Search Results for Isis
Isis
Isis giving milk, Musée du Louvre, photo by Rama via Wikipedia
Isis was the central goddess of ancient Egypt, wife of Osiris and mother of Horus.
Her cult spread throughout the ancient Greek and Roman world, where she was linked with many mystery cults that were popular at the time.
In sculpture she’s often seen suckling the infant Horus. From this, Isis is regularly (and arguably wrongly) equated with the Virgin Mary and Kwan Yin by writers like Joseph Campbell and others who believe it’s valid to lump together different mythic beings on the basis of a few similarities in artistic representation. (In this case what’s similar is a woman suckling an infant, which is hardly unique considering many women have done this through the ages after having a baby).
Some feminist and New Age writers also subsume the different figures of Isis, Mary and Kwan Yin into a general idea of The Goddess.
In the Star Trek mythos, Isis is the name of a telepathic black cat and female partner of a time traveler, Gary Seven, who travels to 20th century Earth to prevent nuclear war.¹
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¹ For more on this, see http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Isis
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Visistadvaita
Visistadvaita
Visistadvaita is a school of Indian philosophy founded by the Indian sage and philosopher Ramanuja (1017-1137 CE).
Ramanuja challenged Sankara’s claim that only the Brahman is real and individuality is illusory (maya).
For Ramanuja the Brahman is real and beyond pain and suffering but individual souls (jivas) emerging from and ultimately resting within the Brahman are also real.
While the Brahman is beyond the law of karma, the individual soul (jiva) is not.
As a result, the jiva experiences the pleasure and pain of earthly life.
Liberation from samsara, the round of rebirth due to karma, is gained through individual effort as well as the grace of God (Vishnu).
» Self, Suffering
Further reading:
- P. D. Devanandan, The Concept of Maya, London: Lutterworth Press, 1950.
On the World Wide Web:
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† JSTOR may be accessed from university and many public libraries. It’s also an application at Facebook.
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by posting a comment
Bodhisattva
Image – earthpages.ca
Bodhisattva [Sanskrit bodhi = enlightenment + sattva = existence]
According to Mayhayana Buddhist belief, the bodhisattva is the near enlightened being who forestalls complete enlightenment in order to lead others to a similar state of awareness.
The bodhisattva is said to have seen the proverbial door leading to total enlightenment but waits before entering in order to help others reach that same realization.
Wikipedia elaborates as such:
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva (Sanskrit: बोधिसत्त्व bodhisattva; Pali: बोधिसत्त bodhisatta) is either an enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva) or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, “heroic-minded one (satva) for enlightenment (bodhi).” The Pali term has sometimes been translated as “wisdom-being,”[1] although in modern publications, and especially in tantric works, this is more commonly reserved for the term jñānasattva (“awareness-being”; Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་སེམས་དཔའ་་, Wyl. ye shes sems dpa’).
Because the bodhisattva has a sincere desire to lead others to enlightenment (as they understand it), they’re often venerated as a personal savior, which seems a bit ironic considering Buddhists usually claim that ultimate truth is beyond individuals, veneration, status, attachment to others, etc.
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Bruce Cockburn
Bruce Cockburn’s first album, 1970 (Photo credit: Wikipedia – click on image for fair dealing rationale)
Bruce Cockburn (1945 – ) is a Canadian, Ottawa-born folk and rock musician. He sang about Christianity through natural metaphors well before it was considered cool to do so. Despite this, Cockburn managed to survive and even thrive in the Canadian record industry.
In one interview¹, he said that it’s fine to sing about God, but if the music’s not happening, then the message doesn’t really connect. This was probably an oblique reference to the contemporary Christian pop of the time, so much of it being formulaic and arguably not too original, musically speaking.
At cockburnproject.net he’s quoted as saying:
I am a Christian songwriter. I just don’t fit the Christian music scene.
As the years went by, Cockburn became increasingly critical of what he saw as hypocritical political and religious practices. In “The Gospel of Bondage” (1988) he denounces the selective use of Biblical quotations to justify questionable acts:
God won’t be reduced to an ideology…God must be on the side of right, not the side that justifies itself in terms of might.
Bruce Cockburn performing at the City Stages festival in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Perhaps due to music’s unique ability to move the body and arouse passion, his “Rocket Launcher” (1984) single was sharply criticized:
If I had a rocket launcher… Some son of a bitch would die.
Cockburn responded to his critics by saying there’s a difference between (a) the artistic representation of anger and (b) advocating angry practices (see sublimation).
With regard to “Rocket Launcher” he claimed to merely represent his outrage in response to the bloodshed of innocents in South America.
Signing with the SONY label, Cockburn’s sound became bigger but he never really cracked the American market as, perhaps, anticipated.
Back with his former True North label, however, his electronically enhanced acoustic sound has returned, along with some noteworthy retro-style experimentation.
