The Gift Of Isis

Discovered by chance in a cave, miraculously preserved from the ravages of time, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts include a major text, rarely explained, entitled:

Lightning: A Perfect Mind

and subtitled:

The Gift Of Isis

 This text is very unusual among the manuscripts of Nag Hammadi, because there is nothing specifically Christian or Jewish. It can not be classified as Gnostic movement that prevailed at the timei.e. between 450 BC and 60 AD. were copied the manuscripts of Nag Hammadi. Commentators are quite embarrassed by this unparalleled text. “In its content, the Lightning is virtually unique in the corpus of Nag Hammadi. It is a revelatory discourse by a female figure that is not specifically identified elsewhere, except perhaps in the title.”(source)George W. Mac Rae, Introduction to Lightning, in Pr James M. Robinson, Nag Hammadi Manuscripts

I don’t think so. The speaker is clearly identified, no only by the title, but through many points of his speech. The narrator seems difficult to identify only because she is not a woman, nor a goddess. She is a thing. She is lightning. Remember that lightning, or thunder, is a feminine word in Greek as well as in French. Is lightning a thing indeed? In this particular context, lightning is both the flash that provides enlightenment and Isis, Great Goddess of Ancient Egypt.

Lightning, therefore, personified as a goddess, is talking to us in a puzzling text and quite rare too, since Egyptian, Hebrew or even Greek texts never discuss that matter. That makes the text particularly important and leads us to dig it up to the secret core.  Thus we made a new translation, influenced by the former facts. We have also included what at the time, was evoked by the images and expressions of Lightning Goddess, Isis of the Egyptians.

“I am Lightning making the perfect mind. I send the power to those who come to me. Do not ignore me, you Greeks, armed with your new beliefs. For I am the first and last, the great goddess and the most humble of your servants. For I am the one who is honored in the old religion, the one who is despised in the Greek worship. I am the one who is sterile because enlightenment is not transmitted by heredity, and numerous are my sons because I have awakened many.

You who have known me, ignore me, because awakening is no more fashionable among the Greeks. And you the Greeks who ignore me, know me, get from  me your enlightenment. Do not be arrogant with me when I’m banished from the earth. When the old religion declines, Isis does not despise the perfect mind. I am a sinner when my flash takes life, and I am the holy when my flash gives enlightenment. I am the wife when I join the insider, and I am a virgin for no man owns me.

I’m sterile because I enlighten those that do not transmit the enlightenment  to their children and I am fruitful because many are those to whom I gave knowledge. I am the midwife because I give birth to the god in man, and I do not give birth because the mystery of life is bigger than me. I am the power when I give through my perfect mind, and I am the fear for my followers fear my kiss. As far as it can kill it can deify. I am compassionate when I give the light of perfect mind and I’m cruel when I crushes the unwary or innocent.

Be careful! I’m mad and I am wise. Why so much hate? You Greeks, why do you ban me from the table of the gods? Because I am a barbarian among the barbarians? But I am both the wisdom of the Greeks and the science of the barbarians. I am the trial of the Greeks and the barbarians. I am Isis, my image is great in Egypt and I have no image elsewhere. Everywhere cursed, loved everywhere, they call me Life, you call me Death. I am the law there, I’m off-the-law here.

I am the one who have no celebration day, because I can thunder every day of the year. And I’m the one that has many festivals, because I was venerated in many countries. I know the first men because I was to them the great goddess, and they know me by, because one day will come when my faith is restored. I am the spirit of man and the repose of the soul. I am the absolute knowledge, the infused science, the total memory.

 All the world’s power comes from my knowledge, the power of angels is based on my word because they are the son of lightning. And I was the first power of the gods.

And I am the power of the spirits who have joined me. I’m the control because the awake knows how to handle himself and I am uncontrollably as the omnipotence of my flash exceeds human strength. Hear me in gentleness, and learn from me rudely. I am the one who cries and thundering and I’m thrown in the face of the earth. I’m hearing is accessible to all, when I scold my thunder.

And I am the only word that cannot be heared
when the insider uses the third ear.

