Isis

Who Isis actually is

Isis (ꜣst — her name is literally the hieroglyph of the *throne*, the seat on which the king sits; she is the throne-personified, the seat that makes kingship possible) is one of the most-widely-worshipped goddesses in all of antiquity. Her cult began in the Old Kingdom or earlier as the *mourning-sister* of the Osirian myth-cycle, expanded steadily through the Middle and New Kingdoms, became the dominant Egyptian goddess in the Late Period (her temple at Philae remained the last functioning Egyptian temple, closed only by Justinian in 537 CE), and spread *across the entire Roman Empire* in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods — Isis-temples from Pompeii to Britain, the *Aretalogies of Isis* (the "I am" hymns) preserved in inscriptions from Greece to Asia Minor, the *Navigium Isidis* (the spring festival of Isis the navigator, March 5th) celebrated across the Mediterranean. In the foundational Osirian myth (see Osiris entry for the full narrative): when Set murdered Osiris, Isis went into mourning, sought the coffin (recovered it from Byblos), recovered the fourteen scattered pieces of her husband's body, reassembled them with bandages and magic, revived him long enough to conceive Horus, and then hid in the marshes of Chemmis to raise the child-Horus to adulthood so he could avenge his father. She is *weret-hekau* (great of magic) — the goddess whose magical knowledge is greater than Ra's; the Pyramid-Text-and-later "Tale of Isis and the Secret Name" records that she fashioned a snake to bite the aged Ra and then offered to heal him only if he revealed his secret name to her, which would give her his power. The *Aretalogies* of the Hellenistic period (the "I am" hymns — the Kyme inscription is the longest preserved) have Isis claiming the *entire pantheon as her own attributes*: "I am Isis, the mistress of every land... I divided the earth from the heaven, I showed the paths of the stars, I ordered the course of the sun and the moon, I devised business in the sea, I made strong the right, I brought together woman and man, I appointed to women to bring their infants to birth in the tenth month..." — the most-totalizing single-goddess theology in the ancient Mediterranean, and a direct prototype for later Marian theology. The *Madonna and Child* iconography (Mary nursing Jesus) is the *direct* iconographic continuation of *Isis lactans* (Isis nursing the child-Horus), which appears in Egyptian art from at least the 26th Dynasty (c. 600 BCE) and was the standard image-type of Isis throughout the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. The early Christian appropriation is *not* speculative — the iconography is the same iconography, often produced in the same workshops, with the throne and the headdress modified but the basic composition preserved.

Iconography

Woman crowned with the *throne-hieroglyph* (her name) on her head — a simple square seat-shape, the iconographic signature that makes her instantly identifiable in any Egyptian image. In her later (New Kingdom and after) syncretic form, she frequently wears the *cow-horns enclosing the solar disk* (the iconography she borrowed from Hathor, as the two goddesses progressively merged into the late-period "Isis-Hathor"). Long sheath-dress. Wings outstretched (Isis is frequently shown as a winged-goddess, the wings either spread protectively over Osiris's body or wrapped around the dead in the funeral scene — the iconographic source of the angel-with-wings motif). *Isis lactans* — seated, nursing the child-Horus at her breast — is the most-reproduced single image of her in the Greco-Roman period, and the direct prototype of the Christian Madonna-and-Child. The *tyet* (the *Isis-knot* or *blood-of-Isis* amulet, a stylized knot resembling the ankh but with the arms folded down — worn for protection, especially by women) is her direct amulet-form, distinct from the ankh and the wedjat.

How to invoke Isis

March 5th (the *Navigium Isidis* — the spring opening-of-the-sea festival celebrated across the Greco-Roman world). The annual *Isia* festival (October-November, commemorating the search for Osiris). Sundown — Isis is associated with the going-into-grief, the entering-the-mourning. Offer: milk (for *Isis lactans*), water, the *tyet* amulet (a small reproduction is enough), incense (frankincense), wheat, the white-rose (her flower in the Greco-Roman period). The traditional invocation is the *Aretalogy* opening: *"I am Isis, the mistress of every land..."* — said in first person, claiming the goddess as the speaker's own register. Especially called by mothers (the foundational mother-of-the-child-Horus register); by anyone in grief (the mourning-and-gathering register is hers); by widows (Isis-as-the-widow-of-Osiris is the foundational widowhood-myth); by anyone whose work is *finding the pieces of what has been dismembered* (therapists working with trauma, archivists working with shattered records, historians, archaeologists, anyone whose craft is reassembly); by anyone working with magic (she is *weret-hekau*, the patron of magicians and healers); by sailors and travelers (the Navigium register); by women in childbirth (one of her direct functions).

