Isis

95:5.12The weak­ness of Ikh­na­ton’s doc­trine lay in the fact that he pro­posed such an ad­vanced re­li­gion that only the ed­u­cated Egyp­tians could fully com­pre­hend his teach­ings. The rank and file of the ag­ri­cul­tural la­bor­ers never re­ally grasped his gospel and were, there­fore, ready to re­turn with the priests to the old-time wor­ship of Isis and her con­sort Osiris, who was sup­posed to have been mirac­u­lously res­ur­rected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of dark­ness and evil.

95:1.7This de­feat of the Salem gospel was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a great in­crease in the cult of Ishtar, a rit­ual which had al­ready in­vaded Pales­tine as Ash­toreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the north­ern tribes as As­tarte. And it was in con­nec­tion with this re­vival of the wor­ship of Ishtar that the Baby­lo­nian priests turned anew to stargaz­ing; as­trol­ogy ex­pe­ri­enced its last great Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­vival, for­tunetelling be­came the vogue, and for cen­turies the priest­hood in­creas­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated.

98:4.2The three mys­tery cults which be­came most pop­u­lar were:

98:4.31. The Phry­gian cult of Cy­bele and her son At­tis.

98:4.42. The Egyp­tian cult of Osiris and his mother Isis.

98:4.53. The Ira­nian cult of the wor­ship of Mithras as the sav­ior and re­deemer of sin­ful man­kind.

98:4.6The Phry­gian and Egyp­tian mys­ter­ies taught that the di­vine son (re­spec­tively At­tis and Osiris) had ex­pe­ri­enced death and had been res­ur­rected by di­vine power, and fur­ther that all who were prop­erly ini­ti­ated into the mys­tery, and who rev­er­ently cel­e­brated the an­niver­sary of the god’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, would thereby be­come par­tak­ers of his di­vine na­ture and his im­mor­tal­ity.

98:4.7The Phry­gian cer­e­monies were im­pos­ing but de­grad­ing; their bloody fes­ti­vals in­di­cate how de­graded and prim­i­tive these Lev­an­tine mys­ter­ies be­came. The most holy day was Black Fri­day, the “day of blood,” com­mem­o­rat­ing the self-in­flicted death of At­tis. Af­ter three days of the cel­e­bra­tion of the sac­ri­fice and death of At­tis the fes­ti­val was turned to joy in honor of his res­ur­rec­tion.

98:4.8The rit­u­als of the wor­ship of Isis and Osiris were more re­fined and im­pres­sive than were those of the Phry­gian cult. This Egyp­tian rit­ual was built around the leg­end of the Nile god of old, a god who died and was res­ur­rected, which con­cept was de­rived from the ob­ser­va­tion of the an­nu­ally re­cur­ring stop­page of veg­e­ta­tion growth fol­lowed by the spring­time restora­tion of all liv­ing plants. The frenzy of the ob­ser­vance of these mys­tery cults and the or­gies of their cer­e­mo­ni­als, which were sup­posed to lead up to the “en­thu­si­asm” of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity, were some­times most re­volt­ing.