Isis and Osiris

Osiris, Isis and Horus (gold, lapis and glass, between 874 and 850 B.C.)

One of the most widely revered and sublime figures of the Divine Mother in ancient Mediterranean civilization was the Egyptian Goddess Isis. Texts written as far back as the third millennium B.C. speak of the divine couple Isis and Osiris.

Rulers of the land

According to Egyptian legend, Isis and her brother Osiris were born from Geb, the Earth Father, and Nut, the Sky Mother. Osiris and Isis loved each other as husband and wife and together they ruled over the land. (Later in the culture of Egypt you see that the Pharaohs are depicted as very large and their queens as very small, but in this period there was the ascent of the feminine ray.)

Isis learned the secret name of Ra and Osiris became Egypt’s sole ruler. Osiris taught the arts, first planted the vines, showed men how and when to sow grain, how to plant and tend the fruit trees, and gave knowledge of the gods while Isis discovered wheat and barley. When Osiris went out to bless his people, Isis remained to rule, wisely and well.

The murder of Osiris

Their brother, Seth, lived in the desert and was angry with Osiris because green things were growing over the land, so he decided to kill Osiris. He took the measurement of Osiris’ body from his shadow and built a chest in which he would fit, then invited Osiris and Isis to a banquet at which they played a game to determine who would become owner of this beautiful chest. No one fit in except Osiris. Once inside, Seth and his attendants placed a heavy cover on the chest, hammered nails into it and soldered it closed with melted lead. They threw the chest into a river, which carried his dead body to sea.

A flood cast the chest upon the land where an acacia tree lifted it up. The branches of the tree wrapped themselves around it and it grew. While Osiris was in the chest, death and war came into the land. Grain and fruit trees didn’t flourish and green places became desert.

Isis set out to find the chest which held the body of her husband. Wherever she went bands of children followed her and helped in the search. Isis blessed the children and decreed that forever after children would speak words of wisdom and sometimes tell of things to come.

Isis traveled to a land called Byblos where she heard of a wonderful fragrant tree by the sea. The king of the land had cut the tree down, trimmed off the branches and set it up as a column in his house. Isis had heard that the chest was within the tree, so she stayed in the spot where the tree had been. The queen of the land was intrigued by Isis and invited her to her house. Isis nursed the queen’s child by putting her finger in his mouth in the hall in which stood the column that enclosed the chest. At night Isis would strip wood from the column and throw it upon the fire. She laid the queen’s child in the fire in order to make him immortal.

One night the queen found her child in the fire and snatched him out. Isis, who had taken the form of a swallow, told her that had the child been able to lie for two nights longer it would have become immortal. Now it would be long-lived but not immortal. She revealed her divinity to the queen and claimed the column.

The resurrection of Osiris

Isis took the chest back to Egypt, took the body of her husband out of the chest, breathed into his mouth, and with a motion of her wings (which she could assume at any time) brought him back to life.

Seth found his brother sleeping, cut his body in fourteen pieces and scattered them over the land. In order to preserve the beauty and abundance of the land, Isis had to bring the pieces together once more. Isis found all but one piece and put them together again on a floating island.As the body was formed peace came to the land. Grain and fruit trees grew once more.

A voice told Isis that Osiris lives again in the underworld where he was now judge of the dead. Isis had a son named Horus, who fought against the evil power of Seth. Horus brought him before Isis but in her mercy she would not have him slain. Thereafter, Seth’s power decreased and he was among the lesser gods.

Archetypal representatives of the Father-Mother God

We can translate these stories into an understanding of the principles of alchemy and the transfer of energy from Spirit to Matter, the interchange of Father giving life to Mother, Mother giving life to Father, and the great desiring of Mother for Father, restoring him to life, the great desiring of Father for Mother, bringing about the manifestation of the Son, the manifestation of this Trinity. Then we see the polar opposite as anti-Christ, anti-Mother, anti-God. The four figures in the legend play the perpetual role of light and darkness—light transcending itself into new forms and darkness itself being diminished by the expansion of the focalization of light.

