Contact With Isis

by G.E. & L.P.

This is an extract from our magical diaries, or to be precise, a distillation of the records of four rituals which took place between February 1989 and December 1990. The working was "The Meeting of Mind with Mind", a ritual taken from Dolores' book First Steps in Ritual which describes a technique whereby a man and a woman work together to contact the goddess Isis. Dolores explains in her book that this is a condensed version of one of the Grade Rituals of the Priesthood of Isis in the city of On. We followed the text of the ritual exactly as laid out in the book except that we changed the opening slightly on one occasion. The text of the article is based directly on the entries in our diaries. These were made as soon as possible after each ritual, but they have been merged and rearranged slightly in the interests of style and readability. Before we began this series of rituals we were convinced that nothing would happen, nothing could have been further from the truth...

Contact with Isis

Priestess:
The opening was straightforward. The godforms built easily but, it seemed, unremarkably. I had some trouble adjusting my physical position so that there was a direct line of power through my throat centre and out through the back of my head. As I settled down into myself, I saw a thread of light come in from the Western quarter and followed it. I seemed to lose all sense of my individuality, I ceased to be me, but felt as though I was floating on someone else's breath, gently and rhythmically floating up and down as the breat rose and fell. It reminded me of the soft but persistent pull of the waves and I felt as though I was back in that sea that was before the start of all things. I was no longer "a woman" but simply Woman. At this point I remembered that I had to signal to my Priest so that he could begin to build the mind-link.

Priest:
As I concentrated upon the back of the priestess' head, I was aware that it was growing less clear and even before I had time to form the link properly (Dolores recommends that this is done by visualising a line of light between particular areas of the brains of the two magicians) I found myself falling downwards and came to rest in a sort of rack chamber. There was a door cut into the rock and I could see a girl beckoning me in. The invitation was irresistible and I entered what seemed to be a vast cavern in which were numerous very bright lights.

Priestess:
The sea rose and fell and I moved easily with it. I was comfortable and whole in a way I had never felt before. The sea became menstrual blood. It was the womb-cradle of the first life forms and I was the first life.

Priest:
As I looked around the cavern it filled with Binah imagery: it was the primordial womb - it was flooded with menstrual blood. Other images rushed upon me with such speed that I could hardly keep track of them. Comparing notes afterwards we realised that many of these were common to both of our visions. Some, for example, the snow-white goose that we both saw, we could not immediately place and it was only on consulting our symbol dictionary that we realised that the white goose was a symbol of the Great Mother.

Priestess:
I was present at the birth of the stars and watched in wonder as the once dark sky was filled with their silver radiance. And then into the centre of my mental screen came a wonderful vision, it seemed that Her head, from being bowed in sleep, rose so that the eyes of the mighty Isis were looking directly into mine. I knew that there were no secrets I could keep from Her and that there was nothing that I could see that was not Her. At that moment I was irreversibly altered: I remembered then what I suppose I have always known, that I have always been and would always be Her priestess. The feeling of power increased and I began to wonder if I would be overwhelmed.

Priest:
A great deal more womb imagery came to me together with half-formed images of the Goddess herself. The sense of power was incredible: it was raw, naked power but not in any way threatening. It seemed to be quintessentially female in nature. The power was so great at one point that I began to feel as if I would burst open. I almost called to my priestess to stop and break the link.

Priestess:
A junoesque figure of a woman stood before me with a spear raised in her hand. There was no sense of aggression in the way that she threw the weapon at me. I gasped as it entered my heart centre. The pain was so much that all of the tears I might otherwise have shed were locked frozen inside.

Priest:
I was looking upon the face of Isis. On her head was an Egyptian headdress but as I watched ha face became the planet and her hair the stars. I rushed towards her as a son rushes to be reunited with his mother.

Priestess:
We were at her breasts and she was nurturing us. We were intertwined. The vision faded and I became aware of another figure, seemingly standing in front of us in the Temple. This time she was in her dark aspect as the destroyer, her forrner beauty lost. Still she opened her arms to me and called me daughter.

Before us was another form of the Goddess. She appeared as a hag, her long fingernails like talons. I physically flinched thinking that she was about to attack us. I asked her why she chose to appear to us in such a sinister aspect and she replied that she represented now the destructive phase of the birth-growth-death cycle to which all life is subject. Then she lowered her clawed hands and smiled at me. By this time I was beginning to feel exhausted as well as elated and I began to undo the link with my priestess and to withdraw back into myself. When I was fully back I signalled so that the priestess could also begin to close down.

Priestess:
Following the signal I allowed my consciousness to withdraw back into my physical body until I became aware one again of the Temple surroundings and finally absorbed the silver thread.

Priest:
We closed down the quarters, but the psychic echoes of the ritual lingered, along with the scent of Kyphi, for the next 24 hours. The memory will last a lifetime. Since the completion of the rituals we have both been increasingly aware of the Goddess both within our everyday lives and within ourselves.

Priestess:
I remember watching a nurse who, with infinite gentleness, was helping an elderly resident to dress and suddenly I realised that this was the Goddess in action, caring for one of her older children. On another occasion, holding the hand of a dying woman, I found myself half envying her in the knowledge that shortly a much greater hand than mine would be holding hers. There has never been an occasion since when I have felt the love of another human being and not thought of the creator of that gift and thanked her wholeheartedly. At other times, when something in my life has come to an end, I have invoked the destroyer in myself to sweep away what is useless with the same precision as a hairdresser sweeping up my hair from the floor. People are talking about the return of the Goddess but the truth is that she never reallv left: she was there all the time sleeping within.

Priest:
In her account of the ritual, Dolores says that for man "...contact with Her brings a sense of wonder they never lose..." There is no better way of summarising my own feelings. How sorry I feel for those whose religion does not allow them to worship the eternal Feminine as well as the eternal Masculine. They are missing so much.