all things. I am reborn as a child. I am the mystery of suffering. I am Mourning.”
Unto You, Isis, I offer my mourning and all things beautiful and pure. M’den, Iset. Accept it, Isis.
This is a revised repost, dear Isiacs…and a little earlier than my usual Sunday posts. But don’t click away. There’s a secret here that all who love our Goddess should know.
In fact, I repost this every year because an amazing stellar event happens worldwide on our modern New Year’s Eve. And I want you to be a part of it.
You see, SHE is visible throughout the world in a striking way at New Year. So for those of us who see Isis in the light of Her beautiful star, every New Year’s Eve is special.
Isis as Sirius by Sirius Ugo Art
Why?
Because the Star of Isis reaches its highest point in the night sky at midnight on New Year’s Eve. In the Northern Hemisphere, look toward the south, and you’ll easily see Sirius shining there around midnight. In the Southern Hemisphere, look overhead or high to the north at around midnight. She will be there. Glittering and gleaming in the depths of the night sky…
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 this 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.)
While some may see Isis in the pale, magical light of the moon. And others may see Her in the golden, life-giving rays of the sun. (I do find Her in both those places; oh yes, yes, 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).
The Star of Isis is at its highest point in the night sky right now
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 (thank you, Alana and John). 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. And holy.
You may already know why Sirius was important to the ancient Egyptians, so I won’t repeat that here. But I would like to add a few interesting bits about Sirius that you may not know; 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 to 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.
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 while She rides high in the sky?
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. And May They bring us good news for 2021 after the year we have all been through.
Amma, Iset. May it be so, Isis.
From the Northern Hemisphere, look toward the south, and you’ll easily see Sirius shining there at around midnight. From the Southern Hemisphere, look overhead or high to the north at around midnight.
A priest censes an offering arrangement of onions decorated with floral garlands. The author of one article I read thought this looked amazingly like a Christmas tree; it’s not, but it’s a fun idea.
Do you have a tree in your house right now?
Many of us do.
Each winter, we celebrate the winter holidays by bringing evergreen trees into our homes, decorating them with shiny ornaments and glittering lights. The rather obvious reason for this is to remind ourselves of the green life that exists even in this darkest part of the year when most plant life has either died off or gone into hibernation—as well as to celebrate that ongoing life with our beloved ones and to prepare for the next phase of life in the coming New Year.
Trees, of course, were important to the ancient Egyptians as well—both symbolically and practically—though they were not the type of evergreen conifers we generally have as Yule trees. (There is only one conifer native to Egypt, a type of juniper; but they had access to other conifers and coniferous resins by importing them.)
Men transporting frankincense trees for transplantation in Egypt.
I’m not sure whether ancient Egyptians brought cut or potted trees into their homes during festivals like we do. But we know they brought in branches and flowers for certain festivals. We know that temples, palaces, and well-to-do homes had extensive gardens and that beautiful bouquets of flowers were ubiquitous as offerings to the Deities. We know that the ancient Egyptians transported trees in pots. The image here shows men bringing potted frankincense trees from their native land back to Egypt.
With their blessed shade, precious building material, and in the case of fruit trees, abundant food, trees were vitally important in ancient Egypt. They were, in fact, sacred and under the protection of the Tree Goddess. When we see images of the Tree Goddess, usually in funerary scenes, Her legs often disappear into the trunk of the tree, while Her hands offer food and water. Sometimes we see Her whole body in front of the tree; other times She is abstracted as offering arms or a nurturing breast. The most important of the Egyptian Tree Goddesses are Hathor, Nuet, and Isis.
Isis gives food and water to Djehutihotep and Kayay.
On a funerary stele of an Egyptian official and his wife, Djehutihotep and Kayay, we see a potted, leafless tree. The pot looks decorative, perhaps painted with horizontal stripes or wrapped in offering fillets. Out of its branches arises the Tree Goddess giving food and water. She wears the throne of Isis upon Her head. Behind Her, an inscription reads, “she gives water as is right.” We can see the water flowing to Djehutihotep and Kayay. Interestingly, another inscription on the stele names Hathor while yet another asks Osiris, Horus, and Isis to give the couple bread and beer, air, water, incense, and all things good and pure.
Surely this stele invokes blessings similar to our Yule tree: ongoing life and sustenance in a place of darkness; in this case, the land of the dead. The epithet by which the Tree Goddess is called, Nebet Amentet, Lady of the West, means that She rules the place of the dead, euphemistically called The West, for it is in the west that the sun daily sets and enters the otherworld.
The Tree Goddess, with the sycamore on Her head, nourishes a variety of growing things, including grapevines.
Nebet Amentet is an epithet common to both Isis and Hathor, so perhaps, with its mixed names and symbolism, both Goddesses are intended on this stele. (More often, though, it is Hathor Who is the Goddess of the leafless tree, which other texts identify as the Southern Sycamore, though this particular representation does not look like other sycamores in Egyptian art.)
Still, there are a number of representations of Isis as the Lady of the Sycamore and we know that She, too, is called by that epithet. A pillar in the tomb of Sennefer of Thebes (18th dynasty) shows Sennefer and his wife Meryt as they stand before a leafy tree, as sycamores are usually shown, with a Goddess figure in it Who is identified in the hieroglyphic text as Isis.
A 19th dynasty stele shows “Isis the Great, the God’s Mother” as a Tree Goddess Who extends Her breast toward the souls of the man and woman standing at Her roots.
Another representation of Isis as a Tree Goddess offering Her breast, in this case to nourish Pharaoh Thutmose; you can see Isis’ name as the bottom two glyphs.
The image you see here is another instance of the nourishing Tree Goddess Isis simply represented as a tree with an arm and a breast.
While the sacred tree is most often a sycamore, other Egyptian sacred trees—the acacia, persea, and date palm—could also be associated with Isis. Isis and Nephthys are called the Two Acacia Goddesses; and sometimes, the tree that grew up around the body of Osiris is said to have been an acacia, though other texts name other trees, such as the tamerisk. The Djed pillar of Osiris can also be seen as a stylized tree, sometimes with the two eyes of the God peering out.
According to Plutarch, the persea tree (Egyptian ished) is sacred to Isis “because its fruit is like a heart and its leaf like a tongue.” He explains that this is because no human quality is more Divine than reason, symbolized by the tongue, and that there is no more driving human force than happiness, symbolized by the heart.
The deceased and his ba receive water from the Tree Goddess in the Otherworld
During the Ptolemaic period, we have records of a grove of persea trees and an altar being dedicated to Isis, Osiris, Serapis, and Anubis by a specific thiasos (a private religious group, similar to a coven or circle today). At Isis’ temple at Philae, a graffito from one of the people who worked at the temple noted that he had planted a sacred tree in Her temple there, as well as three others in and around the nearby town.
Isis is associated with the palm tree through Her assimilation with Seshat, the Scribe & Writing Goddess, for one of Seshat’s symbols is the notched palm branch that was used to count time. In a later period, initiates of the Mysteries of Isis used the palm branch as a symbol of their rebirth.
And so this year as you honor the season with your Yule tree, perhaps it would be well to say a prayer to the Tree Goddess Isis and acknowledge Her Divinity in this beautiful symbol of ongoing green life. While the type of tree is not the same, the meaning is: She goes on and we go on—in spite of everything.
A beautiful image of the Tree Goddesses in the starry winter night
Isis, we drink Your sunlight. Radiant One, we breathe You in. Isis, we eat Your magic. Radiant One, take us within, O Isis…
A modern chant celebrating Isis as Goddess of the Sun
The sun, low in the sky
As we are in the darkest time of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, our thoughts turn to the sun and the return of the light, beginning at the winter solstice tomorrow.
And yes, though many people often think first of Isis as a Moon Goddess, Our Lady is full of Fire and Light. In fact, this blog began ten years ago as part of a community summer solstice festival dedicated to Isis, the Radiant Goddess.
(In later periods of Her worship, it’s true, Isis was indeed associated with the moon; in fact, that’s how She entered the Western Esoteric Tradition. You can learn more about about that whole lunar thing here.)
As far back as the Pyramid Texts, Isis was connected with the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius. It was said to be Her ba, Her soul or manifestation. As the influence of Her worship grew, not only in Egypt, but throughout the Mediterranean world, She also became linked with the sun—probably because the sun was such a central symbol to the ancient Egyptians. The sun is the image of one of the most important Gods, Re/Amun-Re, so perhaps it should not be surprising to find that Isis, one of its most important Goddesses, also has strong solar connections. In some places—notably, Her famous temple at Philae—Isis was worshipped specifically as a Sun Goddess. Among Her solar epithets are Female Re (Re-et) and Female Horus (Horet).
A Uraeus Serpent, one of the fiery, light-emitting Divine forms in which Isis is sometimes depicted
Isis’ most common solar manifestation is as the Eye of Re, the Uraeus, the Cobra Goddess Who coils upon the Sun God’s brow to protect Him; and Who fights a constant cosmic battle against His great opponent, Apop (Gr. Apophis). An inscription at Philae calls Isis “Neseret-serpent on the head of Horus-Re, Eye of Re, the Unique Goddess, Uraeus.” A hymn from Philae calls Her “Eye of Re who has no equal in heaven and on earth.” The Eye of Re is His active power. While He maintains His place in the sky, the solar power—the Eye Goddess—goes forth to manifest His Divine will. In this way, Isis and the other Uraeus Goddesses (such as Nephthys and Wadjet) are similar to Shakti, the active, feminine Power related to the God Shiva in some Hindu sects.
Isis is also one of the Deities Who travels with Re in His solar barque as it moves through the Otherworld. Again, She protects Him and helps battle His foes.
Isis guides the Boat of the Sun God as it passes through the Duat
Isis is also associated with the Sun God and the sun in several of Her important myths. In the tale of Isis and Re, Isis gains power equal to Re’s by learning His secret name, first by poisoning, then by healing the ailing God. In another, with Her magical Words of Power, Isis stops the Boat of the Sun in the sky in order to receive aid for Her poisoned child, Horus.
But it was at Isis’ influential temple at Philae that She was most clearly worshipped as a Sun Goddess and as the sun itself. A Philae hymn to Isis praises Her saying, “You are the one who rises and dispels darkness, shining when traversing the primeval ocean, the Brilliant One in the celestial waters, traveling in the barque of Re.” An inscription on the first pylon (gate) at Philae says Isis is the “One Who illumines the Two Lands with Her radiance, and fills the earth with gold-dust.” (I love this.)
Like many other Egyptian Deities, Isis was often envisioned with immortal, golden, solar skin. Some of Her sacred images would have been covered with gold, earning Her, like Hathor, the epithets The Gold and the Golden One. A Philae hymn addresses Her, “O Golden One; Re, the possessor of the Two Lands, will never be far from you.” Some scholars believe that the holy of holies at Philae may have once been gold-leafed so that it always appeared filled with golden, solar light.
Isis with the solar Horns & Disk crown
At Her Philae temple, Isis is first of those in heaven: “Hail to you, Isis, Great of Magic, eldest in the womb of her mother, Nuet, Mighty in Heaven Before Re.” She is the “Sun Goddess in the circuit of the sun disk” and Her radiance outshines even that of Re.
From Her great temple at Philae, Isis’ identity as a Sun Goddess flowed back up the Nile to Her temples at Memphis and Isiopolis in the delta. From there, it entered into the Graeco-Roman culture in the famous aretalogies (self-statements) of Isis. From a papyrus found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, we learn that one of Isis’ many names is Name of the Sun and that She is responsible for the rising of the Sun: “Thou [Isis] bringest the sun from rising unto setting, and all the Gods are glad.” In an aretalogy from Kyme, in modern Turkey, Isis says of Herself, “I ordered the course of the sun and the moon.” And later in the same text She says, “I am in the rays of the sun” and “I inspect the courses of the sun.”
Throughout Her worship, Isis has always shown Her life giving, fructifying power in the image of the Sun. She is the Radiant Goddess, the Lady of Sunlight, and with the solstice, She is returning once more.
Welcome to another edition of Weird Places We Find Isis.
This is an odd story and it connects two phenomena of the 17th century: Egyptomania and Chinoiserie. At the time, Europeans were obsessed both with ancient Egypt and China. What’s more, there was a theory going around that the Chinese civilization had Egyptian roots. I know.
Athanasius Kircher
The person who initially came up with that theory is also known as “the father of Egyptology.” His name was Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar. He became fascinated with ancient Egypt (and China). He taught himself Coptic and argued, correctly, that Coptic was the last form of the ancient Egyptian language. He also pointed out the connection between Egyptian hieroglyphs and hieratic, a script form of the hieroglyphs that the priests could write more quickly than drawing the glyphs.
