Goddess of the Week: Isis

Image via WikipediaElizabeth needs a goddess to help unify her family because--this is so exciting--she and her husband are adopting a baby!  I think she needs the Egyptian mother goddess Isis.

Isis was all about the family unit.  She was married to her brother Osiris, a nature god who had big plans for Egypt.  Where other gods saw desert and a big river that flooded every year, Osiris saw the heart of civilization.  He got the whole empire thing rolling, but you can't build an empire alone, so he really relied on Isis.  They divided up the work.  Osiris taught folks to make wine; Isis taught them to grind grain.  Osiris taught them to make towns, temples, and laws; Isis taught them to practice medicine and get pre-nups.  It was a great partnership until the evil god Seth Killed Osiris.

Poor Isis traveled near and far only to find Osiris's dead body stuck in a tree.  Finally she got it back, but then Seth chopped Osiris into 13 pieces!  She found everything but his penis and brought him to life again.  Unfortunately, I guess because he had no penis, he had to go be Lord of the Underworld, but first they were able to conceive a son, Horus.

Parenting is difficult under the best of circumstances, but it is a real pain when you can only see your partner in hell, and then, only every other weekend because, you know, travel is expensive, even for gods.  Still, Isis and Osiris persevered, and Horus grew up to be an awesome god with the head of a falcon.

Understanding the importance of having shared interests, Isis worked hard to instill in Horus a deep and abiding desire to kill the evil god Seth.  Horus and Seth fought for seventy years!  Finally, they decided to settle things by seeing who could win a stone-boat race.  Sneaky Horus made his boat out of wood and painted it to resemble stone.  Seth abided by the rules and drowned when his boat sunk, which sort of makes you wonder why it took Horus seventy years to beat a god who thought he could sail in a stone boat.

Isis reminds us that unity in a family comes from sharing burdens and working together, and that starts way before any babies enter the picture, which is just another way of saying that while there are a million ways to make a family work, you can't float a rock.

Channel this goddess: when starting a family, when trying to unify a family, when working on a long-distance relationship, when buying a boat.


Need a goddess: I got goddesses!  Post a comment explain what you need or want a goddess for.  Then check back in a week or two and see what you got.