Category Archives: Ritual

Offering to Isis: Fall EQ 2021

The festival starts this coming Friday. The weather forecast is perfection. The ritual cast is rehearsed. We are ready to go and can’t wait to see those of you who can make it. Still time to register!

The Pacific Northwest is ON for an Isis-themed Fall Equinox Festival (Sept. 24-26, 2021). This is not the same festival we were planning for 2020. That one was much more…involved…shall we say. This one is a gentle way of coming together once again as a community. So I’d like to share with you the write up for the festival, then I’ll repost something on Making Offering in the Egyptian way that will be related…

Frederick Arthur Bridgman, A Procession in Honor of Isis or An Egyptian Procession, 1902

Offering to Isis: A Fall Equinox Celebration of the Goddess and of Community

If you asked the ancient Egyptians, the act of Making Offering was one of the things that maintained Ma’et, that which is Right and True. Offering helped keep the world in balance. Making Offering is part of the great reciprocal flow between the Divine and the human. It is one of the most important ways we communicate with our Goddesses and Gods. It is hallowed by tradition. It is empowered by magic.

As we turn the wheel at this Fall Equinox, let us come together in rituals of offering. Under the Wings of the Great Goddess Isis, let us gather in a celebration of our reentry into and reconnection with Community. In the presence of Isis Myrionymos, Myriad-Named Isis, Goddess of the Ten Thousand Names, let us gather with open hearts and generous spirits to Make Offering.

As we human beings have always done—from the First Time, the Zep Tepi—we shall give gifts to Isis and we shall receive gifts from Her.

“My body being on earth, my heart being awakened, my magic being in my mouth, O Isis, I Make Offering unto You.”

We are living through extraordinary times. Many of us have gone through intense changes. There have been painful losses. And there have been surprising gains. Through Rites of Offering, we can give thanks, mourn losses, and ask for aid. We can find Divine connection and reawaken our hearts.

The Rites of Offering

Our rituals are inspired by the Daily Offering Rites worked in ancient Egyptian temples. We will come together four times, at the cross-quarters of the Holy Day and Sacred Night, to Make Offering to the Goddess in four of Her myriad names.

Yet, as a Community, we are many different people, on many different paths, who honor many different Deities. And so the Iset Weret— the Great Throne Altar of Isis—will welcome all our Divine Ones. If you wish, you are invited to bring an image or symbol of your own Divine One/s to add to the Great Altar that They may receive Offering as well.

Now, Let’s Celebrate

This festival is intended to give us plenty of open time so that we can be together…for feasting, drumming, dancing, and just relaxing. No formal workshops are planned.

Come join us in this Fall Equinox celebration as, under the Wings of Isis, we come together as a Community once more.

Now here’s a little something about Making Offering…

****************************************

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?

For the ancient Egyptians, the sacred images of the Deities were sacred precisely because they were filled with some measure of the Deity Her- or Himself. Offerings to Isis were received by this bit of the Goddess residing in the image, and through it to Her greater Being.

The main spiritual mechanism for the transfer of an offering from offerent to Deity was the ka, or vital, life energy. All living beings—Deities, human beings, animals, fish, plants, stars, mountains, temples—have a ka. The kas of the Goddesses and Gods are extremely powerful. In one Egyptian creation myth, the Creator Atum embraces His children, the God Shu and the Goddess Tefnut, with His ka in order to protect Them from the primordial chaos of the Nun into which They were born—and, importantly, to transfer His ka to Them, giving Them life. Ka energy exists before a being comes to birth, is joined to that being at birth, lives with them throughout life, then travels to the Otherworld after death. The tomb became known as the Place of the Ka (among many other designations) and to die was to “go to one’s ka.”

King Hor’s ka statue; beautiful and haunting

The ka “doubles” the person physically, yet the ka is not essentially personal. It is held in common with all living things—including the Deities. The ka was the ancient Egyptian’s connection to a vast pool of vitality greater than the individual person.

