Isis in the Boat of the Morning. This is someone’s lovely art; can you identify it? Would love to give the artist credit and provide a  link to their site.

I had a dream last night about ritual. And so for today’s offering, I give you a small and very do-able morning rite. This was originally created for our Isis Fest ‘lo those many years ago (well okay, it was four). It was designed for two priest/esses, but I’ve adapted it here for a solo.

I cannot claim that I do this every morning (I wish I could), but it is a beautiful thing to do on weekends or some other period of time that you can devote to daily morning rites. It is a wonderful way to attune yourself to the day and to remind yourself of the spark of Her magic that lies within your awakened image of Her. (You have “opened the mouth” of your sacred image, right?)

For this ritual you’ll need a censer, charcoal, incense, a lighter, a cup and larger libation bowl, pure water or Nile water (see Isis Magic) and your image of Isis, veiled.

The Rite of Awakening

Enter the temple and cross your hands over your heart. Bow to the veiled image of Isis. Light the charcoal and prepare the incense. Pour pure water into the libation cup and ready a larger libation bowl.

Priest/ess: (Singing) Isis is the wisdom that is given in the Boat of the Morning. Isis is the wisdom that is given in the Boat of the Night. Isis is the wisdom that is given in the Boat of the Morning. Isis is the wisdom that is given in the Boat of the Night. Isis, Isis, Isis. (Repeat this until you feel attuned to the Goddess through Her image.)

Priest/ess: (Speaking) A spark from the Heart of Isis resides within this sacred image of the Goddess. I honor that spark from the Heart of the Goddess as I honor Isis Herself.

Stand before your image of Isis and slowly make the gesture of Opening the Shrine (the curtain-opening gesture).

Priest/ess:  (Vibrating softly) ISIS. (Speaking) Awaken, O Isis Within, to this beautiful day. Be welcomed into morning! Awaken, O Isis Within, to the joy of the day. Be welcomed into today!

Pharaoh offers a small boat to Osiris and Isis at Her Philae Temple

Unveil the image. Then place the incense on the charcoal and elevate it toward the image.

Priest/ess: May Your eyes be opened to the beauty of the day. May Your nostrils be opened to the sweet scent of this spice. May Your ears be opened to the voices of Thy children.

Replace the censer, take up the cup, elevate it toward the image, then pour it into a larger libation bowl.

Priest/ess: May Your lips be opened to the sweetness of this cool water. May Your heart be opened to Your people this day. May Your body, O image of Isis, be opened to the beautiful magic of Isis the Goddess, Ever-Living.

(Speaking for Isis) I am that Golden Morning that arises and shines each day. Splendid are the ornaments upon My brilliant brow. I am the One Who glows in the Sun. I am the Eye of Awakening. I am the Greening of the Earth. I am the Joy of the Day.

(Addressing the Goddess) Awaken in joy, Isis, awaken in joy. Amma, Iset.

If you’d like to hear the tune I use for the chant, click this video. Or better yet, create your own. The more chants we create for Her, the better.

In these past few days, we have been remembering our friends and family who have passed before us into the Otherworld with both tears and laughter. It has put me in a sweet, melancholy mood. As amber and scarlet leaves still cling to their branches and the decayed-honey scent of fallen foliage fills the air, my side of the world has rolled over; darkness now overcomes the light.

So I have an ancestor story for you. For me, it is a sad tale, for it takes place at a time when Christianity had come into power and outlawed all other worship. The story comes from a work known as the Life of Severus by Zacharias probably written in the 490s CE. As early Christian literature, it is extremely hostile to Paganism. In other words, we shouldn’t expect unbiased truth. In fact, according to some recent scholars, we shouldn’t expect much truth in this polemical work at all. Nevertheless, since Isis appears in it, it is of interest to modern Isiacs.

Severus and Zacharias were friends; Severus eventually became Bishop of Antioch, while Zacharias became Bishop of Mytilene. Zacharias wrote the Life of Severus to defend his pal from the charge of having been a Pagan in his early life, which in fact, he had. But much of the work really isn’t about Severus at all. Rather, it’s about the conversion of a particular student, named Paralius, to Christianity. According to Zacharias, one of the key incidents that encouraged his Christian conversion concerned Isis of Menouthis.

Menouthis, Canopus & Herakleion

Menouthis was a suburb of Alexandria and neighbor of the city of Canopus. Both were sacred cities and homes to Isis centers known for healing and for incubation, or oracular dreaming. At Canopus, Isis was joined by Her consort Serapis, Himself a powerful healing Deity. Canopus became quite an active center and attracted many visitors from Alexandria as well as other Mediterranean cities. Canopus probably came to prominence first, followed by Menouthis. We have a record of an image of Isis of Menouthis being sent to Isis of Pharos. The Oxyrhynchus papyrus notes that Isis is called “Truth” at Menouthis, no doubt referring to Her true healing oracles.

Today, the cities are underwater, having submerged rather quickly, geologists think, due to a series of catastrophic earthquakes, likely followed by tsunamis. Underwater archeologists now believe they have located Menouthis, Canopus, and the port of Herakleion. One of the first things to be brought out of the waters when the cities were discovered was a beautifully carved, if headless, statue of Isis.

The statue of Isis being raised from the sea at Menouthis

Our story takes place after the Roman Empire is officially Christian and Pagan worship is outlawed, and has been for nearly a hundred years. The Isis temple at Menouthis was operating, but in secret with the local monks looking the other way. So all this is very clandestine.

Zacharias tells of an philosopher named Asclepiodotos and his wife Damiane, who was unable to conceive. Then Asclepiodotos has a dream. Here’s how Zacharias, puts it. He says that Asclepiodotos received

“an oracle (or, rather, he was deceived by the demon appearing as Isis) according to which the Goddess [my capitalization] promised him children if he went with his wife into the temple that the Goddess had at Menouthis, a village 40 miles away from Alexandria. He stayed some time in Menouthis and offered considerable sacrifices to the demons. But it was to no avail. The sterility of his wife persisted nonetheless. Having believed that he saw in a dream Isis lying beside him he heard it declared by those who interpreted dreams there and who served the demon expressed in Isis, that he ought to join himself to the idol of the Goddess, then have sex with his wife—and thus a child would be born to him.”

This painting is from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii and shows the Goddess receiving Io at Canopus

Apparently no pregnancy was immediately forthcoming, for the priest of Isis next sent Asclepiodotos to a nearby town of “Astu” (which looks suspiciously like a word derived from Isis’ name) and there a local Isis priestess gave him a baby. Thus Asclepiodotos and Damiane did indeed return home with a child.

Apparently the story was put out that this was a miracle of supernatural proportions and when the truth came out, it was turned into an anti-Pagan scandal. It was one of the things that Paralius debated with his brother, a Christian monk who was pressuring Paralius to convert. Interestingly, we have one other mention of this story, from Damascius, a philosopher known as “the last of the Neoplatonists.” He says that both Asclepiodotos and Damiane were people of very good character, and one very fragmentary sentence notes that Asclepiodotos took his wife home “when he saw that she was pregnant.” Interesting, huh? Could it indeed be magic? Or the magic of easy Egyptian adoption?

Now, back to Paralius. For him, the final blow came when he went to incubate at Isis’ temple and dreamed that She warned him against a fellow student in his class “who is a magician.” According to Zacharias, Isis gave the same warning to the other student about Paralius. Try as he might, Paralius could receive no further information from the Goddess, so he became angry and turned away from Her to the religion of his brother. From that time on, Paralius ridiculed “the orgies of the Priestess of Isis.” Eventually, this so angered the Pagan students in Paralius’ class that they turned on him. Christian students came to his rescue and this clash erupted into a full-fledged riot.

Cyrus & John

As part of the rioting, a mob descended on Menouthis. The raiders opened the treasury, which still contained sacred images. Some of the statues were destroyed during the first day of the riot. Others were encircled throughout the night by canticle-singing Christians and destroyed the next day when the temple itself was razed to the foundations. Still others—those made of valuable materials or of particular artistic merit—were turned over to the Church.

But the people still needed healing Deities. So eventually a healing cult of the saints Cyrus and John was established and the saints gave healing prescriptions in dreams—and perhaps even helped infertile couples—just as Isis always had.

An Egyptian rudder with seeing eyes and lotus decoration

As the New Year fast approaches, I have a wish for you: May Isis guide you in 2015. May She steer you toward that which you most desire. May She help you grow in strength and beauty of soul.

As a symbol of Her guidance throughout the year, I give you the symbol of the Egyptian steering-oar or rudder. Just as Egyptian pilots steered their earthly boats with these rudders, so they became a symbol of guidance and direction in the afterlife. And so may we take them as a symbol of guidance in our spiritual lives as well as our everyday lives.

