Isis and Osiris III: Theogony

[sdi]

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Why do we read books from beginning to end, anyway? The real world doesn't happen linearly, however we like to pretend it does: sometimes, many things happen at once; sometimes, things that happen before only make sense in light of things that happen later; sometimes, it is more useful or entertaining to pause the story for an aside. (You all know how much I adore footnotes by now, yes?) Sometimes I wonder if we read them from beginning to end just so we don't lose our place: a lot of bookmarks get unwieldy pretty quickly.

So, after spending a lot of time with Isis and Osiris, it seems to me that the best way to approach it is not from beginning to end, but rather thematically. Plutarch presents it as a narrative, but as Sallustius tells us, myths never happened but always are; we're not speaking of a sequence of events, but of eternal principles. So I will jumping around the narrative a bit as we dig in, in order to tease apart the various threads in the hope that we might follow them more easily. Today, I will be focusing on the gods presented in the myth. Who are they? What are we to learn from them?

As we embark on exploring this myth, I must hasten to remind you that my goal is not factual correctness: I am not an Egyptologist, don't believe the actual beliefs and worldviews of the ancient Egyptians are accessible to us moderns at all, and don't believe they would much avail us even if they were. The goal for all souls is to develop meaning within their own unique context: when a Zen master asks a student, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" there is no correct answer; the goal is for the student to "hear" the unique sound within their own unique soul. Such a sound, being specific to the hearer alone, cannot be communicated; but if the master is worth his salt, then he will recognize when the student has heard whatever it is.

Because of all this, I am purposefully trying to limit myself to studying the myth itself in isolation, and not draw in the larger context of Egyptian religion. (For example, I am trying to base my understanding of Isis strictly on her characterization within the myth itself, ignoring all of the academic and esoteric discussion of her over the last few centuries.) It is possible—indeed, likely?—that in so limiting myself, I draw further away from the bigger picture and walk down a blind alley which is entirely valid within the context of the myth and entirely invalid within a larger context. That is fine: my project is to try and hear the unique resonance of the myth within myself, not to uncover whatever it may have meant either to the Egyptians or to Plutarch. So please do not treat my assessments as correct or incorrect, for we are trying to journey to that place which is beyond such judgements. I merely hope that my endeavors are pleasing to Divinity and, perhaps, helpful to you in your own seeking.

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1. [§12] Heaven [Kronos=Nut] and Earth [Rhea=Geb] continually have intercourse.

The myth begins with a theogony [θεο-γονία, "birth of the gods"], describing several "generations" of gods. There were several theogonies present in Egypt throughout the millennia, and this one comes from Heliopolis [Ἡλιούπολις, "city of the Sun"]. We've dug up a fair amount of information about the city's cult and evidently the geneology goes back some generations further (looking suspiciously like Plotinus's theogony), but Plutarch has elected to begin our myth with Heaven and Earth. Why?

I think what is going on is, just as Plato's Athenian stranger discusses in the Epinomis, that astrology is the beginning of wisdom. Beginning here emphasizes two related points: first, that this is ultimately an astrological myth, describing phenomena which can be seen to occur in the heavens; second, that Heaven and Earth are intimately connected, that the things we see in the heavens aren't merely pretty to look at, but are reflected here on earth. "As above, so below:" we can learn about ourselves through careful observation of the heavens, and just like Ariadne gives Theseus the clew to navigate the labyrinth, the myth exists to provide hints or keys as to how to discover the answers to those Big Questions which haunt and devour men.

We know that by the time they reached Greece, the mysteries had come to be seen as a means of salvation in and of themselves, but I think this is a perversion: the Minotaur wasn't, after all, slain by Ariadne. The mysteries can't save you: they can only teach you how to save yourself, and the means of that salvation will (and must) vary for each individual: Theseus had his sword, Orpheus his lyre, etc. That is to say, just as you need a key to unpack the myth, the unpacked myth is, itself, merely your own personal key to a greater myth: the world itself.

2. The Sun [Helios] sees them and curses Heaven to be unable to give birth during any month of the year.

3. Thoth [Hermes] takes pity on Heaven and takes a seventieth part of the Moon's [Selene's] light and fashions it into five intercalary days which he adds to the year, allowing Heaven to circumvent the curse.

Of course it is silly to think that the Sun is jealous or scandalized by Heaven and Earth's constant intercourse. The Sun's "curse" is that he illuminates the earth at the expense of heaven, which is what allows us to live a material life at all; but, if we wish to go beyond this and pursue the spiritual life and the awareness of the gods, then our work of observing Heaven must circumvent this.