The Father of Egyptology
His giant tome on Egyptology—which earned him the Father of Egyptology title and connected Chinese writing with hieroglyphs—was in three volumes and entitled Oedipus Aegyptiacus. Written between 1652 and 1654, it purported to be a decipherment of hieroglyphs, pre-Champollion (who really did unlock the hieroglyphs).
Many-named Isis from Oedipus Aegyptiacus
Oedipus Aegyptiacus was not, in fact, a decipherment of the hieroglyphs. What it was is another tale, for another day. The point here is the Egypt-China connection, a story that intrigued Europe for hundreds of years and continues to crop up even later. In 1933, for example, a Japanese scholar connected the hieroglyphs with Chinese ideograms. Then as recently as 2016, a Chinese chemist tried to show that the Shang dynasty had Egyptian connections due to a match of the chemical composition of ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptian bronzes.
In the early 18th century, scholars in France were among those quite interested in the Egypt-China connection. French historian Pierre Daniel Huet said of the Chinese,
One finds among them clear marks of their origin, a great conformity with the habits of the Egyptians, with their ambiguous letters—hieroglyphic and profane—and even affinity between their languages, the doctrine of metempsychosis [reincarnation].
And Huet was not the only one. Other European scholars followed suit. A member of the English Royal Society, Joseph Turberville Needham, who was a biologist, was invited by the Kings of Savoy (who were looking to add scientists to their court) to come to Turin, Italy. In the royal collection, Needham found an intriguing bust that he identified as the Goddess Isis (finally, we get to Isis!) that was carved all over with highly mysterious glyphs, which Needham proposed to study.
A Turin Aside
Today, Turin has a wonderful Egyptian museum, the oldest in the world dedicated to Egyptian antiquities. The museum traces its history to 1630 when an Isis artifact, the Mensa Isiaca, or Tablet of Isis, came to Turin. (Our pal Kircher was involved with this artifact, too.)
The Mensa Isiaca or Tablet of Isis now in the Turin Egyptian Museum
Today, it houses over 30,000 artifacts, with over 6,000 on display. It is one of the largest collections in the world. There was a temple of Isis and Serapis in the Turin area, too, the foundations of which you can see today. The city of Turin has a local legend that Turin actually has Egyptian origins. It’s not strictly true. Yet it did start as a Roman outpost and the Isis-Serapis temple was an important feature of the town from the 1st or 2nd century CE.
Back to Needham
Needham even suggested that the mysterious Bust of Isis must have been acquired at the same time as the Tablet of Isis, providing a secure Isis-basis for his study.
The Turin “Bust of Isis”
The inscriptions on the bust looked to Needham like Chinese writing, so he sent copies of the inscriptions to a librarian of Chinese books in the Vatican Library. The librarian, Joseph Lucius Wu, confirmed Needham’s suspicions (!?!). Meanwhile, Needham was in Rome copying hieroglyphs from some of the obelisks there, identifying a handful of them as Chinese characters.
His work caused a sensation throughout Europe because by now Europeans could read Chinese…and if Chinese and hieroglyphs were related, perhaps they could finally read the hieroglyphs!
Unfortunately…
Characters copied from the Bust of Isis
As you can see from looking at the copied glyphs, they are not Chinese characters, nor hieratic, nor hieroglyphic. In fact, they look more like some of the magical alphabets, though I can’t identify which one. (Anybody?) Scholars all over Europe began to study the bust in earnest and doubt was cast in voluminous grey clouds over the Chinese-ness of the characters on the Bust of Isis. Champollion himself had occasion to examine the Bust of Isis and declare it a fake.
But a fake what? The Bust of Isis has now been dated to the 17th century and it has been confirmed that it was carved from stone found in the Turin area. But what is it? The image has none of Isis’ characteristic attributes (crown, sistrum, situla), except perhaps for the long curls in the hair and the knotted necklace may have been intended to be some sort of Isis knot.
Some have suggested that the image was an example of the 1700s fad for creating images of people and labeling their faces with zodiacal signs that, I assume, were supposed to be the “cause” of a particular feature and/or to foretell their fate. But the Bust of Isis characters are unlike any zodiacal signs of that period or earlier.
Needham’s attempt at linking the Bust of Isis characters with Chinese characters
Is it a magical image of some kind? A love or curse talisman? If so, it is on a fairly grande scale with a high level of effort. Is it indeed an Egyptian-ish forgery? The base suggests the shape of a canopic jar and maybe the characters are the best the forger could do to simulate hieroglyphs. And if that’s so, and it is an Egyptianizing fake, then the female head is probably supposed to be Isis. No other Egyptian Goddess was so famous throughout Italy; no other personage of any kind would be so valuable as an art forgery.
This wonderful artwork is by Kaede-chama at Deviant Art. See more work here.
For those of you familiar with the Isis-verse, this is a perennial topic of conversation, discussion, and often, disagreement. There are scholars, as well as practitioners, who come down definitively on the “no” side of the question. They say that once the worship of Isis crossed out of Her native Egypt, it was reinterpreted so much that Isis of Egypt disappeared and became Hellenized Isis, Who was Some Other Goddess.
Are Iset and Isis the same Goddess?
Yet, I must confess that, with more years of both study and devotion to this particular Goddess under my belt than I sometimes care to admit, I believe that “Iset” and “Isis” are indeed the same Great Goddess.
This, of course, begs several questions. What do I mean by “Goddess?” And what do I mean by “are the same?”
I talk a bit about what I mean by “Goddess” in one of my older posts, which you’ll find here. For me, ultimately, Isis is the Divine. She can express Herself as one among other Divine Beings, as She did in ancient Egypt, or She can show Herself as THE Divine Being, also as She did in ancient Egypt under the epithet Ta Uaet, the Only One (an epithet used of other Egyptian Deities as well). Isis is a flow of conscious Divinity that can dance with other holy currents or subsume them all like a great river. Nonetheless, the current that She is has a particular “flavor” or feeling that is recognizable.
For me, the flavor of Isis tastes of magic and wisdom, power and love. And yes, it has an Egyptian flavor, too. For that is where people first called Her by the name that has never been forgotten from the first time it was spoken to the present day. I am very fond of Her Egyptian-ness; it was one of the things that first drew me to Her. The culture from which She first emerged as a named Deity is an important part of Her and of my attraction to Her.
But if we believe that a Deity can only be of the culture in which She or He was first honored then, to me, we are positing a rather fragmented polytheism as the Divine reality. Certainly, there are practitioners who prefer and find truth in this kind of separation—perhaps especially those who have been to just one too many rituals in which Odin, Isis, Quan Yin, and the Greenman were all invoked together in one great holy mashup. Believe me, I feel you.
A Roman image of Isis.
But that’s not what happened with Isis in the ancient world. They weren’t trying to reconstruct the worship of Isis or create Neo-Paganism or work out modern polytheism; they were living the worship of Isis as it existed at the time. More than anything else, the people who carried Isis into lands-other-than-Egypt were translating Her for people in other cultures. That’s why we find Isis assimilating so many other local Goddesses (and some Gods). “O, you’ll like Isis. She’s sorta like your Goddess XYZ, and not only that…” This was happening even inside of Egypt itself.
That’s because the ancient Egyptians, at least the learned priesthood, had a more fluid view of the Divine reality. Deities could be “in” each other. Their names could be joined in order to express certain spiritual concepts. One Deity could be the ba, or soul, of another one. Their polytheism was not fragmented, but interconnected. I believe that this underlying interconnection of the Divine influenced later Neoplatonism, which posits an underlying Divine Oneness, even though that unity expresses Itself in many Divine personalities, from Goddesses and Gods to the personal genius or spirit (or ba or ka) of the human being. That’s much closer to where I find myself on the whole structure-of-the-Divine-reality question.
The River of Isis flows through time. (Photo by Tim Laman.)
Is is possible that this flowing Divine reality could somehow be stopped by national boundaries? Obviously, my answer is no. The Divine current most certainly can cross any such boundaries. The current Itself doesn’t change. It’s the people responding to that current who provide the variables. People will always respond in ways they are used to from their own culture. Yet our perception isn’t Her reality. The River of Isis is the same river, from the same source, whether it flows through the great halls of Egypt or a shrine on the Greek island of Delos or the temple in my backyard in Portland, Oregon.
So what do I mean by “are the same”?
Just as a great river twists, moving its channel to flow around natural features of the land, so the River of Isis turns as It moves into other cultures. Again, it it still the same river flowing from the same source, but it may look different to the casual observer. Yet if the water were chemically analyzed, there is no doubt that its true source could be detected. The River of Isis always has a little Nile mud in Its deep waters.
Often, when trying to differentiate Iset from Isis, people will point to the different personalities that Iset and Isis supposedly present to worshipers. Iset is fierce, a funerary Goddess, mother of Horus/Pharaoh, and Great of Magic; Isis is a sweet and loving Great Mother Goddess. They also point to Isis’ connection with the moon, which the Egyptian Iset did not have. I explain that here.
Yet if you look more closely at the later traditions associated with Isis, you will find that there is a great deal of continuity with Her earlier Egyptian self. I trace the history of Her worship and point out those resonances throughout Isis Magic. Indeed Isis’ Greek and Roman worshipers were concerned with maintaining Her Egyptian-ness; it was one of the things they liked about Her, too. So let’s take a quick look at some of the correspondences:
A badass magic-wielding Isis inspired by the game Smite; this piece is by KalaSketch
Fierceness
In the oldest Egyptian materials, Iset is ruthless in Her quest to ensure that Her son Hor inherits the throne of His father, following Usir’s (Osiris’) death and to ensure the punishment of His usurping uncle Set. She is like a mother lion protecting Her cub. Now here is the sweet Mother Goddess in a much later text from the Greek Magical Papyri:
For Isis raised up a loud cry, and the world was thrown into confusion. She tosses and turns on her holy bed and its bonds and those of the daimon world are smashed to pieces…
These papyri are dated broadly from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE. In other words, they’re pretty late. And She sounds pretty fierce to me. The Greek traveler, Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century CE—at the height of Isis’ popularity in the Mediterranean region—tells several cautionary tales about those who foolishly pry into the Goddess’ Mysteries:
They say that once a profane man, who was not one of those descending into the shrine, when the pyre began to burn, entered the shrine to satisfy his rash inquisitiveness. It is said that everywhere he saw ghosts, and on returning to Tithorea and telling what he had seen he departed this life.
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 Coptos. 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, Phocus, Ozolian Locri, 32, 10-17
Tithorea was a Greek town with an Isis sanctuary; the Coptos tale is clearly late, from Roman-occupied Egypt. Fierce then. Fierce now; just ask Her priestesses and priests about Isis, the Ass Kicker.
Green Isis on a cartonnage sarcophagus
A Funerary Goddess
Isis is strongly associated with the Egyptian funerary and Otherworld tradition from the very beginning. And She most certainly did not lose this important connection, even as She moved into the Greek and Roman worlds. Just as Usir is glad to see Isis when He arrives in the otherworld, so the Roman initiate of the Mysteries of Isis expected to find Her in the afterlife, waiting for him:
…and when you have completed the span of your lifetime, you will pass down to the netherworld, but there also, in the very midst of the subterranean hemisphere, you shall often worship me [Isis] who you now see as one who favors you, shining in the darkness of Acheron and ruling in the Stygian depths, when you the while shall dwell in the Elysian fields.
Apuleius, Metamorphoses, Book XI, chapter 6
Indeed Her Mysteries are an initiation into death; an inoculation so that Her initiates no longer fear, but enter into the mysterious realm of death under Her protection—just as She had always protected Her Egyptian children by wrapping Her great wings about their sarcophagi.
Mother of Hor/Pharoah
The name Iset means “Throne.” Thus the Goddess Iset is the Goddess Throne. She, and just about every Egyptian Deity, was connected with Egyptian royalty in one way or another. (However, I believe the meaning of Iset’s name originally had more to do with sacred place, which is another meaning of “iset,” than it did with its later connection to the kingship.) The non-Egyptian rulers of Egypt—the Greek Ptolemies and, after them, the Romans—did not want to lose this important royal connection, especially since Isis was, in their time, an even more important and universal Goddess. So Isis was one of a handful of Deities Who became personal Ptolemaic matrons and patrons. The last Ptolemy, Kleopatra VII, considered herself an avatar of Isis. The Romans had a somewhat rockier relationship with the Goddess, which I talk a bit about here.
And while it is true that Isis showed a motherly face, even the face of a Savior Goddess, to Her children in the Greek and Roman period, She also retained Her specific identity as the mother of Horus. The images of Isis Lactans, Isis feeding Horus from Her breast with the Holy Child seated (“seat” is another meaning of “iset,” by the way) on Her lap, were extremely common in the Roman period and became one of the models for the images of Mary with Her Holy Child as Christianity took root.
