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In Isis and Osiris III, Plutarch exhorts his friend Clea, who has just recently become an initiate, to deprecate outward forms and instead cultivate the mysteries in her heart, because

it is a fact, Clea, that just like having a beard and wearing a coarse cloak does not make one a philosopher, neither does dressing in linen and shaving one's hair make one a votary of Isis; rather, the true votary of Isis is the one who, when they have legitimately received what is set forth in the ceremonies of these gods, uses reason in investigating and in studying the truth contained therein.

And this is exactly what makes the mystery cults so foreign of a religious sensibility to us, today: they didn't proselytize, they taught no dogma, and they enjoined silence upon their initiates, so that those initiates were forced to continually contemplate the symbols in their hearts and develop their own personal meaning from them. I think we've had ample lesson, measured in blood, of the dangers of dogma and the practical wisdom of this approach over the last millennium, but I think the real reason the Egyptian priests instituted this approach is that one only grows by making effort. The point of the mysteries isn't to cleverly find the right answer to a test; it is to continually push against them and thereby develop meaning within one's own soul. In that sense, it doesn't matter what one's understanding of the mysteries ends up being, so long as one is ever attempting to refine it.

Because of that, it was foolish of me to get sidetracked; however, it proved valuable nonetheless, since by going back to the beginning, I think I've found a more profitable avenue to explore. It is one that I hinted at previously, but actually taking the time to investigate it seriously has taught me a lot, and I will endeavor to communicate what I've learned as clearly as I can.

(But, of course, be warned that in doing so I may be robbing you of finding your own meaning by pursuing the course I've laid out! In studying and contemplating my way through the myth, I've been of two minds whether or not to post what I've learned: the gods of the mysteries castigated Numenius for revealing their secrets, but seem to have regarded Plotinus most highly for doing the same. In the end, for various reasons, I've opted to proceed; but please exercise judgement in reading on if you wish to follow the old paths for yourself! For whatever it's worth, though, I am in all of this only following antecedents of my own, and joining myself—as a very weak link indeed—in that golden chain which binds heaven and earth: if that extra couple inches puts it within reach of anyone, and it doesn't break when they grab ahold, then I consider it to have been worth the effort!)

The ancient Egyptians held a tradition that their priests looked at the heavens with awe and reverence, and through much study of them came to learn of the gods underlying the Sun and Moon, whom they called Osiris and Isis, respectively (Manetho, Epitome of Physical Doctrines; Diodorus, Library of History I xi; the correction "underlying" from Pseudo-Plutarch, Stromateis). Over time, the understanding of these gods deepened, and the priests wished to codify it so that it might better be passed on, and so they instituted the mysteries in order to do so while still making their students work for their understanding. These were either first or most successfully instituted at the great temple of Heliopolis (modern Cairo), but they soon spread throughout Egypt, Assyria, and the Mediterranean, evolving as they went (Pseudo-Lucian on the Syrian Goddess II).

A couple thousand years later, a youth from the island nation of Samos, named Pythagoras, was very devoted to learning and went to study under the greatest Greek mind of the time, Thales of Miletus. Thales taught him everything he could, but finding the youth unsatisfied, urged him to continue his studies in Egypt. Samos was an ally of the Black Land, so Pythagoras secured a letter of introduction from his king, Polycrates, and went to pharaoh Amasis II, asking to learn from their priests. The pharaoh assented and sent Pythagoras to the priests of Memphis; but they, neither wishing to disobey the pharaoh nor initiate a foreigner, passed him into the care of the priests of Thebes (modern Luxor); who in turn passed him into the care of the priests of Heliopolis; who, having nowhere else to send him, instead enjoined him with extreme austerities, hoping that he would become discouraged and leave. Pythagoras performed those austerities so readily, however, that he won their admiration and finally became an initiate. He eventually established a sort of guild, the Pythagorean brotherhood, which served as a vehicle for teaching Pythagoras's interpretation of the mysteries: while he almost certainly introduced innovations (especially regarding the use of numbers), on the whole it appears to have been fairly faithful, and maintained the strict code of secrecy that the mysteries demanded. (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris X; Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII i §3; Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras VII–VIII.)

A couple generations later, a youth from Acragas in Sicily (modern Agrigento), named Empedocles, was very devoted to learning and went to study under the Pythagoreans. He wrote a very famous poem, after which he was expelled from the brotherhood under the charge of revealing their mysteries in writing (Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII ii §2). Because of this, and because his poem, like the mysteries, concerns the descent and reascent of the soul, it seems that his poem was a more-or-less faithful discussion of them and that it is likely a fruitful place to look for keys to unpacking the mysteries.

Alas, scarcely a tenth of Empedocles's poem survives to our time, mere scraps and tatters quoted by ancient commentators. (There is perhaps no other single work from antiquity which I wish we possessed complete today!) But because we have so little of it, we will be forced to tread tentatively and consider what the ancient commentators say in order to attempt to sketch Empedocles's worldview.

After Plutarch recounts the myth of Isis and Osiris, he considers the myth from various angles and gives Clea different tools to try and reason about what it may mean. In the second of these considerations (XXV ff.) he explicitly relates the wandering of Isis to Empedocles's poem, quoting him concerning the exile of souls:

ἔστιν Ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν,
ἀΐδιον, πλατέεσι κατεσφρηγισμένον ὅρκοις·
εὖτε τις ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιήνῃ
[...] ἐπίορκον ἁμαρτήσας ἐπομώσει
δαίμονες οἵτε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο,
τρίς μιν μυρίας ὧρας ἀπὸ μακάρων ἀλάλησθαι,
φυόμενον παντοῖα διὰ χρόνου εἴδεα θνητῶν
ἀργαλέας βιότοιο μεταλλάσοντα κελεύθους.
Αἰθέριον μὲν γάρ σφε μένος Πόντονδε διώκει,
Πόντος δ' ἐς Χθονὸς οὖδας ἀπέπτυσε, Γαῖα δ' ἐς αὐγάς
Ἠελίου φαέθοντος, ὁ δ' Αἰθέρος ἔμβαλε δίνῃς·
ἄλλος δ' ἐξ ἄλλου δέχεται, στυγέουσι δὲ πάντες.
τῶν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἰμι, φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης,
Νείκεϊ μαινομένῳ πίσυνος. [...]

There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, eternal, sealed with broad oaths: if one of the daimons who are heir to long life stains his dear limbs with blood or perjures himself through his misdeeds, then he shall wander apart from the blessed for thrice ten thousand seasons, being born meantime in all sorts of mortal forms, changing one bitter path of life for another. For mighty Aither pursues him Seaward, and Sea spits him forth onto the threshold of Earth, and Earth casts him into the rays of the blazing Sun, and Sun into the eddies of Aither, each receiving him in turn, all hating him.

I, too, am now one of these: a fugitive from the gods and a wanderer, at the mercy of raging Strife.