But that’s not the end of it. One meets one’s ka after death where it can continue to protect.

Utterance 25 of the Pyramid Texts says that the dead king “goes with his ka.” Just as a list of Deities “go with Their kas,” so does the king:

“You yourself also go with your ka.
O Unas, the arm of your ka is before you.
O Unas, the arm of your ka is behind you.
O Unas, the leg of your ka is before you.
O Unas, the leg of your ka is behind you.”

The ka statue of Amenemhet III — A ka statue of Amenemhet III

You might recognize this formulation. It is a common magical formula for invoking protection on all sides; similar to casting a circle or the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or part of the so-called Breastplate of St. Patrick (“Christ at my right. Christ at my left, etc.”)

Even though ancient Egyptians could experience the ka as separate from themselves, the ka also connected the person with the long line of humanity—for the ka was associated with the ancestors. In fact, the ancestors were thought to be the keepers of ka energy. Jeremy Nadler suggests that when people died, the Egyptians believed that they returned to the ka-group of ancestral energy to which each person naturally belonged. In other words, after death, the ka returns to its family.

This meant the living had several reasons for making offering to their ancestral dead. As we all do, they wanted to remember loved ones who had died. The offerings provided their ancestors’ kas with the nourishment required to keep the family spirit strong. But since the ancestors had ready access to the greater pool of beneficial ka energy and could bestow it on the living, people could also ask their ancestors to send them a blessing. A blessing of ka energy could nourish human beings, animals, and crops alike.

As usual in Egyptian society, the king was a special case. He could have multiple kas. He also had more intimate contact with the powerful ka energy of his royal ancestors than the average person had with their familial kas. The royal ka was especially connected with the power of the God Horus. By the time of the New Kingdom, the king’s ka was specifically identified as Harsiese, “Horus, son of Isis.”

Modern Balinese food offerings that look remarkably Egyptian

In Egyptian, the word ka is related to numerous words that share its root. Egyptian words for thought, speech, copulation, vagina, testicles, to be pregnant and to impregnate, as well as the Egyptian word for magic (heka), all share the ka root. And all have some bearing on the meaning of ka. Ka is also specifically the word for “bull” and “food.” Connections such as these reveal mysteries. Ka is also the bull because it is a potent, fertile energy that contains the ancestral seeds that connect us with our families. Ka is also food for it is the energy that nourishes life, in both the physical and the spiritual realms. Ka is intimately connected with offering; the plural of ka, kau, was used to mean “food offerings.” Sometimes the ka hieroglyph replaces the images of food inscribed on offering tables.

Offering table piled high with kau and other offerings

Kau, food offerings, provide life-energy for the individual ka. When the Egyptians offered food to their Deities or honored dead, they were offering the ka energy of the food to the ka of the Deities or ancestors. The ka inherent in the kau nourished the ka of the spirit being. Offering thus feeds the kas of the Deities and ancestors and the great pool of ka energy to which all enlivened things are connected. Simultaneously, the great pool of ka energy is the source of the energy found in the offerings by virtue of the ongoing, archetypal connection with it. By making and receiving offering, a great reciprocal power system was set up and could be eternally maintained. No energy was ever lost; it was continually transformed and re-activated by being offered and received, received and offered. Ka energy may be considered the food that fuels the engine of the living universe.

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.

Serving Isis: the art of ritual

I believe that the ministrant of Isis should develop some facility with ritual. Of course, this is more important for those of us who are involved in ceremony with other people, less important if we work solitary. But even for solitaries, having some ritual skill benefits our spiritual work by making it more graceful. This, in turn, enables us to be less self-conscious and better able to focus on developing our relationship with Isis.

Ritual is how we human beings do religion. Throughout the world—almost without exception—the practice of religion involves the practice of ritual. Even quiet, private prayer or meditation is normally ritualized in some way. Whether by folding our hands, sitting in a yoga asana, counting a rosary, or simply lighting a candle, some sort of ritual pattern is usually incorporated in spiritual activity.