Isis the Magician working Her heka; art by Bill Bounard, “Open Your Heart”
Great of Magic
In ancient Egypt, heka, usually translated as “magic,” is the great Force that underlies all existence. It is the energy that enables life, the universe, and everything to operate. It is the power of Creation. All the Deities have heka, yet Iset and Djehuty, Isis and Thoth, come down to us as Egypt’s greatest Divine magicians. In the Egyptian texts, Iset uses Her magic to resurrect Usir in order to conceive Their child, to create—bringing forth “what Her mind conceived and Her tongue spoke”—to protect in this world and in the beyond, for dream divination and, perhaps most importantly, to heal.
We find Her magic working in all these same areas in later periods, too. Look through the Greek Magical Papyri and there She is. For instance, here is a divinatory working:
Great is the Lady Isis! Copy of a holy book found in the archives of Hermes: the method is that concerning the 29 letters [perhaps of the Coptic alphabet] through which letters Hermes and Isis, who was seeking Osiris, her brother and husband, found him. Call upon Helios and all the gods in the deep concerning those things for which you want to receive an omen. Take 29 leaves of a male date palm and write on each of the leaves the names of the gods. Pray and then pick them up two by two. Read the last remaining leaf and you will find your omen, how things are, and you will be answered clearly.
And a love spell:
The goddess in heaven looked down upon him, and it happened to him according to every wish of his soul… [your name] says: From the day and the hour I, [your name], do this act to you; you will love me, be fond of me, and value me [until] I die. O Lady, goddess Isis … carry out for me this perfect charm.
And a healing formula for curing an infection from a dog bite:
To be said to the bite of a dog: “My mouth being full of blood of a black dog, I spitting out the redness of a dog, I come forth from Alkhah. O this dog who is among the ten dogs which belong to Anubis, the son of his body, extract your venom, remove your saliva from me also! If you do not extract your venom and remove your saliva, I shall take you up to the forecourt of the temple of Osiris, my watchtower. I will do for you … according to the voice of Isis, the magician, the lady of magic, who bewitches everything, who is never bewitched in her name of Isis, the magician.”
Even as late as the Greek Magical Papyri, Isis the Magician, Isis the Great of Magic, is the Goddess Who “bewitches everything,” yet is never Herself compromised.
The Nile River at night
The River of Isis Flows
These examples are enough to demonstrate the continuity of the Divine current that has always existed, and which, all those thousands of years ago, came to be called by the name of Iset, Isis, Eisis, Iside. It is the same current, issuing from the same source from which it has always flowed. We can still taste the Nile mud in the water. A Deity’s worshipers will always contribute to the form that Deity takes; I discuss one of the most obvious manifestations of that phenomenon here. Yet we don’t create that image out of whole cloth. The feeling, the taste, the essence of the Deity always forms the core of our experience. The River of Isis is eternally flowing; what we human beings build along its banks is what changes with the times.
Did you see the glorious moon last night on All Hallows Eve?
I was with a few friends as we watched it rise, full and brilliant, coming up over the horizon. Our shadows were long and long in the cool, sweet light of the moon. I hope your remembrances and celebrations last night were meaningful.
As it turns out, there is an Isis festival recorded for just about this time of year, too.
It is called the Isia and is found in a calendar from 354 CE that was commissioned by a wealthy Roman Christian named Valentinus from a prominent, also-Christian scribe named Philocalus. The Calendar of Philocalus is famous because it contains the first known reference to the Christian holiday of Christmas as an annual festival of the birth of the Christ on December 25th. (There are earlier references to that date, but not as an annual festival.)
An illustration of November from Philocalus’ 354 CE calendar
But for Isiacs, the calendar is important for its inclusion of a different festival: the Isia. Philocalus records the dates of the Isia as October 28th-November 1st. Some scholars include the days until November 3rd as part of the Isia. That’s because Philocalus’ calendar has what was known as an “Egyptian Day” on November 2nd and a Hilaria on November 3rd, both of which may have been included in the Isia.
Let me explain: to the Romans, an “Egyptian Day” was a bad luck day. There were three in January and two in every other month. The first Egyptian Day in November fell right after the Isia, on November 2nd. These days were inappropriate for public festivals, sacrifices, and were generally stay-in-your-house-and-do-nothing days. The bad luck of the Egyptian Days continued on into medieval Christian calendars. Why were they called “Egyptian” days? No one knows for sure. However, Egyptian calendars (for example, the famous New Kingdom Cairo Calendar) often list festivals along with auspicious and inauspicious days. So it may well be that Romans simply picked up these genuinely Egyptian bad luck days. Later on, the name was taken to refer to the ten biblical plagues of Egypt to better harmonize these pagan-y days with scripture.
From Pompeii: Making offering before the sarcophagus of Osiris
As for the Hilaria, there are two shown on Philocalus’ calendar, one on March 25th, at the end of a lengthy festival of Magna Mater/Kybele in which the death of Attis is mourned. The preceding day (the 24th) was the Day of Blood, on which flagellation and self-castration might take place, and it was also an Egyptian Day. The Hilaria was what it sounds like: a day of joy. People played games and feasted. Some see the spring Hilaria as the origin of our April Fool’s Day.
So clearly, it was not absolutely unheard of to have a festival on an Egyptian Day…of course in the case of the Kybele festival, it was the (yikes!) Day of Blood. There is nothing else listed in Philocalus’ calendar for the Egyptian Day following the Isia. The November Hilaria is shown as the day after that, on the 3rd.
Yet in both cases, we have a Great Goddess with a partner to be mourned, followed by a Day of Joy. This makes very good sense from a psychological standpoint; we need relief after mourning. So it may be that we should include the Egyptian Day and Hilaria following the Isia as part of the Isia festival after all. Which would mean that we’re in the middle of the festival rather than the end right now. So there’s plenty of time should you choose to celebrate your own Isia.
Artist’s depiction of ceremonies at the Temple of Isis, Pompeii. Click to see it larger.
We know little else about the Roman Isia. On one hand, this frees us to create our own Isia. Given the time of year, we might choose to connect the Isia with the modern festival of Halloween. Isis is, after all, a Goddess of the Dead par excellence. There is much we could do with an Isia in which we remembered our own Honored Dead, for example by speaking their names and making offering in the ancient Egyptian tradition.
On the other hand, there is an appropriate Egyptian option for the celebration of the Isia and—and given the timing and the resonant subject matter—it is a likely candidate for the basis of the Roman Isia.
Though perhaps it should more rightly be called the Osiria. For at about this same time of year, in the Egyptian month of Khoiak, the ancients held a festival for Osiris that remembered His conflict with His brother Set, His death, and His resurrection through the holy magic of Isis. We know of this festival from the period of the Middle Kingdom and have a decent record of it from the great Osirian sanctuary of Abydos. We also know of it from the Osiris chapel in Hathor’s Ptolemaic sanctuary at Denderah.
Mourning for Osiris
The festival re-enacted the central Isis-Osiris myth (I won’t recount it here; you all know the story.) The Egyptians moulded images of Osiris from Nile mud, special spices, talismanic stones, and seeds. The images were watered so that the grain sprouted, a fitting symbol of new life. (We should also know that this was about the time of year when the Nile flood was receding so that the fields could be planted with new crops.) The festival ended with the raising of the Djed pillar, symbol of the resurrection of the God Himself as Lord of the Otherworld.
This was, in fact, the Fall Equinox Festival we were planning for 2020. It was to be our own Isia. But. Well. 2020. So at the next opportunity, those of us in the upper left corner WILL make this festival happen.
Watering the grain in the sacred image of Osiris
Nevertheless, if you are so inclined, now is a perfect time to re-enact that core Isiac myth—if on a smaller and more personal scale. And should you do so from Isis’ point of view, it would be a true Isia, indeed.
I have done my own private Isia like this: I shuffle and deal out 14 Tarot cards, representing the 14 parts of the body of Osiris. I place or “hide” the cards in a circle around my temple. Then, during the several days of the festival, I ritually circle the temple, “finding” some of the cards until I have “found” them all. Then I assemble them into a roughly human-shaped, stick-figure Osiris. (This is a fairly large spread, so I place it in the middle of the floor of my temple.) On the last day of the festival, I turn over the cards, revealing them, and read them as an omen for the coming season and coming year. Naturally—to expand the rite and get myself in the proper magical frame of time, I use temple openings and closings of my choice from Isis Magic. (The Opening of the Ways works quite well; if you haven’t got your own copy of Isis Magic, you’ll find the ritual here.)
Should you decide to honor the Isia this year—in this way or some other—I would love to know about your experience. Whether you choose to connect your Isia with the ancient Khoiak festivals of Isis and Osiris, create a Day-of-the-Dead-type Isia, or celebrate some other way entirely, I wish you much depth and beauty in this darkening season of sad, sweet remembrance. May She embrace you always.
Isis and the pharaoh raise the Djed pillar, the symbol of the resurrection of Osiris
Here are some lines (though not all of them) from a particularly interesting New Kingdom hymn to the Goddess.
I have simplified some of the lacunae and made the appropriate capitalizations.
See if you can guess which Goddess the hymn praises:
“…great of sunlight, Who illumines [the entire land with] Her rays. She is His Eye, Who causes the land to prosper, the glorious eye of Harakhti, the Ruler of What Exists, the Great and Powerful Mistress, life being in Her possession in this Her name […]
[…] in the circuit. The Gods are in … Great of Might. Her Eye has illumined the horizon. The Ennead, Their hearts are glad because of Her, the Mistress of Their Joy, in this Her name of Heaven.
She is in their hearts, they being glad when She ascends to Her abode, Her temple. She has appeared and has shone as the Woman of Gold […] of best pure silver. All lands give Her their divine property in Her name, and their standards of their places. They rejoice for Her and Her beauty which belongs to Her. Everyone comes into existence through Her when he is created, say the Living in this temple.
There exists no one like Her on earth. She who lives by the might of Her word.
[…] the Great One of the Throne […] She is […] of forms, Great of Property, Mistress of That Which Exists. The papyrus flourishes.”
Isis protected by the Vulture Mother
This Goddess is also called Mistress of the Gods, Queen of Heaven, Great Goddess, Mighty Goddess, Lady of the Two Lands.
The hymn could well be used to praise Isis. Because it seems that all the Great Goddesses, at one time or another, were called by each other’s epithets and even by each other’s names. (See how that applies to Nephthys here.) Louis Zabkar, who has studied the Isis hymns at Philae extensively, traced how a number of the texts at Philae were adapted from preexisting sources to suit both the space they had available at Philae and the Goddess they were praising.
But this particular hymn is in praise of Mut; and it is especially interesting because it is in the form of a crossword. Known as the Crossword Hymn to Mut (obviously enough), the instructions say to read it “three ways.” Indeed, it can be read horizontally and vertically. Scholars guess that the third way might be around the edges, but the artifact is too damaged to be sure that works.
Mut with a phallus from the Book of Doors oracle deck
Mut’s name means simply “Mother.” It is spelled with the vulture hieroglyph, which also connects Her with one of the Two Ladies of Egypt, Nekhebet the Vulture Goddess Who was the protectress of Upper Egypt.
According to Horapollo, supposed to be an Egyptian magician of the fourth century CE, Egyptian tradition had it that there were no male vultures. Female vultures were thought to remain virgin, but to become pregnant by exposing their vulvas to the north wind. Thus Mut is a Virgin Mother. In Her Crossword Hymn, we see Her both as the maiden Daughter of Re and the Great Mother, since everyone comes into existence through Her.
But Mut also has a powerful lioness aspect. In this form, She is one of the Raging and Returning Goddesses, like Sakhmet, Hathor, and Tefnut. In the Book of the Dead, Spell 164, a magical image of Mut is described as having three faces: a vulture, a woman, and a lioness. Not only that, She has a phallus and wings and lion’s claws. The Crossword Hymn shows Her as a fierce and awesome Mother when protecting the dead. Yet it also calls Her Mistress of Joy, Mistress of Peace, and the Beloved One.
Isis with the head of a lioness from the Ombos temple
It almost goes without saying that Isis is a Mother Goddess. Specifically and significantly, She is the mother of Horus, Mut Nutdjer, “Mother of the God.” But She also reveals Herself as Mother of the Gods and as the Great Mother of All. As Great Mother, Isis has inspired the devoted worship of women and men throughout history. During the Græco-Roman period, Her motherliness toward humanity was expressed in the novel The Golden Ass by Her initiate, Lucius, who declared that Isis brings “the sweet love of a mother to the trials of the unfortunate.” This conception of Isis endures today when, for many, Isis is the very model of the Mother Goddess.