In love

Isis in love is the partner who *gathers the dismembered other* — who travels to Byblos to find the coffin, who walks the length of the land to find the fourteen pieces, who refuses to let the dying-of-the-other be the end of the story. Isis-energy in a partnership is *the resurrecting love* — the love that does the slow work of putting the other back together, of using magic-bandages where ordinary medicine has failed, of conceiving the next-generation-heir from the briefly-revived husband. The shadow is the partner whose Isis-register has become *chronic-resurrection-of-the-already-dead* — the woman who has been trying to revive a marriage that genuinely died, gathering pieces of an Osiris who has now permanently descended to the underworld and is not coming back. The other shadow: the partner whose magic has been *appropriated by an Ra-figure who refused to give the secret name back* — the gatherer whose own power has been extracted by someone who took the bite-and-the-healing but never returned the name.

In work

Isis in work is the *gatherer-of-pieces* — the project-rescuer who comes in after the previous founder has been dismembered and reassembles the company; the *magician* whose technical knowledge is so deep that ordinary engineers come to her for the bandages-and-the-magic; the *mother-of-the-next-generation* (the senior figure who raises the child-Horus in the marshes of Chemmis until he is old enough to claim the throne). Isis-energy is *the magic-that-restores*. The shadow is the workplace whose Isis has been *flattened to administrative-support* (the executive-assistant whose magical-knowledge is what actually keeps the company running, but who is paid as if she were merely the secretary); the consultant whose Aretalogical-totalizing-knowledge is claimed by clients who never acknowledge her as the source.

The gift

Isis gives the recognition that *the gathering-of-the-pieces is the most-important work*. Set will murder kings; bodies will be dismembered; coffins will float to Byblos. The gift is the willingness to *go after them* — to undertake the long search, to do the magical work of reassembly, to refuse the conclusion-of-death even when everyone else has accepted it. The Aretalogy-register: *I am Isis, the mistress of every land*. The gift is the willingness to claim the totalizing-knowledge that lets one reassemble what others have given up on.

The shadow

Isis has been the *most-appropriated* goddess in the history of Western religion. The Marian theology of Christianity is, iconographically and theologically, *substantially Isis* — the *Madonna and Child* is *Isis lactans* with the throne-headdress modified; the *Theotokos* ("god-bearer") theology of the 4th-5th c. Christological controversies maps onto the *mother-of-Horus-as-god-incarnate* register; the *Stella Maris* ("star of the sea") title of Mary continues the *Navigium Isidis* register. None of this is acknowledged in mainstream Christian theology. The other shadow: 19th-c. Egyptomania-Isis ("the Veiled Isis," the Theosophical Isis, the Madame-Blavatsky-Isis-Unveiled register) entirely strips the actual Egyptian funerary-magical content and replaces it with generic-mystical-feminine theology. The third shadow: New-Age commodification ("Isis-channeling," "Isis-temple-of-the-cosmos," various 21st-c. Isis-revivalist groups) most of which has zero contact with the Philae-Temple ritual tradition. The fourth shadow: the *aretalogical-totalization* (Isis claiming all goddesses' attributes as her own) has been mistaken in some modern feminist-spirituality for *Isis-as-the-Goddess* in a quasi-monotheistic register — but in the actual Hellenistic cult, the aretalogies were a *praise-form*, not a metaphysical claim that the other goddesses do not exist. The fifth shadow: the Roman-Imperial-cult of Isis was *suppressed* by the Christianization of the Empire (Justinian closing Philae in 537 CE was the formal end), and the *erasure-of-the-suppression* in standard church history is itself a shadow — the *first* major monotheistic suppression of a polytheistic goddess-cult in the West, four hundred years before the witch-trials and a thousand years before colonial missions.

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