Ritual is a communicative art that goes beyond what we are able to express by speech alone, dance alone, music alone, or intellectual effort alone. Because ritual can combine all these things—and energize them with the power of symbolism—ritual enables us to communicate with the other people in the ritual and with the Divine in ways beyond our normal capacity. Some things, particularly the ineffable, sacred things we are trying to express in a relationship with Isis, can only be expressed through ritual.

Ritual takes us beyond the body-mind/soul-spirit split. It gives us a holistic way to communicate with and relate to Isis. It is a primary tool of the ministrant of Isis for worship and spiritual growth. Working to gain ritual proficiency is particularly appropriate for someone in an intense relationship with Isis because of the strength of the ritual tradition in Egypt and because Isis is a Goddess of Sacred Magic, an art that is almost always practiced through ritual. What’s more, I can tell you from my experience with other ministrants of Isis, it seems that the Goddess often gifts us with rituals that they are then asked to share.

What ritual does

Just like every Pagan ritual you’ve ever been to…right? (Bouguereau, The Youth of Bacchus)

Ritual is completely natural to human beings. It is an essential, even primal, human activity. Indeed, some of the earliest evidence from our cave-dwelling ancestors is evidence of ritual.

There are biologically based rituals in which we engage—for example, sexual behaviors. We also take part in social ritual. We may shake hands when we meet each other; we mark life passages such as marriage or death with ceremony. These types of rituals give us ways to interact with each other and to understand each other, especially at times when words fail, such as funerals.

And then there is sacred ritual. Sacred ritual not only helps us recognize changes in our lives, it also helps us create changes and—this is important for devotees of Isis—provides us with a means of worship.

A woman working magic — A solitary ritual; John Waterhouse, The Magic Circle

Ritual is not just a set of actions we move through by rote. Ritual is powerful because it deeply affects us. It affects us psychologically and it affects us physiologically, both of which, in turn, feed back into our spiritual selves.

You may be familiar with the work human potential researcher Jean Houston. She has done extensive work on what she calls “psychophysical” exercises. They include such things as visualization, working with the kinesthetic body (some ritualists might call this the astral body), learning through conversation with a personified aspect of the self, and personification of an object to discover its “essence.”

Many of us would recognize these things as elements of at least some types of ritual. From her studies, Houston concludes that these exercises give people the ability to learn more quickly, to think on multiple tracks at once, and to tune into the symbolic and mythic parts of themselves at will. This alone would make ritual worthwhile, but there’s more.

In therapy, Houston says these ritual-type exercises work much better for patients than talking therapies alone because talking therapies involve only one part of the person’s being while these exercises, (rituals), involves the whole person.

I strongly agree that the holistic nature of ritual is deeply valuable for human beings. By addressing the whole person, physical and spiritual, ritual can move us toward greater wholeness. Wholeness is one of the keys to spiritual growth and spiritual growth is one of the key responsibilities of ministerial work with and for Isis.

Invocation and offering

Some of the basic components of ritual include chanting, singing, drumming, spoken invocation, moving in circles, dancing, meditation, and repeated patterns. Researchers have studied the effect of these things on the brain and the human nervous system and there seem to be two main things that these ritual components do in the human system: they trigger our emotions and they decrease the distance between us and others—including the Divine. These repeated patterns affect the brain’s neurological ability to define the limits of the self. They break down the walls we put up between ourselves and others—including those we erect between ourselves and the Goddess. Thus ritual helps us find self transcendence. By becoming less focused on ourselves, we can better open ourselves to the experience of Isis.

On the emotional side, strong rhythm or repetition (of a mantra, for example) has been shown to produce positive limbic discharge in the brain (the limbic system is part of the brain that deals with emotion among other things), which results in pleasurable feelings. If these feelings are prolonged, a part of the brain called the amygdala gets involved; the amygdala is connected with the fear-arousal system. Some researchers think that the combination of pleasure and a slight elevation in the fear-arousal system could produce the feeling of religious awe that many of us experience.

