Isis and Mary - Horus and Jesus

When I went to California about a month ago, I made it a point to go to the A.M.O.R.C. Rosicrucian Center in San Jose. You see their ads in the back of magazines, or at least you used to. About the "Mysteries of Life" and some such things. Pretty intriguing. If you go to their center, the grounds are completely in an Egyptian motif, and they have an Egyptian museum on site with many original relics. The grounds are very impressive, and very beautiful, with all sorts of Egyptian artwork and statuary, as well as many roses, very large roses, growing everywhere. What does it all mean?How does it all fit together? The Rosicrucians are what's known as a "secret society", which explores the past and its hidden truths, in an effort toward self-development. For example, if you are Catholic, you might have wondered about where at least some of that rich Catholic imagery and symbolism derives from (if Protestant, then your wonder may be less personal, as Protestants did away with a lot of this imagery and symbolism when they broke away under Martin Luther). The Rosicrucians believe that there's more to the story than what is presented as conventional, orthodox, or as traditionally given.

The Catholic veneration of the Holy Family (Joseph, Mary and Jesus) has interesting, and earlier, much earlier parallels, with the Egyptian cult of Osiris, Isis and Horus. Osiris, god of the Dead, is brought back to life (resurrrected), by Isis, after being killed by his archrival, known as Set, god of discord and the desert (and from which may well derive our "Satan"). Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris, and also has many battles with that malignant ol' Set. Set knocks out one of Horus' eyes, while Horus removes a testicle from Set in battle (doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible that Satan would strike the Son of the Woman in the heel, while the Son would deliver, ultimately, a fatal blow, to the head?). Isis was also known by her many titles, such as "Queen of Heaven", "Protector of the Poor", "Stella Maris" (Latin for Star of the Sea, important to sailors in ancient times), as is the Virgin Mary, per Wikipedia. The rose was a symbol of Isis, as it is still for the Virgin Mary (does this sound familiar, Catholics?).

The Middle East in the time of Jesus was a very cosmopolitan place, where Greeks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Africans all intermingled and mixed together in the marketplaces of Egypt, Israel, Syria, and so forth. As well did their ideas, their cultures, and their religious conceptions. It was very popular in those times, to mix and match religious concepts and ideas together to come up with new, syncretic forms of worship. Particularly the Greeks served as an intermediary of ideas between Egypt and Israel, and were quite fond of combining all of the neighborhood conceptions together into something new.

I wonder if all of this is buried in the archives of the Vatican somewhere? Probably not; as it's actually all out there in relatively plain sight, for those whom as Jesus himself said, have, "eyes to see, and ears to listen". And as it says in Luke 17:20 and 21, "...the kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is', because the kingdom of God is within you." That verse, in a nutshell, represents I believe the philosophy of the Rosicrucians as well as the true essence of Christianity, and it is something that has always been, from time immemorial right on up to the present day. In other words, we've had many stories and legends handed down to us. The truth, however, if you look long and hard enough, really lies within you. And even Jesus himself said as much. Not that we are God, but that the kingdom of God, that hidden potential, lies within all of us.

I think I kinda like that.