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

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

The seven Cows of Heaven and Their Bull, with rudders

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

Isis guides the boat of the deceased in the Otherworld

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

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

Isis-Fortuna with rudder and cornucopia

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

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

Isis Fortuna from the Temple of Isis, Pompeii

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

Whether as the Divine Cow Goddess Who gives provisions and rebirth or as the guiding Goddess of the rudder and the cornucopia, Isis goes before us, guiding and leading us to abundance in all things. May She bless you in 2015 and beyond.

The “Treasury” (originally a mausoleum/crypt)

Who has not been astounded by the beautiful ghost city at Petra? Intricately carved from living, rose-hued rock, many of Petra’s ancient buildings have survived while their free-standing contemporaries have not.

Petra is in modern Jordan. It may have been established as early as the 3rd or 2nd century BCE and was the capital city of people known as Nabataeans. Petra—the name comes from the Greek word for “rock;” we do not know what the Nabataeans called it—was built into a rocky slope of a mountain and near a wadi, a valley that is dry except during the rainy season.

The “Siq” is the passageway by which modern visitors usually enter Petra

Nabataean architects and engineers are famous not only for the incredible buildings of Petra, but also for their brilliant control of the water supply. They were able to contain and store the waters of the flash floods to which the wadi was subject and to manage the flow of a small stream that was Petra’s sole ongoing water source. The work they did turned this desert city into an artificial oasis and enabled its caravan trade to flourish. Petra is one of the world’s most precious cultural sites, and like most of them, is threatened by both environmental conditions and tourism.

The Isis image from Wadi as-Siyyagh; without the inscription, “This Goddess is Isis,” we wouldn’t recognize Her

As you no doubt expect to hear by now, Isis was to be found in ancient Petra, just as She was throughout much of the Mediterranean world. She may have been brought there with Alexandrian craftsmen when they came to work at Petra, or by Nabataeans themselves who encountered Isis either in the Levant or in Egypt. We know of Nabataean settlements in the eastern Delta of Egypt.

The earliest date to which researchers are willing to commit for Isis’ arrival in Petra is 25 BCE. A sanctuary at Wadi as-Siyyagh on the outskirts of Petra includes an inscription that labels one of the rock-carved images there: “This Goddess is Isis.” The way the inscription is phrased and the ambivalent iconography of the image makes researchers think that Isis was being newly introduced to Petra at the time.

One of the winged lions from the Temple of the Winged Lions, photo by Richard Nowitz

On the other hand, the Oxyhrynchus aretalogy of Isis, to which we have referred many times, notes Isis as being called Savior “on the rock,” which may mean Petra. The aretalogy itself dates to the 2nd century CE, but its contents may go back to the 3rd or 2nd century BCE. Generally, scholars don’t accept this as solid enough evidence for Isis in Petra that early, nonetheless, it’s interesting.

Also interesting is that one of Isis’ most common aspects at Petra seems to have been Her mourning aspect. (Which, by the way, actually would accord quite well with Her Savior aspect; as the Mourner, She weeps for Osiris, but as the Savior, She weeps for us all.)

The Sorrowing Isis image found in the Temple of the Winged Lions

We know that She was honored in Petra in this aspect because of several Sorrowing Isis terracotta figurines found in what is known as The Temple of the Winged Lions, or “North Temple” if you want to be boring about it, as well as similar images found in other excavations throughout the area.

The most spectacular piece that was uncovered in the Temple of the Winged Lions is a rectangular stone with a female face on it inscribed ”Goddess of Hayyan son of Nypt.” Some have suggested that the headdress wreath once contained an Isis crown and thus have tried to say that the temple belonged to a syncretic Isis + Local Goddess, but I’m going to have to vote with the scholars who deny it on this one.

The wonderful sacred image of Al-Uzza or Allat from the Temple of the Winged Lions

The image is quite unlike any known for Isis and quite like many known for local Arab Goddesses. The wonderful image is most likely Al-Uzza, the matron Goddess of Petra, or perhaps just Allat, which means simply “Goddess” just as Allah means “God.”

Excavating a rubbish heap that covered older Petran homes, British archeologists found terracottas of Isis with Harpokrates dating at earliest to the 1st century CE. There is also an alabaster fragment of an Isis statue from ez-Zantur, another area in Petra, probably from about this same time. They have even uncovered a pottery workshop outside of Petra where they were making Isis images in addition to votive images for other Deities.

The Isis-knotted image from Wadi Abu Olleqa

There is another Isis sanctuary at Wadi Abu Olleqa, again outside of Petra but on one of the main routes. There we can easily see the Isis knot on the now-headless image’s breast.

Important evidence of the influence of Isis in Petra comes from the fact that the Isis crown, known as the Basileion, was used on Nabataean coins from around 7 BCE. We also have records of several theophoric personal names from Petra: Abdisi and Thimisi; the “isi” in these names is “Isis.” (I’m afraid I don’t know what the other Arabic parts of the names mean. Can anybody help me out?)

The Basileion of Isis on a coin with Cleopatra on the obverse

Some have tried to connect the central figure on the famous Treasury, originally built as a mausoleum and crypt, to Isis. She seems to be a standard Tyche, the Luck of the City, with cornucopia in hand. Yet beneath Her feet is what does indeed look like it might be the horned headdress of the Cow Goddess (long associated with Isis by this time) with stalks of wheat flanking the horns and perhaps (I can’t make it out) the Amun feathers between the horns.

Isis-Tyche on the Petra Treasury (click the image to see it larger)

So I’m willing to buy this figure as an Isityche, especially since the Basileion headdress of the Goddess has been found on Nabataean coins.

Since it was originally a mausoleum, perhaps Isis-Tyche was intended to bring luck and abundance in the afterlife.

A close up of the “Isis crown” below the figure of Tyche

The Sorrowing Isis images of Petra are nothing like the more ancient Egyptian images of Mourning Isis. Instead, they show a seated Isis, usually with the characteristic Isis knot in Her costume, in a posture of dejection. The image came into Petra, then was reproduced locally when it became popular.

Now, here’s the weird thing. According to Veit Vaelske, an archeologist at Berlin’s Humbolt University who has studied the Isis evidence at Petra, there seems to be no particular person or being for Whom Petra’s Sorrowing Isis sorrows. (Apparently no Osiris images have been found in relation to the Isis images.)

Vaelske seems rather amazed by that fact (exclamation points were used!) and thinks that this solitary Isis may be a particularly Nabataean form of the Goddess.

An Isis-Tyche from Petra

I’m not sure that’s entirely justified. By this time, Isis’ worship was so thoroughly disseminated that any Isiac, and even non-devotees, would know exactly why She sorrowed. The Goddess’ image needn’t have been paired with a dead Osiris to communicate the extremely well known myth.

Or perhaps, as I mentioned before, this lone and mourning Isis could be intended to represent the Savior Goddess Who sorrows for all of us as we each pass through the tribulations of our own lives.

Sobek, the Crocodile God

We don’t usually think of Isis in relation to crocodiles or to Sobek, the Crocodile God. Ahh, but wait. As with so much in Egyptian religion, it’s complicated. And there are more Isis-croc connections than we might at first think.

Let’s start with a bit about the crocodile itself. A Nile crocodile can reach up to twenty feet in length—and it doesn’t care what it eats. In addition to their usual diet of fish, the Nile crocodile is happy to feed on birds, wild and domestic animals—and human beings. Estimates are that as many as 200 people a year are killed by crocodiles. Crocodiles catch their prey in huge, toothy jaws and drag it underwater until the struggling stops. It is no wonder Egyptians ancient and modern fear the beast. Perhaps that fear explains why the Nile crocodile was hunted nearly to extinction in the 1940s through 60s. Today, however, they have rebounded and are no longer in danger.

The impressive Nile crocodile

The image of the strong, voracious, and fierce crocodile appears in Egyptian art beginning in prehistoric times. Yet, they are shown both as devouring monsters and as protective guardians. Ammut, Who waits to devour the dead who fail the judgment of Osiris, is part crocodile. Yet magic wands designed for protection often include images of crocodiles. A protective amulet called the Cippi of Horus showed the Son of Isis standing upon the backs of two or more crocodiles and holding dangerous serpents harmlessly in His hands. Powerful magicians were fabled to be able to ride across the river on the backs of crocodiles.

Yet most people wanted to repel crocodiles. Numerous magical formulae have been found that were uttered to keep the frightful creatures at bay, many of them including the important words, “Get back, crocodile!” Jokingly or seriously, I have used that spell on the road when another vehicle comes way too close.

Isis standing on a crocodile on a magical gem

The crocodile was a presence in the Egyptian world that simply could not be ignored. And as the God Sobek, the Egyptians gave Him His due. Sobek is a Water God and thus associated with fertility. There was a common folk belief among the ancient Egyptians that when many crocodiles were seen in the Nile, the flood waters of the annual Inundation would be deep and, as a result, the harvest would be abundant.