O Isis, O lightning that turns into god, extend your blessing on the people of that time. You left your will in a magical prayer, Lightning: A Perfect Mind, And for all your kindness, for your so beneficial gift, for the strength of your light, we praise you, Isis. Who are you, O holy Isis, the mother and the sister of men, the great goddess, the first and last, you who have been called the goddess with ten thousand names?

Initially, you’re the daughter of Geb, god of the earth, and Nut, goddess of the starry vault. Daughter of earth and sky, under your form of lightning, you show your dual origin by uniting both your parents in your embrace. You are the true benefactor of mankind, the Divine Mother. Unlike other goddesses who disliked life on Earth, Isis has long lived among men to teach them how to grow wheat, to flour and bake bread. She taught them many things, spin flax, weave, carve, sew clothes, cooking and kneading the clay pottery. She knew also to shape the clay and give it life, just as Prometheus. Married to Osiris,who gave her a posthumous son, Horus, with whom she will rule the world for peaceful and bright millennia: the Atlantean age. 

Isis is called the Magical Goddess and the One who gives Life, but she is also the Kiss of Death.  She kept worshipers throughout the Greco-Roman world, but they could not exercise freely their religion, which has taken numerous appearances to protect its zealots. For the Greeks of the 4th century BCE, when Lightning Perfect Mind was written, though her cult had declined significantly, Isis was still a figure as well known as Santa Claus today. Every aspect of her legend was familiar even to children, the story of Isis being rhymes and artwork. But the origin of her worship came from Egypt and before, no doubt, of Amenta, this ancestral land that was beyond the seas, far to the west.” (source)Albert Slosman, Et Dieu ressuscita à Dendérah 

In the fourth century AD, as Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, the worshipers of Isis founded the cult of the Madonna to maintain the influence of Isis. Another sect was all the rage at the time, Mithraism also called Sol Invictus, the Sons of the Sun. Behind an exotic look far away from the Egyptian source, the religion of the Son of the Sun based on the same initiation, enlightenment – or death – by lightning.

At the time, the new religion of Jesus was known in Rome where often confused with Mithraism to which christianism did many loans. It seems that the original Christianity was a religion of enlightenment. Several signs still linger to remind this origin. It was based on a pagan religion of energy called Sol Invictus, where the lightning enlightenment was practised. 

Pentecost: a shamanic ritual

Some shamanist rituals are clearly present in the gospels. For instance Pentecost shows us how the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles as a dove. Jesus has disappeared. Before leaving he had entrusted their mission: “Go and teach all nations and give them the good news When you get home, eat what they eat and follow their habits. Heal those among them who are sick.”  Then the Holy Spirit went down in them, as they were trembling with fear, and when he was in them, all the fear vanished. They began to speak in tongues. They received power to cure all illness.

Pentecost tells us therefore the story of a collective awakening. The awakening was one of the essential components of early Christianity. That is why all other religions of enlightenment can be found more or less in the legendary Christian corpus. Besides, the old pictures showing Isis and baby Horus inspired all the portraits of the Mother and Child for centuries, including Mary and baby Jesus. But after the fairly tolerant syncretism of Greece and Rome, the new Christian religion has thrown the Trinity to the dogs, replacing Isis, the perfect female spirit of Atlantis and ancient people, by a male figure, the Holy Spirit.

Thus the Trinity Father-Mother-Son, Osiris-Isis-Horus was commuted Father-Son-Spirit. Machismo was as strong as it was unfair… In the esoteric tradition, Osiris was identified with Orion and Isis with Sirius. Does this mean that these gods come from these distant stars? We can not exclude this hypothesis, the presence of both Orion and Sirius is brilliant in the myths of many different origins: Latin America with the pre-Inca and Olmec, Africa with the Dogon, the Middle East with Sumer, Asia with India, China and Japan, Europe and the Tuatha De Danaan, the people of the Goddess Dana, another name for the great Isis.

O Isis, my sweet benefactor, shine your bright light on me!

It is a force called weakness by the strong ones who have not, it’s a wisdom called madness by the sages who have not, it’s a light called darkness by the blind ones who have not.