Teaching the citizens of Akragas that we humans are exiled divinities and urging them on the path of return appears to be Empedocles's primary purpose in writing his poem. In support of this, he spends quite a bit of time on metaphysics, describing that there are exactly six primary divinities (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies VII xvii; Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics), four "roots" and two "forces" which cause those roots to combine and disperse in various ways to produce all we see around us, even all other gods:

τέσσαρα γὰρ πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε·
Ζεὺς ἀργὴς Ἥρη τε φερέσβιος ἠδ' Ἀιδωνεύς,
Νῆστις θ' ἣ δακρύοις τέγγει κρούνωμα βρότειον. [...]
ἐκ τῶν πάνθ' ὅσα τ' ἦν ὅσα τ' ἔστι καὶ ἔσται ὀπίσσω,
δέδρεά τ' ὲβλάστησε καὶ ἀνέρες ἠδὲ γυναῖκες,
θῆρές τ' οἰωνοί τε καὶ ὑδατοθρέμμονες ἰχθῦς,
καί τε θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες τιμῇσι φέριστοι. [...]
καὶ ταῦτ' ἀλλάσσοντα διαμπερὲς οὐδαμὰ λήγει,
ἄλλοτε μὲν Φιλότητι συνερχόμεν' εἰς ἓν ἅπαντα,
ἄλλοτε δ' αὖ δίχ' ἕκαστα φορεύμενα Νείκεος ἔχθει.

First, hear of the four roots of all things:
shining Zeus and life-giving Hera and Aidoneus
and Nestis, who wets the springs of mortals with her tears. [...]
From these all things were and are and will be:
sprouting trees and men and women,
beasts and birds and water-dwelling fish,
even long-living, most-exalted gods. [...]
And these never cease from constantly alternating,
at one time all coming together into one by Love,
and at another again all being borne apart by the hostility of Strife.

Most ancient commentators (following Plato and Aristotle) consider these in purely physical terms, hence the "classical elements" as we know them today. However, I think this is a mistake: Empedocles calls them first by the names of gods and only later refers to them by other names. (And in these he is not consistent: sometimes he calls Love, "Friendship," "Joy," "Harmony," or "Aphrodite;" Fire, "Light," "the Sun," or "Hephaestus;" etc. So he is certainly speaking of something beyond mere physical experience.) Every self-important smartass from ancient times to today (erm, including myself, oops) has their own opinion of how to associate the gods and the elements in order to fit their preconceptions, but the preponderance of ancient sources (e.g. Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII ii; Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies VII xvii; Stobaeus, Eclogues I x) tell us that Zeus is Fire; Hera, Earth; Aidoneus, Air; and Nestis, Water. Rather than continuing in my folly, I have endeavored to follow the tradition to see what it can teach me; while I initially found it confusing, in the end I think it makes good sense of Plutarch's myth.

Empedocles describes a process of the roots all, originally, being held together in a state of Love, but peeling off from each other, one at a time, under the influence of Strife. Hippolytus (Refutation of All Heresies I iii), in fact, describes that original Fire as the Pythagorean Monad, the original unity from which all arises from and returns to:

Empedocles came after [the Pythagoreans] and wrote a great deal about the nature of daimons too, how they dwell in and administer affairs all over the earth, being very numerous. He said that the principle of the universe is Strife and Love and that god is the intelligent Fire of the Monad and that all things are constructed from Fire and will be dissolved into Fire.

Thus, I think Empedocles's cosmology is, in fact, describing what the Pythagorean tetractys symbolizes: the step-by-step expansion of the cosmos from Fire to the physical world. Let's take a look at it for a moment.

In the past, I have used the tetractys to symbolize Plotinus's cosmology, but I think Empedocles's system is different: he has no conception of hypostases ("planes of being"), but rather all things (except the roots and forces) exist within the temporal cosmos, and are thus subject to the changes in that cosmos over time as Love and Strife give way to each other in turn. As far as I can tell, Empedocles never speaks of eternal things: he always calls gods and daimons δολιχαίωνες, "long-lived;" and this seems to me to match the Egyptian conception, since even the mighty Ra grew old and senile. Where Plotinus provides an ontological ordering of the One, the Intellect, Soul, and Nature, Empedocles calls his roots co-eval, and this too seems to match the Egyptian conception, since the Egyptian Bremner-Rhind papyrus says that the four gods come forth "in one birth." So because of all this, I think we are to see the rows of the tetractys as the unfolding of the cosmos in time rather than ontologically.

So, in the first row, all is joined in Love and there is only the Monad, the "intelligent Fire" in which all exists. In the second row, Strife has interposed herself a little bit and Fire has separated out from the other roots, producing the Dyad. (It is for this reason that Empedocles calls Fire "destructive Strife" (Plutarch on the Principle of Cold XVI), since it is the beginning of separation. Similarly, Plotinus calls the One, "Love," and the dyadic Intellect, "Strife" (Enneads V i §9).) In the third row, Strife's influence has increased and separated Air, producing the Triad. Finally, in the fourth row, Strife's influence has reached it's peak, causing Water and Earth to separate and produce the Tetrad. The tetractys ends here, but Empedocles says that eventually even this stage comes to an end, and the cosmos squishes back together under the increasing influence of Love. I think it is of peculiar interest that Water and Earth separate out into their pure forms simultaneously: this matches how, despite using a different model, Plotinus says that the Watery "lower soul" and Earthy body come into being simultaneously. Something curious about that is that while Earth is the heaviest and most dense root, at least one commentator (Philo of Alexandria, On Providence) says that Empedocles says that the roots separate out in the order of Fire, then Air, then Earth: Water, due to its nature, just sort of passively takes up whatever space is left to it. (Perhaps this is why Empedocles calls Water "tenacious Love" (Plutarch on the Principle of Cold XVI), since it is the end of separation and the beginning of recombination.)

With all that in mind, let's take a fresh look at the myth.

I've mentioned previously that Apuleius tells us that there are three mysteries. However, I divide the myth into four: the theogony, the wandering of Isis, the separation and recombination of Osiris, and the contending of Horus and Set. I am doing this because I don't think the theogony is a mystery at all: Herodotus discusses it (Histories II iv), but (as an initiate) he is generally reticent concerning the mysteries (Histories II clxx ff.); Diodorus discusses it openly from multiple sources (Library of History I xiii) but elsewhere calls out secret teachings (Library of History I xxi); Manetho apparently discussed it, but as the high priest of Heliopolis, it seems unlikely that he would disclose its mysteries publicly; and it was apparently the explanation for and popular basis of the civil calendar.

Today, we're just going to revisit the first part, the theogony. As a part of taking a fresh look at it, I've gone ahead and revised my summary, placing it side-by-side with the equivalent Greek myth, which runs as follows:

This, I think, describes in mythic terms the process of cosmic expansion just as I did, above: Sky (Egyptian Nut, Greek Kronos) is the state of the cosmos where all is held together in a state of pure Love, while the Sun (Egyptian Ra, Greek Helios) is the force of Love itself, which keeps the roots together in the womb of Sky; while Earth (Egyptian Geb, Greek Rhea) is the opposing state of the cosmos where all is held apart in a state of pure Strife, while the Moon (Egyptian Iah, Greek Selene) is the force of Strife itself. This is reminiscent to me of what Proclus and Wolfram talk about: pure order (Sky, Love) and pure chaos (Earth, Strife) are both uninteresting, since order is too crystalline and static for any event to occur, while chaos is too random and mobile for anything to have being, and so it is their intercourse that produces the cosmos.

Then, the gods are born. I think it is quite easy to see the relationship of the Kronos myth and the Nut myth, and it is straightforward to equate Isis with Demeter; Nephthys (𓉠 nebet-hut, "lady of the house") with Hestia; and Horus with Zeus (though Zeus is properly Horus the Younger, who battles Set and becomes king, his birth is confabulated with Horus the Elder's), though the association of the other gods is a bit trickier. We can also see that the Kronos myth is self-contained, in a sense, covering also Zeus's fall to earth, growth in skill, and battle to become king, which is (as we shall see) what Horus's myth is about. It is also interesting, I think, how Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are said to divide the sky (Air), sea (Water), and land (Earth) between them, which seems to echo Empedocles's roots somehow, though the relationship between gods and roots seems garbled. (At least, I can't make good sense of it.)