Isis from Abydos wearing the Vulture Headdress
It should be no surprise then that Mother Isis and the Goddess Whose name is simply “Mother” would become identified. In Isis’ Roman-era temple at Shenhur, Isis is represented in four forms: as “Isis the Great, Mother of the Gods,” as “The Great Goddess Isis,” as Mut, and as Nephthys Nebet-Ihy (a festive form of Nephthys). In Mut’s Crossword Hymn, Mut is said to be “under the king as the throne,” just as Isis’ very name means “Throne.”
As Isis the Kite protects Osiris by enfolding Him in Her wings, so in one of the Books of the Dead, a vulture-headed Mut is shown enfolding Osiris in the same way. On a pectoral found in Tutankhamon’s funerary equipment, a vulture, labeled “Isis”, guards the king. In the Book of the Dead, the “vulture of gold” to be placed at the neck of the deceased is associated with Isis. Both Isis and Mut wear the Vulture Headdress, though Mut wears over it the combined Red and White Crowns. Both are Eye Goddesses and Uraeus Goddesses and as such are assimilated with Bast and Sakhmet. Both, as Great of Magic, take the prominent place of the divine barque to defend and protect the Sun God. And of course, both are Divine Mothers; Isis of Horus and Mut of Khonsu. Isis and Mut are considered to be the mother of the pharaoh and They ultimately mother those of us devoted to Them.
I started this post because I wanted to share with you the amazing Crossword Hymn of Mut. But now I am being struck by this idea of the correspondences of the Great Goddesses (and the Great Gods, for that matter). The more I study, the more I find that They share mythology, share epithets, and share the ability to appear as each other “in Her name of fill-in-the-blank.” This capacity, along with the ancient Egyptian idea that the Deities could combine Their identities or be the Ba-soul of another Deity points at an underlying unity of the Divine, even in the midst of a thriving polytheism. Works for me.
Here’s a short phone video of the sacred images and other things in my personal Isis shrine and I invite you to take a tour. The audio is low because I was whispering. It was early. I was not quite awake yet. You’ll have to turn it up a bit to hear the narration.
With the world seemingly crumbling about our ears, we have very good reasons to be depressed. This is a hard year. A very hard year. And it most certainly can affect our practice. Yet it is just such times as these that we need our practice. We need our Deities. We need one of the key tools of the devotee of Isis: hope. With that in mind, I am republishing this post on the Dark Night of the Soul…
I read a short blog post the other day that made me sad…and sympathetic. It was by a young woman who felt she had lost the mystery of her Pagan path. The power of the rites had flown. She doubted. Her anguish was palpable in what she wrote.
This may have been the first time that had happened to her.
Yet I can guarantee that, if we follow any spiritual path for a sufficient length of time, this same thing will happen to each of us. At some point, the mystery dries up. The excitement dies down. The thrill of discovery is not as thrilling as it once was. Usually, this doesn’t happen all of a sudden and usually not in the early part of our journey with Isis. Rather, it’s a slow erosion that we don’t even notice. We just don’t feel like tending Her shrine or meditating or making offering today. We find we have other things to do. Practice slips away. That wonderful sense of Isis being with us in every step of our lives slips away. But we hardly notice.
Isis giving sustenance to the ba in the Otherworld
Until we do. Notice, that is. Then, we might panic a bit. Especially if we have chosen a priest/essly relationship with Isis. O my Goddess, O my Goddess, O my Goddess! What happened? Where is She? What have I (not!) done?
If we’re not careful—and forget to breathe—thoughts and feelings can quickly escalate from there. Why am I even doing this? What if it’s all a lie? Where is She? Where is She? Where is She? We ask questions, but get no answers. It isn’t like it was before. We don’t seem to be who we were before, either. We may feel like strangers to ourselves just as we feel like strangers to Isis. We feel alone, cut off from the Goddess, perhaps even cut off from other human beings and from other pleasures in our lives.
The first thing we must understand about such periods in the spiritual life is that, though we feel desperately alone, we are not. Spiritual people throughout the ages have had this experience; all the way back to prehistory I’d be willing to wager. There’s even a term for it, a term you probably know. It’s the “dark night of the soul,” which is the title of a poem and a treatise written by the 16th century Christian Mystic known as Saint John of the Cross. He writes of it as a necessary part of the soul’s journey to union with God. The phrase is so perfectly evocative that it has been adopted by many spiritual traditions today.
A man and his ba greeting each other
There’s even an ancient Egyptian precedent. It’s generally known as A Man Tired of Life in Dispute with His Soul (Ba) and is found in Berlin Papyrus 3024. The papyrus itself has no title. What we have left is the last part of the work; the first part is missing. In it, a scribe is arguing with his ba, trying to convince his ba to die with him. The man berates himself and declares the world around him to be a horrible place. The ba argues that the scribe should live and die only when it truly is his time. Egyptologists consider the papyrus very obscure and difficult. As a result, there are many different translations of the papyrus and they differ widely in their interpretation.
We do not know the purpose of the papyrus or the exact period to which it is dated. Most scholars put it in the First Intermediate Period, a time of confusion between the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Some have theorized that the author’s despair is a reflection of the chaos of that Intermediate Period. Bika Reed, who is of the Schwaller de Lubicz school of Egyptology, has interpreted it as an initiatic text, essentially dealing with the dark night of the soul.
We don’t know for sure, but the point is, this happens to us—and it has always happened. But what do we do when it happens?
A beautiful statue of a ba
I can tell you that I have had more than one dark night of the ba in my life with Isis. I have learned that patience and persistence are the keys to survival (as they are in so much of life). In these dark and dry places, we must be patient with ourselves and with the Goddess; we must persist in our practice. Even if we don’t feel anything happen when we meditate with Isis or when we place flowers upon Her altar, we must continue to do so. But we must also give ourselves a break. It’s okay if we don’t feel anything right now. It doesn’t mean Isis has abandoned us. It only means we are in a period of transition, even of initiation. Some consider a dark night to be part of the process of ego death that must precede a deeper relationship with the Divine, in our case, with Isis.
We may even give ourselves another type of break. If it had been our practice to meditate daily, perhaps we do so once every few days or once a week. That’s okay, too. The important thing is not to stop altogether, even if the sense of connection isn’t there. We just persist. Eventually—in a month, or even a year—something will change. The shell surrounding our hearts will crack. Like the Child Horus, our hearts will struggle out of the egg and be born. Eventually, we will return to our practice and find that it, too, is transformed. It is deeper, richer, juicier.
Held in Her wings, we are Becoming, even when we don’t know it.
A queen’s image in the waters outside of Alexandria
The last time I posted this, it was for the people and the land of the sacred Isis Oasis in California, which was being threatened by fire. This time, it for those of us in Oregon—and the entire West Coast of the US—as wildfires sweep through our climate-change dried forests. (Nah, there’s no problem here.)
At present, we are under no evacuation orders here in Multnomah County (where Portland is). There are many of us who have been Working weather magic; myself included. In fact, once I post this, it’s down to the temple to do it again. I would be so glad to have you join me. Here is the invocation I’m using:
We Call the Waters, the Healing Waters, the Nourishing Waters, the Starry Waters. We Call the Waters, the Blood of Isis.
Isis, Lady of Rain and Dew. Lady of Magic Who Calls Forth the Waters of the Great River. Let the Rain Folk come! Let the Cloud Folk come! Let the Fires die and the Winds be still. Rain, Goddess, rain!
Amma, Iset.
Our air is getting slightly more humid as marine air comes in, but the smoke is choking. We hope for rain early next week. May Our Lady bring it soon!
And so, I offer you this post about Isis’ connection with the life-living Waters…
The beautiful blue Nile God, Hapy
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.”
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. And here’s another option.
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.
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.”
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. I couldn’t find any photos of the statue, but this is a Coptic Church and has quite a few sacred images of Mary throughout the grounds.
And so we call upon Isis Who brings rain, Who fills the rivers with Her tears, Who Calls the Waters. May She surround and protect.
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.
Queen Elizabeth I of England on the cover of The Faerie Queene
Today’s post is a repost. I really just needed to offer something not topical (my brain and soul are a bit ragged right now), but which shows how very topical our Goddess Isis has been throughout Western history.
Have a bit of respite from the news and enjoy…
Did you know that Isis can be connected with Queen Elizabeth I—she for whom the “Elizabethan Age” is named?
It’s an interesting story…
It’s a story that speaks to the influence of Isis’ story throughout the ages. It is also a story that reinforces Isis’ importance as a feminist icon.
So let us start in 1558, the year Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, became queen. Elizabeth never married, thus never shared her throne; she reigned for over 40 years. She was called “Gloriana” and “Good Queen Bess” and “the Virgin Queen”.
Knox’s lovely piece of work
But this whole unmarried-queen-ruling-by-herself thing was problematic. If you think there’s sexism now, imagine 1558. Even queens were not immune. Elizabeth’s advisors were forever pestering her to marry. It was a given that women were inferior in all ways, from moral strength to intellectual strength to physical strength. “Frailty, thy name is woman,” sayeth the Bard in Hamlet to absolutely no one’s surprise. Women had virtually no rights under the law and were subject in all things to first father, then husband.
1558 was also the year that John Knox published his polemic against women rulers called The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regimen [that is, “rule”] of Women. It was specifically against the Catholic queens of Scotland and England (Knox was Protestant), but as Elizabeth came to the throne in the same year, you can be sure it was applied to her as well. Knox summed up the general attitude this way:
For who can denie but it repugneth to nature, that the blind shal be appointed to leade and conduct such as do see? That the weake, the sicke, and impotent persones shall norishe and kepe the hole and strong, and finallie, that the foolishe, madde and phrenetike shal gouerne the discrete, and giue counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be al women, compared unto man in bearing of authoritie. For their sight in ciuile [civil] regiment, is but blindnes: their strength, weaknes: their counsel, foolishenes: and judgement, phrenesie, if it be rightlie considered.
As you might expect, Elizabeth took offense and she opposed Knox, successfully keeping him from being involved in his beloved “Protestant cause” in England. Queens do have some power after all.
What Elizabeth needed was some propaganda of her own. So she carefully constructed her public image, sometimes by portraying herself as the mother of her people, sometimes as a king or prince, and sometimes by having herself compared to various Goddesses—Goddesses Who were thought, by this time, to be safely in the past. This meant that Their myths could now be used to portray queenly and Protestant values without too much consternation.
“Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses,” by Hans Eworth, 1569; Elizabeth actually owned this painting, which both associates her with the Goddesses and has her besting Them, for she kept the golden “apple” or royal orb for herself.
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a long poem that helped promote the cult of Elizabeth as the Virgin Moon Goddess Diana. During royal functions as well as in Elizabeth’s raiment, the liberal use of the symbols of the moon and moon-like pearls helped promulgate the idea.
As war leader of her people, Elizabeth would style herself after Minerva, a Goddess capable of war, but more known for Her wisdom and love of peace. While addressing troops who were preparing to repel the Spanish Armada, she wore an Minerva-like plumed helmet and steel cuirass over a white velvet gown. She turned sexism on its head with the most famous line of her speech: “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too…”
I thought Pfeiffer was awesome as the Faerie Queene, Titania
Then in 1590, Edmund Spenser wrote a long, highly allegorical poem called The Faerie Queene, which he dedicated to Elizabeth and in which he symbolically portrays his queen through various characters in the poem, including Gloriana, the Faerie Queene of the title. The poem is classic sword-and-sorcery, knights-and-damsels; Elizabeth liked it enough to award Spenser a pension for life.
It is in The Faerie Queene that we meet Isis as a symbol of Justice and equitable queenly rule. Spenser wanted to associate Elizabeth’s rule with an ancient Golden Age ruled over by another strong queen: Isis, the Divine Queen of Egypt. Spenser tells us that Isis was “a Goddess of great powre and souerainty” and that justice and equity were among Her blessings. So too are power, sovereignty, justice, and equity hallmarks of Elizabeth’s reign. Elizabeth is further associated with Isis—as well as with the famous Queen Cleopatra—by the fact that the Faerie Queene lives in “Cleopolis.”
In support of his Faerie Queene, Spenser writes that during recent history men had not properly recorded the deeds of women rulers, particularly their deeds of war. However, in ancient days (such as the time of Isis) female rulers were given the credit they deserved. He also explains that men’s jealousy of women caused them to “curb women’s liberty.”
Artegall from a graphic novel
Scholars think that we are seeing the influence of the Hermetica as well as Giordano Bruno’s Egyptian-themed work on Spenser’s choice of an Isis-and-Osiris theme in Book V of the poem. Britomart, the female Knight of Chastity, is Isis-like, while the male Knight of Justice, Artegall, is Osiris-like. They are lovers, separated by various adventures, which require Britomart to search repeatedly for Artegall just as Isis does for Osiris.