Sobek is also connected with original creation; for as the crocodile rises up out of the Nile, so the primordial Sun arose from the waters of chaos. Because of this solar connection, Sokek is frequently seen crowned with the solar disk. The God’s major centers of worship were at Kom Ombo, upriver from Philae and Aswan, and in the Faiyum, a large, especially fertile oasis in Lower Egypt, southwest of Cairo. We also have some evidence of His cult in Memphis, perhaps within the Ptah temple complex.

Both Memphis and the Faiyum were places where Sobek and His myth met up with Isis and Hers. The Faiyum was the center of Sobek worship and sacred crocodiles were bred and raised at the God’s temples. The historian Herodotus remarks on the Egyptians’ treatment of these temple crocodiles: “they put ornaments of glass and gold on their ears and bracelets on their forefeet, provide for them special food and offerings and give the creatures the best of treatment while they live; after death the crocodiles are embalmed and buried in sacred coffins.”

A rather destroyed image of Osiris on the back of a crocodile, Isis before them, from Philae

When the Faiyum temple of Medinet Madi was unearthed, some of the first things they found were four lengthy praise hymns to Isis as universal Goddess, in Greek, and written by Her devotee, Isidorus. In these hymns, Isis is understood to be many Goddesses, including Isis-Thermouthis or Hermouthis. This is Isis assimilated with the Cobra Harvest Goddess Renenutet. In the Faiyum She is paired with Sobek.

Further excavation at Medinet Madi revealed a Middle Kingdom temple of Sobek, Renenutet, and Horus, which is the only Middle Kingdom temple discovered to date. You can see why it was easy to connect Isis, Who sometimes takes the form of a cobra, with the Cobra Goddess Whose child is Horus. During the 12th dynasty, when the pharaohs took a particular interest in Sobek and the Faiyum, Sobek came to be assimilated with Horus. A text from Denderah tells us that Horus takes the form of a crocodile to retrieve Osiris’ body from the water. In another tale, Sobek Himself was said to assist Isis during Horus’ birth. On the other hand, it was also said that Sobek was the one Who devoured Osiris’ phallus when it was thrown into the Nile, for which offense Isis cut out His tongue. The tale explains why the crocodile has no tongue. (They do have tongues, but their tongues are not free, being held in place by a membrane.)

Horus-Sobek or Horus in the form of a crocodile

In one of the hymns to Isis from Medinet Madi, Sokonopis (“Sobek of the Nile”) is called “Agathos Daimon (“Good Spirit”),” “mighty,” and “that goodly bestower of wealth, creator of both earth and starry heaven, and of all rivers, and very swift streams.” Two other Isiac consorts, Serapis and Osiris, are also called Agathos Daimon. Like Sobek, both Serapis and Osiris are associated with water and especially rivers. Serapis is connected with a miracle in which pure water is produced from salty. Osiris is the living water of the Nile Inundation itself.

Isis-Thermouthis and Sokonopis were considered healing Deities, an ability that may have accrued to the Crocodile God from His association with Isis, the Healing Goddess. The Crocodile God was said to have assisted Isis in healing Osiris. In fact, there are a number of representations of a crocodile bearing the Osirian mummy on its back. One of these is from Philae, where Isis is shown standing at the feet of the crocodile-carried Osiris. This idea surely came from the fact that mother crocodiles will sometimes carry their young on their backs to protect them from predators. Plutarch relates an Egyptian tradition that, out of fear and respect for the Goddess, crocodiles will not attack people traveling in papyrus boats because Isis traveled in such a boat as She searched for the parts of Osiris’ body.

A statuette with Osiris on the back of a crocodile

Isis’ association with the crocodile continued long after the end of ancient Egypt. There is a famous work called The Faerie Queene, written by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser. Spenser is writing in support of his monarch, Elizabeth I. In his story, the heroine finds herself in Isis Church and has a vision of the Goddess. At first, she sees herself as a votary of Isis, later she becomes Isis Herself. A crocodile threatens to destroy the Church, but our heroine, as Isis, drives it back. Tamed, the beast now seeks her “grace and love.” Literally. For the crocodile mates with her/Her and she/She gives birth to a lion. A priest at the Church explains that the crocodile is Osiris and their lion-child will be a just king.

And so we see that Isis and the crocodile are much closer than it might at first seem. Like the Goddess Who, in Her dark and bright aspects, can be both frightening and comforting, the Crocodile God Who is Her Faiyum consort can be fearsome, as well as a protector, healer, and a giver of wealth. When it comes to Goddesses and Gods, it’s definitely complicated.

A beautiful Isis-Sothis-Demeter from Hadrian’s villa, now in the Vatican Museums

Last week we talked about Isis devotees outside of Egypt.

But how did there come to be devotees outside of Egypt anyway? How did the worship of an Egyptian Goddess move out of Her homeland and into the greater Mediterranean world?

This is such an interesting puzzle for scholars in many disciplines, from history to religion to sociology, that it has actually been studied quite a bit. But what about those of us who are not historians or religious scholars or sociologists. Why care? Why not just say ‘it is what it is’ and call it a day? Does knowing how Isis’ worship spread make any difference at all to modern Isiacs?

For me, it’s about knowing our history. Those of you who know my work with Isis, know that I have no problem with innovative personal expressions of spirituality. Our relationship with Isis doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. Nevertheless, Isis is a Goddess with a tradition. And like all living traditions, it has grown and changed over the millennia. If we are to be educated Isiacs, it’s important for us to know about those changes and developments.

This question also bears on Who we think Isis is. Once She leaves Egypt’s borders, does She became a different Goddess? Most certainly Iset began to look more Hellenized as Her worship spread. But for me, that is merely a matter of form, not essence. I’ve written about that here. And also here.

Isis with sistrum and bowl of fruit between female and male sphinxes, from the temple of Palatine Apollo

But today I’d like to look at that crucial period when Isis moved out of Egypt, how that may have come to be, and how, as a consequence, Isis earned Her epithet, the Many-Named.

First of all, we must remember that even within Egypt itself, Isis was already being joined with many other Goddesses; this is sometimes called “syncretism.” The natural fluidity of Egyptian Deities made this easy. Deities could combine—Osiris-Re, for example—or one could be the ba of another. Isis and Osiris were not just local Egyptian Deities, either. By the 5th century BCE, Herodotus could note that They were the only Deities worshipped throughout Egypt. And although Isis was known outside of Egypt even before this time, it was about then that Her tide began to rise. By the time of Ptolemaic rule in Egypt, it was surging.

But Isis was not the only one. There was a lot of religious movement at the time. Mysteries like those at Eleusis began drawing international crowds. Thracian, Syrian, and Jewish cults were seen in cities throughout the Greco-Roman world. And as they moved in, there were periods of both rejection and acceptance.

A Ptolemaic queen wearing the Isis Knot and sheer draperies

When rejected, the new types of worship were seen a deviations from the civic norm and thought either exotic, ridiculous, or horrible. Throughout Isis’ history in Italy, Her worship was rejected a number of times. But it also had periods of high-ranking patronage.

When accepted, we often see the “new” Deities being “translated” for Their new audiences. Since Hellenism was the dominant culture, the non-Greek Deities were translated into Greek—in names, symbols, and forms—so that They could be better understood by the local populations. Isis is like Demeter. Demeter is like Isis. To further explain the harmonies between the Deities, people might transfer symbols. Isis might be shown holding shafts of wheat, for example. That wasn’t in Her Egyptian iconography, but She is connected with grain and the grain cycle in Egypt and so it made sense to show Her in that way so that people could know at least something about Her.

Some aspects of the spread of Isis’ worship seem to have been quite natural. Egyptians who traveled to or settled in other parts of the world brought their Goddess with them. For instance, we know that Athens’ rulers had allowed an Isis temple to be built in the Piraeus “at the request of the Egyptians” sometime in the late 4th century BCE.

Terracotta figurines of Isis-Aphrodite, now in the Louvre

In an article I’m reading right now by Greg Woolf, he makes an interesting suggestion as to why Isis may have been singled out by Greeks “from the dense web of Egyptian myth and ritual for particular attention.” In addition to Her prominence in Egypt and the pathos of the Isis-Osiris myth, Isis’ sheer proximity may have been a factor. Her cult center at Isiopolis in the Egyptian delta was readily accessible to visitors from throughout the Mediterranean. (Having named this site “Isiopolis,” that idea pleases me.)

Other aspects of the diffusion of Isis’ worship seems to have been more purposeful.

