Isis, the Egyptian goddess of rebirth remains one of the most familiar images of empowered and utter femininity. The goddess Isis was the first daughter of Geb, god of the Earth, and Nut, the goddess of the Overarching Sky. Isis was born on the first day between the first years of creation, and was adored by her human followers.
Unlike the other Egyptian goddesses, the goddess Isis spent time among her people, teaching women how to grind corn and make bread, spin flax and weave cloth, and how to tame men enough to live with them (an art form on which many of us would welcome a refresher course!)
Isis taught her people the skills of reading and agriculture and was worshipped as the goddess of medicine and wisdom.
More than any other of the ancient Egyptian goddesses, Isis embodied the characteristics of all the lesser goddesses that preceded her. Isis became the model on which future generations of female deities in other cultures were to be based.
As the personification of the “complete female”, Isis was called “The One Who Is All”, Isis Panthea (“Isis the All Goddess”), and the “Lady of Ten Thousand Names”.
The goddess Isis, a moon goddess, gave birth to Horus, the god of the sun. Together, Isis and Horus created and sustained all life and were the saviors of their people.
Isis became the most powerful of the gods and goddesses in the ancient world. Ra, the God of the Sun, originally had the greatest power. But Ra was uncaring, and the people of the world suffered greatly during his reign.
The goddess Isis tricked him by mixing some of his saliva with mud to create a poisonous snake that bit him, causing him great suffering which she then offered to cure. He eventually agreed.
Isis informed Ra that, for the cure to work, she would have to speak his secret name (which was the source of his power over life and death). Reluctantly, he whispered it to her.
When Isis uttered his secret name while performing her magic, Ra was healed. But the goddess Isis then possessed his powers of life and death, and quickly became the most powerful of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, using her great powers to the benefit of the people.
Isis was called the Mother of Life, but she was also known as the Crone of Death. Her immense powers earned her the titles of “The Giver of Life” and “Goddess of Magic”. Her best known story illustrates why she is simultaneously known as a creation goddess and a goddess of destruction.
Isis was the Goddess of the Earth in ancient Egypt and loved her brother Osiris. When they married, Osiris became the first King of Earth. Their brother Set, immensely jealous of their powers, murdered Osiris so he could usurp the throne.
Set did this by tricking Osiris into stepping into a beautiful box made of cedar, ebony and ivory that he had ordered built to fit only Osiris. Set then sealed it up to become a coffin and threw it into the river. The river carried the box out to sea; it washed up in another country, resting in the upper boughs of a tamarisk tree when the waters receded.
As time passed, the branches covered the box, encapsulating the god in his coffin in the trunk of the tree.
In a state of inconsolable grief, Isis tore her robes to shreds and cut off her beautiful black hair. When she finally regained her emotional balance, Isis set out to search for the body of her beloved Osiris so that she might bury him properly.
The search took Isis to Phoenicia where she met Queen Astarte. Astarte didn’t recognize the goddess and hired her as a nursemaid to the infant prince.
Fond of the young boy, Isis decided to bestow immortality on him. As she was holding the royal infant over the fire as part of the ritual, the Queen entered the room. Seeing her son smoldering in the middle of the fire, Astarte instinctively (but naively) grabbed the child out of the flames, undoing the magic of Isis that would have made her son a god.
When the Queen demanded an explanation, Isis revealed her identity and told Astarte of her quest to recover her husband’s body. As she listened to the story, Astarte realized that the body was hidden in the fragrant tree in the center of the palace and told Isis where to find it.
Sheltering his broken body in her arms, the goddess Isis carried the body of Osiris back to Egypt for proper burial. There she hid it in the swamps on the delta of the Nile river.
Unfortunately, Set came across the box one night when he was out hunting. Infuriated by this turn of events and determined not to be outdone, he murdered Osiris once again . . . this time hacking his body into 14 pieces and throwing them in different directions knowing that they would be eaten by the crocodiles.
The goddess Isis searched and searched, accompanied by seven scorpions who assisted and protected her. Each time she found new pieces she rejoined them to re-form his body.