Like Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Bryan Adams, Alanis Morisette, Celine Dione, Glenn Gould and Justin Bieber, Cockburn is something of a culture hero in a country that is finally growing out of its national identify crisis.²
The following tune, “Wondering Where the Lions Are” is a reference to the Old Testament story of Daniel in the Lions Den and, according to Wikipedia, is his most popular single to date on the US but not the Canadian charts.³
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¹ From a magazine article. Source cannot be located. Probably somewhere between the late 80s and the new millennium. In recent decades, Christian pop has undergone a serious reboot, some of which is arguably just as “cool” or “good” as anything else out there.
² This was especially prevalent in the 1980s, when entire university departments in the Humanities spent countless hours (and taxpayers dollars) looking at how Canada differed from the US and beyond.
³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Cockburn
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Church Fathers
Altarpiece of the Church Fathers: St Augustine Liberating a Prisoner (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Church Fathers is the title usually given to those regarded as the brightest theological lights in the early Christian Church.
Influential and usually learned Christian thinkers contributing to the formation of Church dogma, aspects of their writings are often cited as supportive “truths” within the contemporary Roman Catholic Catechism.
The Church Fathers are considered exemplars of holiness and are usually, but not always, canonized. Tertullian (160–225) is a good example of a leading Christian who was never canonized.¹
The study of the Fathers’ writings is known as Patristics, although the Church Fathers fall into two periods, the Apostolic and the Patristic.
Since the 17th-century the Apostolic Fathers have been designated as those who wrote just after the New Testament period, to include Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Hermas, Polycarp and Papias. This list also includes the anonymous writers of the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle to Diognetus, Clement and the Didache.
The well-known theologian Origen (184–254) was too far interested Platonism and ideas similar to reincarnation to be taken as a Church Father. He was excommunicated by the Church but his work continues to interest scholars. And sort of slipping in the back door, as it were, Origen’s writings are often included in compilations under the heading, “Church Fathers.”
Tertullian (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Patristics wrote up to the 8th-century, to include Isidore of Seville (7th-century) and John of Damascus (8th- century).
Feminists point out that there are no Church Mothers, perhaps because of the sexist environment of the early Christian era. This type of discrimination persists through the ages and, so they say, remains in many contemporary religious and secular organizations.
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¹ Tertullian also demonstrates that the Church Fathers could be quite harsh against their opponents, in this case, the early Gnostics. As the British philosopher of religion, John Hick, points out in Evil and the God of Love, Tertullian wrote scathing attacks against the Gnostics.
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Dismemberment
Mourner (could be Isis mourning Osiris) via Wikipedia
Dismemberment has been a cruel form of capital punishment in both Asian and European history. And the ugly practice came to North American shores, legitimized under the belief in manifest destiny.¹
The theme of dismemberment occurs throughout comparative mythology.
In the Hindu Artharva Veda the world is created from the sacrifice and dismemberment of the “cosmic man” (Skt. purusa). This has been interpreted as a universal self that we ultimately return to, past the fragmented splinters of false and deceptive personalities and personas.
In Egyptian mythology Osiris is dismembered by the demon Set. His sister-wife Isis, with the help of Nephthys and Anubis, restores him fully with only his nose to work on, a tale arguably prefiguring the 21C realities of cloning.
Wikipedia lists these additional examples:
- In Greek mythology, the god Dionysus is dismembered by the Titans.
- In Japanese mythology, Izanagi dismembers Kagutsuchi in revenge for the death of his lover Izanami.
- In Aztec mythology, the god Huitzilopochtli dismembers his sister Coyolxauhqui for trying to kill their mother, Coatlicue. He tossed his sister’s head into the sky, where it became the moon.²
The Dismemberment Plan (Photo credit: mehan)
The theme of dismemberment usually fits, either closely or indirectly, within the larger mythic cycle of death and resurrection because dismembered characters in myth often come back in some kind of new, transformed state.
The theme of dismemberment crops up in B-movies, video games, anime, and rock music. And in literature, Dante’s Divine Comedy has recurring cycles of dismemberment and healing as a form of punishment for falsifiers.
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¹ Theodore Roosevelt condoned the dismemberment of Native American Indian women and children in Colorado as a “righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the continent.” http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&ved=0CGgQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apaonline.org%2FCMDownload.aspx%3FContentKey%3D5f847188-8a3d-4b90-a678-8f7cf9387122%26ContentItemKey%3D49ac4888-2f0c-4a87-b688-c0f5f1b03f61&ei=mY4zUJK-Jaf00gHK84GADw&usg=AFQjCNERU8qo_OtrQ5FXQTMMUGqC3LaUOw
Death and Resurrection
The Earliest fresco of the Virgin Mary, in the Catacomb of Priscilla from the middle of the 2nd century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Countless scholars, depth psychologists and writers point out that the motif of death and resurrection is found throughout world religion, mythology, literature and the arts.
The death may be symbolic, involving a hero who undergoes a psychological or societal ‘death’ by leaving everyday life for the underworld. He or she typically encounters unusual friends, foes, adventures and battles, only to return utterly transformed.
