ISIS MOON TEMPLE
HOLY HIGH ALTAR OF ASET
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By far the most potent snake form of Aset is when She is known as Isis-Thermouthis or Isis-Renenutet. This Cobra Goddess form is a guardian of the Pharaoh and also a guardian of the granaries and fields. Renenutet is often depicted as a woman with a cobra's head. Renenutet is also considered to be part of the flame that protects the Pharoah, combining with Wadjet to accomplish this task. Her gaze is said to vanquish all enemies, clearly an observation based on the habits of the physical cobra, who seems to hypnotize its prey. However, this same intent emanation from Her eyes causes things to grow. She is believed to be part of the force encouraging the child in the womb to enter this world. She, like Aset, is a Fate Goddess, associated with the span of life and the fortune that comes with each life. Renenutet was mated with Sobek, one of the alternative husbands of Aset, and She is shown as a nursing mother, occasionally with a crocodile as the baby. The Greeks called Aset combined with Renutet "Isermouthis". In the Hymns of Isidorus, Aset is praised as Isis-Thermouthis. "Hail, Agathetyche, greatly renowned Isis, mightiest Hermouthis, in you every city rejoices; O Discoverer of Life and Cereal food wherein all mortals delight because of your blessing(s)..." Another hymn asks:
"Who built this holy temple to greatest Hermouthis? What god remembered the All-Holy One of the Immortals? He marked out the sacred shrine as a high Olympos.
For Deo highest, Isis Thesmophorus..." In fact, prior to her conjoining with Thermouthis, Aset was not often regarded as a cereal goddess, a goddess of grain. This identification was crucial to her later identification with Demeter, and her rite of the Thesmophoria.
The most prevalent snake form of Aset, however, appears when she is depicted with Sarapis. Both of them frequently have coiled lower bodies very reminiscent of the Chinese goddess Nu Kua and her consort, and this can be seen as a metaphor for the energy exchanged in sexual intercourse. The lower bodies are united; the upper bodies are free to ascend in the air, paired but still individual. At one temple, potential priestesses walked barefoot through a room filled with allegedly venomous snakes or scorpions. If their faith were strong, supposedly they would not be bitten. Or, perhaps, if their faith were strong they WOULD be bitten, and given an experience of the realms of death which is often mentioned in connection with initiation ordeals. In the Mensa Isiaca, an altar top made in Alexandria, Aset sits throned, surrouned by serpents with crowns.
Of course, serpents are often given phallic meanings, often to the obscurance of their other interpretations. It is interesting, however, that of the two objects that Aset is commonly associated with making out of clay, one is a phallus, and one is a serpent. In one perspective, the drooling, staggering, impotent god form of Ra is brought back into harmony with the universe through the intervention of the serpent that bites Him. Though it is not at all clear in the myth if Aset completely heals Ra -though She might, once She has the word - is possible that here, too, She has in essence replaced His phallus by the snake and re-potentized Him. She has gone into His body and searched out the word, as one source puts it, reversing the usual order of things.
So far as can be make out, the serpent-symbol does not indicate a direct phallic reference, nor is its attribute of wisdom the most essential. The idea most intimately associated with these animals was that of life, not present merely, but continued, and probably everlasting. Thus the snake Bai was figured as Guardian of the doorways of the Egyptian Tombs which represented the mansions of heaven. A sacred serpent would seem to have been kept in all the Egyptian temples, and we are told that many of the subjects, in the tombs of the kings at Thebes in particular, show the importance it was thought to enjoy in a future state. Crowns, formed of the Asp or sacred Thermuthis, were given to sovereigns and divinities, particularly to Aset, and these no doubt were intended to symbolize Eternal Life. Aset was Goddess of Life and Healing and the serpent evidently belonged to Her in that character, seeing that it was the symbol also of other deities with like attributes. Thus, on papyri, it encircles the figure of Harpocrates, who was identified with Asclepius, while not only was a great serpent kept alive in the great temple of Serapis, but on later monuments this God is represented by a great serpent with or without a human head. It has also been pointed out that the good serpent of Egyptian Legend is always represented as upright, while the evil serpent is shown crawling, and this is usually the only distinction made. The Moon Goddess Aset being the feminine counterpart of Asar, we must expect to find the mysteries of Her worship equally entwined with Ophiolatry. According to Montfaucon, the Isaic table, which described these Mysteries, was pictured with serpents in every part as emblems of the Goddess. The particular serpent most pictured was the Asp, so famous as the instrument of Cleopatra's suicide. This reptile is said to be identified with the horned viper of genus Cerastes, a snake about fifteen inches long, said by Herodotus to have been common near Thebes. In the British Museum there is a head of Aset wearing a coronet of them. It is painted or carved upon the tiaras of Kings, the priestly robes, and the image of the Goddess, and it was the chief symbol displayed upon the Sphinxes. In olden days the living reptiles were housed in Aset's Temple, and sanctified the offerings of her worshippers by crawling over and around them. Montfaucon also describes an engraved plate of gold which was found in an old wall at Malta in 1694. This plate was rolled up in a golden casket ; it consists of two long rows which contain a very great number of Egyptian deities, most of which have the head of some beast or bird. Many serpents are also seen intermixed, the arms and legs of the gods terminating in serpent's tails. The first figure has a upon its back a long shell with a serpent upon it; in each row there is a serpent extended upon an altar. Among the figures of the second row there is seen Aset of tolerably good form. This same plate contains the most profound mysteries of the Egyptian Legend. Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Knoum and Kneph, are all deities with the attributes of the serpent. They are all healers, givers of health, spiritual and physical, and of enlightenment. The crown formed of an asp, the Thermouthis, belongs to Aset, Goddess of Life and Healing. She was the invincible Queen, whose emblem is the Egyptian Cobra, the Uraeus.