When Alexander, who conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, was laying out the plans for his new capitol at Alexandria, he specified the number of temples that should be built and to which Greek Deities. He also personally marked the location for “a temple to the Egyptian Isis.” This was clearly a political move. Alexander wanted to placate his Egyptian subjects by including a temple to one of their most popular Deities in his new city. He chose Isis. By doing so, Alexander both recognized Her prominence in Egypt at the time and set the stage for Her prominence throughout the Mediterranean world in the future.

Hellenized Isis and Serapis, in Their chthonic aspects, now in the Heraklion Museum in Crete; yes, Their puppy is Cerberus

Alexander’s successors, the Ptolemies, the Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt from 305 BCE until Rome conquered Egypt in 30 BCE, continued the promotion of Isis, as well as Her new consort Serapis. (You can read more about Serapis in Edward Butler’s excellent article here.)

As we have already seen, a number of the Ptolemaic queens associated themselves with Isis and most likely are the source of the famous knotted robes seen in later images of Isis and Her priestesses. Oh, and the Ptolemies built Egyptian temples—lots of temples. For the most part, these are the temples we still see today in Egypt.

At the time of the Alexandrian conquest, Memphis was a key Egyptian city. It is likely that Egyptian priesthoods there assisted in this translation of Isis to the rest of the Mediterranean. The famous Isis aretalogies, which include both Greek and Egyptian elements, were said to have been copied from an original text at Memphis. It is likely that the aretalogies (along with other hymns and praises of Isis) depicting Isis as both all-powerful and kindly were part of a program of evangelization.

Yet it is not as simple as Ptolemaic political promotion of the Egyptian Deities. Scholars who have studied this extensively have rejected that too-simple explanation repeatedly.

Isis Fortuna with Her rudder and cornucopia

According to one idea of how religions spread, any new religion must be able to fit within existing structures yet it must also offer an element of risk. In other words, it must offer something new and exciting, while at the same time being able to fit within people’s existing ideas.

With Isis’ Hellenization, Her worship was able to fit in. Each time Isis was translated to local people through the Goddesses they already knew, She added to Her list of names and epithets. We specifically find such equations in hymns like those by Isidorus of the Faiyum, in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus, and in Lucius’ prayer in The Golden Ass.

Yet Isis also offered something different. She was Egyptian and exotic. Her rites—especially when they were re-Egyptianized as Her worship came to Italy—were very different than Greek and Roman civic rites and could be quite emotionally exciting. She even developed Mysteries in the Greek mode, which provided a very personal experience of the Divine. Even so, these new Mysteries were merely another way of expressing Her eternal and essential identity as a Goddess of birth, death, and rebirth.

For many, it made Her irresistible. And it is because Isis made this transition out of Egypt that so many still know Her today.

The masthead of L’Echo du Merveilleux

The other big source of information about the Mathers Rites of Isis was published in the French periodical L’Echo du Merveilleux (December, 1900), entitled “Isis á Montmartre” and written by André Gaucher. It is rather more breathless and its prose is deeply—deeply—empurpled.

At the time of the article, the Mathers moved to a new home in Montmartre (a Parisian arrondissement) where they could have a larger temple and a garden. Apparently, they had just moved when they had L’Echo interview—everything was still in boxes.

Napoleon’s Coat of Arms for the city of Paris with Isis enthroned on the ship’s prow

Mathers told Gaucher the myth of Isis and Osiris, explained Isis’ connections with Paris (at least according to the lore of the day, including the not-true idea of the city having been named for Her), and eventually—with much mysterious cloak-and-dagger, which I’m guessing was largely in the perception of the author—invited Gaucher to one of the Isis ceremonies.

The article is in French, so please forgive my Google Translate-aided English translation. Here is Gaucher’s account of the ritual:

A CEREMONY OF ISIS

Removing the blindfold. Light. Before my eyes, a large room draped entirely in white, decorated with garlands of flowers to graceful effect. There are roses, camellias, morning glory and purplish clusters—wisteria. (And in November!) Around me are men and women draped in long robes, or rather colorful peplums [probably meaning what appear to him to be Greek style robes]. Moreover, they all seem to deeply ignore my presence. Nobody pays attention to me or seems to notice my strange dress in this “Greek Revival” meeting. Motionless, serious, and attentive, their faces were turned to the back of the room where, on a sort of stele supported by a platform, is erected a veiled statue of—Isis?

As if they had waited for my arrival, long curtains that hid the back of the room are opening. At the foot of the statue, a man and a woman appear, also dressed in white, their waists encircled by a length of saffron-colored fabric. Their arms are bare [except for] wide bands of gold or silver. The woman’s abundant, black hair floated over her shoulders.

MacGregor as the Hierophant Ramses in the L’Echo article; click to enlarge

They then performed the rites of a simple ceremony.

At the foot of the veiled statue, both kneel to ignite perfumes in a censer; the warm air of the sanctuary is charged with a strong odor of benzoin and incense. Then the priest and priestess scattered grains of wheat and [petals of] flowers on the ground. They pass these to an assistant, who bows deeply. Some of the wheat and flowers are then placed on the burning coals of the censer. They burn slowly.

Around us, the spectators seem to be readying for some important act of the ceremony. Faces become brighter, eyes shine, joy radiates everywhere. What is going to happen? Now, solemn, majestic, and hieratic, the priest of Isis moves toward the statue; he seems to grow taller, with a light touch and triumphant gesture, the mysterious veil falls away. The goddess appears smiling as assistants prostrate themselves, crying, “Isis! Isis! Isis!”

The priestess falls to her knees. The priest remains standing, arms wide, head flung back, ecstatic. A heavy silence—frightening!—falls on the kneeling crowd, and slowly, as if the earth moved under its base, the statue descends bit by bit. As it passes by the priest, he quickly takes up the veil. Then he lets out a frightful cry which is met by a mournful howl from the kneeling people.

PHANTASMAGORIA

Moina as the High Priestess Anari in L’Echo article; click to enlarge

As I wonder in amazement whether I am dreaming or awake, a long and sinister rustling is heard. The white veils and flower garlands fall from the walls with an ominous shudder and the walls now appear to be draped in black. The torches are extinguished one by one as if by the breath of an invisible wind. On the right and left of the sanctuary, two sole flames burn, reddish and sooty. The blackness at the back of the room is rent with a sinister screeching. Away, in that deep darkness, a huge mass, chaotic, separates itself from the black background. Again a cry of the priest, a brief call, and the assistants become rigid, stiff and immobile. They shout three times: “Osiris! Osiris! Osiris!”

Indeed, my eyes, accustomed to the darkness, can better distinguish the details of the huge statue. It’s the Egyptian god wearing a gigantic pschent [the Double Crown]. But how could this colossal statue, this inexplicable prodigy, be transported as far as here? Is it a trick, a disappointing show of painted cardboard? Or is it really the god himself, the art of ancient Egypt torn from the stone bowels of Luxor and Karnak; what mysterious force, what superhuman powers were able to make this great image answer the prayers of his new worshippers? And I hear singing in my memory the verses of the poet [Victor Hugo], “The idol then, blind and monstrous fetus, emerges from the half-open mountain.”

In the middle of Egypt, the presence of such a granite monument would already be extraordinary; in Paris, it becomes completely incomprehensible.

Ramses & Anari, with a really big sistrum!

I do not have time to think about this new strangeness. Other phenomena both weird and wonderful require my attention and once again I wonder whether I am the victim of an hallucination—or whether the phenomena are only clever tricks? Anything is possible. But then the skill of the architects of this fantastic scene itself touches on the unreal.

Here from the top of the statue, something luminous, phosphorescent, bursts forth and moves, circulating its inexplicable radiance. One by one the attendants appear haloed by the changing light that seems to move around them in a formidable magnetic effluvium. Round and about, under the eyes of the god, the worshippers fall in ecstasy or catalepsy. Around me sighs, convulsive cries. Their bodies roll on the ground, in the darkness, in the anguish of dreadful nervous spasms. Others stand, straight, rigid, with bloodless faces, haggard eyes. The vision descends into a nightmare. A scarlet torch illuminates the back of the sanctuary with an infernal glimmer, I believe that, at the rear, I see the gigantic statue in a terrible grin. Horror!

Scary Osiris from the TV show, Supernatural; maybe this is what Gaucher saw?

The monstrous head [of the statue] oscillates in darkness, unleashing a dull, deep sound; the indescribable rhythmic motion seems to carry with it, around the statue, a fantastic array of superhuman beings. Confusedly, I see the hawk-headed god Horus, the muzzle of the jackal of Anubis, the face of the bull god Thor [he probably means Hathor]. All the monsters of ancient Egypt—are they here?

Well, I’m afraid; yes, I am afraid, and suffocated by the acrid smoke from the bloody torches, which is becoming thicker and darker; I half-lose consciousness.

Having fainted, the over-excited journalist is driven back to Paris and safely delivered to his front door at “two o’clock, the hour of dreams, visions hour.”

Well! Now that is a ritual. I sincerely wish I could have been there.

