Raven's Reflections: Isis and Nephthys

Isis and Nephthys

Why do we put the goddess before the god? The question came up on a first degree study list for the Correllian tradition. This is an important question that deserves consideration: in a religion that so strongly emphasizes balance, why do we tend to put the feminine first? Some traditions, such as the Dianics, have either removed or reduced-to-a-mention the god entirely and a question such as this goes to the heart of our theology.

The answers from the students started rolling in. Most of the replies could be summarized as we honor the goddess over the god because She is nurturing and caring and gave birth to us all. Reply after reply came in saying approximately the same thing: sweetness and light and bunnies all around. This perception has lead some practitioners of other faiths--right or wrong--to see Wicca as something fundamentally different from what it is supposed to represent. Steve Corum, an Ásatrúar, has said:

While this view is probably not the view of all of Ásatrúar, this view does exist and, unfortunately, among many Wiccans there is some justification for it. Many so-called Wiccans do say proudly that My magick is not dark; it is light. I apply the Wiccan Rede and the Threefold Law to my life, not just to my magickal practice. I believe that I am here to serve my Goddess, humanity, Mother Earth and all Her creatures.

Goddesses of Darkness

Hel, Kali, The Morrigan, Lilith. These are a few of the many dark goddesses: entities who are far from sweet and loving mothers to us all. Some of them are mothers, however, their darker natures do not come from later fabrications but were considered, by the original religion, to be intrinsic to the entity.

Hel

Hel was the daughter of Loki by the Giantess Angurboda. Her bones showed on the outside of her body and she was both black and white in color. Her domain is the underworld (Niflheim). A place of torment, after Ragnarok it would be the domain for murders, oath breakers, etc. Hel was bound to Niflheim and given domain there by the All-Father himself for her behavior in the gods home of Asgard.

Kali

The Destroyer. Black and emaciated, this Hindu goddess has terrible fangs and claws. Her earrings are made from the corpses of children and her mouth is smeared with blood. A girdle of severed arms adorns her waist, bracelets of cobras cover her wrists, and a necklace of skulls is draped over her neck.

She was a loving a protective mother as well as a destroyer, but one cannot downplay her darker aspects simply because they are not to one's tastes. Her terrifying and powerful nature is not the interpretation of Christian Missionaries trying to bias others against her--it is as much a part of her as her more motherly aspects.

The Morrigan

The Washer at the Ford. She who appeared to those who were about to die in battle; a goddess of war represented by three ravens. A triune goddess, The Morrigan is composed of Badb, Nemain, and Macha--none of whom I would want to meet alone on a dark night. When Cúchulainn refused her hand she jinxed him so that he would die in battle.

Another fertility goddess, the Phantom Queen is also a bringer of death who brings new life through the composting of corpses on the field.

Lilith

The Night Hag of Isaiah, Lilith was the slayer of young children in the Hebrew mythos. She is likely derived from the Sumerian entity known as Ardat Lili, a young female goddess who was responsible for night hag syndrome where we wake up feeling paralyzed by an unseen force.

Some claim that she was Adam's first wife and have made her into a symbol of female empowerment. This image is based on The Alphabet of Ben Sirah, a medieval work. All prior references to her (and, indeed, that one as well) are fundamentally demonic in nature--this is not the fabrication of later scholars. In the Kabbalah she is known only as The Klippah--the shell, the mother of the demons.

In some stories she is portrayed as the slayer of children--the boogyman who slays children who misbehave or who die suddenly in their cribs. She does this job without mercy or compassion, but also without malice.

Accepting the Yin

What we as a community have been doing is embracing Isis but rejecting her sister Nephthys. [W]here Isis was visible, birth, growth, development and vigour, Nephthys was invisible, death, decay, diminution and immobility. We have embraced with open arms all that is sweetness and light into our world, but we have rejected, shoved under a rug, or otherwise avoided the idea that the price of life is that the cycle must end at death so that it may begin anew. Even the goddess Isis is not the "Sweet and Light" goddess many make her out to be.

In the anime Trigun there is a scene where Vash is with his brother Knives watching a spider crawl towards a butterfly trapped in its web. Vash is slowly moving to save the butterfly, and Knives reaches out and kills the spider and freeing the butterfly in the process. Vash is upset by this and Knives points out that if he wanted to save the butterfly, killing the spider was the most effective way to do it. Vash cannot be reconciled, saying that he wanted to save them both. Knives points out that if you save the butterflys then the spiders will starve to death.

If we claim to embrace nature then we must be willing to watch the butterfly be eaten. The spider does not kill for spite or malice, it kills because it is in its nature to kill and it cannot survive without preying on those who fall into its web. Such is nature's way. We do not have to like it (I'm sure the mouse doesn't like being food for the cat), but we do have to understand it and embrace it.

Without negative feedback most natural systems would explode. As Coyote points out in the Navajo Creation Myth, the world would be stripped bare and there would be no room for the children of the current generation. Death and destruction are necessary for life to continue. Elements such as strife, misery, and suffering are all simply part of the learning process that we must go through and that our souls must experience through each iteration of the wheel. Just as we greet Isis with open arms, so too must we greet her sister--to do otherwise is to insult the goddess herself by saying we want only those aspects of you that we find palpable.

People who embrace the Yang and who are mostly Sweetness and Light™ are not the problem and can be quite fun to be around. The problem is when people shove the Yin to the side and sweep it under a rug. The two aspects do not cancel each other out but rather remain in a state of active equilibrium (as my friend RekKa would put it)--each one needing the other to balance both itself and the universe around it. If we truly advocate balance, then while we may personally lean one way or the other, we must be willing to accept both.