We see Britomart at her most Isian in Book V, Canto VII of the poem as she sets out to rescue Artegall from the evil Amazon queen Radigund. (Yes, it’s not all that feminist a poem.) Along the way, Britomart stops to rest at a temple of Isis (also called “Isis Church” in the poem) and is received there by the priests. The long-haired priests, dressed in silver-trimmed linen robes and moon-shaped headdresses, are in the midst of their offering rites. Britomart is amazed by the beauty of the temple, gawking openly.
“Britomart” by Walter Crane, 1900
The priests take her to the sacred image of Isis, which is as beautifully wrought as the temple itself. The image is crowned with gold “to shew that she had powre in things diuine”, carries a wand, and with one foot treads upon a crocodile that represents both “forced guile and open force” and is being suppressed by Isis.
Britomart kneels down and prays at the Goddess’ feet. The wand in the hand of “the Idoll” moves, which Britomart takes as a sign of good fortune and falls asleep: “There did the warlike Maide her selfe repose, Vnder the wings of Isis all that night…” The priests, too, went to sleep and “on their mother Earths deare lap did lie.” They kept strict chastity and eschewed both meat and wine (especially wine).
Britomart sleeping “under the wings of Isis” in Isis Church
Now Britomart dreams a dream that foretells her fate. She sees herself, as a priestess, making sacrifice to Isis. Then her linen robes becomes scarlet and her headdress becomes a crown of gold, like that of the Goddess Herself. She is in wonder, yet pleased by the change as she becomes merged in Isis. Suddenly, a wind arises that fans the altar flames and threatens to set the temple on fire. The crocodile beneath the foot of the sacred image of Isis comes to life, devours the flames and the wind, and starts toward Britomart. The image of Isis raises Her wand and beats him back.
Chastised, the crocodile now humbly comes to Britomart, begging her to love him. Which she does, becoming pregnant with and then giving birth to a great lion that subdues everything. (How’s that for a dream, eh?)
At that, Britomart wakes, confused and upset. The priests are already up, preparing for the day. Their leader notices Sir Knight’s dismay and asks her about it. She tells him the dream.
Immediately, he sees that she is of royal blood. He tells her that the crocodile represents Artegall and also the just “Osyris” Who sleeps forever beneath Isis’ foot, protected from those “cruell doomes of his.” The priest tells her that she and Artegall will have a lion-like son and start a dynasty. (Elizabeth, of course, is of this heroic line.) After rewarding the priests with gold and silver as gifts for their Goddess, the knight continues on her way.
“Prince Arthur and the Faerie Queen” by Henry Fuseli, 1788
According to Spenser’s tale, other heroes are also part of Elizabeth’s heritage, including King Arthur, the British warrior queen Boudicca, and the Anglo Saxon heroine Angela. Yet the story of Isis and Osiris, associated with Spenser’s greatest virtue, Justice, is especially important.
Though Britomart and Artegall reign with great justice for many years, eventually, Artegall is killed—by treachery—and taken from Britomart just as Osiris must eventually leave Isis to rule in the otherworld. Yet before he dies, they conceive a son, a Horus-Child who will begin the dynasty destined to lead to the reign of Elizabeth, the royal virgin who marks the glorious culmination of the Britomart-Isis and Artegall-Osiris line.
If you’ve been following this blog, you know I write a lot about Isis as Lady of the Holy Star. In my area, Portland, Oregon, Her heliacal rising is a week from today.
I will be in my local high place (I am fortunate to have one near my home), awaiting Her reappearance with offerings in hand at 4:30 in the morning. I will watch as the Mystery unfolds and the Goddess emerges once more from the Underworld into the dawning light.
But for now, I watch the morning skies in anticipation of the pre-dawn reappearance of the beautiful and brilliant star of Isis, Sirius.
Thanks to the wonders of modern online astronomical calculators, we can know pretty precisely when the Fair Star of the Waters will rise before the sun in our area. (To use the calculator, just enter your email and the password: softtests. You will need to know the latitude and altitude of wherever you are observing Her rise. This info is easily google-able.)
If you want to know more about Sirius and Isis, here are some links to previous posts, all in one place:
At Denderah, one image of Sopdet shows Her as a cow with Sirius between Her horns, and stars surrounding Her
The rise of the Star of Isis was important in ancient Egypt for it marked coming of the fertilizing Nile Inundation and the day of the New Year. It was also the end of the epigominal days, those days out of time when the the Cairo Calendar tells us that the birthdays of Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys were celebrated.
Thus, if you wish to celebrate the Birth of Isis, it is two days before New Year’s Day.
There are a number of options for choosing our New Year’s Day.
For instance, perhaps you’ve seen a date of July 19th given for the rising of Sirius? This comes from a 1904 calculation by Eduard Meyer, who was the first modern person to have noticed ancient Egypt’s Sothic Cycle.
Isis-Sothis, Lady of the Dog-Star, riding on Her dog, from an Alexandrian coin
You may recall that the Sothic Cycle is a period of 1,461 ancient Egyptian years during which the 365-day Egyptian year, which is one quarter-day too short, loses enough time so that the Egyptian New Year, once again coincides with the rise of Sirius.
Meyer was trying to calculate the date of the star’s rising from the ancient Egyptian calendar and translate it to the modern Julian so that the reigns of the pharaohs could be more accurately dated. The Sirius rising date he came up with was July 19—but that would have been for 140-142 CE.
You may certainly use that date if you prefer a firm date for planning your celebrations. That would make New Year on July 19th and Isis’ birthday on July 17th.
Personally, I like to use the date when Isis’ star may actually be seen in the morning skies in my area. You can use the calculator link above to find out when She rises in your area.
You could mark the rise of Isis’ star at Isiopolis…
Another option might be to use the modern rising time at either of Isis’ major sacred temple sites in Egypt.
At Her Lower Egypt temple of Isiopolis in the delta, that was on August 8th this year.
…or from Her Philae temple; photo by Ivan Marcialis; used under Wiki Creative Commons
At Her Upper Egypt temple of Philae/Agilika, that was on August 2rd.
So you can see that latitude makes a great deal of difference as to when the rising of the Goddess’ star may be actually observed.
If you wish to join me in celebration of Her rising, you’ll need to be at your observation point about an hour before sunrise in order to see Her. We may chant Her name—Iset-Sopdet, Isis-Sothis—as She rises. We may offer Her milk and lotuses. Or we may watch in beautiful silence as She comes, She comes.
One of my favorite tarot images: Isis as The Star in the Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett
It is getting to be that time. That time when She rises early, early in the dawning light. This is known as the “heliacal rising of Sirius” and 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.
Now some of you may be saying, “wait, wait, I thought that happens in July.” It could. When you are able to see Her heliacal (“before the sun”) rising depends on where on this globe you are.
Here in Portland, Oregon in 2020, Sirius rises at 4:34 in the morning of August 22rd. Further south, She rises earlier. It all depends on your latitude, you see. You can calculate Her rising in your area with this online calculator. Then, if you’d like to celebrate Isis’ birthday, it would be two days before the rising of Sirius, in my case, August 20. So Isis is a Leo (at least at this latitude.) And well, She is Isis-Sakhmet, after all.
Of course, some people see Isis in the pale, magical light of the moon. Or in the golden, life-giving rays of the sun. I do find Her there, 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). 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, coming soon to a dawn near me
Likely, you already know why Sirius was important to the ancient Egyptians, so I won’t repeat that here. But I would like to add a few interesting bits about Sirius that you may not know about; in particular, the orientation of some Egyptian temples and shrines to Sirius at the time of their construction. For instance, the small Isis temple at Denderah and Isis’ great temple at Philae seem to have been oriented toward the rising of Sirius. Philae may even have a double stellar orientation: one axis to the rising of Sirius, one to the setting of Canopus.
Iset-Sopdet following Sah-Osiris in Their celestial boats
Overall, Egyptian temples have a variety of orientations. A survey of temples taken between 2004 and 2008—that actually went to the temples in Egypt and measured the orientation—showed that most temples were oriented so that the main entrance faced the Nile. But not only that. It seems that the temples were also oriented toward other astronomical events, most especially the winter solstice sunrise, which of course makes very good sense as a symbol of rebirth.
Orientation to Sirius is rarer and harder to be certain of since the earth’s position in relation to the stars has shifted over the millennia.
A Horus temple, called the “Nest of Horus” on the summit of the highest peak of the Hills of Thebes, seems to have been oriented to the heliacal rising of Sirius around 3000-2000 BCE. Nearby, an inscription carved in rock during the 17th dynasty (1580-1550 BCE) records the observation of just such a rising of Sirius. This high place would have been ideal for Horus in His nest to await the coming of His mother Isis. On the other hand, the archaeoastronomers who did the survey I mentioned believe that it may also be oriented to the winter solstice sunrise, an event closely associated with Horus.
The original temple of Satet on Elephantine; made of mudbrick nestled among the natural 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 since many of these temples were built far away from the river. They made note of a son of a Priest of Isis, Wayekiye, son of Hornakhtyotef, who was “hont-priest of Sopdet” and ”wab-priest of the five living stars” (the planets) and “chief magician of the King of Kush.” This is from an inscription on Isis’ temple at Philae dating to about 227 CE. It emphasizes the importance and sacrality of the study of celestial objects and events to the kingdom and it is quite interesting that this was the work of the Chief Magician. This study revealed that most Kushite temples and pyramids were oriented either to the winter solstice sunrise or the rise of Sirius.
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 associated with Her—the most important celestial orientation point was the rising of Sirius. But, in addition to Sirius, the star Canopus was also a key orientation point. According to their data, Goddess temples in general were more frequently aligned with these very bright stars, Sirius and Canopus, while God temples were more often oriented to key solar-cycle events. Isn’t that interesting?
On the horizon, She rises, with Orion/Osiris above
If you are, as I am, feeling the anticipation of Her rising later this month, you might like to do some ritual. The Opening of the Ways is always good. You could use it as an invitation to Her. Or try a simple meditation, allowing yourself to yearn for Her coming. Waiting for Her and wanting Her is sometimes a very good exercise. You might set out a vessel of water (a shiny silver one is nice) on the night of Her rising, let it be charged with that rising energy in the dawn, then use it as part of your holy water for purification. I have just such star water that I use waiting in my shrine right now.
Last time we saw that there is no evidence for temple prostitution in ancient Egypt. Yet we still find modern writers (usually very well-meaning ones discussing sacred sexuality) who relay the tale that Isis spent ten years as a prostitute in Tyre, that She was beloved by prostitutes, and that Her temples were located near brothels and were reputed to be good places to meet prostitutes.
Where does all that come from?
Well, this is definitely one of those “consider the source” situations.
The bit about prostitution in Tyre is from Epiphanius, a 4th century CE Christian bishop writing against what he sees as heresies. He complains about the sister-brother marriage of Isis and Osiris then launches into the prostitution accusation. There’s no other evidence of this story circulating at the time. He may have made it up. He may have confused Isis with Astarte or even with Simon Magus’ muse Helena, who was a prostitute in Tyre (before being recognized by Magus as the “Thought of God” and the reincarnation of Helen of Troy and rescued from her life of prostitution by the magician; but that’s a whole other story).
The “tradition” connecting Isis with prostitutes and prostitution comes from a couple of sources; both worthy of clear-eyed consideration (see above). Cyril, Christian bishop of Alexandria in the 5th century CE wrote that “the Egyptians,” especially the women (shock! horror! faint!), when they were made initiates of the religion of Isis “are deemed worthy of honor—therefore of wantonness.” (On Adoration in Spirit and Truth, 9) But before him, a number of Roman poets and satirists made such claims in relation to devotion to Isis. Her temples were supposed to be fabulous places to meet loose women. And then there was the famous Isiac scandal, told by the Jewish historian Josephus, in which a Roman matron was supposedly tricked into going to the Temple of Isis so that “Anubis” could sleep with her.
Isis-Aphrodite, 1st or 2nd century CE; for some reason, I find these “flashing” terracottas charmingly cute
When you look more closely into these accusations and put them in context, you see that the poets complained not only of temples of Isis, but of anywhere in Rome where women either gathered (the temples of a wide variety of Goddesses as well as just about any public space, for instance) or went to protect their interests (such as courts of law). If women are allowed to run around loose, lewdness is sure to follow.
It’s pure misogyny, folks. (One of these poets, the appropriately named Juvenal, wrote a poem called Against Women, in case I have not already made myself sufficiently clear.)
Without seeing the irony, several of these poets would write about sexual immorality and the temples of Isis, then turn around and complain when their mistresses would abstain from sex for a period of ten days as part of their devotion to Isis. (This period of abstention was known as the Castimonium Isidis or “Chastity of Isis.” Surely it was intended as a purification prior to some important Isiac rite.)