I think the references to the Sun, Moon, and five extra days of the year give us a hint as to how. Because the solar year isn't an even multiple of the lunar month, the lunar calendar rapidly drifts away from solar calendar, making it difficult to make use of the month for timekeeping. This problem can be fixed with intercalation, but how do you know when to insert extra days or months? The simplest solution is to track the heliacal rising and setting of stars: that is, which stars appear on the horizon just before the Sun rises, or just after the Sun sets. (The dates on which various stars rise or set change over time, too, but only very slowly and so are much less of a problem.) So, if you fix the start of your year to a particular star's heliacal rising, simply adding extra days or months at the end of the year until you see it rise again, then your lunar and solar calendars will always stay synchronized. (And this is just what the Egyptians did with Sirius, the "dog star." woof woof)

So the Sun's "curse," the day, is the material life; and the night is the spiritual life. But the spiritual life is too remote, too detached to understand directly: the mechanics of the heavens and the life of the gods are too complex for us to comprehend without some contrivance. We need to use the twilight carefully if we wish to make an approach, and as we shall see this is shown in detailed observation and record-keeping, which is why it is Thoth who breaks the curse.

4. On the first day, Heaven gives birth to Osiris.

6. [Skipping ahead,] on the third day, Set [Typhon] bursts out of Heaven's side.

7. On the fourth day, Heaven gives birth to Isis, wife of Osiris.

8. On the fifth day, Heaven gives birth to Nephthys, wife of Set.

Here, we have our second generation of gods. But who are they? What does it mean for them to be the children of Heaven and Earth?

I think the marriages are the key to unlocking this section. Marriages describe polarizations: the spouses represent the two complementary halves of a greater whole. In the example we've seen already, Heaven and Earth are the two halves of the Cosmos: Heaven contains stars which remain ever the same, while Earth contains bodies which are always changing. So I think Heaven and Earth represent the axis of animation: Heaven is the negative ("female") pole of stasis, while Earth is the positive ("male") pole of animation.

Because Heaven is static, she can't change: her "giving birth" isn't a thing that happens, but rather refers to an ontological relationship. Therefore, we may suppose that the children of Heaven and Earth should be intermediate between the two, possessing some characteristics of eternal stars and other characteristics of mortal bodies. Obviously, these must be the planets, which look like stars but move; but they remain eternal, since their motions are repetitive and orderly, rather than the irreversible, chaotic motions of earthly bodies. These characteristics are enough to sketch a realm in between Heaven and Earth where such beings live: this is Duat, the astral world.

As I have said above, heliacal rising and setting is crucial to identifying the gods. (It is noteworthy that Duat is related to the word duau, "dawn.") We also have the hint that Osiris and Isis, and Set and Nephthys, are married. These both seem to point to Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys being, collectively, the planets Mercury and Venus, since these planets can only be seen at dawn and dusk, and each has a morning star and evening star aspect. Can we identify them more closely?

Osiris is easy: as the firstborn and king of the intermediate world, he must be Venus, the brightest star in the sky; and as the gentle bringer of civilization, he must be associated with beginnings, and thus a morning star. Since he is married to Isis, she must be Venus as an evening star, and this fits with her mythic characterisation of grieving and killing (which are both associated with endings), and also explains why Osiris and Isis are said in the myth to alternate ruling Egypt (since only one of them can be in the sky at a time).

Set and Nephthys, then, are the planet Mercury. Set, being associated with destruction and sterility (as he has no children), must be an evening star; Nephthys, who gives birth and is more beneficent than Set, should be a morning star. Set bursts from his mother's side in imitation of a viper as a metaphor for his treacherous character. It is appropriate for Isis and Set to both be evening stars, as we are told that Set can't cause mischief while Isis is keeping an eye on him, and this occurs when both planets are in the sky in the evening. Similarly, Osiris and Nephthys have liasons, which can occur when both planets are in the sky in the morning.

While we can see these planets in the sky on nearly any clear day, their behavior only becomes clear if we carefully track their positions over years (which is why it is Thoth, above, who "allows" them to "be born"). We see that, while they exist in Duat, they frequently descend as if to visit Earth. We see that Osiris and Isis, and Set and Nephthys, are linked: that their appearance is the same, and that only one is present while the other is absent. We see that Osiris and Isis travel at a measured and stately pace, while Set and Nephthys move much more frenetically.

5. [Skipping back,] on the second day, Heaven gives birth to Horus the Elder, who was born to Isis and Osiris in Nut's womb.

16. [§14. After Osiris dies, grieving Isis wanders in search of his body and] meets Nephthys. Seeing a token of sweet yellow clover belonging to Osiris on her, Isis discovers that Osiris had accidentally slept with her, believing her to be Isis; Nephthys bore a child by him and exposed it in fear of discovery by Set.

17. Isis searches for the baby. Dogs lead her to it and she raises the baby, Anubis, to be her guardian and attendant.

45. [§19. After Osiris is resurrected, he] and Isis conceive Horus the Younger, but he is born premature and lame.