But this is a separate transmission of the myth into Greece from the one I want to talk about, which is Empedocles's. Ignoring Horus for a moment, since he is not a child of Sky and Earth, we have Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys, explicitly ordered and yet also said to be born simultaneously. Given the order, I think it is easy to associate Osiris (Empedoclean Zeus) with Fire, Set (Empedoclean Aidoneus) with Air, Isis (Empedoclean Hera) with Earth, and Nephthys (Empedoclean Nestis) with Water; and since the gods are all "of equal age," their "births" on successive days represent not their coming into existence but their gradual separation under the influence of Strife. Because of Aristotle's influence, I think we moderns are used to thinking of the classical elements cyclically and "marrying" those of opposite qualities (bright Fire and dark Water, ephemeral Air and solid Earth), but the pairing of Fire with Earth and Air with Water, as here, has parallels in Plato's Timaeus and in the Geomantic tradition. It is also, of course, reasonable to associate Osiris with Zeus (as king), Set with Hades (as the one who snatches away souls from heaven), Isis with Hera (as the wife of Osiris/Zeus), and Nephthys with Persephone (as the begrudging wife of Set/Hades).

But if the roots are straightforward enough, we will need to make an effort on Horus since we have exhausted Empedocles's six principles, and I think the key to making sense of him is that there are two Horuses, an elder and a younger, which are certainly distinct (for example, they are shown side-by-side on the Metternich Stela), but their roles in myth are confused and conflated: in a sense, they are both two and one. Considering all this, I think Horus is one of Empedocles's daimons (indeed, the prototypal daimon) which has perjured themselves, is exiled from the gods, and after many trials is restored to their ranks. (Consider that his name in Egyptian, 𓅃 heru, is simply the word for "falcon," a bird which soars high up into the sky on thermals, a lovely image of a soul on its heavenly ascent.) Horus the Elder doesn't have any significant role in the myth, and I think he represents the passive potential of a soul, it's mere being or Platonic Form which exists within Osiris. After Strife has reached it's peak, Isis magically "draws from [dead Osiris] his essence" (that is, Horus the Elder) and using it gives birth to Horus the Younger, who is the actualization of that potential, the living soul which wills and acts.

Hesiod parallels Empedocles's "oracle of Necessity" in the Theogony (ll. 793–804):

ὅς κεν τὴν ἐπίορκον ἀπολλείψας ἐπομόσσῃ
ἀθανάτων οἳ ἔχουσι κάρη νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου,
κεῖται νήυτμος τετελεσμένον εἰς ἐνιαυτόν·
οὐδέ ποτ' ἀμβροσίης καὶ νέκταρος ἔρχεται ἆσσον
βρώσιος, ἀλλά τε κεῖται ἀνάπνευστος καὶ ἄναυδος
στρωτοῖς ἐν λεχέεσσι, κακὸν δ' ἐπὶ κῶμα καλύπτει.
αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν νοῦσον τελέσει μέγαν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν,
ἄλλος δ' ἐξ ἄλλου δέχεται χαλεπώτερος ἆθλος·
εἰνάετες δὲ θεῶν ἀπαμείρεται αἰὲν ἐόντων,
οὐδέ ποτ' ἐς βουλὴν ἐπιμίσγεται οὐδ' ἐπὶ δαῖτας
ἐννέα πάντ' ἔτεα· δεκάτῳ δ' ἐπιμίσγεται αὖτις
εἴρας ἐς ἀθανάτων οἳ Ὀλύμπια δώματ' ἔχουσιν.

For whoever of the immortals, who possess the peak of snowy Olympus, swears a false oath after having poured a libation to [the Styx], he lies breathless for one full year; and he does not go near to ambrosia and nectar for nourishment, but lies there without breath and without voice on a covered bed, and an evil stupor shrouds him. And when he has completed this sickness for a long year, another, even worse trial follows upon this one: for nine years he is cut off from participation with the gods that always are, nor does he mingle with them in their assembly or their feasts for all of nine years; but in the tenth he mingles once again in the meetings of the immortals who have their mansions on Olympus.

In those terms, I think descending Horus the Elder is the god sleeping as if in a coma in that first year, and ascending Horus the Younger is the god in exile for the nine following years. As we'll see much later, Horus the Younger is the Greek Apollo, who was himself exiled to earth and forced to serve Admetus for nine years before returning to Olympus, and so is the prototype or king of those daimons who have come before us, reascended, and now aid us in following them. (Small wonder, then, that Apollo is the special friend and helper of mankind!) Since the interplay of the two Horuses is at the core of the myth, we'll be talking about them much more as we proceed.

In addition to the sketching the cosmos, I think the order of the birth of the gods is a representation of their rank or pre-eminence: Osiris is of central importance all throughout the myth, initiating all the action in each stage of the story, and so is of first rank; Horus's ascent and victory is the outcome and purpose of the story, giving him second rank; Set's constant antagonism is responsible for both the fall of Osiris and the restoration of Horus, giving him third rank; Isis is the protagonist of part of the myth and the great initiator, giving her fourth rank; and poor Nephthys is hardly mentioned at all, taking the last place remaining. Ordering them in this way thus not only conceals an esoteric meaning (in the unfolding of the cosmos) but also has a practical exoteric meaning (in giving honors to the gods in the holiday calendar, and embedding their relative importance into folklore).

Finally, there is Thoth (Greek Hermes, Hesiodic Metis), who is representative of wisdom, skill, or experience, which is the very thing which differentiates the potential of Horus the Elder from the actualization of Horus the Younger. Here, it is Thoth who kicks off the introduction of Strife into the cosmos to create the opportunity for the roots to separate and for the daimons to actualize; later, we shall see that it Thoth who again allows the actualized daimons to reascend. In Egyptian myth, Thoth is said to be the husband of Maat, who I think is Empedoclean Necessity or Fate (Plutarch on the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus XXVII; Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies VII xvii; Porphyry, quoted by Stobaeus, Eclogues II viii), which brings us full circle: it is the strict rule of Necessity that forces the daimons into exile for breaking their oaths and brings them back again when their debt has been paid in full, which is only accomplished when their Strife-riven roots are brought back into unity by means of Love. This is equivalent to the Egyptian image of Thoth weighing the dead person's heart against Maat's ostrich feather on a scale, and, if the two are exactly in balance, allowing the person to proceed on their journey home.

Phew! What an exhausting six weeks it has been since starting the myth back over, but it's been profitable. I think it's amazing how much depth these myths possess, but I hear my shoulder-Plotinus saying that the depth was already within me the whole time.

Here on this blog, I spend so much time on the philosophers and their metaphysics that it may surprise you to hear that my own personal theology is mostly drawn from Hesiod's Ages of Man. I didn't expect, in studying the Egyptian myth, to learn anything which would expand on that, and yet we've seen a couple parallels already: the theogony and the exile of daimons. Surely you all know by now how fond I am of the golden race, yes? So it must be no surprise to hear that my ears perked up when I heard Hippolytus saying, "Empedocles [...] wrote a great deal about the nature of daimons too, how they dwell in and administer affairs all over the earth, being very numerous." I had noted before that I despaired of being able to trace Hesiod's daimons back any further than Greece, and yet, with so many other precedents in Egyptian myth, perhaps the daimons, too, have theirs?