Caroline Tully of the University of Melbourne suggests in her paper, “Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Isis” that, since this rite took place in November, the Mathers’ ritual could have been inspired by the Osirian Khoiak festival that lamented Osiris’ death and celebrated His rebirth, and which took place at roughly that time of year. It’s a very interesting idea. If we can believe Gaucher, the extreme emotionalism he witnessed at the Mathers’ Rite of Isis would definitely fit the festival of lamentation and joy in Khoiak.

The Palais des Nations from the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris; you really should click to enlarge this one.

Now, you might think that being public Isiacs, developing their Isis Movement, and dealing with various Golden Dawn upsets (that never happens!) would have kept the Mathers plenty busy enough. But no. It seems that at least MacGregor was involved with creating an Isis Temple for the Exposition Universalle of 1900 in Paris.

MacGregor’s friend, J.W. Brodie-Innes wrote an eulogy for Mathers in the Occult Review of April, 1919.

In it he writes, “When he arranged a Temple of Isis for the Paris Exhibition, an Egyptologist whose name is world-famous said, ‘MacGregor is a Pharaoh come back. All my life I have studied the dry bones; he has made them live.'” We don’t know which world-famous Egyptologist Brodie-Innes intended, more’s the pity.

In a letter to Adept Order member Florence Farr (who had her own Egyptian connections), MacGregor writes, “My time is just now so enormously occupied with the arrangements for the Buildings and Decorations of the Egyptian Temple of Isis in Paris, as well as other matters, that I must write as briefly as possible.” Presumably, this is the Exposition temple. And, having just moved (you’ll recall from earlier), it could also be the smaller temple in their home. Or both.

The Egyptian Palace, 1900, note the Temple on the left

From some catalogs of the Exposition as well as descriptions of the Egyptian Palace (the Egyptian pavilion for the Exposition) we know that ancient Egyptian art, including images of Isis, Horus, and Osiris, was reproduced in the temple section of the Palace.

A book in English about the Exposition describes the Egyptian exhibit like this;

“Its facades were copied from the most famous buildings of ancient Egypt with their huge porticos, their strange bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics depicting the history of the ancient dynasties of Egypt, their friezes crowded with polychrome designs. There were three distinct divisions: on the right, the “Temple;” in the centre, the “Onakala,” or Arabian bazaar; to the left, the “Theatre.” The front facade of the Temple was a reproduction of that of the Temple of Dandour in Nubia. The sides were copied from buildings at Philae, Abydos and Karnak. The entrance hall, which formed a vestibule, led to a large square covered gallery in the form of a colonnade, with the atrium in the centre open to the sky.”

And about the Theatre:

In the third division, or Theatre, the exterior and the entrance were antique in style, like the Temple. The interior was richly decorated with immense frescoes, depicting in polychrome the life of ancient Egypt, the triumphal progress of the kings, public festivals on the Nile, ceremonies in the temples, etc. The arrangement of the auditorium and the furnishing was entirely in conformity with the Egyptian style. On the stage there were Arabs and Soudanese enacting their “fantasias” and characteristic dances. The sacred dances of ancient Egypt were also performed; in fact here were gathered together all varied attractions and delights of the mysterious East.

Were the “sacred dances of ancient Egypt” the four elemental dances we read about last week? I don’t know. But the Exposition—and the Egyptian Palace in particular—is another event from that period that I would dearly love to have been able to attend.

And there you have it. That’s about all we know about the Mathers and their Isis Movement.

However, an account on a Golden Dawn site that details the history of the GD’s Ahathoor Temple in Paris, opines that the Isis rites survived MacGregor’s death and Moina’s return to London within l’Ordre Eudiaque headed by Hector Durville. The Ordre Eudiaque seems to have been focused on magnetism and massage as well as Egyptian and Hermetic magic. The Aurum Solis claims it as a close relative and has the Ordre Eudiaque’s papers in its archives.

The holy Star of Isis, the brightest star in the night sky

I know, sorry.

But it is that time.

Stars and the Cow Goddess were associated very early in Egypt

The time when we watch the skies for 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 of your area and its altitude. Both of those are easily google-able.)

I’ve written a number of posts about Sirius and Isis. Here are the links, 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 basic information on Isis and Her holy star and why it is called the “dog star”.

Meditations on Isis and Her Mother during this time of waiting.

Why Sirius is appropriately the heavenly marker of our modern New Year, too, and about temples oriented to Sirius.

The experience of my sister priestess and me last year as we watched Her rise.

About the symbol of the star in Egyptian spirituality and being “joined” to yours.

And a ritual for beginning the process of “being joined to your star.”

Sopdet from Isis’ temple at Philae

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.

(NOTE: Sorry if I confused anyone. I had the epigominals mixed up in my head. Thanks to JewelofAset for the correction.)

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 the 19th and Isis’ birthday on July 22nd.

Personally, I like to use the date when Isis’ star may actually be seen in the morning skies in my area. In my part of the world, the Pacific Northwest of the US, that’s August 23rd. 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 will be August 9th 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 would be August 3rd.

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.

This year, at my latitude, the rise of the Star of Isis falls on a weekend (no work worries, yay!), which means that I will be getting up in the wee hours of the morning, traveling a short distance to a high place, and watching as the Mystery unfolds and the Goddess emerges once more from the Underworld into the dawning light.

If you wish to join me, 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.

Today’s repost is inspired by a Facebook friend’s question about Isis and sex. So let’s dive into that a little bit. We can use having just passed Valentine’s Day and approaching spring—when all things, including love, bloom once more—as an excuse. As if we need one.

If you’ve ever looked into the topic of ancient Egyptian sexuality, you’ll know that they were pretty comfortable with sexuality. Sex was part of the great cycle of creation, life, death, and rebirth. You’ve no doubt read some of the famous ancient Egyptian love poetry with passionate lines like these:

“Your love has penetrated all within me, like honey plunged into water.” “To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me—I draw life from hearing it.” 

As well as some that are an appreciation of the sheer physical beauty of the beloved:

“Sister without rival, most beautiful of all, she looks like the star-goddess, rising at the start of the good New Year. Perfect and bright, shining skin, seductive in her eyes when she glances, sweet in her lips when she speaks, and never a word too many. Slender neck, shining body, her hair is true lapis, her arm gathers gold, her fingers are like lotus flowers, ample behind, tight waist, her thighs extend her beauty, shapely in stride when she steps on the earth.”

We have such poetic passion from the perspective of both the woman and the man. Before marriage, young men and women seem to have had freedom in their love affairs. After marriage, fidelity was expected, though it went much worse for the woman—including death—if she was caught in infidelity. The ancient Egyptians present a puzzling picture when it comes to homosexuality. On one hand, we have copies of the negative confession in which the (male) deceased declares that he has not had sex with a boy. Because he had to declare it, can we assume that some men were having sex with boys? That I do not know. The only reference to lesbianism comes from a dream-interpretation book in which it is bad omen for a woman to dream of being with another woman. And most references to man-on-man sex refer to the rape to which a victor may subject the vanquished enemy.

And yet we have two instances of what seems to indicate a consensual homosexual relationship that seem to be okay: King Neferkare goes off with his general and it is implied that they do so for sex. We also have the tomb of what used to be called The Two Brothers. More modern researchers have suggested that the men, who were royal servants and confidents, were a gay couple. This is based on their tomb paintings, which show them embracing each other or in placements usually reserved for a husband and wife. The men are shown with their children, but their wives, the mothers of the children, are very de-emphasized, almost to the point of being erased. Some scholars say, yes, they probably were a gay couple, other say no.

Yet I want to talk not about ancient Egyptian sexuality in general, but about sexuality and religion, and especially sexuality in relation to Isis.

Temple Prostitution? Nope.

First, let us put the whole “temple prostitutes” thing right out of our heads when it comes to Egypt. There is no evidence of the practice in Egypt. Yes, I know. It was very exciting for the old gentlemen to contemplate the ever-so-Pagan goings on in those richly colored temples in days of old. But it may not have been quite how the old gentlemen envisioned it. (Please see my kindly rant on the old gentlemen of Egyptology here.) In fact, the one specific reference comes from the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (64 or 63 BCE-24 CE). Here’s the passage in its Loeb 1930s translation:

“…but to Zeus, whom they hold highest in honor, they dedicate a maiden of greatest beauty and most illustrious family (such maidens are called ‘pallades’ by the Greeks); and she prostitutes [or “concubines,” pallakeue] herself, and cohabits [or “has sex” synestin] with whatever men she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body takes place; and after her cleansing she is given in marriage to a man; but before she is married, after the time of her prostitution, a rite of mourning is celebrated for her.” (Strabo, Geographies, 17.1.46)

Well, it’s right there, ain’t it? But let’s take another look. The keys are the Greek word pallades that Strabo says the Greeks called such maidens, its relation to another Greek word, pallakê, and how it was translated, and the old gentlemen who did the original translating.

