Neith (aka Net, Neit or Nit) and is one of the oldest deities of ancient Egypt who was worshipped early in the Pre-Dynastic Period (c. 6000 – 3150 BCE) and whose veneration continued through the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323 – 30 BCE), the last to rule Egypt before the coming of Rome.
For the image at the top, click here.
Serket (also known as Serqet, Selkis, and Selket) is an Egyptian goddess of protection associated with the scorpion. She was worshipped widely in Lower Egypt as a great Mother Goddess in the Predynastic Period (c. 6000- c. 3150 BCE) and so is among the older deities of Egypt. She is associated with healing, magic, and protection, and her name means “She Who Causes the Throat to Breathe”. Her symbols are the scorpion, the Ankh, and the Was Sceptre, all of which convey her benevolent aspects.
Read more at the Ancient History Encylopedia
(Image originally from Flickr, by Merce.)
After all, the Egyptians seem to have associated the moon with gods: Thoth, Khonsu, Aah. The Greeks, however, saw the moon as feminine, so when the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, Isis became a moon goddess. Isis is a very complex goddess, however, who can’t be defined by any one function or aspect.
A lovely painting of a lunar Isis by artist Katana Leigh. Visit her site here.
Modern Pagans often think of Isis as a Moon Goddess. And, it’s true, in later periods of Her worship, She was indeed associated with the Moon—and, in fact, that’s how She entered the Western Esoteric Tradition. The Isis-Moon connection first started when Egypt came under Greek rule in the 3rd century BCE, following the conquest by Alexander the Great. To the Greeks, Goddesses were the lunar Deities, so as Isis made Her way into Greek culture and hearts, Her new devotees naturally associated Her with the Moon.
In Egypt, Osiris, Khons, Thoth, and I’ah were the Deities most associated with the Moon. Isis, for Her part, was connected with the star Sirius as far back as the Pyramid Texts; the star was said to be Her ba, or soul. Yet Isis is also linked…
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The Egyptian goddess Seshat is one of the lesser-known Egyptian deities, and yet she was an enduring one. Her name means “Female Scribe” and the art of the scribe was her area: the burgeoning state of Egypt needed to keep records, formalize contracts and agreements, and make blueprints for buildings. This made her a useful deity, but also limited her cult, as we shall see.
Horus is one of the oldest Egyptian gods, possibly reaching back to predynastic times. His conflict with Set, the desert-god, was one of the basic myths of Egyptian religion, long before Horus joined to the Isis-Osiris family.
In the 1940s comics that first featured Dr. Fate, his parents were a Swedish archaeologist and his spiritualist wife. In a larger, pop culture sense, however, he was the child of Helena Blavatsky and Howard Carter.
Like all the early heroes, he distilled elements that were floating around in the culture already. Both archaeology and spiritualism had their roots in the mid-1800s. Archaeology grew out of the attempt to trace the history of Biblical events, and to establish just how much of the actual narratives could be confirmed by outside evidence.
What do the Egyptian god Horus and the Norse god Odin have in common? Both of them are said to have the sun and moon as their eyes. The difference is that this belief about Horus dates back to very early Egyptian religion. As far as I can tell, the same statement about Odin comes from some 19th and 20th century writers.
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky – its modern name comes from the Ancient Greek Seirios (“glowing” or “scorcher”). It is actually another one of those binary stars, a white star and a white dwarf. Like Procyon, its nearness to Earth makes it much brighter in the night sky than many other stars. It is brighter than our sun, but dimmer than Rigel and Canopus.
Procyon suffers from an inferiority complex – even its name points to a more important star. Procyon means “before the dog”, meaning Sirius, the dog-star. (Fun fact: the racoon genus is called Procyon, because it used to be thought that raccoons evolved before dogs.)
Rattawy, or Raet, is the feminine form of the name Ra, the Egyptian sun-god. Strangely, she has nothing to do with the sun-god’s cult, but seems to have led an independent existence from the 19th Dynasty onward. While some see her as simply “Mrs. Ra”, the only records we have of her tell a very different story.
We Are Star Stuff 