Now, I am not very far into reading Egyptian literature, but there seem to be a lot of Horuses: Horus himself, Horus of the Two Lands, Horus of Behdeti, Horus of the Horizon, and so on. Is it possible that "Horus," used in this way, simply refers to a daimon? That is, is Horus of the Two Lands the tutelary daimon of the unified state of Egypt? Is Horus of Behdeti is the tutelary daimon of the city of Behdeti? Is pharaoh identified with Horus because, like a tutelary daimon, it is his responsibility to guide and protect Egypt? It seems like it might be a profitable avenue of research to explore Egyptian myth with an eye towards such an interpretation...

I just noticed something interesting about Hesiod's ages of man.

So, Hesiod tells us mankind is descended from the gods, and there was a descent through five ages:

• In the Golden Age, Kronos was king and men lived joyous, carefree lives.
• In the Silver Age, Zeus took over and men lived foolishly, wronging each other and the gods.
• In the Bronze Age, men were violent and warred constantly.
• In the Heroic Age, men were noble and righteous.
• In the Iron Age, men lived short, painful lives of unending toil.

It is well-known that these relate to the astrological ages of Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, and Aries.

Well, Manetho in his History of Egypt tells us that the gods ruled Egypt before mortals did. (Diodorus Siculus puts a date to this, saying it mortals began to reign around 5000 BC, which was in the age of Taurus.) The gods who ruled Egypt were, in order: Hephaistos (Ptah), Helios (Ra), Sosis/Agathodaemon (Shu), Kronos (Geb), Osiris, Typhon (Seth), and Horos.

There's a nice connection, there. If we assume the gods refer to astrological ages, then righteous Horos was king during the similarly-righteous age of Taurus before handing off kingship to the pharaohs; before him, violent Seth was king during the similarly-violent age of Gemini; before him, benevolent Osiris (e.g. Zeus) was king during the age of Cancer (remember how Plutarch says the people were as beasts and Osiris taught them how to live civilized lives and honor the gods?); and before him, Geb (e.g. Kronos) was king during the age of Leo. It smells like Hesiod got his ages of man from Egypt—certainly, he got a lot of his other myths from there! (By the by, nobody knows the etymology of the Greek word ἥρως ("hero"). It certainly sounds a lot like heru ("Horos")... is the Heroic Age literally named after its king?)

Plato says that, according to the Egyptians, the fall of Atlantis was around 9000 years before his time, which corresponds to the end of the last glacial period and to the age of Leo. I would not be a bit surprised if the "golden age" is an echo of a memory of that once-great civilization; after it fell, a dark age ensued, after which the gods slowly reintroduced civilization to men... plausibly, in Egypt. (Certainly, Plato and Diodorus say that the Egyptians thought so.)

If that's so, then it suggests that the myth of Osiris could be a good deal older than the fifth dynasty (e.g. the Pyramid Texts, which are our first references to it). One wonders how much. Even predating the age of Aries would be an impressive accomplishment, but I've seen references (which I have not yet managed to track down) to myths very similar to Osiris's being found among South American cultures, on the other side of the Atlantic. Does it go back to Atlantis, itself?

䷝

30: Clarity. [...]

Third nine moves. The setting sun shines as it goes down. The old either sing and beat their drums or else bewail their lot. Either way is ill-omened.

(The best attitude to cultivate at this time in your life is a general acceptance of fate. To totally lose yourself in the happiness of the moment is as bad as to bemoan the passing of time. Such folly of the mind and the emotions leads to a loss of inner freedom.)

Socrates, when condemned to death and thrown into prison, asked some one who was playing a song of the Greek poet Stesichorus with great skill, to teach him also to do that, while it was still in his power; and when the musician asked him of what use this skill could be to him, as he was to die the next day, he answered, "that I may know something more before I die."

(Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History XXVIII iv §15. Stobaeus, Florilegium III xxix, tells a nearly identical story concerning a very elderly Solon, but there are no English translations of Stobaeus and, alas, my Greek isn't up to it yet.)

I received the above I Ching reading (30–3) today. I couldn't imagine what it referred to until I found myself telling somebody the above little story. It is why I study philosophy so assiduously: life has been very difficult and I haven't managed to figure out how it might be enjoyed, but I have managed to develop the skill of study, and I hope that my use of it makes a satisfactory offering to Divinity.

Let's look at some names from the Heliopolis and Hesiodic cosmogonies!

• Atum (tm) means "completion."
• Tefnut (tfnwt) has no certain etymology, but is associated with moisture. I might assume "fluidity," and hence "time" (which flows but is otherwise difficult to pin down).
• Shu (šw) means "emptiness." I might assume "space."
• Nut (nwt) means "sky."
• Geb (gbb) means "earth."
• Chaos (χάος) means "void."
• Gaia (γῆ) means "earth."
• Ouranos (οὐρανός) means "sky."
• Kronos (χρόνος) means "time."
• Rhea (ῥέα) means "easily" (e.g. without effort). (I'm honestly not sure what to make of that.)

Given all this, I might assume the Heliopolis cosmogony means, "The All produces Time and Space. Time and Space produce Heaven and Earth."

I think the equivalent subset of the (ludicrously complicated) Greek cosmogony is the same, except in syncretizing, they swapped the priority of Heaven and Earth with Time and Space. This isn't a small thing! The Egyptians seem to have taken for granted that gods were born, grew old, died, provided for a line of succession, etc. The Greeks—at least by the classical period—seem to have taken for granted that the gods were eternal and static and their relationships were therefore ontological (despite, for example, Apollo clearly stating otherwise). That is to say, I'm not sure the Egyptian notion of "god" (nṯr) is the same as the Greek notion of "god" (θεός). Certainly, at least, neither is remotely close to the Christian notion of "God," and so I guess I'm sorta groping around in the darkness of unfamiliar cultures no matter what...

Find the right way down through the maze, to the food, then find the exit. Push the exit button. If the food tastes awful, don't eat it, go back and try another way.

They want the same thing that you do, really, they want a path, just like you. You are in a maze in a maze, but which one counts? Your maze, their maze, my maze. Or are the mazes all the same, defined by the limits of their paths? [...]

There is only one path and that is the path that you take, but you can take more than one path. Cross over the cell bars, find a new maze, make the maze from it's path, find the cell bars, cross over the bars, find a maze, make the maze from its path, eat the food, eat the path.

(Greg Kirkpatrick, Marathon Infinity XVII "Eat the Path")

Unpacking the mysteries is like navigating a maze: you take the path you think is right, but sometimes you hit a dead end and need to double-back; usually you don't have to double-back too far, and so you can catch it before you draw your line on the page, but sometimes the dead end is very deep and you need to erase the line you already drew. But, of course, I'm posting these essays online as I go, and they're written in ink, and I can't erase them.

This is all to say that while my unpacking of the myth so far seems to be internally consistent, I ran into two things this week that caused me to doubt my analysis, and the issue is fundamental enough that I think I need to backtrack quite a bit.

The first is that I spent a good while examining the etymology of all the names mentioned in both the Isis and Demeter myths, but especially those of Isis and Osiris. These are made complicated by the fact that Egyptian linguists have been arguing over etymology for over a century and are no closer to a solution than they were when they started, due to (it seems to me) a combination of institutional inertia and overspecialization. My guesswork is speculative, and yet it led me somewhere interesting nonetheless:

• English Isis is from Greek Ἶσις, which is from Egyptian 𓊨𓏏 (Ꜣusat), which is the logogram of a throne with a feminine noun suffix: hence Isis is "the seat."