Pallades means simply “young women” or “maidens.” As in Pallas Athena. Virginity is often implied, but it doesn’t have to be. Pallakê originally meant the same thing; a maiden. However, pallakê had long been translated as “concubine” due to contextual evidence in some non-Egyptian texts. A highly influential scholar of near eastern and biblical texts, William Mitchell Ramsay—one of our old gentlemen, indeed—took the term to mean “sacred prostitute” and so-translated it when he first published these non-Egyptian texts in 1883. He based the translation on his own belief in ancient sacred prostitution and two Strabo passages: one about Black Sea sacred prostitutes and the one about the pallades we’re discussing. Ramsay was so influential that his definition became the reigning one. THE Greek-English dictionary, by Liddell and Scott, had “concubine for ritual purposes” as the first definition of pallakê. Now it is the second one.

A non-sexualized translation of the Strabo passage has been made by Stephanie Budin in Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World, edited by Christopher Farone and Laura McClure. Here it is:

“But for Zeus [Amun], whom they honor most, a most beautiful maiden of most illustrious family serves as priestess, [girls] whom the Greeks call ‘pallades’; and she serves as a handmaiden and accompanies whomever (or attends whatever) she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body; and after her cleansing she is given to a man (or husband); but before she is given, a rite of mourning is celebrated for her after the time of her handmaiden service.”

Sounds quite different, doesn’t it? Would it not be more likely that a highborn girl who has not yet had her period would serve as a handmaiden in the temple, attending whatever rites she wishes—perhaps even getting an education—until she proves herself marriageable by having her first period, rather than expecting an inexperienced girl to immediately start having sex with “whomever she wishes”? (And who would that be in the temple; the priests who were supposed to abstain from sex during their temple service?) Even the “rite of mourning” is explicable as a kind of farewell to childhood that the young woman would celebrate with her fellow handmaidens and priestesses as she left the temple to take up her married life.

And besides, sex in an Egyptian temple was taboo. Even Herodotus knew of the prohibition against sex in Egyptian temples when he says that the Egyptians were the first to make it a matter of religion not to have sex in temples and to wash after having sex and before entering a temple. (Histories, 2.64)

Alternatively, Budin wonders whether Strabo might have been hearing stories about the Divine Adoratrice or God’s Wife of Amun, powerful and high-ranking priestesses of the centuries before Strabo’s visit. But at least in the later dynasties, these priestesses were celibate and tended to rule long past their first menstrual period.

Sacred Sexuality? Yep.

Well, I didn’t know I was going on so much of a tear today. It seems I have used up all of today’s time and space—and haven’t even gotten to Isis yet. So we’ll do that next time with more on sexuality in Egyptian religion…and we will indeed get to Isis.

As we fast approach the time when Night and Day, Moon and Sun come into a brief and beautiful balance, I’d like to share this post about Isis’ lunar and solar natures.

Modern Pagans often think of Isis as a Moon Goddess. And, it’s true, in later periods of Her worship, She was indeed associated with the Moon—and, in fact, that’s how She entered the Western Esoteric Tradition. The Isis-Moon connection first started when Egypt came under Greek rule in the 3rd century BCE, following the conquest by Alexander the Great. To the Greeks, Goddesses were the lunar Deities, so as Isis made Her way into Greek culture and hearts, Her new devotees naturally associated Her with the Moon.

In Egypt, Osiris, Khons, Thoth, and I’ah were the Deities most associated with the Moon. Isis, for Her part, was connected with the star Sirius as far back as the Pyramid Texts; the star was said to be Her ba, or soul. Yet Isis is also linked with the Sun.

As the Sun was the image of one of the most important Gods to the ancient Egyptians, it should not be surprising to find that Isis, one of the most important Goddesses, also has strong solar connections. In some places—notably, Her famous temple at Philae—Isis was worshipped specifically as a Sun Goddess. Among Her solar epithets are Female Re (Re-et) and Female Horus (Horet).

Isis’ most common solar manifestation is as the Eye of Re, the Uraeus, the Cobra Goddess Who coils upon the Sun God’s brow to protect Him; and Who fights a constant cosmic battle against His great opponent, Apop (Gr. Apophis). An inscription at Philae calls Isis “Neseret [fiery]-serpent on the head of Horus-Re, Eye of Re, the Unique Goddess, Uraeus.” A hymn from Philae calls Her “Eye of Re who has no equal in heaven and on earth.” The Eye of Re is His active power. While He maintains His place in the sky, the solar power—the Eye Goddess—goes forth to manifest His Divine will. In this way, Isis and the other Uraeus Goddesses (such as Nephthys, Wadjet, and Tefnut) are similar to Shakti, the active, feminine Power related to the God Shiva in some Hindu sects. Isis is also one of the Deities Who travels with Re in His solar barque as it moves through the Otherworld. Again, Her function is to protect Him and help battle His foes.

Isis is also associated with the Sun God and the Sun in several of Her important myths. In the tale of Isis and Re, Isis gains power equal to Re’s by learning His secret name, first by poisoning, then by healing the ailing God. In another, with Her magical Words of Power, Isis stops the Boat of the Sun in the sky in order to receive aid for Her poisoned child, Horus.

But it was at Isis’ influential temple at Philae that She was most clearly worshipped as a Sun Goddess and even as the Sun itself. A Philae hymn to Isis praises Her saying, “You are the one who rises and dispels darkness, shining when traversing the primeval ocean, the Brilliant One in the celestial waters, traveling in the barque of Re.” An inscription on the first pylon (gate) at Philae says Isis is the “One Who illumines the Two Lands with Her radiance, and fills the earth with gold-dust.” (I absolutely adore this praise of Her!)

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. O how I would love to have seen that.

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.

Now enjoy this lovely animation of Isis birthing the Sun by Lesley Keen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With so many of us feeling a bit hopeless these days, I am reposting this small essay 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.

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. Prehistoric shamans probably had it. 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.

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 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—and it has always happened. But what do we do when it happens?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because, you see, She IS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Is-ness of Isis

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

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

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

And how have you answered?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because, you see, She IS.

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

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

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

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

— Isis Magic

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

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

The Is-ness of Isis

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

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

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

And how have you answered?

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

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

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

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

Are you finding it harder or easier to do your practice these days? Honestly, I go back and forth. Sometimes it seems harder, sometimes easier. But whatever the case, I know I have been needing my practice more than ever right now. We don’t have to social distance from Isis.

I often find it easier to keep up my spiritual practice when I have something “set,” something specific to do. You, too? If so, then today I’d like to offer you a simple offering ritual. (If you have my Offering to Isis, a version of it is in there. But since I hear those are going for stupid out-of-print prices, here’s a version you can use, and of course, adapt, as you choose.)

The Adma Iset

Ritual Tools: A cup or other vessel of pure water; a censer with charcoal and incense; fire starter for incense; an offering (this can be anything you choose: milk, beer, flowers, a poem, a dance); a small reed mat (such as a table placemat); a shallow tray of sand large enough to place one foot in; a bundle of fresh plants for sweeping the sand. These last two are optional, but are adapted from things they actually did in Egyptian temples. You can do this rite at your altar; I will assume you have a sacred image of Isis on your altar.

Ritual Preparation: Prepare your offering as needed; set the small reed mat on the floor before the altar; place the tray with sand and the fresh plants conveniently to the side.

Purification  & Consecration

Sit comfortably before your altar, breathing slowly, clearing your mind. When you are ready, rise, approach the altar of Isis, and bow politely.

Ritualist: (Raising your hands in a gesture of adoration) Isis is all things and all things are Isis.

Take up the cup and elevate it.

Ritualist: (To the Purifying Powers) O, You Souls of Night, Water Dwellers, Purifiers, You of the Pure Water from the Sycamore Tree of Isis, I have come for you. By the Blood, by the Power, by the Magic of Isis, establish yourselves within this vessel!

Lower the cup to heart level. Visualize blue light coming into your body from above, let it move through your body into the earth, then bring it back up into your heart, then into the cup as you vibrate.

Ritualist: (Vibrating) ISET MU!

Circle your ritual space, sprinkling water, then sprinkle yourself.

Ritualist: (Speaking while walking) Isis is pure. The temple is pure. The temple is pure. I am pure. I am pure with the Purity of Isis. I am pure with the Purity of the Goddess. (Repeating until you return to the altar; then repeat as needed until you feel it to be so.)

Ritualist: By the Magic of Isis, it is so!

Return cup to altar, take up censer and elevate it.

Ritualist: (To the Consecrating Powers) O, You Souls of Day, Fire Dwellers, Consecrators, You of the Pure Breath from the Mouth of Isis, I have come for you. By the Blood, by the Power, by the Magic of Isis, establish yourselves within this censer!