And here, we have our third generation of gods. Given the associations I gave to their parents, I think the case can easily be made that these three are the outer planets, for a few reasons:

• First, as children of beings in Duat, these three must also be present in Duat, and there are exactly three more planets present there.

• Second, when their motions are tracked relative to the Sun (e.g. at heliacal rising or setting), these planets exhibit a very different sort of motion than the inner planets do: rather than meander around exclusively in the morning or evening, they travel in something of a straight line; rising in the morning, shooting across the sky, and setting in the evening. In a sense, they seem much more "purpose-driven" or "single-minded" than the inner planets; so it is reasonable to consider them somehow different or lesser than them, and I think this is done by making them a separate "generation."

• Third, rather than "disappearing" for significant stretches of time, the outer planets are always somewhere in the sky, except for those weeks where they are conjunct the Sun itself.

Identifying which planet is which god is more difficult than it was with their parents, since of the three, only Horus the Elder is given any significant characterization in the myth. Nevertheless, let's hazard it.

Horus the Elder is Jupiter. He is the child of Osiris and Isis because Jupiter is very close in general color and appearance to Venus, being only slightly dimmer. He is born after Osiris and before Set, Isis, and Nephthys because Jupiter is the second-brightest star in the sky. He is conceived "in the womb of Nut" because Isis and Osiris are never together in the sky, so they must have been together when neither is in the sky (e.g. when Venus is conjunct by the Sun). When his motion is tracked over time, he seems to be born, converse with Osiris in the east, and then race across the battlefields of the sky in order to attack Set in the west, which is just what we see him do in the myth.

Anubis (woof woof) is Saturn. He is the child of Nephthys because his appearance is like Mercury, being very swift, grayish or brownish, and dim. We see him fly from Nephthys in the morning (being her child) across the sky to Isis in the evening (being her attendant).

Horus the Younger is Mars. Mars is unusual compared to the other planets: he is red in color, variably bright (he is as bright as Jupiter at best, but the dimmest planet on average), and when viewed relative to the Sun seems to creep very slowly across the sky. We are told nothing of Horus the Younger except that he is lame and sickly, and I think these characteristics of Mars are why.

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Let us step back and look at this section of the myth as a whole. What does all this mean to us? Why does identifying the gods in the sky matter? Well, Heaven and Earth are married, and so the great lives of these children of Heaven and Earth are linked to our small lives: their endlessly-repeating dance in Duat is reflected, so far as is possible, in us. The myth is a key, a hint to understanding what we see in the sky, and what we understand from it can tell us something about ourselves. For example, just as the denizens of Duat are the children of two worlds, so too are we; and just as they descend to Earth for a time and then return above to Duat, so too do we...

But, exploring such things in detail will need to wait until next time. In the meanwhile, some comments on this section:

It is not essential to the myth, but I found it surprising that my bilingual edition of Isis and Osiris capitalizes Helios [Ἥλιος], but does not capitalize Selene [σελήνη], as if only the former is a proper noun! (What punks!) This would not be a distinction of Plutarch's, since lower-case letters were only invented some eight centuries after he died, so my complaint must lie with some scribe or scholar. In any case, I've capitalized the Moon in my summary out of respect to she of the long wings and lovely hair...

I have mentioned in the past that I think the Isis and Osiris myth really got around the Mediterranean. I had only been talking about underworld mysteries, but in studying this part of the myth, I think the associations are far more widespread than I had thought:

• Reading this myth, it is very hard not to see a reflection of it in Hesiod's myth of Kronos and Rhea in the Theogony (ll. 453 ff.): after all, Kronos has five children in his belly, which are prevented from coming out of it, and are only finally released through the aid of Metis [Μῆτις, "skill"]. For centuries, the Greek philosophers underwent many contortions to contrive how Kronos, most wise king of the Golden Age, could be so wretched as to eat his own children (eventually culminating in Plotinus' self-contemplating Intellect); how ironic if it were all merely because, when the Egyptian myth reached Greece, the nearest local analog to Nut was masculine?

• Nobody knows where the name "Apollo" comes from. Now, I'm no linguist, but I conjecture that Apollo is none other than Heru-ur, Horus the Elder, transliterated through at least a couple Mediterranean languages. Not only do they share the myth of slaying a serpent who was chasing a fertility goddess, but both gods are the special shepherd of humanity (Horus taking over this role from Osiris), and both are associated with similar domains (like war, protection, and healing).

• Similarly, nobody knows where the name "Hephaistos" comes from, but I conjecture that Hephaistos is none other than Heru-pa-khered, Horus the Younger, transliterated through at least a couple Mediterranean languages. (Certainly, "Hephaistos" is no worse a transliteration than "Harpokrates!") Horus is given very little characterization in the myth; but both gods are born lame; and determined, cold Mars is certainly the appropriate planet for all-work-and-no-play Hephaistos...