• English Osiris is from Greek Ὄσιρις, which is from Egyptian 𓊨𓁹 (Ꜣusjrj), which is the logogram of a throne with the verb "to create, to do:" hence Osiris is something approximating "the creation or action of the seat."

The second is that I found a haunting few lines in a third century BC hymn to Isis inscribed in her temple at Philae:

For she is the Lady of Heaven,
Her man is the Lord of Duat,
Her son is the Lord of the Earth.

Think about those for a moment.

Both of them point to something much more akin to Plotinus's emanationism than what I have been working with: taking the soul as "the seat" of consciousness, then Isis is a god, the prototype of the human soul; Osiris is the emanation of Isis, a daimon, and the prototype of the human imagination (Plotinus's "lower soul," Porphyry's "pneumatic vehicle"); then, finally Horus is the emanation of Isis via Osiris, a human, and the prototype of the human body. We might say that Isis is symbolised by Sirius (cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XXI), which is the brightest star of Heaven and, to the Egyptian, brought the flooding of the Nile and life; Osiris is symbolized by the planet Venus (cf. Joachim Friedrich Quack, The Planets in Ancient Egypt), which is the brightest planet of Duat and lives an amphibious life as a morning star (when alive) and an evening star (when dead); Horus is symbolized by the role of Pharaoh, who is the first among humans, but is not himself a man but rather a succession of men invested with the role, some better, some worse.

If that's right, we start to see where the philosophy of the ancients comes from: every individual is a reflection of these prototypes, being composed of a single god illuminating an dual daimon illuminating an indefinite sequence of humans until philosophy fills up the god and allows them to pull their daimon back together into one piece... which is really a just sketch of what the myth is all about anyhow. I had been hesitant to read such a thing into Isis and Osiris, since I had been working on the assumption that Plotinus was doing his own weird thing and reading it all into Plato, but now it seems to me that there was at least some amount of continuity of tradition going back millennia, and it's plausible to use such a model for interpreting the myth. Unfortunately, this means that my analysis of the theogony at the beginning, and everything stemming from it, is flawed. So I am going to have to sit with it awhile, feel my way through my doubts, and see where I'm led. Clearly, I am being led somewhere, though, as in hindsight it is obvious that my angel fed me Sallustius in preparation for Plotinus, and Plotinus in preparation for Plutarch!

In the meantime, I'll leave you with something I was wondering about. Diodorus says (in the Library of History I xcvi) that the mysteries of Demeter are just the mysteries of Isis with the names changed, and having read both myths, I was inclined to agree... until I ran across that hymn. See, in Egypt, the soul (Isis) and the imagination (Osiris) were married and the body (Horus) was produced by them, together: not a thing to be reviled, but rather celebrated (though, of course, raised and educated with great care). In Eleusis, however, the soul (Demeter) stood apart and the imagination (Persephone) and body (Hades) were uneasily married, making the body something of an enemy to be fought and ultimately defeated. That difference in emphasis seems to me very significant. It crept into Greek philosophy and, from there, spread all throughout the Western worldview. I wonder whether the shift in the mythic family structure was intentional or accidental. I wonder what good it has done, weighed against what harm it has done...

I suppose apprehending such great mysteries are too much for a man. I will content myself in trying to apprehend my little, lesser mystery: it is enough. May you all have a contemplative Autumnal equinox tomorrow, as Osiris and Kore descend again.

Phaedrus. You never cross the border, do you, Socrates? In fact, it seems to me you never even leave the city walls!

Socrates. I beg your pardon, my friend, but I love to learn and it is the people of the city that are my teachers: I learn nothing from the trees or open country.

(Plato, Phaedrus 230D)

If you watch the skies, what do you see? The Sun and Moon, of course, stand apart from all others; among the stars, Venus, Jupiter, and Sirius; but what else? Here I must take issue with Socrates, since I have, alas, been a city kid most of my life, and the city is where lovely Nut goes to die (in more ways than one). I remember the summer when I moved out to the country and could, for the first time in my life, really see the sky; and what amazed me the most was that mighty river, the Milky Way, meandering across Heaven. I stood outside for hours merely gazing at it, for nothing material, save the Moon Herself, can compete in beauty and wonder...

...but we'll get to that. Let me first say that our old friend Apuleius tells us (in the Golden Ass XI) that there were three sets mysteries of Isis and Osiris: the first is the mysteries of Isis, the second is the mysteries of Osiris, and the third is not named. He also tells us that the first two mysteries are more-or-less the same. Diodorus tells us (in the Library of History I xcvi) that the mysteries of Isis are identical to the mysteries of Eleusis (read Isis and Osiris §§12–20 followed by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter if you'd like to see this for yourself), that the mysteries of Osiris are identical to the mysteries of Dionysus, and of the third mystery he makes no reference whatsoever. (Very mysterious!) From this, I speculate that the vast bulk of this myth cycle—where Osiris is killed, Isis wanders, collects his pieces, and resurrects him—covers the pageant of both the mysteries of Isis and Osiris. The difference, I think, is that they're told from different perspectives: in the former, the initiate follows Isis in her wanderings; in the latter, the initiate follows Osiris in his death, dismemberment, reconstruction, and resurrection. The third mystery, then, I presume to be what remains: the initiate follows the contending between, and eventual triumph of, Horus over Set.

The myth cycle that forms the mysteries of Isis and Osiris is too lengthy to take in a single stretch, though, so I'm going to break it into pieces. Today, we'll start with the murder of Osiris.

[1–8, 16–17, 45. Heaven and Earth give birth to Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. Osiris and Isis give birth to the brothers Horus. Osiris and Nephthys give birth to Anubis.]

Stepping back for a moment, I have identified the inhabitants of Duat with the planets. But what relevance is this? Heaven and Earth are conjoined; the planets—the gods!—are not merely without you, they are also within: Osiris, Set, Isis, Nephthys, the brothers Horus, and Anubis all dance in both sky and soul. So while I have already identified these beings in macrocosm, it would be worthwhile to pause for a moment and identify them in microcosm, too, before we continue with the myth.

The second generation of gods are, I think, the inherent capacities of the soul: those capacities that the soul is inherently "born" with. Osiris and Isis, being bright, calm, and rising relatively high in the sky, are those higher capacities of the soul: in Platonic terms, they are the tendency towards the good, the serene intuition of the higher mind, the well-bred horse hitched to the chariot in the Phaedrus. Nephthys and Set, being dim, frenetic, and never rising far above the horizon, are those baser capacities of the soul: the tendencies towards the "sensible world," the relentless chatter of the lower mind, the wild horse hitched to the chariot. The morning stars are the beginning of these tendencies, while the evening stars are their end: so Osiris is the innocent, pristine tendency towards good, while Isis is the wise, experienced tendency towards good; Nephthys is innocent tendency away from good, while Set is the wilful tendency away from good. Hence, Osiris is generous and beautiful, but he is also trouble since he is foolish and trusting. Isis is wise, but harsh and severe. Nephthys isn't terrible, since she doesn't know better: enjoyment and appreciation of the material world isn't evil, it just isn't as good as it could be. Set, though, is something of a wanton rejection of the good, and this is why the myth considers him sterile: there is no future to be found there.

The third generation of gods are, then, the cultivated capacities of the soul: those capacities that develop as the soul "grows its wings." I'm sure you can guess as what these are by examining their parents' natures, but we'll investigate them more deeply when we get further in the myth.