But Isis could only recover thirteen of the pieces. The fourteenth, his penis, had been swallowed by a crab, so she fashioned one from gold and wax. Then inventing the rites of embalming, and speaking some words of magic, Isis brought her husband back to life.
Magically, Isis then conceived a child with Osiris, and gave birth to Horus, who later became the Sun God. Assured that having the infant would now relieve Isis’ grief, Osiris was free to descend to become the King of the Underworld, ruling over the dead and the sleeping.
His spirit, however, frequently returned to be with Isis and the young Horus who both remained under his watchful and loving eye.
There are many other variations of this myth . . . in some Isis found the body of Osiris in Byblos, fashioned his penis out of clay. In others the goddess consumed the dismembered parts she found and brought Osiris back to life, reincarnating him as her son Horus.
In one of the most beautiful renditions, Isis turns into a sparrowhawk and hovers over the body of Osiris, fanning life back into him with her long wings.
Regardless of the differences, each version speaks of the power over life and death that the goddess Isis symbolizes. . . the deep mysteries of the feminine ability to create and to bring life from that which is lifeless.
The Egyptian goddess Isis played an important role in the development of modern religions, although her influence has been largely forgotten.
The festivities surrounding the flooding of the Nile each year, originally named “The Night of the Tear-Drop” in remembrance of the extent of the Isis’ lamentation of the death of Osiris, her tears so plentiful they caused the Nile to overflow, is now celebrated annuallyby Egyptian Muslims and is called “The Night of the Drop”.
She was worshipped throughout the Greco-Roman world. During the fourth century when Christianity was making its foothold in the Roman Empire, her worshippers founded the first Madonna cults in order to keep her influence alive.
Some early Christians even called themselves Pastophori, meaning the shepherds or servants of Isis. . . which may be where the word “pastors” originated. The influence of Isis is still seen in the Christian ikons of the faithful wife and loving mother.
Indeed, the ancient images of Isis nursing the infant Horus inspired the style of portraits of mother and child for centuries, including those of the “Madonna and Child” found in religious art.
The power of the goddess Isis in the “public arena” was also profound. Her role as a guide to the Underworld, was often portrayed with winged arms outstretched in a protective position. The image of the wings of Isis was incorporated into the Egyptian throne on which the pharaohs would sit, the wings of Isis protecting them.
The ancient Egyptian goddess Isis has many gifts to share with modern women. Isis embodies the strengths of the feminine, the capacity to feel deeply about relationships, the act of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
At times Isis could be a clever trickster empowered by her feminine wiles rather than her logic or brute strength, but it is also the goddess Isis who shows us how we can use our personal gifts to create the life we desire rather than simply opposing that which we do not like.
The myths of Isis and Osiris caution us about the need for occasional renewal and reconnection in our relationships. Isis also reminds us to acknowledge and accept the depths of our emotions.
words – http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/egyptian_goddess_isis.htm
The creation of the universe is a mystery. But in Egypt this was regarded as the only ineluctable mystery — beyond the Primordial Scission, all is in principle comprehensible. And if it is objected that a philosophy founded upon a mystery is unsatisfactory, it must be remembered that modern science is rife not only with mysteries, but with abstractions corresponding to no possible experience in reality: the zero, which is a negation; infinity, which is an abstraction; and the square root of minus one, which is both a negation and an abstraction. Egypt carefully avoided the abstract. In our terms unity, the Absolute or unpolarized energy, in becoming conscious of itself, creates polarized energy.
One becomes simultaneously Two and Three. Two, regarded by itself, is divisive by nature. Two represents the principle of multiplicity; Two, unchecked, is the call to chaos. Two is the Fall. But Two is reconciled to unity, included within unity, by the simultaneous creation of Three. Three represents the principle of reconciliation, of relationship. (This threeinone is of course the Christian trinity, the same trinity that is described in innumerable mythologies throughout the world.) Numbers are neither abstractions nor entities in themselves. Numbers are names applied to the functions and principles upon which the universe is created and maintained.
