Isis

I decided I wanted to do my project on the Goddess Isis because I used to read these novels about her and I thought she was really interesting.  To me, she represents women in power, as she was exceedingly powerful and followers of her Cult believed in equality for women and men.

Isis was worshiped as nearly everything.  She started out as the Goddess of things like motherhood, and giving life.  Then the "giving life" thing took on a whole new meaning after her husband and brother, Osiris, was killed by their brother Set and she resurrected him, making her the most powerful magician to exist.  Over time, Isis became the Goddess of everything and sort of overtook the power of all Goddesses as her worship grew.

She even overcame the former most powerful Goddess, Hathor.  Isis was worshiped all throughout Europe.  Sometimes she was associated with other Goddesses like Demeter and Hera from the Roman and Greek religions, but mostly she was worshiped in her own right, even in other cultures.  She was a huge influence from then on.  She was often depicted as the patron mother, with Horus in her lap, and it is a possibility that she was sort of a precursor to the Virgin Mary, and that the idea of Isis eventually translated into that.

Isis was also the possessor of the ankh, the key of life, after she accomplished the feat of raising the dead.  One of the things that made Isis so powerful was that she had convinced Ra, the sun God, into telling her his true name.  Thus, she had power over him, one of the other most powerful gods.

For my product, I decided to do a comparison of Isis with the most powerful, beloved Goddess of today: Beyonce.  My thought process going into this was that I wanted to connect my topic to modern day.  So, I thought about what Isis represented, and her relevance to the world.  I considered other icons, like Oprah, but eventually I decided that the main Goddess of the modern world was, indeed, Beyonce.

Colbert, Joanna P. "Isis, Goddess of the Divine Feminine." Isis, Goddess of the Divine Feminine. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2014. <http://www.angelfire.com/journal/ofapoet/isis2.html>.

"Goddesses Associated with Isis." Ancient Egyptian Gods; Isis. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2014. <http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/isisgod.html>.

Graves, Robert, Richard Aldington, Delano Ames, Félix Guirand, and Félix Guirand. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. London: Hamlyn, 1968. Print.

Matheson, Susan B. "The Goddess Tyche." Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin An Obsession with Fortune: Tyche in Greek and Roman Art (1994): 18-33. Print.