These points correspond to Persephone (Osiris) being born of Zeus and Demeter (Heaven and Earth, though Demeter also takes on the role of Isis); and of Psyche (gentle Osiris in the first half of the myth, determined Isis in the second) and her sisters (Nephthys and Set) being born of "a king and queen" (also Heaven and Earth). Psyche's sisters running off to get married right away shows their rejection (either innocent or wilful) of the good; Psyche, however, lingers and so retains more of that memory of the Beauty to sustain her, slowing and limiting (but not, alas, preventing) her descent.

9. [§13] While Isis watches over Set, Osiris leaves Heaven and teaches the Egyptians the arts of civilization.

Macrocosmically, Venus heliacally rises in the east. Presumably, Mercury will heliacally rise and set several times while Venus remains in the east, and at some point Osiris will unwittingly sleep with Nephthys (e.g. Venus and Mercury go conjunct as morning stars).

One of the things I think I misunderstood in my original perusal of Plotinus and the myths is that souls do not merely descend from Heaven once, but twice! The soul must fall from Heaven to Duat, and again from Duat to Earth. (Being born twice, one must also die twice, which is why Plutarch speaks of the first death and the second death. Perhaps this is why initiates are called "twice-born:" the initiation awakens them to this fact.) Persephone being kidnapped by Hades is her first birth, and eating the pomegranate is her second birth. Psyche being carried by Zephyr into the beautiful valley is her first birth, and throwing herself into the river is her second. In both cases, there is no harm done in the first birth: Persephone can go home whenever she likes, and Psyche is comfortably married and carrying a divinity in her womb; it is only after the second that their trials and travails begin. In the same way, Osiris/Set/Isis/Nephthys being born is their first birth, and in the same way, there is no harm done yet; they are no longer in their pristine state, but neither are they degraded in the material world. So I do not think Osiris merely coming to Egypt is his "fall:" Egypt must be representative something else.

As I've mentioned, I think Heaven is the macrocosm, and Earth is the microcosm. The planets wandering in Heaven is the macrocosmic Duat, and so I think Osiris ruling in Egypt, here, is the microcosmic Duat. Osiris coming to Egypt is not the morning star falling to Earth, it is the reflection of Osiris rising in the morning sky within you. And consider, to the Egyptians, Egypt was "home:" it is the good place that they wish to be. We will soon see other Earthly locations, each with their Heavenly analogues: foreign lands (Byblos in this myth, Eleusis in the Demeter myth, etc.) are equivalent to a star being beneath the horizon in the sky and of the soul being "in exile," as Empedocles says:

τῶν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἰμι, φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης,
νείκει μαινομένῳ πίσυνος.

I too am now one of these, an exile from the gods and a wanderer,
trusting in mad strife.

There is also the Nile itself (or, in Hesiod, the Styx), which is the Milky Way in the sky, and the bridge by which souls descend from their higher state to their lower one (cf. Plato, Republic X; Porphyry on the Cave of the Nymphs; Sallustius on the Gods and the World IV; Macrobius on the Dream of Scipio I xii), which we shall see shortly. The Milky Way intersects the ecliptic in two places, representing the places where Earth and Duat meet: Tanis in the east, where Osiris leaves Egypt, is the intersection by which souls descend (which Porphyry calls "the gate of gods"), while Buto in the west, where Osiris returns to Egypt, is the intersection by which souls ascend (which Porphyry calls "the gate of men").

What of Osiris teaching the Egyptians the arts of civilization? This is saying that Osiris—as I have said, the upward tendency of the soul, that vague recollection of the good—is what separates us from the beasts, who only possess the Nephthys/Set or "base" capacities of the soul.

10. Upon his return, Set secretly measures him and constructs a beautifully-ornamented box sized to fit him exactly.

Macrocosmically, Mercury heliacally rises in the west while Venus remains in the east.

The box is, of course, the physical body that the soul "fits into." The soul is said to be enticed by sensual pleasure to descend into the material world, so the box is said to be beautifully ornamented so that simple, starry-eyed Osiris is lured into it.

This corresponds to Hades offering pomegranate seeds to Persephone, and to Psyche's wicked sisters filling her with doubt.

11. On 17 Hathor, Set invites Osiris, Queen Aso of Ethiopia, and seventy-two conspirators to a party.

12. Set and the conspirators trick Osiris into the box, nail it shut, seal it with molten lead, and push it into the Nile, after which it floats downriver, reaching the sea near Tanis.

Simple, trusting Osiris is tricked into sensual desire and thus descends into corporeality, leaving Egypt and going into exile. We see the microcosmic form in the myth directly; in the macrocosmic form, this is Venus going conjunct the Sun while, at the same time, the Sun is going conjunct the Milky Way; at heliacal rising, this looks like Venus "falling into" the Milky Way and then disappearing. This presently happens around the winter solstice, but it varies slowly over time due to the precession of the equinoxes; it would have occurred around 17 Hathor (in late Autumn) during the Hellenistic era.

These points correspond to Persephone eating the pomegranate seeds and no longer being allowed to return home; and to Psyche gazing upon Cupid, Cupid fleeing, and Psyche trying to drown herself in a river.

13. [§14] Pan and the satyrs learn of Osiris's death and tell Isis.

14. Isis grieves and wanders in search of Osiris.

Macrocosmically, Venus is no longer conjunct the Sun and begins to rise in the west, seemingly "stepping out" of the Milky Way.

Porphyry tells us in his Sentences [VIII] that "what Nature has bound, Nature must unbind, and what the soul has bound, the soul must unbind." Osiris falling for the box is representative of the second of these. But Pan and his satyrs represent Nature and its subordinate generative powers; their notifying Isis therefore represents Nature binding the soul to itself. That is, the soul is now subject to Nature's law: which we may call Ma'at, Necessity, or karma.

These points correspond to Hekate and Helios hearing Persephone's scream, telling Demeter what happened and trying to comfort her, her quitting Olympus in a rage, and her wandering in search of Persephone; and to Psyche coming to shore near Pan, Pan comforting her, and her wandering in search of Cupid. It is noteworthy that Helios/Pan counsel Demeter/Psyche to accept the situation and behave piously: they are telling the soul how to unbind itself. This is the easy part; the problem is that the soul reels in shock from its descent, and it will take a long time—many lives—before it can finally pull itself together enough to follow their advice. By the time this finally occurs, the soul has racked up so much karma that it must now pay it back before Nature, too, will unbind it.

Apuleius tells us (in the Apology §§53–56) that initiates were given talismans from the mysteries in which they were initiated, which were kept in linen and placed on their home altar to pray and meditate over. These are not, as far as I know, identified anywhere, but I wonder if the talisman of the mystery of Isis was an icon of the tyet, or "knot of Isis," representing the binding of the soul to the law of Nature:

𓎬

As always, in pondering the myth I find myself wondering about many adjacent things:

• The title of this post is, of course, from Holly Golightly's song in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. I couldn't help myself: while thinking of the Milky Way, it occurred to me that the song can easily describe the incarnate soul finally coming to acceptance of Necessity in its desire to return to Duat:

  Moon River, wider than a mile,
  I'm crossing you in style some day.
  Oh, dream-maker, you heart-breaker,
  Wherever you're going, I'm going your way!

  Two drifters, off to see the world—
  There's such a lot of world to see!
  We're after the same rainbow's end
  Waiting 'round the bend:
  My huckleberry friend,
  Moon River, and me.

  The Milky Way is no longer a curse, but a teacher and guide. Psyche ceases her wandering and submits herself to Venus.