Through the study of number — perhaps only through the study of number — these functions and principles can be understood. Generally speaking, we take these functions and principles for granted; we do not even realise they underlie all our experience and that, at the same time, we are largely ignorant of them. We can only measure results, which provide us with quantitative data but not with understanding.
What is today called Pythagorean number mysticism is Egyptian in origin (if not older still) and corresponds to the underlying philosophy behind all the arts and sciences of Egypt. In effect, what Pythagoras did was to undramatized myth — a strategy that had the advantage of talking directly to those capable of thinking along these lines.
Egyptology, along with all modern disciplines devoted to past or alien cultures (anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, etc.), is based upon certain assumptions considered so self-evident they are never stated explicitly, never questioned. Generally speaking, ‘authorities’ within these fields are unaware that their disciplines are based upon these assumptions:
1 That man has ‘progressed’: There has been an ‘evolution’ in human affairs.
2 That civilization implies progress and that the height of civilization is in direct proportion to the rate of progress.
3 That progress, hence civilization, began with the Greeks, who invented speculative philosophy and rational science.
4 That science and science-based disciplines are the only valid instruments for arriving at ‘objective truth’
5 That without rational science and speculative philosophy there is no real civilization.
6 That there is nothing the ancients knew that we do not know, or understand better.
These assumptions (the selected quotes typify the attitude) have been accepted by almost every scientist and scholar for the last two hundred years. They percolate in to every aspect of education. No reader of this book will have been taught otherwise at school or university. Yet each of these assumptions is false, or represents a half truth more insidious than outright falsehood. To demonstrate this according to prevailing academic ground rules is simple enough but time consuming, and would take us too far from Egypt. The reader interested in pursuing the subject is referred to the Bibliography.* (Bl, 3, 9, C 11.)
Modern society is what it is, not because the masses are uneducated, but precisely because of the understanding, beliefs and goals of our leaders — not politicians, but scientists, educators and intellectuals — all of whom are highly educated. Society is shaped by those who control its head and heart. Real physical needs are easily satisfied. It is our desires and beliefs that make the world what it is. Darwin wields a greater influence than Stalin. The world is what it is because of progress, not in spite of it. Progress is neither a corollary of civilization nor vice versa. ‘Civilization’, like ‘love’ or ‘freedom’, is a word that means something different to everyone. By ‘civilization’ I mean a society organized upon the conviction that mankind is on earth for a purpose. In a civilization, men are concerned with the quality of the inner life rather than with the conditions of day to day existence. Though there is no commanding logical or rational reason why ‘concern with quality’ should depend upon ‘sense of purpose’, human nature is such that without the sense of purpose, it is in practice impossible to maintain that essential unwavering concern — a concern which involves the personal determination to master greed, ambition, envy, jealousy, avarice and so on, all those aspects of ourselves that make the world what it is.
History is there to bear grim witness: even with the sense of purpose man usually fails; without it there is no compelling reason why he should even try. In a true civilization, men try and succeed. ‘Progress’ is a parody of civilization, understood in this sense. Knowledge is a parody of understanding. Information is a parody of knowledge. We live in an age of information, and if we swallow whole the bait of modern education, the thought, art and literature of civilized men is, to us, incomprehensible. Egypt was a civilization, and the academic Egyptologist stands helpless in the face of its accomplishment. It is for this reason that, in all our schools, we are presented with an obvious paradox. We are taught that the ancient Egyptians were a people capable of producing artistic and architectural masterpieces unequalled in recorded history, yet that at the same time they were priestbound necrophiles, an intellectually infantile race obsessed with purely materialistic concerns for a mythical hereafter; a people slavishly worshipping a grotesque pantheon of animal-headed gods; a people devoid of real mathematics, science, astronomy or medicine, and devoid of any desire to acquire such knowledge; a people so conservative, so opposed to change, that their artistic, political, social and religious institutions remained rigid for four millennia. Philippe Derchain Mythes et Dieux Lunaires en Egypte: La Lune, Mythes, et Rites Source Orientates, 1962, p. 28 It is also remarkable that the exact explanation of the light of the moon was almost found by the Egyptians: ‘Khonsu Io, light of the night, image of the left eye of Amon, rising in the Bahkt (East) while Aton (the Sun) is in the Ankhet (West). Thebes is flooded with their light, for the left eye receives the light of the right eye when they are reunited on the day when the two bulls meet.’ The only reservation to be made is that this short text appears to refer to the reflection of the solar light by the moon at the moment of opposition. Whatever it may be, the two latter citations show a clear scientific tendency in the modern sense of the word.