The Virgin of the World, an ancient Greek text attributed to Hermes Tirismegistus, includes these words spoken by Isis to her son Horus:

The Supreme God, Creator and Architect of the world, at length accorded to earth for a season, thy father Osiris and the great Goddess Isis, that they might bring the expected salvation. By them life attained its fulness; savage and bloody wars were ended; they consecrated temples to the Gods their ancestors, and instituted oblations. They gave to mortals law, nourishment, and raiment.

The story of Isis and Osiris is the story of twin flames: the Father-Mother God who come in the person of the Manus, who are the lawgivers, sponsors of the root races, sponsors of the great religions of the world, and the sponsors of ordered life and government.

“They shall read,” Hermes said, “my mystic writings, and dividing them into two parts, they shall keep certain of them, and inscribe upon columns and obelisks those which may be useful to man.” Institutors of the first tribunals, they established everywhere the reign of order and justice. With them began the faith of treaties, and the introduction into human life of the religious duty of oaths. They taught the rites of sepulture [burial] towards those who cease to live; they interrogated the horrors of death; they shewed that the spirit from without delights to return into the human body, and that if the way of entry be shut against it, it brings about a failure of life.

Instructed by Hermes, they engraved upon hidden tables that the air is filled with genii [elemental life]. Instructed by Hermes in the secret laws of God, they alone were the teachers and legislators of mankind, initiating them in the arts, the sciences, and the benefits of civilised life. Instructed by Hermes concerning the sympathetic affinities which the Creator has established between heaven and earth, they instituted religious representations and sacred mysteries. And, considering the corruptible nature of all bodies, they ordained prophetic initiation [i.e., initiation by the prophets], so that the prophet who lifts his hands to the Gods should be instructed in all things, and that thereby philosophy and magic might provide nourishment for the soul, and medicine might heal the sufferings of the flesh.

This philosophy is the entire understanding of this history and of our religion, and the magic is the white magic of the science of the spoken Word. Therefore, prophets were ordained by the Manus, by the Father-Mother representative, to receive from God that which should be given to those souls, the nature of whose bodies is corruptible.

Having performed all these things, O my son, and seeing the world arrived at its fulness, Osiris and I were recalled by the inhabitants of heaven; but we could not return thither without having first praised the Lord, so that the celestial Vision might fill the expanse, and that the way of a happy ascension might open before us, since God delights in hymns.

The path of the ascension

The Father-Mother visitants as the witnesses of heaven to earth in the person of Osiris and Isis came, gave the law, contacted the people, showed them the right way in all areas of life, were recalled to the heaven world, but would not return without first praising the Lord Sanat Kumara, the I AM THAT I AM.

This praise consists of all of the teachings of the World Mother that have ever been recorded East and West. Many of those teachings have been destroyed and burned. Many remain. Some are fragmentary. It is the gift of God to send the Father-Mother principle to earth in succeeding epochs, to give the teaching and not return until the fullness of the praise is manifest, so that the celestial vision might fill the expanse of the Matter sphere.

This vision is present. It is upon akasha. It is recorded physically by the spoken Word. It vibrates throughout the planetary body. The vision is told and foretold. They do not leave until the work is finished. And this divine us of the Father-Mother God includes the progeny of the Father-Mother God, all who are endowed with a threefold flame. Therefore, we praise the Lord until the path of the ascension is opened, is made known, is demonstrated, so that none may be lost.

God delights in our hymns of praise, the mantras, the dynamic decrees, the songs, the affirmation of the Word of God. God releases his light in these. Therefore, the science of the Word must be taught so that there is a continuity of life on earth when those twin flames, the Christed ones, must withdraw. Because each one must prove his own salvation without reinforcement. That is ultimately the initiation of the Father-Mother God and the Manus to us. We are given all things, but in the hour of the proving, we must find salvation based upon our own heart’s fervor.

See also

Isis

Sources

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, April 17, 1988.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, December 29, 1977.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, November 29, 1981.