• Empedocles is well-known for his four elements, but I wonder if we've been misinterpreting him all these many centuries. What he actually said was,

  τέσσαρα γὰρ πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε·
  Ζεὺς ἀργὴς Ἥρη τε φερέσβιος ἠδ' Ἀιδωνεύς,
  Νῆστις θ' ἣ δακρύοις τέγγει κρούνωμα βρότειον.
  
  First, hear of the four roots of all things:
  gleaming Zeus and life-bringing Hera and Aidoneus
  and Nestis, who moistens with tears the springs of mortals.

  I'm of half a mind to see these four, not as elemental forces in the Aristotelian sense, but as literally referring to Osiris (that brightest star of Heaven), Isis (the mother of the gods and resurrector of Osiris), Set, and Nephthys (who grieves with Isis). Come to think of it, "Nestis" and "Nephthys" sound suspiciously similar: νῆστις ["fasting, hungry"] is universally assumed to be an epithet, but what if it is a (punning) transliteration?

• Despite much effort, nobody has managed to figure out what creature the "Set animal" depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphics and art represents:

  𓃩
  ...woof woof?

  If, as I suggest, Nephthys/Set represent the "bestial" capacity of the soul, one wonders if it's not supposed to represent any actual animal at all, but rather some sort of "generic" or "idealized" beast? Perhaps a composite of a Nephthys dog body (she is the mother of Anubis, after all) and a Set (...aardvark?) head?

• One of the highlighted arts that Osiris teaches the Egyptians is to refrain from cannibalism. The Egyptian priests were said to be vegetarian, as were Pythagoras (who learned from them) and Empedocles (who learned from Pythagoras and specifically links meat-eating to cannibalism and the descent of souls). Porphyry wrote a lengthy treatise (On Abstinence from Eating Animals) in defense of vegetarianism for those who aspire to philosophy, and Apuleius tells us that prospective initiates were required to fast from meat prior to their initiations. All this suggests to me that the myth is referencing the karmic implications of meat-eating.

• I skipped over Queen Aso, above. Trying to figure out what she represents led me down quite a bit of a rabbit-hole.

  In the Perseus myth (cf. Pseudo-Apollonius, the Library II iv), Cassiopeia is the Queen of Ethiopia. I am unable to find an etymology for Cassiopeia anywhere, though it bears at least slight resemblence to Aso ("k-ASO-peia"). The constellation bearing her name straddles the Milky Way and is not far from "the gate of the gods," so presumably she is something of an onlooker to Osiris's fall.

  But that's not all. Cassiopeia is the mother of Andromeda, who is chained to a rock in the same way that Isis is bound to Nature, and whose name (Ἀνδρομέδα=ἀνδρός-μέδω "I protect my husband") is closely related to the role of Isis in our myth. Is Perseus Osiris? Nobody knows the etymology of Perseus, but it is interesting to note that the names Osiris and Perseus (and, indeed, Orpheus) are all pretty similar...

  I hadn't considered the Perseus myth to be yet-another-derivative of the Osiris myth, but at first glance, there seems to be a relationship. I haven't thought deeply about it yet, but it's another myth I'll need to spend more time on. Worse, this makes me realize that the myth of Jason and Medea is related, too: the "Meda" of Andromeda is closely related to "Medea," and of course Isis and Medea are both sorceresses who use magic to rescue their husbands, both are exiled from their homelands, both have a relationship with somebody who is cut into many pieces and strewn about, both murder two young brothers, etc. etc., so toss yet another myth on the pile.

  All this is to say that I apologize for not having a nice, tidy answer to the question of Queen Aso and the 72 conspirators handy: if I chased the rabbit down that rabbit-hole, I would be as lost and mad as poor Alice. I will have to tackle it some other time, when I am better-prepared.

• It is interesting that Pan features at the exact same point in the exact same capacity in both Isis and Osiris and Cupid and Psyche. To my mind, this is too exact a parallel to be a coincidence, and an argument that Apuleius (who invented the Cupid and Psyche myth) was either an initiate of Isis himself, or an initiate of Demeter and an avid reader of Plutarch, or both.

• I had somehow missed it my first few times through Hesiod, but ll. 775–806 of the Theogony describe exactly the same phenomenon that the poem of Empedocles (and, of course, this myth) does: if any god commits perjury, then that god is forced to traverse the Styx (that is, descend into the material world), sleeping as if in a heavy trance for a year, and then forced to exile and hard labor for nine years, only after each of these being able to rejoin the gods. Indeed, this is why the gods swear by the Styx in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Homeric Hymns: for fear of being forced into exile themselves.

• Tanis was situated on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, while Buto was situated between the Sebennytic and Bolbitine branches of the Nile. The Tanitic branch and the Sebennytic branches silted up sometime between AD 150 (cf. Ptolemy, Geography) and AD 600 (cf. George of Cyprus, Description of the Roman World), but the Bolbitine branch still exists (now called the Rosetta). If we treat the world as symbolic of spiritual truths, as Sallustius bids us, and if Tanis and Buto have the meanings I've ascribed to them above, then the silting-up of Tanis seems to say that the old truths are closed and that no new revelations are coming into the world that way; while the half-silting-up of Buto seems to suggest that, while the mysteries are no longer a major avenue of return, the way back up through them is not yet completely closed to us...

A. Why is Dionysus the god of wine?

B. Because understanding of the mysteries causes one to forget their sorrows: the revelry of the Mainads is the freedom from the fear of death. As Socrates says [in the Phaedo], "He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world."

As a side amusement in studying Isis and Osiris, I felt it worthwhile to read the rest of Apuleius—I think it very likely that he was initiate of Isis and of Osiris, but even if not, he was certainly an initiate of Demeter and of Dionysus and knew enough Plutarch to connect the dots—and I'm glad I did. He's a peacock and no mistake, but there's meat beneath those feathers.

What reason have you for regarding three slaves as a mark of my poverty, rather than for considering three freed men as a proof of my wealth? Poor Æmilianus, you have not the least idea how to accuse a philosopher: you reproach me for the scantiness of my household, whereas it would really have been my duty to have laid claim, however falsely, to such poverty. [...] Had Pudens come across these facts in his reading, he would, I think, either have omitted this particular slander or would have preferred to reproach me on the ground that three slaves were too large rather than too small an establishment for a philosopher.

(Apuleius, Apology XVII)

Have you ever heard of Feynman's Algorithm? It is a description of how the Nobel-Prize-winning physicist is said to have solved problems:

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution.

This is often presented as a joke (e.g. "just be a genius"), but I don't think that's it at all: the idea is to get yourself as clarified a version of the problem as possible, and then simply marinate yourself in that clarified version to allow your subconscious, intuitive mind to piece it together. Eventually, you'll have a nebulous intuition of the solution, and by writing it out and trying to explain it, you apply your conscious, reasoning mind to it, finally obtaining something concrete and linear from what was once abstract and amorphous.

In that vein, let's begin with the myth of Isis and Osiris by trying to get ourselves a clarified version of it that we can contemplate. The below outline is extracted from §§12–20 of Plutarch's Isis and Osiris.