Ritual has also been proven to lower blood pressure, decrease heart rate, lower rates of respiration, reduce levels of the hormone cortisol (the “stress hormone”), and and create positive changes in immune system function. It seems that ritual is even good for our health.

Built for spiritual experience

None of this means that there is no magic in ritual. Far from it. What it means is that our physical bodies were built for and/or evolved this way so that we are able to participate in the magic of ritual and to better communicate with the Divine; in our case, with Isis.

Our bodies are not the mere cause of the effect; they are its result. As the ancient Hermeticists would say: As Above, So Below. We are a microcosm reflecting the way the macrocosm works. Our bodies do not make us experience the spiritual. They enable us to experience the spiritual. We have evolved this way because the spiritual is real, because it is valuable, and because we human beings need to be able to experience it.

The magic of ritual profoundly affects us. Whether it’s a scripted group rite, a drumming circle, or an unscripted intuitive rite, ritual is one of our most powerful tools for human growth, spiritual expression, and Divine communion. The ministrant of Isis should have at least some facility with this important tool.

Offering to Isis: Fall EQ 2021

Yes!

Offering to Isis: A Fall Equinox Celebration of the Goddess and of Community

As we human beings have always done—from the First Time, the Zep Tepi—we shall give gifts to Isis and we shall receive gifts from Her.

The Rites of Offering

Now, Let’s Celebrate

This festival is intended to give us plenty of open time so that we can be together…for feasting, drumming, dancing, and just relaxing. No formal workshops are planned.

Come join us in this Fall Equinox celebration as, under the Wings of Isis, we come together as a Community once more.

Now here’s a little something about Making Offering…

****************************************

Well, no.

And, yes.

So did the Goddess receive Her offerings or not?

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:

Invocation Offerings to Isis

A king offering incense and pouring a libation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Offering to Isis

Well, no.

And, yes.

So did the Goddess receive Her offerings or not?

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.”

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.”

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.

A modern offering table

The Lamentations of Isis

One of the rituals that will be part of our local (Pacific NW) 2020 Fall Equinox Isia Festival is the “Lamentations of Isis.”

This rite is an adaptation of the lamentations ritual in Isis Magic.

Our festival version is non-gendered and changes have been made to allow for a larger group of participants.

If you think that you’d like to be a part of this rite, please read on so you’ll know how to prepare. For additional reading, here’s a post about Isis and lamentation.

About the Rite: Lamentation has always been a part of the honoring of Isis. We even have some of the actual scripts of the laments for Osiris that were performed in the temples, though all the surviving records date from the later Ptolemaic period. They are evocative and, in some cases, quite heartbreaking. In Imperial Rome, where Isis became enormously popular, the Isis religion was notorious for its large, highly emotional, public enactments of the lamentations of the Goddess. The cathartic value of this emotional release was one of the attractive features of the religion for worshippers who found the Roman state religion too sterile.

I have not felt the need for this rite for many years. But that has changed. And I have the feeling that I am not alone. If you would like to not be alone in your own laments, please join us for this afternoon ritual. Know that if you participate in this rite, you may face your innermost pain. Be sure that you are ready and that your heart fully consents to this Work.

This rite of lamentation allows for an emotional release that is intended to ease the pain in our souls, freeing us from that pain so that we are able, once again, to take action. During the course of the rite, we lament societal, personal, and spiritual wounds, each followed by a cleansing with water to make the catharsis tangible.

The “Lamentations of Isis” are just one part of the greater Isia Festival. This rite takes place on Friday afternoon, giving us time to lament, but also giving us time to move into a place of rebirth and renewal through the other rites and activities of The Isia.

Ritual Preparation: Sometime before you arrive at the Festival, take time to read or remember the myth of Isis and Osiris. Attempt to identify with the sufferings of Isis as She endures the murder of Her Beloved and searches for His dismembered body. Let your own sufferings rise in your mind in response to reading about the sufferings of Isis. Feel them, but do not try to analyze them to any extent.