Lower the censer to heart level. Visualize red light coming into your body from above, let it move through your body into the earth, then bring it back up into your heart, then into the censer as you vibrate.

Ritualist: (Vibrating) ISET ASH!

Circle your ritual space, censing it and then yourself.

Ritualist: (Speaking while walking) Isis is consecrated. The temple is consecrated. The temple is consecrated. I am consecrated. I am consecrated with the Fire of Isis. I am consecrated with the Flame of the Goddess. (Repeating until you return to the altar; then repeat as needed until you feel it to be so.)

Ritualist: By the Magic of Isis, it is so!

Entering

Face the altar and make the Gesture of Adoration.

Ritualist: Isis is upon Her Throne. The spirits awaken! They awaken in peace for they know that I have come to make offering unto this Great Goddess.

Put your palms together and extend your arms straight out in front of you. Slowly open your arms as if opening a heavy curtain. This is the gesture of Opening the Shrine. Place the tray of sand before the sacred image and step in it to leave a footprint in the sand.

Ritualist: The sacred doors are opened to me. The light goes forth. It guides me on a fair path to the place where the Great Goddess is. I approach Your shrine, O Isis.

Offering to the Uraeus Goddess

Take up the censer and elevate it.

Ritualist: (Addressing the Uraeus serpent form of Isis) The Sacred Eye is powerful. Lady of Flame, Great One Who is between the horns of the Sunshine Goddess, accept this perfume and let me enter in peace.

Place the censer in your dominant hand, resting on your upturned palm. Bring that hand to your heart. Breathe in and visualize light glowing around the censer. Slowly swing your arm outward toward the image of the Goddess. Visualize the light flowing from the incense smoke to Her sacred image. This is the Gesture of Giving. Return the censer to its place.

Invoking the Goddess

Stand before the sacred image. Place your palms together in front of you. Bring them apart to a comfortable distance, remaining thumbs up. To make the Gesture of Invocation, move the tips of your fingers towards you in a ‘come to me’ gesture. Do this slowly and gently as you speak the invocation below.

Ritualist: Iu en-i. Iu en-i (Eeoou-en-EE). Come to me, come to me, Beautiful, Great One—Isis of Many Names, Lady of Sacred Magic, Great Mother, Great Goddess, come to me, come to me! (Vibrating) ISIS. ISIS. ISIS.

See within your heart the light of the Goddess. Feel it glowing with sun-bright warmth and beauty.

(Speaking to the Goddess) Fair is Your coming to Your temple, Isis. Beautiful is Your appearance in my heart.

Place your hand upon your heart, breathe in, and on the out-breath, move your hand toward the altar and send that light into the sacred image of Isis.

Making Offering

You may wish to be seated at this time.

Ritualist: My body being on Earth, my heart being awake, my magic being in my mouth, O Isis, I make offering unto You.

Take up your offering. With open heart, speak aloud why you have chosen to give that particular offering to the Goddess.

If your offering is physical, use the Gesture of Giving (above) to offer it to Isis. If it is not, visualize a symbol representing it in your palm as if it were physical. Breathe in, visualize light around the offering, then on the out-breath, move your hand toward the altar and see that light transfer to the sacred image of Isis. Then, if your offering is performative, perform the offering (e.g. read the poem, dance the dance).

Closing the Temple

Once again, take some time to see the light of what you have given glowing around the sacred image of Isis. Let yourself KNOW that She has accepted your offering. Feel Her blessing upon you in return.

When you are ready, take up the bundle of plants and sweep away the footprint in the sand. Make the Gesture of the Closing of the Shrine (the opposite of Opening the Shrine above).

Ritualist: I have flourished on water. I have grown on incense. I have climbed up on sunbeams. O Isis, give me Your hand for I have made offering unto You.

Be in peace, Isis, be in peace. Amma, Iset (AH-ma, EE-set; Egyptian: “Grant that it be so, Isis”).

The Adma is finished. Exit the ritual space or remain in meditation as desired.

I rarely post anything political on this blog. That’s not what it’s for. But sometimes—like when your city has been invaded by goon squads kidnapping citizens—it’s hard to write about anything else. And so, for a lead-in to today’s post about ancient Egyptian sexuality and Isis, I am proud to introduce you to “Naked Athena.”

THIS. This is why I love this city. This is the power of a vulnerable, naked human body. This is the power of Art.

Now, here’s another photo of the same kind of vulnerable power:

What is the difference between the stories of these two photos taken four years apart? Naked Athena was not arrested for her protest (nudity is officially illegal in Portland, but court rulings have made exceptions for protests). Ieshia Evans was. It is blatantly obvious that there’s a lot of justice work to be done, folks. Ma’et calls us to it and Black Lives Matter.

Deep breath.

Of course, we do not always use our naked and vulnerable bodies for powerful protest. And so today I also bring you…

Sexuality, Sacred Sexuality & Isis, Part I

If you’ve ever looked into the topic of ancient Egyptian sexuality, you’ll know that they were pretty comfortable with sexuality. Sex was part of the great cycle of creation, life, death, and rebirth. You’ve no doubt read some of the famous ancient Egyptian love poetry with passionate lines like these:

“Your love has penetrated all within me, like honey plunged into water.” “To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me—I draw life from hearing it.” 

As well as some that are an appreciation of the sheer physical beauty of the beloved:

“Sister without rival, most beautiful of all, she looks like the star-goddess, rising at the start of the good New Year. Perfect and bright, shining skin, seductive in her eyes when she glances, sweet in her lips when she speaks, and never a word too many. Slender neck, shining body, her hair is true lapis, her arm gathers gold, her fingers are like lotus flowers, ample behind, tight waist, her thighs extend her beauty, shapely in stride when she steps on the earth.”

We have such poetic passion from the perspective of both the woman and the man. Before marriage, young men and women seem to have had freedom in their love affairs. After marriage, fidelity was expected, though it went much worse for the woman—including death—if she was caught in infidelity.

The ancient Egyptians present a puzzling picture when it comes to homosexuality. On one hand, we have copies of the negative confession in which the (male) deceased declares that he has not had sex with a boy. Because he had to declare it, can we assume that some men were having sex with boys? That I do not know. The only reference to lesbianism comes from a dream-interpretation book in which it is bad omen for a woman to dream of being with another woman. And most references to man-on-man sex refer to the rape to which a victor may subject the vanquished enemy.

And yet we have two instances of what seems to indicate a consensual homosexual relationship that seem to be okay: King Neferkare goes off with his general and it is implied that they do so for sex. We also have the tomb of what used to be called The Two Brothers. More modern researchers have suggested that the men, who were royal servants and confidents, were a gay couple. This is based on their tomb paintings, which show them embracing each other or in placements usually reserved for a husband and wife. The men are shown with their children, but their wives, the mothers of the children, are very de-emphasized, almost to the point of being erased. Some scholars say, yes, they probably were a gay couple, other say no.

Yet I want to talk not about ancient Egyptian sexuality in general, but about sexuality and religion, and especially sexuality in relation to Isis.

Temple Prostitution? Nope.

First, let us put the whole “temple prostitutes” thing right out of our heads when it comes to Egypt. There is no evidence of the practice in Egypt. Yes, I know. It was very exciting for the old gentlemen to contemplate the ever-so-Pagan goings on in those richly colored temples in days of old. But it may not have been quite how the old gentlemen envisioned it. (Please see my kindly rant on the old gentlemen of Egyptology here.) In fact, the one specific reference comes from the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (64 or 63 BCE-24 CE). Here’s the passage in its Loeb 1930s translation:

“…but to Zeus, whom they hold highest in honor, they dedicate a maiden of greatest beauty and most illustrious family (such maidens are called ‘pallades’ by the Greeks); and she prostitutes [or “concubines,” pallakeue] herself, and cohabits [or “has sex” synestin] with whatever men she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body takes place; and after her cleansing she is given in marriage to a man; but before she is married, after the time of her prostitution, a rite of mourning is celebrated for her.” (Strabo, Geographies, 17.1.46)

Well, it’s right there, ain’t it? But let’s take another look. The keys are the Greek word pallades that Strabo says the Greeks called such maidens, its relation to another Greek word, pallakê, and how it was translated, and the old gentlemen who did the original translating.

Pallades means simply “young women” or “maidens.” As in Pallas Athena. Virginity is often implied, but it doesn’t have to be. Pallakê originally meant the same thing; a maiden. However, pallakê had long been translated as “concubine” due to contextual evidence in some non-Egyptian texts. A highly influential scholar of near eastern and biblical texts, William Mitchell Ramsay—one of our old gentlemen, indeed—took the term to mean “sacred prostitute” and so-translated it when he first published these non-Egyptian texts in 1883. He based the translation on his own belief in ancient sacred prostitution and two Strabo passages: one about Black Sea sacred prostitutes and the one about the pallades we’re discussing. Ramsay was so influential that his definition became the reigning one. THE Greek-English dictionary, by Liddell and Scott, had “concubine for ritual purposes” as the first definition of pallakê. Now it is the second one.