In fact, we have far more evidence for morality and chastity among Roman Isiacs than we do for sexual promiscuity. I’m sure it happened. Humans. Sex. But it wasn’t part of the temple proceedings.
So now we know. But that was Rome, and rather late. What about Egypt?
Ecstatic dance for Hathor
We know there were exuberant religious celebrations that included drinking and dancing in Egypt. In the 5th century BCE, Herodotus notes a celebration for Bastet in which boats full of men and women traveled to Bubastis, laughing, singing, clapping, rattling (sistra?) and playing flutes, the women hurling ritual abuse at other women along the riverbank and some raising their skirts to expose themselves to the crowd. The historian notes that more wine was drunk during that festival than all the rest of the year. You know there was some drunken sex going on. Surely this was a festival meant to inspire fertility in the land and in the people. I’ll bet it did, too. Festivals of drunkenness were also celebrated for Hathor. And a recently discovered and translated papyrus, dating back 1900 years, appears to be a fictional story about a devotee of Mut who seduces someone into joining the sexy, drunken festivities for that Goddess.
Isis as the kite settled on the phallus of Osiris, from Abydos
I’m not aware of a festival of drunkenness for Isis. The emotionalism associated with Her cult is the sorrow of lamentation—and eventually the joy of reunion with the Beloved.
Yet there is still good reason to think of Isis and sex. After all, She is one of the Deities to Whom one prayed for children; and naturally, one must take physical-world action along with one’s prayers. Furthermore, the story of Isis and Osiris has at its heart a sexual coupling. The Goddess magically resurrects Her husband in order that They may make love one last time and so conceive Their child, Horus.
A very unusual 2002 find at Osiris’ temple at Abydos may provide some information. It appears to be a votive offering and shows a woman and man having intercourse. Unlike most Egyptian representations of sex, it is neither crude nor satirical. The man is particularly well endowed, and in contrast to most male-female depictions, the woman is shown larger than the man. Because of the fragmentary nature of the carving, we can’t be sure what sexual position is intended, but it may be that she is straddling him. If so, then perhaps this is because she is intended to be in the Isis (or Nuet) position of woman-on-top.
A clearer picture of the same; Isis comes to make love and bring life to Osiris
Best guess is that it was a votive offering to promote fertility, even though such offerings were usually in the form of a phallus or a “fertility figure” (such as one of the big-haired wasp-waisted “paddle” dolls). There was a separate shrine of Isis at Abydos, but archeologists studying the votive have suggested that there might have also been an Isis shrine in the Osiris temple itself and thus the sexual votive would be even more appropriate. Sex is crucial to Isis and Osiris as well as to the Egyptian dead. Sex is part of the magic of renewal and rebirth. It is the magic Isis works with Osiris. It is the magic the Goddess in Her many names works for the dead. (See my post on Isis as a sexy Goddess here.)
In the early days of my relationship with Isis, one of the things She asked of me was that my lovemaking be given in Her name. Now, it could be that the researchers’ guess is correct and that the votive was an offering made to ask for fertility. But perhaps this unusual and somehow poignant votive offering was an expression of the same sort of thing that Isis asked of me so long ago. Perhaps it is a reminder that lovemaking is sacred, that it is a vital part of Isis’ magic of renewal, and that we should honor it as She does.
An artistic representation of Kheperu by Steffi Grant; note the human inside the figure of Horus
The Key to Egyptian Magic, Part 3
We’ve been talking about what I call (for lack of a known ancient Egyptian term for it) Kheperu, “Forms” or “Transformations.” It is a way of taking the imaginal Form or Image of a Deity upon ourselves and—for a specific, limited period—thus Transforming ourselves into the Deity; in this case, Isis.
It’s not exactly the same thing as trance possession or “being ridden” by a Loa, as in Voudon. In the case of Kheperu, the ritualist does not lose their own consciousness. Rather, consciousness is expanded. Assuming a Kheper (sing.) is more like stepping into a stream of Divine power, more like being carried than carrying.
When successfully done, Kheperu puts us in touch with a deeper wisdom that serves as guide in any act of magic, mundane or spiritual. It means no more—and no less—than placing the Divine part of ourselves in contact with a greater Divine power. In this way, we “become” the Goddess. The potential that this offers for spiritual development as well as for practical magic is immense.
Kheperu has been around for a VERY long time; this is a drawing of the famous cave painting believed to be a shaman in the Kheper of a stag. The human hands, feet, and face are the clue.
People differ in what they believe a Kheper or—as it is often known in modern ceremonial magic—a God/dessform is. Some consider it to be a purely human psychological construct. Some consider the imaginal Form to reflect an archetype, which in turn, reflects a Divine Reality. Most will consider a Kheper to be a little of both—a sacred and enlivened image to which both humanity and Divinity contribute.
I’ve seen some folks using the term “Godform” in a way that suggests that the Form is somehow the whole Divine Being; that “Godform” is just another, perhaps more technical, word for God. Nope. The Form is just that: a form. It is an interface that human beings can use to connect with some part of the Truth of a Deity. I’ve also seen some criticism of using the term “energy” to talk about what we sense in the presence of a Deity as being a bit too new age-y. However, I find it a useful metaphor, so I’m going to continue using it. Feel free to substitute your preferred term if it’s not to your liking.
To me, a Kheper is an image that interprets the Divine energy of a particular Deity or aspect of the Deity to us as human beings. Normally, it would be an image that has some history behind it, an image that has been invested with human spiritual, mental, and emotional energy for hundreds or even thousands of years. When it comes to Isis, we may picture Her in any number of ways that artists have portrayed Her during the thousands of year of Her worship.
To use Jungian terms, we can think of a Kheper as an image recorded in the Collective Unconscious. By assuming the Form, we make it conscious rather than unconscious. These images live by virtue of the energy, both Divine and human, invested in them.
Like the ancient Egyptian who dons the cloak of the Great Lady and becomes the Great Lady, we, as modern devotees, can also put on the cloak or Form of the Goddess and “become” Isis. An invocation of Isis by the technique of Kheperu is a great, sacred cycle of inflowing and outflowing energy, from human to Divine, Divine to human.
If we succeed in doing this, we will certainly know it—for the feeling is very unlike any normal state of consciousness. We may feel as if our body, soul, mind, and spirit have tapped into a stream of power coming from outside ourselves, a stream which extends beyond the physical and touches invisible realms. We may perceive ourselves as enormous, towering over the earth or suspended in space. We may have a feeling of expansion in the heart or little rushes or spasms of energy throughout the body. We will feel the intense presence of Isis and may participate in the creativity and magic that are an essential part of Her nature. Through the Kheper of Isis, we will be able to use some of the power of the Goddess Herself to initiate, empower a rite, charge a talisman, or commune with Her.
Actors do a form of the technique when they “become” their character. Masks help, too.
Big Magic Caveats
With Big Magic like this, there are always caveats. If you are reading this blog, I will assume that you have some form of devotional relationship with Isis. That’s good. If not, you might wish to develop one before doing this rite. (That’s not to say you can’t take on the Kheper of a Deity you don’t have such a relationship with, just that it will be easier and more productive if you do.)
I probably don’t have to tell you this, but we do not Become the whole Goddess with this technique; rather, we help our own divinity blossom into a little bit of Her. The great Neoplatonist teacher Iamblichus discussed this in relation to theurgy. I’m paraphrasing now, but he tells us that with this technique, we maintain a dual perspective: we are both in touch with Deity and aware of our own natural human place in the world. We know both at once—just as in the Coffin Texts example from last week.
And remember, when we’re doing ANY magical Work, we are always using the only tool we have: ourselves. We are human beings and we come with a full complement of psychological shit packed into our heads and hearts and souls. The more we are aware of our own psychology and as we work to heal what we need to heal, the more we can separate what is our own stuff from Hers. Indeed, Divine contact like this can be part of the therapeutic process. Since Isis is alway ma’et, Right and True, when we align ourselves with Her in this way, we become more ma’et, too.
What’s more, in this process, we will discover that true Divine contact, though very powerful, is humbling and does not idly flatter the ego. We may come to believe, as did the theurgists and Hermeticists of old, that the Divine Ones participate in our assumption of Their Forms not merely because of the ritual or Their harmony with the images, symbols, and names employed, but because of Their Goodness and Divine Love for us. We will see that when we expend our effort to reach out the Them, They will in turn stretch out Their hands to us, guiding us, assisting us in our magic, and most importantly, helping us grow spiritually.
Sitting in this classic Egyptian posture is perfect for taking on the Kheper of Isis
The following rite, Becoming Isis, is from Isis Magic and envisions Isis in Her role of Lady of Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld. If Kheperu is a new technique for you, Isis is an excellent choice as She will be indulgent and kindly as you learn. When you work this rite, you may or may not have success the first time. Either way, it’s okay. Just keep coming back to it. Use your sacred imagination to visualize the image and the energy. Breathe. Take your time.
Prepare yourself with a ritual bath or other purification of your choice. Make sure you have an opening and closing ritual ready. If you’re using Isis Magic, try any of the rites suggested in the rubric below. If not, do whatever you would normally do to open a ritual, such as casting a circle and calling the Quarters.
Becoming Isis
Enter the temple and face east. Still yourself by breathing the sequence of the Breath of Isis (or just breathe slowly and deeply) until you are calm and focused. Perform the Four Pillars of the Earth, the Star of Isis, or the Opening of the Ways to open the temple. At the midpoint, begin your invocation:
Ritualist: I invoke Isis, the Giver of Life, Who pours out the Inundation, She Who makes green plants grow and all people live. I call upon Isis the Ever-Living, Who offers Her abundance to all the souls of earth. I ask You, Isis, Lady of Heaven, Lady of Earth, Lady of the Otherworld, to come. O Lady of All Who brought all things into existence through what Her heart conceived and Her tongue spoke into Being, come to me. Come, You Who are the Living Soul of Everything, come to this, Your temple, and to me, Your Child. Let me take on Your Kheper, Your Form, O Goddess Isis the Great. Let me be Your garment.
(Vibrating) ISIS! ISIS! ISIS!
Be seated in a comfortable, meditative posture and close your eyes. Visualize the form of Isis as described in the speech that follows. Imagine the Goddess as very large, with Her feet in the Underworld and Her head in the Heavens. Next, visualize yourself growing larger and larger. Notice how your perceptions of the world change as you grow. When you are almost, but not quite, the same size as Isis, turn to face Isis and look into Her eyes—if you can. Bow in respect, then turn so that the Kheper of the Goddess is once again behind you.
Now, imagine stepping backward into the Kheper of Isis. The face of Isis is before your face. The wings of Isis are upon your arms. The heart of Isis surrounds your heart. The body of Isis envelops your body. The feet of Isis uphold your feet. Through an act of will, now let yourself expand to completely fill the Kheper of Isis.
Ritualist: (When ready, speaking in the Kheper of Isis, as Isis) I am Isis. My Form is that of a beautiful woman with shining Wings. I am crowned with the Crescent of the Moon and the Disk of the Sun, and above them rises a Star that rests upon the image of My Throne, for I am Queen of Heaven. In my right hand I bear the Lotus Wand with which I enliven all of nature. In my left, I bear the Ankh, for I am the Mother of Life and the Lady of Re-birth. Light pours forth from My Form.
I am the Great Goddess. I am called Isis the Divine and Lady of Words of Power. I am Isis the Magician. I am the Movement Around the Still Point. I am the Form and I am the Ritual. I am the Shaper of the Forces. I am the Goddess Throne, Maker of Kings and the Seat of All Being. Through knowledge of Me, My Devoted Ones learn to guide themselves with Wisdom.
I am the Light-giver of All. I am Isis.
Allow as much time as you desire to experience the energy and presence of Isis. You may receive a greater understanding of Her nature. You may see visions from the point of view of the Goddess. You may hear the words of the Goddess in your mind. All these things are experiences of the energy of Isis. When the experience is complete, end the vision by thanking Isis.
When you are ready, take off the Kheper of Isis by reversing the procedure for taking on the Form. Visualize yourself growing smaller so that you no longer fill the image of Isis. Step forward out of the Form, feeling your separation from the image of the Goddess. When you have fully separated, turn to face the Goddess and bow in respect. Then allow yourself to continue becoming smaller until you return to your human size. Become aware of your human size, shape, and the feeling of your own human energy. Open your eyes and come back to yourself.
Ritualist: I thank You, Isis, the Giver of Life, Who pours out the Inundation. Isis, Who is the Living Soul of Everything. I thank You for allowing me to take on Your Kheper, Lady. I thank You for letting me be Your garment and for receiving this glimpse of Your Divinity.
Be in Peace, Goddess.
Amma, Iset [Ah-MA, Ee-SET; ancient Egyptian for “Grant it, Isis”].