Please arrive for the rite wearing blue or white, the colors often worn by Egyptian mourners, or come in black, the Hellenistic color of mourning and a color also worn often here in the US. Black robes came to be particularly associated with Isis as Her religion spread throughout the Greco-Roman world; She was called Melanophoros, the “Wearer of the Black,” and in at least one place, Her devotees were also called Melanophoroi. (You may wear a full-length robe or simply blue, white, or black clothing, as you see fit.) You should also bind your hair tightly to your head. If you have short hair or no hair, bind your head with cloth or scarves, turban-style. The point is to arrive at the ritual with a feeling of tightness about your head. We will be unbinding ourselves as part of the rite.

In addition, bring with you a chalice and a black Isis band (a blindfold; i.e. a strip of black cloth; it would be ideal to bless this cloth in the name of Isis before you come). Finally, also bring a white votive candle or tealight in a container.

The lamentations are guided by nine ritualists. There are three Priestesses or Priests of the Circle, who facilitate the first lament, three Priest/esses of the Triangle, who facilitate the second lament, and three Priest/esses of the Point, who facilitate the third lament. In addition to other ritual responsibilities, the Priest/esses of the Circle 3, Triangle 3, and Point 3 lead the purifications with water and the Priest/ess of the Point 1 will take on the kheper or Goddessform of Isis for the resolution of the third lament.

If you have questions about this ritual, please feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. May She keep you well and Under Her Wings, as always.

Invocation Offerings to Isis

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.

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.

Invocation Offerings to Isis

A king offering incense and pouring a libation

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

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.

A Mongolian shaman making offering

Roman girl making offering

Hebrew priest making offering

An offering formula from a tomb

That’s it for now. Next time we’ll look at some ways to use invocation offering in a relationship with Isis.

Filed under: Goddess Isis Tagged: Ancient Egypt, Aspects of Isis, Deities, Deity, Egypt, Egyptian magic, Egyptian worldview, Goddess, Goddess Isis, Invocation of Isis, Invocation offering, Isis Magic, Isis Rituals, Offering, Offering rituals, offering to Isis, Peret Kheru, priestess of Isis, Ritual

Susanoo and Amaterasu

The shining sun Goddess Amaterasu had a brother, Susanoo, lord of storms and of the sea.

Susanoo was an uncontrollable man, often given to violence. When he quarreled with his sister, Susanoo lifted up Amaterasu's beloved pony and threw it at Amaterasu and her priestesses.

Amaterasu was so angry that she hid in the cave called Iwayado, and there was no warmth or light upon the Earth.

The other Kami, or Goddesses and Gods, tried to lure Amaterasu out of her cave, but her anger still burned, and she refused to come out. Ame-no-Uzume, the Kami of joy, knew what to do. She placed a mirror near the entrance of the cave. Then, she did a bawdy dance, which made all of the other Kami roar with laughter. Amaterasu was still angry at her brother, the Kami of the stormy sea, but she wanted to know what made everyone laugh. She crept to the edge of the cave and peeked out at Ame-no-Uzume and, angry as she was, Amaterasu had to laugh. In that moment, a ray of her sunlight escaped from the dark cave and reflected in the mirror. Amaterasu saw her own lovely face and could no longer remain angry. She returned to the world, bringing sunlight and warmth.

Today, in Japan, Susanoo's violence was great and the uncontrollable sea stormed over Amaterasu's land. It must seem to the people of Japan as if the lovely sun Kami has again withdrawn from them. My own heart is heavy with sadness at the loss of lives, homes, family altars, and pets and with fear for the damage done to Japan's nuclear plants. I'm going to go to my altar, light a candle to reflect in my scrying mirror, and dance like Ame-no-Uzume, in the hopes that the people of Japan will soon bask under Amaterasu's warm light, rather than Susanoo's angry seas.

You come too.

Picture found here.