Banks have been some of the most powerful institutions in the world for over seven centuries.
But that dominance is now in danger of being replaced by new technology that grows at a far more rapid rate than banks can possibly match.
Seven years ago, central bankers from around the world coordinated policy moves to set interest rates at 0% (or even negative) and conjure trillions of dollars, yen, renminbi, euros, etc. out of thin air.
Around the same time, digital payments technology known as Bitcoin was invented.
Bitcoin represented a very 21st century way to hold savings outside of the conventional financial system, like a digital form of gold.
Since then, the technology has become much more widely adopted, spawning brand new thinking and a digital revolution in finance.
Technology now makes it possible to completely eliminate banks as a financial intermediary—a highly centralized middleman standing in the way between you and your money.
So-called “fintech” or financial technology startup companies are leading this trend.
You can now send and receive funds, transfer money internationally, exchange foreign currencies, borrow money, and invest your savings, better, faster, and cheaper than ever before, and all without using a bank.
About six weeks ago, Fintech companies Zazoo and BitX joined forces to create a new product allowing consumers to load virtual prepaid credit cards with cryptocurrency (like bitcoin), and use the cards to by products online.
This technology essentially creates a bridge between the old financial system and the new financial system, suggesting very clearly that the financial revolution is underway.
WHAT JIHAD IS
- The Arabic word “jihad” is often translated as “holy war,” but in a purely linguistic sense, the word ” jihad” means struggling or striving.
- The arabic word for war is: “al-harb”.
- In a religious sense, as described by the Quran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (s), “jihad” has many meanings. It can refer to internal as well as external efforts to be a good Muslims or believer, as well as working to inform people about the faith of Islam.
- If military jihad is required to protect the faith against others, it can be performed using anything from legal, diplomatic and economic to political means. If there is no peaceful alternative, Islam also allows the use of force, but there are strict rules of engagement. Innocents – such as women, children, or invalids – must never be harmed, and any peaceful overtures from the enemy must be accepted.
- Military action is therefore only one means of jihad, and is very rare. To highlight this point, the Prophet Mohammed told his followers returning from a military campaign: “This day we have returned from the minor jihad to the major jihad,” which he said meant returning from armed battle to the peaceful battle for self-control and betterment.
- In case military action appears necessary, not everyone can declare jihad. The religious military campaign has to be declared by a proper authority, advised by scholars, who say the religion and people are under threat and violence is imperative to defend them. The concept of “just war” is very important.
- The concept of jihad has been hijacked by many political and religious groups over the ages in a bid to justify various forms of violence. In most cases, Islamic splinter groups invoked jihad to fight against the established Islamic order. Scholars say this misuse of jihad contradicts Islam.
- Examples of sanctioned military jihad include the Muslims’ defensive battles against the Crusaders in medieval times, and before that some responses by Muslims against Byzantine and Persian attacks during the period of the early Islamic conquests.
WHAT JIHAD IS NOT
- Jihad is not a violent concept.
- Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions. It is worth noting that the Koran specifically refers to Jews and Christians as “people of the book” who should be protected and respected. All three faiths worship the same God. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and is used by Christian Arabs as well as Muslims.
- Military action in the name of Islam has not been common in the history of Islam. Scholars says most calls for violent jihad are not sanctioned by Islam.
- Warfare in the name of God is not unique to Islam. Other faiths throughout the world have waged wars with religious justifications