A non-sexualized translation of the Strabo passage has been made by Stephanie Budin in Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World, edited by Christopher Farone and Laura McClure. Here it is:

“But for Zeus [Amun], whom they honor most, a most beautiful maiden of most illustrious family serves as priestess, [girls] whom the Greeks call ‘pallades’; and she serves as a handmaiden and accompanies whomever (or attends whatever) she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body; and after her cleansing she is given to a man (or husband); but before she is given, a rite of mourning is celebrated for her after the time of her handmaiden service.”

Sounds quite different, doesn’t it? Would it not be more likely that a highborn girl who has not yet had her period would serve as a handmaiden in the temple, attending whatever rites she wishes—perhaps even getting an education—until she proves herself marriageable by having her first period, rather than expecting an inexperienced girl to immediately start having sex with “whomever she wishes”? (And who would that be in the temple; the priests who were required to abstain from sex during their temple service?) Even the “rite of mourning” is explicable as a kind of farewell to childhood that the young woman would celebrate with her fellow handmaidens and priestesses as she left the temple to take up her married life.

What’s more, sex in an Egyptian temple was taboo. Even Herodotus knew of the prohibition against sex in Egyptian temples when he says that the Egyptians were the first to make it a matter of religion not to have sex in temples and to wash after having sex and before entering a temple. (Histories, 2.64)

Alternatively, Budin wonders whether Strabo might have been hearing stories about the Divine Adoratrice or God’s Wife of Amun, powerful and high-ranking priestesses of the centuries before Strabo’s visit. But at least in the later dynasties, these priestesses were celibate and tended to rule long past their first menstrual period.

Sacred Sexuality? Yep.

Well. This post is long enough for today—and haven’t even gotten to Isis yet. So we’ll do that next time with more on sexuality in Egyptian religion…and we will indeed get to Isis.

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:

The basic information on Isis and Her holy star and why it is called the “dog star”.

Meditations on Isis and Her Mother during this time of waiting.

Why Sirius is appropriately the heavenly marker of our modern New Year, too, and about temples oriented to Sirius.

The experience of my sister priestess and me one year as we watched Her rise.

About the symbol of the star in Egyptian spirituality and being “joined” to yours.

And a ritual for beginning the process of “being joined to your star.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

We don’t usually think of Isis in relation to crocodiles or to Sobek, the Crocodile God. Ahh, but wait. As with so much in Egyptian religion, it’s complicated. And there are more Isis-croc connections than we might at first think.

Let’s start with a bit about the crocodile itself. A Nile crocodile can reach up to twenty feet in length—and it doesn’t care what it eats. In addition to their usual diet of fish, the Nile crocodile is happy to feed on birds, wild and domestic animals—and human beings. Estimates are that as many as 200 people a year are killed by crocodiles. Crocodiles catch their prey in huge, toothy jaws and drag it underwater until the struggling stops. It is no wonder Egyptians ancient and modern fear the beast. Perhaps that fear explains why the Nile crocodile was hunted nearly to extinction in the 1940s through 60s. Today, however, they have rebounded and are no longer in danger.

The image of the strong, voracious, and fierce crocodile appears in Egyptian art beginning in prehistoric times. Yet, they are shown both as devouring monsters and as protective guardians. Ammut, Who waits to devour the dead who fail the judgment of Osiris, is part crocodile. Yet magic wands designed for protection often include images of crocodiles. A protective amulet called the Cippi of Horus showed the Son of Isis standing upon the backs of two or more crocodiles and holding dangerous serpents harmlessly in His hands. Powerful magicians were fabled to be able to ride across the river on the backs of crocodiles.

Yet most people wanted to repel crocodiles. Numerous magical formulae have been found that were uttered to keep the frightful creatures at bay, many of them including the important words, “Get back, crocodile!” Jokingly or seriously, I have used that spell on the road when another vehicle comes way too close.

The crocodile was a presence in the Egyptian world that simply could not be ignored. And as the God Sobek, the Egyptians gave Him His due. Sobek is a Water God and thus associated with fertility. There was a common folk belief among the ancient Egyptians that when many crocodiles were seen in the Nile, the flood waters of the annual Inundation would be deep and, as a result, the harvest would be abundant.

Sobek is also connected with original creation; for as the crocodile rises up out of the Nile, so the primordial Sun arose from the waters of chaos. Because of this solar connection, Sokek is frequently seen crowned with the solar disk. The God’s major centers of worship were at Kom Ombo, upriver from Philae and Aswan, and in the Faiyum, a large, especially fertile oasis in Lower Egypt, southwest of Cairo. We also have some evidence of His cult in Memphis, perhaps within the Ptah temple complex.

Both Memphis and the Faiyum were places where Sobek and His myth met up with Isis and Hers. The Faiyum was the center of Sobek worship and sacred crocodiles were bred and raised at the God’s temples. The historian Herodotus remarks on the Egyptians’ treatment of these temple crocodiles: “they put ornaments of glass and gold on their ears and bracelets on their forefeet, provide for them special food and offerings and give the creatures the best of treatment while they live; after death the crocodiles are embalmed and buried in sacred coffins.”

When the Faiyum temple of Medinet Madi was unearthed, some of the first things they found were four lengthy praise hymns to Isis as universal Goddess, in Greek, and written by Her devotee, Isidorus. In these hymns, Isis is understood to be many Goddesses, including Isis-Thermouthis or Hermouthis. This is Isis assimilated with the Cobra Harvest Goddess Renenutet. In the Faiyum She is paired with Sobek.

Further excavation at Medinet Madi revealed a Middle Kingdom temple of Sobek, Renenutet, and Horus, which is the only Middle Kingdom temple discovered to date. You can see why it was easy to connect Isis, Who sometimes takes the form of a cobra, with the Cobra Goddess Whose child is Horus. During the 12th dynasty, when the pharaohs took a particular interest in Sobek and the Faiyum, Sobek came to be assimilated with Horus. A text from Denderah tells us that Horus takes the form of a crocodile to retrieve Osiris’ body from the water. In another tale, Sobek Himself was said to assist Isis during Horus’ birth. On the other hand, it was also said that Sobek was the one Who devoured Osiris’ phallus when it was thrown into the Nile, for which offense Isis cut out His tongue. The tale explains why the crocodile has no tongue. (They do have tongues, but their tongues are not free, being held in place by a membrane.)

In one of the hymns to Isis from Medinet Madi, Sokonopis (“Sobek of the Nile”) is called “Agathos Daimon (“Good Spirit”),” “mighty,” and “that goodly bestower of wealth, creator of both earth and starry heaven, and of all rivers, and very swift streams.” Two other Isiac consorts, Serapis and Osiris, are also called Agathos Daimon. Like Sobek, both Serapis and Osiris are associated with water and especially rivers. Serapis is connected with a miracle in which pure water is produced from salty. Osiris is the living water of the Nile Inundation itself.

Isis-Thermouthis and Sokonopis were considered healing Deities, an ability that may have accrued to the Crocodile God from His association with Isis, the Healing Goddess. The Crocodile God was said to have assisted Isis in healing Osiris. In fact, there are a number of representations of a crocodile bearing the Osirian mummy on its back. One of these is from Philae, where Isis is shown standing at the feet of the crocodile-carried Osiris. This idea surely came from the fact that mother crocodiles will sometimes carry their young on their backs to protect them from predators. Plutarch relates an Egyptian tradition that, out of fear and respect for the Goddess, crocodiles will not attack people traveling in papyrus boats because Isis traveled in such a boat as She searched for the parts of Osiris’ body.

Isis’ association with the crocodile continued long after the end of ancient Egypt. There is a famous work called The Faerie Queene, written by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser. Spenser is writing in support of his monarch, Elizabeth I. In his story, the heroine finds herself in Isis Church and has a vision of the Goddess. At first, she sees herself as a votary of Isis, later she becomes Isis Herself. A crocodile threatens to destroy the Church, but our heroine, as Isis, drives it back. Tamed, the beast now seeks her “grace and love.” And in the vision, the crocodile mates with her/Her and she/She gives birth to a lion. A priest at the Church explains that the crocodile is Osiris and their lion-child will be a just king.

And so we see that Isis and the crocodile are much closer than it might at first seem. Like the Goddess Who, in Her dark and bright aspects, can be both frightening and comforting, the Crocodile God Who is Her Faiyum consort can be fearsome, as well as a protector, healer, and a giver of wealth. When it comes to Goddesses and Gods, it’s definitely complicated.