Calling the Elements

I've been thinking a lot lately (well, it's sad; you get old, your mind wanders down strange pathways, but at least I've been thinking about this in between v practical issues for a rather demanding appellate brief; my job does do wonderful things for me) about the role that Calling the Elements really plays in Wiccan ritual. Coming, generally, at the beginning of the ritual, I think that Calling the Elements serves a role greater than the sum of its parts.

By that, I mean that Calling the Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water! Come be with me; I'm your daughter. Air, Fire, Water, Earth! To my better self now give birth. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air! Bring me now the power to dare. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire! I call you now with all my desire.) is one of the parts of ritual that speaks most clearly to Younger Child and, as a result, can, when well-done, lead us quickly into that space between the worlds where magic is, indeed, possible. And when done perfunctorily, or as an afterthought, or as an Oh-Shit-I-Volunteered-to-Call-Water-and-then-Forgot-about-It-Well-Let-Me-Start-Babbling-About-Flow-and-Drops-Coming-Together-and-Hope-this-Works (I've been totally guilty of this), it can put a damper on the entire ritual, can make it that much more difficult for the magic to happen.

Younger Child, at least as I conceive of Her, is that part of us that responds to poetic language, to symbol, to things just below the level of language and conscious thought. It's funny (well, funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha, except in the sense that the Universe and I have, for almost 55 years, been having grand jokes on each other and then, of course, it's also funny-ha-ha) that, for many years after reading and understanding (intellectually) the concept of Younger Child, what I said to myself was: "But I'm deficient in this area. I'm too left-brained to have much of a Younger Child. If I see a sigil, I translate it into words and turn that task over to Talking Self, so, really, I don't have much of a Younger Child."

And, then, somehow, I remembered the first time that, as a child, I somehow wound up in a v nice section of a v nice restaurant. My memory is foggy about how this happened: I was the oldest of five kids in a working-class family and we didn't spend much time in any restaurant, much less one that wasn't (a special treat) a McDonald's. But I have this vague sensory impression of being in such a place, of reveling in the way that sounds were muffled there and that empty space provided room for one's being to expand. Once I made the association between that impression and the way that it made me feel as if maybe I could be who I'd always meant to be (this is shallow, I know; so is Younger Child), dozens of similar impressions came flooding back to me.

The way that great architecture has always made me feel. The way that fountains instantly make joy bubble up within me. The way that wearing elegant, well-fitting clothes has always changed the way that I move, the things that I say, the way that I feel towards others. The feelings of both groundedness and airiness that the scent of lilacs can induce in me. Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man. The way that a man's cologne can make me weak in the knees. Poetry.

So, I'm a slow learner; it took me a long time to get in touch with my own Younger Self; the one who didn't get much validation from my writer-father or my left-brained, Vatican II Catholic education. And, yet, once I did, I quit worrying about whether or not a sigil or rune induced anything within me and began to focus on the many ways that my Younger Self could be induced to feel comfortable, expand, do magic, invoke what I needed.

And, so. Here's Margaret Roach, in A Way to Garden, discussing the element of Air:

Where I live, I’d have to count wind—not cold, despite my Zone 5-ish climate—as the most destructive force in the garden, bringing down or splitting apart woody plants when it roars, and desiccating evergreens in winter. Particularly when it combines with or follows drought, as it is this year, it’s a force to be reckoned with.

For now, all that means is a few stray sycamore leaves (Platanus occidentalis). We’ll see what . . . other tricks it has in mind this winter. Batten down the hatches, won’t you?

Can you invoke Air more powerfully for your next ritual? I'd love to see it in comments.

Picture found here.

The Goddess of Willendorf

In Search of the Feminine Divine

Category Archives: Ritual

Offering to Isis: Fall EQ 2021

Serving Isis: the art of ritual

Offering to Isis: Fall EQ 2021

Invocation Offerings to Isis

Offering to Isis

The Lamentations of Isis

Invocation Offerings to Isis

Invocation Offerings to Isis

Susanoo and Amaterasu

Calling the Elements

Simon Magus is coming to