Close the rite in the manner appropriate for the opening, then quit the temple.
I hope you will share with me your experiences with the Kheper of Isis. Be blessed beneath Her wings.
Art seems to capture Kheperu best; this is The Lotus Soul by Frantisek Kupka, 1898. This is what the energy feels like in Kheperu
The Key to Egyptian Magic, Part 2
Last week, we talked about Kheperu or “Transformations” as the key to Egyptian magic. This is the technique by which a human magician, priest/ess, or other adept practitioner, may briefly partake of Divine powers through the use of sacred images, ritual speech, and right action. It is a way of empowering our magic.
To develop this technique, a society would need to understand that human beings could become godlike—which ancient Egypt did—and further, that human and Divine beings naturally interact with each other and mutually affect each other.
This is a magical and participatory world. In Jeremy Naydler’s book TheTemple of the Cosmos, he comments that the Egyptians believed human beings depended on the Deities, but that the Deities also depended on human beings—even to the extent of relying on human action to help mobilize heka (“magic”) in the universe through the temple rites. Both Deities and humanity must uphold Ma’et (“Rightness,” “Truth”) or the universe will be thrown into chaos. Thus human beings have an innate power and influence, although we cannot hope to match that of the Goddesses and Gods. In this world view, it is theoretically possible for a human being—especially one who had acquired a lot of heka, because one can acquire it—to cause change or even chaos in the universe. If humans are part of the universal order, we can affect the universal order.
This interconnectedness is why we sometimes find threats made against the Deities in Egyptian magical formulæ. This was one of the things that freaked out Greek magic workers when they encountered it. To them, claiming godlike power was hubris—and the Gods were sure to smack you down for it rather than help you out.
Nuet, the Heavens, joined to Geb, the Earth
Yet the idea that human beings have the power to affect the universe stems from the interrelatedness and interdependence of the human and the Divine worlds in Egyptian tradition. In the same way that the Great Goddess of Magic, Isis, threatens to stop the Boat of the Sun in its tracks unless Her son Horus is healed, so the human magicians sometimes threatened the Deities with a similar upset to the cosmic order unless their desires were met. “The expertise of the magician lay in bringing together the spiritual and material levels in a deliberately engendered and powerful coalescence. Magic did not function exclusively on the physical or the psychic or the spiritual planes but on all three together,” writes Naydler. And a most effective way of joining all three worlds is through the technique of Kheperu.
Some Examples of Kheperu
“I put on the cloak of the Great Lady, and I AM the Great Lady.”
In his excellent study, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, the One and the Many, Egyptologist Erik Hornung defines Egyptian Deities by three criteria: Onoma (the name of the Deity), Logos (words or knowledge about the Deity), and Eidolon (the image of the Deity). All three, combined with ritual, are also used in Kheperu as we see it expressed in Egyptian texts.
A longish passage from the Coffin Texts illustrates these principles and highlights some of the characteristics of Kheperu (CT Formula 484, Faulkner translation):
“The Sistrum-Player is in my body, the pure flesh of my mother, and the dress will enclose me. I don the dress of Hathor, my hands are under it to the width of the sky, my fingers are under it as living uraei, my nails are under it as the Two Ladies of Dep, and I kiss the earth, I worship my mistress, for I have seen her beauty. She creates the fair movements which I make when the Protector of the Land comes; the gods come to me bowing and praise is given to me by the gods, they see me at my duty, and I am initiated into what I did not know, I cross the retinue of this Great Lady to the western horizon of the sky, I speak in the Tribunal. [. . .]
“The god who protects the land comes,” say the horizon dwellers concerning me. “The god comes, having gone aboard the bark,” say they who are about the shrine, who sit in the sides of the bark, who eat their food. They see me as the Sole One with the secret seal. I don the dress, I wear the robe, I receive the wand, I adorn the Great Lady in her dignity. Her Sistrum-Player is on her lap, and he has built mansions among your great ones, he has presented offering cakes, so that he may live thereon and that he may celebrate the monthly festival in his hour in company of those who are in linen, for he has looked at his face. So says the occupant of the throne of the Great Lady concerning me.”
We can be sure that the deceased is intended to be in the Kheper of Form of the Goddess because when he “dons the dress of Hathor,” “the Sistrum-Player is in my body,” and it is She Who “creates the fair movements which I make,” and the horizon dwellers “see me as the Sole One with the secret seal.” He employs the Onoma, the names and epithets, of Hathor in his formula. He has knowledge of Her Logos for he describes Her place in the sacred barques of the Gods. He also uses Her Eidolon, symbolized as the dress of Hathor, building up the Goddess’ image through the description in the text and putting on Her dress or image.
As in this example, Kheperu is often characterized by a multiplied consciousness. Here, the deceased perceives as a human being, as Hathor, and as Her son, the Sistrum-Player. The deceased is at once the Great Lady, Her Divine Child, and Her worshipper. So can we be both human being and Divine Being, mediating between Heaven and Earth, partaking of and blending both.
Another excellent example is a Coffin Text formula “for the Soul of Shu and for Becoming Shu” (CT Formula 228, Faulkner translation):
“I am the soul of Shu the self-created god, I have come into being from the flesh of the self-created god. I am the soul of Shu, the god invisible of shape, I have come into being from the flesh of the self-created god, I am merged in the god, I have become he.”
In the rest of this formula, the magician spends considerable time making statements that identify them with Shu. The magician recites the full myth of Shu, and beautifully ends the formula with “I am invisible of shape, I am merged in the Sunshine-God.”
In the following example, the deceased is identified with Re, quality by quality—which allows ample ritual time for visualization (Book of the Dead, Formula 181, Faulkner translation):
“His sun disk is your sun disk;
His rays are your rays;
His crown is your crown;
His greatness is your greatness;
His appearings are your appearings;
His beauty is your beauty. . .”
In Formula 78 of the Book of the Dead, the deceased says:
“Horus has invested me with his shape [. . .] I am the falcon who dwells in the sunshine, who has power through his light and his flashing. My arms are those of a divine falcon, I am one who has acquired the position of his lord, and Horus has invested me with his shape. “
And another Gonzales, because, damn beautiful
Once the Kheper is assumed, the Deity could be perceived within: “Hail to you, Khopri within my body” states Formula 460 in the Coffin Texts.
I have no doubt that if you worked these spells today—as written and while in the proper frame of mind—you could indeed assume the Form of Hathor or Shu or Re or Horus…or, importantly for us, of Isis.
This is really a huge topic and, once again, I have taken up enough of your time for today.
One of the most important things about this technique is that it persisted. From ancient Egypt to the magic of the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri to the Hermetica to early Christian magic to Medieval magic to Qabalah and Christian mystics to modern ceremonial magic, Kheperu is there. And it is there because it works.
I admire the blogging work of John Beckett on Patheos. His recent post talks about the period of disruption we are in right now, which he (and some of his compatriots, I gather) call Tower Time, after the tarot card.
In this particular post, I was struck by his recommendation to magic workers to “take your magic up a notch” in response to current times. I do agree. As I said a couple weeks ago, this time of change, this time of flux, is precisely when magic can have an outsized effect.
So today I’m going to start a series on what I believe is THE key to Egyptian magic. It has no known Egyptian name, but you find it everywhere throughout Egyptian sacred written materials. It freaked out the Greeks when they learned about it from Egypt. And it still freaks out some modern magic workers.
Here, let me demonstrate it:
I am Isis. I have gone forth from my house and my boat is at the mooring rope… O you who travel in the sky, I will row him with you, I will travel as Isis.
My name is Isis in the Sealed Place; I am in my name and my name is a god; I will not forget it, this name of mine.
I am Isis when she was in Chemmis, and I will listen like him who was deaf and who stared.
Go behind me for I am Isis!
These excerpts from the ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts show the technique precisely. Of course, those texts can often be a bit obscure. Here’s another example of the technique in a modern Neo-Pagan/Witchcraft/Wiccan context:
Cool moonlight streams into the Circle, falls upon the altar, glitters the silver jewelry upon the breast of the High Priestess. Her eyes are closed. Her arms and legs are flung wide—as if she would abandon her body by sheer human desire. She feels her heart radically alive. She breathes softly and deeply, praying in silence for the Goddess to come, to come.
Before her, the High Priest kneels, “I invoke Thee and call Thee, Mighty Mother of us all, By seed and root, by bud and stem, by leaf and flower and fruit, by life and love do I invoke Thee to descend upon this Thy servant and Priestess!”
The witches begin a low humming as the High Priest continues to invoke the Moon Goddess by Her many names, asking Her, praying Her to descend—now! now!—into the body of Her Priestess.
Thessalian witches Drawing Down the Moon
Then a sharp intake of breath. The High Priestess’ breathing has become ragged. Moonlight catches in her hair, illuminates her body. An electric thrill runs up her spine. The nape of her neck prickles with spirit fire. Her hair stands on end. Her dark eyes snap open, staring strangely. The atmosphere within the Circle is changed. Every one of us feels it. Excitement in the pit of the stomach. Anticipation. Truth.
The High Priestess looks into our eyes, into our hearts, and begins to speak the Charge of the Goddess, “Whenever you have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, then shall you assemble in some secret place to adore the spirit of Me, Who am Queen of all the Witches…”
We have Drawn Down the Moon. The woman who was our High Priestess is—for this brief and sacred moment—the Goddess incarnate. And She gives us Her blessings.
A beautiful modern rendition of Drawing Down the Moon by Jake Baddeley. You can learn more and purchase a copy here.
Drawing Down the Moon
The name of the modern ritual practice of Drawing Down the Moon comes to us from ancient Greece, when it was a known practice of the famous Thessalian witches. The ritual was well known in even the highest intellectual circles of Greek and Roman society. Plato mentions it as do Lucan and Horace.
We have no evidence that the ancient practice was similar to the modern one. The scant clues we do have suggest that it was not. Nonetheless, the modern rite is not without ancient precedent. It is simply to be found somewhere else—in texts, some of which, are roughly contemporary with the height of the activities of the Thessalian witches: the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri. This collection of ancient magical workings is usually known as the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) because they are written largely in Greek. Nonetheless, scholars are generally agreed that much of the magical technique to be found in them is Egyptian. (Yes, I’m finally getting to Egypt.)
As I said, we don’t have a sure Egyptian name for this powerful magical technique. I have called it Kheperu, “Transformations” or “Forms.” The Egyptian root of the word means “to be, to exist, to form, to create, to bring into being, to take the form of someone or something, and to transform oneself.”
Recognizing Kheperu
It’s relatively easy to tell when we are witnessing the technique of Kheperu. Most simply, whenever we find the deceased, the priestess, or the magician claim TO BE a particular Goddess or God and speaks in the first person, we are likely to be witnessing Kheperu. It is the voluntary taking on of the astral or imaginal form of a Deity that enables the ritualist to share, albeit briefly, in the powers and Divine energy of that Deity, usually for the purpose of enhancing the effectiveness of a ritual or for deep communion with that Deity.
A clear example comes from a Coffin Text about the Goddess Hathor. The deceased says:
I am in the retinue of Hathor, the most august of the Gods, and She gives me power over my foes who are in the Island of Fire. I have put on the cloak of the Great Lady, and I am the Great Lady. I am not inert, I am not destroyed, and nothing evil will come to pass against me.
The deceased “puts on the cloak”—the imaginal or astral form—of Hathor and becomes Hathor. Doing so enables him to use Her power to protect himself in the Land of the Dead.
The Egyptian Concept Behind Kheperu
An artistic representation of Kheperu by Steffi Grant; more on this in the next post
There is a basic idea that must exist in a culture to make it possible for the idea of Kheperu to develop—and that is that human beings are not divorced from the Divine and that they have the ability to become even closer to the Divine.
And indeed, the idea that a human being could be god-like is found throughout Egyptian literature. In the Instruction for Merikare, wisdom literature from the First Intermediate Period, it is said that the deceased is “like a god” in the beyond and refers to humanity as the “likeness of God.” A human being with great knowledge is also said to be a likeness of God.
Deities are inherently godlike, but human beings who wish to partake of godlike powers have to make an extra effort—through ritual actions and by being in accord with Ma’et, “Rightness” or “Truth.” By proper words, deeds, and personal rightness, human beings may participate with the Divine.
Using Kheperu
The technique of Kheperu is a defining characteristic of Egyptian and Egyptian-derived magic. There are reasons to believe that it was more than a mere invocatory convention to the Egyptians and that a genuine connection with the Deity invoked was both intended and achieved. Kheperu was one of the key ways the ancient Egyptians empowered their spirituality—and it is one of the most important ways we can empower our own spirituality and our relationship with Isis, today.
Next time, we’ll look at some more background on this technique, then follow that up with some ways we can use it in our relationship with Isis and take our magic up a notch.
