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 ISIS
Isis [IS] was an Egyptian Throne Goddess dating
back to the 5th dynasty.
Her name literally means the feminine aspect of the throne - also the
Queen of the throne. However, the hieroglyph for her name used
originally meant (female) of flesh, i.e. mortal, and she may simply
have represented deified Earthly queens of the World. She
was most prominently remembered as the wife of Horus, or, in later
periods, as the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, and was worshiped
as the archetypal wife and mother.
Isis is the feminine archetype for creation - the goddess of fertility
and motherhood. She has gone by many names, such as the 'virgin' Mary,
and played many roles in
history and mythology -as goddess, virgin, and female creator of
life.
Isis
represents the feminine aspects of life - male and female alike, for
she represents creation, rebirth, reincarnation, Ascension,
intuition, psychic abilities, higher frequency vibrations, love and
compassion. In other words, she represents nature and all that
is natural of our existence.
She is the mother nurturer - the High Priestess - the Goddess of
creation, and perhaps representing Eve, the first woman and
mother of all.
Isis became prominent late
in Egyptian history when it
began
to absorb the cults of many other goddesses. It eventually spread
outside Egypt throughout the Middle East and Europe, with temples to
her built as far away as the British Isles. Remnants of her worshipers
remained in Christian Europe as late as the 6th century, when at that
time, her memory was honored as the virgin mother of the Chrisitan god,
Jesus. [At right is a photo taken of Betty Rhodes dressed as Isis
for an Egyptian theme play in 1978.]
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 RA
Ra (sometimes spelled Rê) is the sun-god of
Heliopolis in ancient Egypt. Ra originally meant "mouth" in the
Egyptian language, and was a reference to his creation of the deities
of the Ogdoad system, excluding the 8 concepts which created him, by
the power of speech (compare how Yahweh was said to have created the
world). In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra was subsumed into the god
Horus, as Re-Horakhty (and many variant spellings).
The Eye of Ra,
or the Right Eye of Horus
The
sun is either the entire body of Ra, or just his eye. The symbols of Ra
are the solar symbols of a golden disk or the symbol ⊙ (circle with a
point at its centre). He was also associated with the Phoenix, as he
rose again each morning in flames.
The Eye of RA
was a symbol that signified royal power,
yet on the numeration side denoted a decimal system where round off was
set to the first 6-terms. The ancients believed this symbol of
indestructibility would assist in rebirth, due to their beliefs about
the soul. The more recent tradition of freemasonry adopted the symbol
in the form of the Eye of Providence and as such it has survived to
this day, and appears as the Eye of Providence on the recto of the
Great Seal of the United States. The Eye of Horus (flanked by Nekhbet
and Wadjet) was found under the 12th layer of bandages on Tutankhamun's
mummy.
Horus
was an ancient god in Egyptian mythology who dramatically evolved over
the whole of Egyptian history. Early on, he became identified as a sky
god, where one of his eyes was the sun,
and the other the moon. His weaker eye later became less important in
his mythology, and he became more strongly aligned with the sun,
particularly when the cult of Thoth, a moon
god, arose. As the sun, or rather, with his eye as the sun, his eye had
a special meaning, and became a symbol of power when combined with the
hieratic aspects of the subject. Originally, Ra held this
position, but as Horus gradually became more important, he transformed
into a sun god, so Horus became thought of as Ra, or rather Ra-Herakhty
("Ra, who is Horus of the two horizons"). Later Horus-Eye numeration
decreased in importance in Egyptian life, with hieratic, demotic and
later improvements in Egyptian arithmetic solving the oldest Horus-Eye
problem. The oldest Horus-Eye problem was to write any number, like one
(1), exactly, without throwing away any piece of the number.
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 EL [depiction at
left is of Enlil and Ninlil]
Ellil
by Micha F. Lindemans
"The
Akkadian god of earth and wind. He is the son of Ansar and Kisar, the
primordial deities, and the father of the moon god Sin. Together with
Ea and Anu
he forms a powerful triad of gods in the ancient Mesopotamian religion.
He is represented wearing a headband which is decorated with horns. He
is equivalent to the Sumerian god Enlil."
Enlil
by Micha F. Lindemans
"In ancient Sumero-Babylonian myth, Enlil ("lord wind") is the god of
air, wind and storms. Enlil is the foremost god of the Mesopotamian
pantheon, and is sometimes referred to as Kur-Gal ("great mountain").
In the Sumerian cosmology he was born of the union of An heaven and Ki
earth. These he separated, and he carried off the earth as his portion.
In later times he supplanted Anu as chief god. His consort is Ninlil
with whom he has five children: Nanna, Nerigal, Ningirsu, Ninurta, and
Nisaba.
Enlil holds possession of
the Tablets of Destiny which gives him power
over the entire cosmos and the affairs of man. He is sometimes friendly
towards mankind, but can also be a stern and even cruel god who
punishes man and sends forth disasters, such as the great Flood which
wiped out humanity with the exception of Atrahasis. Enlil is portrayed
wearing a crown with horns, symbol of his power. His most prestigious
temple was in the city Nippur, and he was the patron of that city. His
equivalent is the Akkadian god Ellil."
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