This kind of symbolic death and resurrection is championed by the depth psychiatrist C. G. Jung and also by the mythographer Joseph Campbell. But it need not be a single, big event. As a friend of mine said quite a few years ago, she’s been through several symbolic deaths and resurrections.
At the time I thought my friend just didn’t get it because I’d been through a pretty big change, which my ego told me was way more significant than what she was talking about. But I came to see that she was right. At least, she was right in that we can all go through many symbolic deaths and resurrections according to who we are and what we need so as to grow in life.
As Sonia Neale beautifully puts it from a Buddhist perspective, and in the context of leaving her therapist:
It is normal to grieve and mourn. This non-attachment is difficult because every breath of warm wind, every flower and tree, in fact almost everything reminds me of someone I love dearly and have to let go. Even being alive reminds me of what I have lost. But I now believe that when you lose something, it is replaced with something of equal value or better.¹
The mythic theme of death and resurrection also takes the form of an actual death, as we find in sacred accounts of the Hindu Siva and Kali, the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the Greek Persephone and Demeter, as well as in the story of Jesus and The Virgin Mary.
We also find many accounts where archaic societies sacrificed human beings to appease their gods or spirits. And it was generally believed that the sacrificial victims were generously rewarded in the afterlife. Such practices were found in Greece, Rome, India, China, Celtic and Viking Europe as well as Mesoamerica.
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¹ Neale, S. (2011). Death and Resurrection Through Therapy. Psych Central. Retrieved on June 28, 2012, from http://blogs.psychcentral.com/unplugged/2011/05/death-and-resurrection-through-therapy
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Excalibur
A sculpture of the sword given to King Arthur by the Lady of the Lake, in the lake of Kingston Maurward gardens (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur, often said in traditional and contemporary¹ lore to have magical powers.
In Malory’s Morte d’Arthur the young boy Arthur succeeds in pulling the sword from a stone, a seemingly impossible feat which not even adults can accomplish. In another account the sword is given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake.
As Arthur is dying he commands Sir Bedivere to toss the sword into the lake and a mysterious hand grasps it, drawing it under the surface. In an older version of the legend by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthur’s sword is known as Caliburn.
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¹ Such as the TV series Merlin » http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1199099/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_%28TV_series%29
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Eden
Adam and Eve Are Driven out of Eden by Gustave Dore. Picture portrayed over passage in Genesis. And he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen. 3:24). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In Jewish and Christian belief, based on the book of Genesis 2-3, Eden [Hebrew Eden: delight, pleasure] is the garden of paradise in which God first created mankind.
According to the Bible story, the first humans were vegetarians. God allowed them to eat of any fruit in the garden, except the fruit from the tree of knowledge (either an apple or a pomegranate).
Later in the Bible story, after the disobedience and expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, God gives his chosen people (the Israelites) prohibitions concerning which meats are permissible to eat and which are not.
In the Book of Ezekiel Eden symbolizes Israel’s promised redemption after being in exile.
Eden is also mentioned in the Koran. And a rough parallel to Eden is found in the Sumerian Dilmun, a mythological place where everyone lives forever and never gets sick nor dies.
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St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi (circa 1182-1220) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Before becoming known as St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone was the son of a wealthy Italian cloth merchant, next in line to take over his father’s prosperous business.
In his youth Francis was a popular dilettante, enjoying friends and parties. In keeping with expectations for the young upper-class men of the day, he fought in the army and was taken prisoner. Suffering a serious illness, Francis apparently had some kind of powerful mystical vision.
He returned to his father, telling him he could no longer continue with the family business. Scorned by his father, Francis went to the central square in Assisi where he removed his clothing for all to see, which was his way of renouncing his life of worldly gain. Standing naked, a nearby person threw him a course blanket, which he took to wear. Francis went on to form the friars minor (fratres minores), a monastic order characterized by chastity and extreme poverty, and all of its members wore the same course cloth.
The order grew quickly. By 1219 the Franciscans swelled to over 5,000 members. His former friend and spiritual love, Lady Clare of Assisi, followed suit by likewise renouncing the world. She founded a similar but sequestered order and was eventually canonized.
Stories about St. Francis abound, telling of his love and tenderness toward animals, his writing a canticle to “brother sun, sister moon” and his insistence on complete poverty, which he affectionately personified as “Lady Poverty.” He apparently opened the Bible at random every morning and read a verse to set the tone for his actions throughout the day, believing that God directed him to the right passage. And with Papal permission he unsuccessfully tried to convert the Muslims in the Holy Land, who nonetheless were impressed by his piety.
He also endured a painful medieval eye operation using red-hot irons to remove cataracts. And he is one of the very few mystics said to have miraculously received the stigmata—physical marks of Christ’s crucifixion appearing on one’s own hands and feet.
St. Francis was buried in his native town of Assisi. He remains, perhaps, Catholicism’s most popular saint, probably because his kind of example can be easily understood by rank and file Catholics. However, it’s hard to know if his knowledge of God was a deep as, say, the contemplative St. Faustina Kowalska, who apparently saw Jesus on a near daily basis.
His feast day is October 4.
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