Can Isis smell the flowers we place upon Her altar? Does She eat the delicacies we so carefully arrange upon Her offering mat? Does She drink the wine we pour into a beautiful cup and lift to the smiling lips of our sacred image?
Well, no.
And, yes.
Although I have had weird phenomena happen with offerings—for instance, once an entire two-ounce packet of incense (you DO know how much two ounces of powdered incense is, right?) was apparently incinerated without leaving a whiff of scent in the air of our tiny temple space—usually, the flowers wither naturally, the food dries to inedibility, and the wine evaporates.
So did the Goddess receive Her offerings or not?
An ancient Egyptian offering table
For the ancient Egyptians, the sacred images of the Deities were sacred precisely because they were filled with some measure of the Deity Her- or Himself. Offerings to Isis were received by this bit of the Goddess residing in the image, and through it to Her greater Being.
The main spiritual mechanism for the transfer of an offering from offerent to Deity was the ka, or vital, life energy. All living beings—Deities, human beings, animals, fish, plants, stars, mountains, temples—have a ka. The kas of the Goddesses and Gods are extremely powerful. In one Egyptian creation myth, the Creator Atum embraces His children, the God Shu and the Goddess Tefnut, with His ka in order to protect Them from the primordial chaos of the Nun into which They were born—and, importantly, to transfer His ka to Them, giving Them life. Ka energy exists before a being comes to birth, is joined to that being at birth, lives with her or him throughout life, then travels to the Otherworld after death. The tomb became known as the Place of the Ka (among many other designations) and to die was to “go to one’s ka.”
King Hor’s ka statue; beautiful and haunting
The ka “doubles” the person physically, yet the ka is not essentially personal. It is held in common with all living things—including the Deities. The ka was the ancient Egyptian’s connection to a vast pool of vitality greater than the individual person.
But that’s not the end of it. One meets one’s ka after death where it can continue to protect.
Utterance 25 of the Pyramid Texts says that the dead king “goes with his ka.” Just as a list of Deities “go with Their kas,” so does the king:
“You yourself also go with your Ka. O Unas, the arm of your ka is before you. O Unas, the arm of your ka is behind you. O Unas, the leg of your ka is before you. O Unas, the leg of your ka is behind you.”
You might recognize this formulation. It is a common magical formula for invoking protection on all sides; similar to casting a circle or the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or part of the so-called Breastplate of St. Patrick (“Christ at my right. Christ at my left, etc.”)
Even though ancient Egyptians could experience the ka as separate from themselves, the ka also connected the person with the long line of humanity—for the ka was associated with the ancestors. In fact, the ancestors were thought to be the keepers of ka energy. Jeremy Nadler suggests that when people died, the Egyptians believed that they returned to the ka-group of ancestral energy to which each person naturally belonged. In other words, after death, the ka returns to its family.
A ka statue of Amenemhet III
This meant the living had several reasons for making offering to their ancestral dead. As we all do, they wanted to remember loved ones who had died. The offerings provided their ancestor’s kas with the nourishment required to keep the family spirit strong. But since the ancestors had ready access to the greater pool of beneficial ka energy and could bestow it on the living, people could also ask their ancestors to send them a blessing. A blessing of ka energy could nourish human beings, animals, and crops alike.
As usual in Egyptian society, the king was a special case. He could have multiple kas. He also had more intimate contact with the powerful ka energy of his royal ancestors than the average person had with their familial kas. The royal ka was especially connected with the power of the God Horus. By the time of the New Kingdom, the king’s ka was specifically identified as Harsiese, “Horus, son of Isis.”
In Egyptian, the word ka is related to numerous words that share its root. Egyptian words for thought, speech, copulation, vagina, testicles, to be pregnant and to impregnate, as well as the Egyptian word for magic (heka), all share the ka root. And all have some bearing on the meaning of ka. Ka is also specifically the word for “bull” and “food.” Connections such as these reveal mysteries. Ka is also the bull because it is a potent, fertile energy that contains the ancestral seeds that connect us with our families. Ka is also food for it is the energy that nourishes life, in both the physical and the spiritual realms. Ka is intimately connected with offering; the plural of ka, kau, was used to mean “food offerings.” Sometimes the ka hieroglyph replaces the images of food inscribed on offering tables.
Modern Balinese food offerings that look remarkably Egyptian
Kau, food offerings, provide life-energy for the individual ka. When the Egyptians offered food to their Deities or honored dead, they were offering the ka energy of the food to the ka of the Deities or ancestors. The ka inherent in the kau nourished the ka of the spirit being. Offering thus feeds the kas of the Deities and ancestors and the great pool of ka energy to which all enlivened things are connected. Simultaneously, the great pool of ka energy is the source of the energy found in the offerings by virtue of the ongoing, archetypal connection with it. By making and receiving offering, a great reciprocal power system was set up and could be eternally maintained. No energy was ever lost; it was continually transformed and re-activated by being offered and received, received and offered. Ka energy may be considered the food that fuels the engine of the living universe.
Offering table piled high with kau and other offerings
Since offerings are given and received ka to ka, it is no wonder that the Egyptians who made offering before the sacred images in the temples, did not expect the Deity to physically consume the food or drink offered. Instead, they expected the Deity’s ka, residing within the image, to take in the energy from the kas of the offerings. Ancient texts are explicit about this. A text from Abydos says that the pure, Divine offerings are given daily “to the kas” of the temple Deities. Sometimes the Deities are said to have been “united” with Their offerings. It is the ka of the offering and the ka of the Deity that unite. In another text from Abydos, the king asks the Deity to bring His magic, soul, power, and honor to the offering meal. Clearly, the king is not expecting a physical appearance, but a spiritual one.
It is the same with our offerings. We offer the ka of the kau to Isis and Her ka receives it. We can open our awareness to this aspect of offering by envisioning the ka, perhaps as Light, move from the offering to our sacred image of Isis (if we are using one) or to an image of Her we hold in our mind’s eye. In this way, we can know that Isis has indeed received what we offer to Her.
When everything is all stirred up, when things are changing, when things are moving—like right now—that’s when heka, magic, can be very effective. Even surprisingly so. With things in flux, a magical push can move things along more quickly than having to move them from a dead stop.
As Weret Hekau, Great of Magic, Isis’ magical “push” can be powerful indeed. If you are inclined to your own magical pushing (as I am), let me suggest one thing first: connection to Great Isis before any other Work. Commune with Her about your purpose. Ask Her advice. Many of us are angry right now, and while anger is not necessarily out of place in magic (as you will see in the upcoming tale), it can be blinding and cause us to make mistakes. Centering in Her Divinity will always help us see more clearly.
That said, as you know, Isis is not all sweet motherhood. So today, we have an Isis story that shows Her fierce and fiery aspect and which you may not have heard before.
This is a tale of Isis the Avenger and it is from the Papyrus Jumilhac. The only publication of the papyrus has been in French (which is why English readers probably haven’t heard the tale). Via the blessings of interlibrary loan, I was able to borrow the French text.
This is part of the Papyrus Jumilhac in which the tale of the Transformations & Revenge of Isis is told. It dates to the Ptolemaic period but records older Egyptian myths.
The Papyrus Jumilac is about 23 “pages” long. It is a Ptolemaic text (approximately 2nd century BCE) but it was found in Upper Egypt and records some thoroughly Egyptian myths. It may have been a sort of training manual for the priesthood of the 17th and 18th nomes and tells stories connected with the local landmarks. Our Isis story from it is a tale of transformations, and in it, Isis changes Herself into a hound, a uraeus serpent, Hathor, and Sakhmet—all in Her pursuit of and revenge upon the murderer of Her husband.
The Papyrus Jumilhac may have been for the training of the priesthood in the 17th and 18th ancient Egyptian nomes.
Herewith is the tale of Isis the Fierce:
Set once more regrouped His allies, but Isis marched against them. She concealed Herself in Gebal which is south of Dunanwi, after having made Her transformation into Her Mother Sakhmet. She sent out a flame against them all, seeing to it that they were burned and devoured by Her flame. (It is said to Her, “Hathor, Mistress of the Two Braziers.”) She [Isis] created for Herself there, a place to observe the preparations of the Evil One and His allies. (It is said to Her, “The Temple of the Mistress of the Two Braziers,” and the wab priest of this Goddess is called Ouroumem [the Great Devourer].) Then Set, seeing Isis at Her observation point, transformed Himself into a bull to chase Her, but She made Herself unrecognizable and put on the form of a bitch with a knife at the end of Her tail. Then She began to chase Him, and Set couldn’t trap Her again. So He scattered His semen upon the earth, and Isis said, “It is an abomination to have scattered Your semen like this, O Bull.” His semen grew, in Gebal, in the plants which we call bdd-k3w.
This Egyptian image from about the 2nd century CE shows Isis with a serpent body as Isis-Thermouthis
Then the Goddess entered into the mountain which we call Hout-Kâhet, and settled Herself there. After which, She went to the north and, having transformed Herself into a serpent, She entered into that mountain which is north of this nome to spy on the allies of Set as they arrived in the evening. (It is said to Her, “Hathor, Mistress of Geheset.”) The Goddess [Isis] watched the allies of Set as they arrived in the Oxyrhynchite Nome and as they crossed the country to reach Gebal, the City in the East. She pierced them all [with Her fangs since She was in the form of a serpent], and She made Her venom penetrate into their flesh, so that they perished, all together; their blood poured out upon the mountain, and this is why this mountain is called the prsh of Geheset.
The story bears a little commentary to explain some of the features. Isis is pursuing Set in revenge for His having murdered Osiris. It is interesting to note that it’s not Horus the Avenger Who is going after Set, but Isis the Avenger. I’m not sure exactly where the local Gebal is; but we are told that it is south of Dunanwi. Dunanwi is a local God of the 18th Upper Egyptian nome, so perhaps the direction refers to a temple or shrine of the God or the text is using the Deity’s name as a name for the nome itself.
Although Isis’ first transformation is into “Her Mother” Sakhmet, Isis is repeatedly called by the name and epithets of Hathor, a local Goddess of Geheset. Geheset is a mythically powerful place; it hasn’t been conclusively identified with any real place in Egypt, but some scholars believe it may be at modern Komir, on the westbank of the Nile, south of Esna. (Interestingly, Komir was a center of the worship of Nephthys and a temple dedicated to Her has been found there. It is in the 3rd nome, however, south of the 17th and 18th nomes.) The Jumilhac papyrus does contain more information on Geheset. In another passage it says:
“Regarding Geheset, it is the temple of Hathor of Geheset, the house of the Chief of the Two Lands. House of Uraeus is the name of the Divine Booth of Hathor in this place. Isis transformed Herself into the uraeus. She hid from the companions of Set, Nephthys was there at Her side. The companions of Set passed by Her without their knowing. And then She bit them all. She threw Her two lances at their limbs. Their blood fell on this mountain, flowing, and their death happened immediately.”
Now, in the 4th nome, there was a famous Hathor cult center in Pathyris or Aphroditopolis, modern Gebelein. It is reasonably near to the Komir Nephthys temple. If this is the mythical Geheset, then Nephthys being at Isis’ (as Hathor) side makes some geographic sense.
In the encounter between Isis and Set, in the form of a bull, Set attempts to rape Isis. We know this because He eventually ejaculates on the ground and Isis castigates Him for having wasted His semen like that. This reminds me of the myth in which Hephaestus tries to rape Athena, but His semen either falls on the ground or on Her leg, which She then wipes off in disgust and tosses it on the ground. The semen fertilizes Gaia and the Earth gives birth to Erichthonius, a mythical ruler of Athens who may have been part serpent. In this case, the semen of Set becomes an unidentified local plant called beded kau; the kau part is the plural of ka or vital essence.
For the final part of the tale, Isis Herself takes the form of the holy cobra, the uraeus serpent. As a great serpent, She kills all of Set’s companions with Her venom. Their blood pours out on the mountain and becomes juniper berries (prsh); there is an Egyptian pun here on juniper berries and the flowing out of blood. In another part of the Jumilhac papyrus, Isis “cut up Set, sinking Her teeth into His back” and in yet another She first transforms into Anubis, “and having seized Seth, cut Him up, sinking Her teeth into His back.” (Is there some connection between Isis transforming Herself into a dog with a knife in Her tail and later into Anubis?)
A canine Deity with knife
The myths recorded in the Papyrus Jumilhac are surely much earlier Egyptian stories that the priesthood used to teach their tradition in the temples of the 17th and 18th nomes. There were almost certainly other tales like these, from other nomes, in which it is Fierce Isis Herself Who takes revenge upon the murderer of Her beloved Osiris. I hope someday we will find more of them.
May the Fierce Goddess always protect you and guide your heka.
