Genesis of EdenThis narration of the myth of Isis is in memory
of Joseph Campbell
who said it so well in the Masks of God.
Isis is the archetype of the divine mother. It is in Isis's shadow form the Church portrayed the image of the Virgin Mary with child. This is admitted as much by implication in 2 Peter 1:16 "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." It is also conceded that significant elements of the Christian mass are derived from the Isis tradition.
Mary continues to be the throne of the Lord just as she did in
ancient Egypt.
The myth of Isis contains all the same elements of tragic loss of her son to the sacrificial round of the young fertility hero who is in a sense at once bridegroom, king, lover and son, in the endless cycle of rebirth of fertility associated with the ebb and flow of the river Nile. Indeed it is to the river that we see Ositis, who represent the cut grain is committed.
At a great gathering of the deities, Set, Osiris's counterpoint,
representing the hot lean season produces a beautiful sarcophagus
and offers to give it to whosoever it will fit.
Of course it has been designed to accomodate Osiris perfectly.
As soon as Osiris enters it, a party of retainers clap it shut
and bear it in great haste to the Nile where they cast it off.
Osiris passes out to sea and reaches the shores of Byblus, after
whose tradition of phonetic papyrus writing the Bible is named,
where the sarcophagus becomes a beautiful scented tree.
The King of Byblus cut the treee down and takes it to form a pillar
in his palace.
Osiris remains a spirit trapped within its confines.
Isis journeys to Byblus and finds the pillar. To be near her beloved she poses and a wet nurse and is given the baby prince to suckle. To give him immortality she passes him through the fire. Woven in here in some sense are the fires of Tophet reviled as infant sacrifice in the Bible.
However she is interrupted by the queen reacting in fright interrupting
the process.
She flies up as a bird revealing her true nature.
She entreaties the king and queen to release her consort from
the pillar.
Her wish is granted. As she journeys back over the ocen she mates
with the lifeless form of Osiris just as Kali-ma mates with the
lifeless
Shivai becoming pregnant to his lingering seed.
Here she finally sits again by the sacred river bank nursing the
child Horus in her arms,
the new fertility Christ.