Frank Babbitt Cole notes in his introduction to the Loeb Classical Library edition of Isis and Osiris, "Herodotus in the fifth century BC had visited Egypt, and he devoted a large part of the second book of his History to the manners and customs of the Egyptians. Plutarch, however, draws but little from him. Some of the information that Plutarch gives us may be found also in Diodorus Siculus, principally in the first book, but a little also in the second. Aelian and, to a less extent, other writers mentioned in the notes on the text [e.g. Pausanias, Strabo, Pseudo-Apollodrus, Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, Athenaeus, and Eusebius], have isolated fragments of information which usually agree with Plutarch and Diodorus. All this points to the existence of one or more books, now lost, which contained this information, possibly in a systematic form." Whatever this source was, it was inconsistently Hellenized, sometimes converting Egyptian gods to roughly-equivalent Greek ones (for example, Set is called Typhon), while at other times merely transliterating the Egyptian name into Greek (for example, 𓅃𓀭𓅮𓄿𓄡𓂋𓂧𓀔𓀭 [Heru-pa-khered, "Horus the Child"] is transliterated Ἁρποκράτης [Harpokrates]). Usually, this is merely annoying, but sometimes it can cause problems. (For example, it is important to the myth that Nut is pregnant, but her name is translated to Kronos, who is male!) I have regularized these by translating them into English when appropriate, and using the most common modern spelling of the name otherwise (frustratingly, at least to a nerd like me, sometimes this is from the Greek, as in "Osiris," and other times this is from the Egyptian, as in "Tewaret"). The names Plutarch uses are included in brackets, and in cases where I am unable to unambiguously identify the Egyptian god, I have either omitted the Egyptian entirely (e.g. Helios, Selene) or added my own guesswork (e.g. Leto).

Let's do it!

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

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.

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

5. On the second day, Heaven gives birth to Horus the Elder, who was born to Isis and Osiris in Nut's womb.

6. 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.

9. [§13] While Isis watches over Set, Osiris leaves Heaven and teaches the Egyptians the arts of civilization.

10. Upon his return, Set secretly measures him and constructs a beautifully-ornamented box sized to fit him exactly.

11. On 17 Hathor, Set invites Osiris, Queen Aso of Ethiopia, and seventy-two conspirators to a party. [17 Hathor=13 November (Julian)=26 November (Gregorian) after 238 BC, but varies prior.]

12. Set and the conspirators trick Osiris into the box, nail it shut, seal it with molten lead, and push it into the Nile, after which it floats downriver, reaching the sea near Tanis.

13. [§14] Pan and the satyrs learn of Osiris's death and tell Isis.

14. Isis grieves and wanders in search of Osiris.

15. Some children tell Isis that they saw the box float into the sea.

16. Isis 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.

18. [§15] The box lands in a patch of heather near Byblos in Phoenecia.

19. The heather grows to exceptional size, enclosing the box within its stalk.

20. Malkander, the king of Byblos, discovers the heather and is so impressed by it that he cuts it down (unbeknownst to him, with the box still inside) for a pillar in his house.

21. Isis hears rumors of all of this and travels to Byblos, sitting beside a spring, weeping, and speaking to nobody.

22. Queen Astarte's maids come by the spring, and Isis plaits their hair and perfumes them with ambrosia.

23. When the queen sees her maids so beautifully made up, she sends for Isis, who so ingratiates herself with the queen so as to become nurse of the baby prince.

24. [§16] Isis nurses the baby with her finger rather than her breast.

25. Isis periodically transforms into a swallow and flies around the pillar, bewailing Osiris. The queen sees this.

26. Isis gradually burns away the child's mortal part at night. The queen eventually sees this, at which she cries out and deprives the child of immortality.

27. Isis explains herself and asks for the pillar. The Queen consents, and Isis removes it, cuts the box out of it, and then wraps its remains in linen, perfumes it, and entrusts it to the royal family as a relic.

28. Isis laments her husband so profoundly that the Queen's younger son dies.

29. Isis takes the box and the elder prince and sails from Byblos, drying up the Phaedrus river as she goes in spite for delaying her.

30. [§17] When finally alone, Isis opens the box, sees Osiris's body, and grieves.

31. Curious, the elder prince peeks into the box. Enraged, Isis gives him such an awful look that he dies of fright.

32. [§18] Isis proceeds to Buto, where Horus the Elder is being raised [§38 by Leto], and hides the box. [40, below, suggests Leto=Tewaret, except that she has not yet defected. The Pyramid Texts suggest Leto=Nephthys, which is more reasonable.]

33. Set finds the box, divides Osiris's corpse into fourteen pieces, and scatters them all over Egypt. [Different manuscripts of Diodorus say sixteen or twenty-six pieces.]

34. Isis discovers this and searches for the pieces.

35. Isis finds every part except for Osiris's penis, which is eaten by a fish.

36. Isis reassembles Osiris, fashioning and consecrating a replacement penis.

37. [§19] Osiris visits Horus the Elder from Duat [Hades] and trains him for battle.

38. Osiris asks Horus the Elder questions to see if he is ready, and receives satisfactory answers.

39. Many of Set's allies switch allegience to Horus the Elder, including his concubine Taweret, who comes chased by a serpent which Horus the Elder's men cut into pieces.

40. Horus the Elder defeats Set in battle.

41. Set is delivered as a prisoner to Isis, who releases him.

42. Horus the Elder, enraged, takes Isis' royal diadem from her head. Thoth gives her a helmet shaped like a cow's head to replace it.

43. Set takes Horus the Elder to court over the legitimacy of his rule, but with the aid of Thoth, the gods rule in favor of Horus the Elder.

44. Set battles Horus the Elder twice more, but loses each time.

45. Osiris and Isis conceive Horus the Younger, but he is born premature and lame.

46. [§13] Osiris travels the world, civilizing it with persuasive discourse and song. [Plutarch doesn't say when this occurs. Diodorus says Isis rules Egypt in his stead and that Horus the Elder and Anubis accompany him, so I have placed this event here.]

47. [§20. Plutarch explicitly notes that he omits stories concerning the dismemberment of Horus and the decapitation of Isis.]

I will refrain from much commentary on the myth itself today, as I have much to unpack yet. Indeed, I was in despair of it the other day, as it is so much work and it often seems so pointless to me: after all, what is the practical consequence to be gained from all that effort? But my angel said to me, "But why are you upset? Do you not see that you are extracting meaning from a story?" (My angel's words are somehow always pregnant with deeper meaning, and it was clear that when they said this, that they meant, in modern occult terminology, transmuting an astral phenomenon to a mental one.) They continued, "Is that not the point?" And, of course, it is: the practical consequence is growth. I suppose I am just weary of the growing pains!

I have mentioned in the past how valuable an exercise it is to take a myth and walk through it point-by-point, and this time was no different: even though I had just read Isis and Osiris a couple months ago, I had missed quite a few points and had mentally rearranged others.

It is clear that this is not merely a myth, but rather an entire cycle of myths. While I think it is crucial to keep the entire thing in mind as one contemplates it, I will be analyzing it in pieces as we proceed.

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I've mentioned before that the second-greatest Cynic [κυνικός, "doglike"] philosopher was Crates, who was nicknamed "the opener of doors" for his habit of barging into people's houses and lecturing them on philosophy (and somehow getting away with it).

While pondering over the Isis and Osiris myth today, I remembered that there is an Egyptian deity called Upuat, whose name translates to "the opener of ways." He is also doglike—depicted as a jackal or wolf—and, just like philosophy itself, he opens the way into Duat (the intermediate world between heaven and earth). I am curious if there's a connection or joke there, but alas, I suspect it's not possible to know.

(Fun fact, Upuat's cult center was Lycopolis [Λυκόπολις, "wolf-city"], which is where Plotinus was born. He was also an "opener of ways," wasn't he?)