ISIS/AS/ASET/ESET/TAIt---Egypt---Supreme Egyptian goddess; Moon goddess; Great Mother; Great Goddess; Giver of Life.

Isis and Osiris

Mysteries,THE PAINTINGS OF SUSAN SEDDON BOULET, May 11-17, 1997
Catalog No. 98154. Published by Pomegranate Calendars & Books, California, 1997
Susan Seddon Boulet Quotations compiled by Michael Babcock

	In ancient Egypt Isis was among the oldest of goddesses, the mother and giver of all life. A moon goddess, she gives birth to the sun, creates and sustains all life, and is the savior of all people. Some of her many names include Star of the Sea, Lady of the Beginning, Queen of Heaven, and Mother of God. The teacher of agriculture, she is also the goddess of medicine and wisdom. The hieroglyph for her name is a throne because she is the throne from which the king arose or was born. Osiris was her brother and husband. When Osiris was murdered by his brother Set Isis searched for him. Finding him, she revived him and conceived their son, Horus. When Set again took Osiris and scattered his body in fourteen pieces, Isis hunted down each piece, . . . in order to give them a proper burial. Isis is the universal goddess, representing total femininity. She can overcome death itself yet she is not above grief one of her tears, wept when Osiris was dying, caused the Nile River to flood. A wonderful image of the ability of the goddess to give and to restore life, she underscores the depths of emotion that even a goddess must feel.

In ancient Egypt Isis was among the oldest of goddesses, the mother and giver of all life. A moon goddess, she gives birth to the sun, creates and sustains all life, and is the savior of all people. Some of her many names include Star of the Sea, Lady of the Beginning, Queen of Heaven, and Mother of God. The teacher of agriculture, she is also the goddess of medicine and wisdom. The hieroglyph for her name is a throne because she is the throne from which the king arose or was born.

Osiris was her brother and husband. When Osiris was murdered by his brother Set Isis searched for him. Finding him, she revived him and conceived their son, Horus. When Set again took Osiris and scattered his body in fourteen pieces, Isis hunted down each piece, . . . in order to give them a proper burial.

Isis is the universal goddess, representing total femininity. She can overcome death itself yet she is not above grief one of her tears, wept when Osiris was dying, caused the Nile River to flood. A wonderful image of the ability of the goddess to give and to restore life, she underscores the depths of emotion that even a goddess must feel.

Isis
Conway, D. J. The ANCIENT & SHINING ONES. St. Paul, Minnesota, Llewellyn Publications, 1993, 119
ISIS/AS/ASET/ESET/TAIt---Egypt---Supreme Egyptian goddess; Moon goddess; Great Mother; Great Goddess; Giver of Life. As Tait, Isis was the weaver and knotter of the threads of the Tat. She was pictured with dark hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. Identified with DEMETER, HERA, and SELENE. With OSIRIS, Isis (the mother) and HORUS (the divine child) made up the Holy Trinity. Legend says Isis was born in the swamps of the Delta. North of Busiris at Perchbet , there was a renowned temple of Isis. Great festivals in the spring and autumn honored her with splendid processions, along with a June festival called the Night of the Teardrop.* Priestesses of Isis were said to control the weather by braiding or releasing their hair. ISIS-HATHOR was believed to bind or loose the lives of humans with the Tat (Knot of Fate);
from her came the art of making and blowing on magick knots. Her priests were called the mesniu (smiths) and worked with metals. As with many ancient cultures, these priest-smiths were said to receive their magick from secret connections with the Goddess and the female forces of Nature. The cow was sacred to her, as were the magick Buckle of Isis and the sistrum. Her sistrum was carved with a cat image that represented the Moon. Sometimes she was portrayed with protecting winged arms. Isis helped her brother-husband teach Egyptians to grind corn, spin flax, weave cloth, and cure disease. As High Priestess, she was a powerful magician. Goddess of marriage and domestic life, the Moon, mother-hood, fertility, magick, purification, initiation, reincarnation, success, woman-hood, healing, spinning, weaving, advice, divination, civilization, agriculture, the arts, protection, advice. The patron of priestesses.
*This festival has been preserved by the Arabs as their June festival Lelat al-Nuktah, which means Night of the Teardrop. See Walker, Barbara. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.

The Great Goddess
Parrinder, Geoffrey, ed. World Religions From Ancient History to the Present. New York: Facts On File Publications, 1983
The great goddess Ishtar gradually absorbed the functions of many earlier deities and her name became a synomn for goddess, while she herself was patroness of war and love. As goddess of love in popular worship she was adored throughout the land under various aspeccts.
From Nineveh, her main temple, her worship spread to the west where this goddess of love and fertility was known as Ishtar of Erbil. She was concidered the Queen of Heaven and attracted Judean women (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:19), Syrians as Anat, Arabs as Atar, Greeks as Astarte and Egyptians as Isis.

Queen Isis
Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. amended and enlarged edition. New York: The Noonday Press Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1966, 25th printing 1991, 72 - 73
"Behold, Lucius, I am come; thy weeping and prayer hath moved me to succour thee. I am she that is natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers divine, queen of all that are in Hell, the principal of them that dwell in Heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all gods and goddesses. At my will the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the seas, and the lamentable silences of hell be disposed; in variable customs, and by many names. For the Phrygians that are the first of all men call me the Mother of the Gods at Pessinus; the Athenians, which are spring from their own soil, Cecropian Minerva; the Cyprians, which are grit about the sea, Paphian Venus; the Cretans which bear arrows, Dictynnian Diana; the Sicilians, which speak three tongues, Infernal Proserpine; the Eleusinians, their ancient goddess Ceres; some Juno, others Bellona, other Hecate, other Rhamnusia, and principally both sort of the Ethiopians which dwell in the Orient and are enlightened by the morning rays of the sun, and the Egyptians, which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine and by their proper ceremonies accustom to worship me, do call me by my true name, Queen Isis. Behold, I am come to take pity of thy fortune and tribulation; behold I am present to favour and aid thee; leave off thy weeping and lamentation, put away all thy sorrow, for behold the healthful day which is ordained by my providence."

Isis
Source: Susan Seddon Boulet; The Goddess Paintings
Isis is the mother-goddess, source of life and inventor of agriculture and the sail. The goddess rises every year with the appearance of the star Sirius, which heralds the flooding of the Nile and the return of the earth's fertility.
Isis's husband and brother, Osiris, murdered by his brother Seth, was cast adrift on the river. Isis set out to find him. When at last she did, she carried him to a sacred site. There, sheltered in the great wings of the Nepthys, Isis breathed life into the body of Osiris and conceived her child, the falcon-headed god Horus.
As the mother of the sun, Isis wears the horns of Hathor, the sacred cow, with the mirrored sun disc between them. She is the mother, sister and wife, the bringer of light and life.

Isis and Oiris

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