“Isis-Sophia, Wisdom of God, she has been slain by Lucifer, and on the wings of the powers of the world carried her hence into the infinite space of the universe. The willing of Christ working in man, shall wrest from Lucifer, and on the boats of spirit-knowledge awaken in human souls Isis-Sophia Wisdom of God.”

Rudolf Steiner, GA 202

One of the most complex and misunderstood aspects of Rudolf Steiner’s teachings is the mystery of the being of Sophia, the being Steiner calls AnthropoSophia. What is most confusing is that Steiner seems to be describing three separate beings under the name of Sophia. These three beings comprise what could be thought of as the Mother (the Creatrix), the Daughter (the Kyriotetes, the beings of Wisdom), and the being of AnthropoSophia (unique to Steiner’s teachings). Anyone who attempts to do what Steiner gives as an important injunction for the spiritual seeker – discover the Sophia of Christ – may find themselves in a quandary attempting to unravel this mystery.

According to Steiner in his lecture on Faust, the first three incarnations of the Earth (Saturn, Sun, Moon) combine to create “The Mothers.” This is Sophia the Mother, part of a trinity of beings. This Mother Sophia descended from the Divine Feminine Trinity, a realm above the nine hierarchies. The being of Wisdom from the hierarchy of the Kyriotetes is described by Steiner as the combined beings of the hierarchical rank of the Beings of Wisdom (Kyriotetes) – sometimes referred to as the Cosmic Sophia. We can call this being Sophia the Daughter, who descended with Christ from the realms of the Kyriotetes issuing from the Holy Trinity. She descended into the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth, changing her into the vessel of Cosmic Wisdom – called by Steiner, Mary Sophia.

The third being of Sophia spiritually evolves along with humanity and Steiner gives her the name, AnthropoSophia. This being is the midwife of everyone’s spiritual unfoldment. Together, these three Wisdom beings comprise what Dr. Tyla Gabriel, in her trilogy entitled The Gospel of Sophia, name as the Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Sophia. This being, or beings, comprises a second spiritual trinity above the nine hierarchy, which is the female counterpart to the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Rudolf Steiner in the lecture cycle entitled Ancient Myths, presents a “New Isis Myth” that is appropriate for our times, which he wrote himself. The Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris was made new through the insight of Rudolf Steiner who tells us that a new myth is necessary if we are to understand Christ Jesus. This myth, presented below, is one of the most mysterious gifts Steiner’s wisdom gives to Anthroposophists to contemplate. To date, we have found no comprehensive interpretations of this myth and do not intend to present one here. We have also gathered remarks Steiner has presented in other lecture cycles to try and understand the New Isis Myth and its relevance for the modern striving soul seeking a broader understanding of the place of Isis and Sophia in relation to the cosmic nature of Christ.

Steiner understands the myth of Isis and Osiris as an expression of the loss of the clairvoyant perception of the spiritual world that was common to the ancients. He speaks of the loss of that direct connection to the spiritual world as necessary for humanity’s evolution. The new challenge is to understand the connection between that loss and the challenge we face today in bringing new life to our abstract thinking and understanding the world.

Steiner’s New Isis Myth is the key to understanding Christ, what he calls the “Sophia of Christ.” In the Egyptian myth, the veiled Isis says, “I am Isis, I am the All. I am the Past, the Present, and the Future. No mortal has yet lifted my veil and lived.” In the New Isis Myth, as told by Rudolf Steiner, the Isis figure states, “I am the Human Being. I am the Past, the Present, and the Future. Every mortal should lift my veil to live.”

This extraordinary myth challenges modern humanity to awake to a new consciousness of the spiritual forces that work in our lives and in society. We are to carry this new Isis/Sophia within us as she midwifes the human soul uniting with the divine spirit developing the Christened soul.

This new myth of Sophia that weds the soul to the spirit challenges modern humanity to awake to a new consciousness of the spiritual forces that work in our lives and in the world. We are to bear this new spirit of Sophia within us with increasing understanding and a profound sense of responsibility.

The “New Isis Myth” offers tremendous inspiration to transform our cold head knowledge into fiery heart knowledge and to lift the veil between the physical and the spiritual worlds to find our new spiritual path and our divine biography throughout the past, present, and future.

In the New Isis Myth, Rudolf Steiner’s wooden sculpture, the statue of the “Representative of  Humanity” plays a significant role as a type of new statue of the evolving Isis/Sophia. It  poses the key “riddle” for our current time that must be understood as the veil over Isis is lifting to reveal Sophia. Steiner tells us that there is another statue of Isis living ‘behind’ this statue of the Representative of Humanity. He clearly indicates that the new seeker of Isis must not think he means this symbolically, but that it should be considered quite literally true.

The term Anthroposophy should really be understood as synonymous with Sophia, meaning the content of consciousness, the soul attitude and experience that makes a person a full-fledged human being in a spiritual sense. The right interpretation of Anthroposophy is not “the wisdom of humanity”, but rather “the consciousness of one’s humanity”, birthed with the help of AnthropoSophia.

In a lecture from February the 5^th, 1913, found in the lecture series entitled: The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Rudolf Steiner tells us about what the seeker of Isis, during the Egyptian times, experienced. “Then came a moment of experience wherein the initiates felt like a traveler in a country encompassed by the sea, who had reached the shore. They knew they had come to the farthest point attainable. In the Egyptian Initiation they experienced what one cannot clothe in words other than these: In your vision you have been led far and wide through cosmic realms and have come to know the beings and forces that work on your physical body and your etheric body. But now you are entering the most holy place. You are entering a realm where you can feel yourself united with the Being who works with others on the part of you that goes from one incarnation to another, and on your astral body. When the aspirant who was going through the Isis Initiation had reached the furthest shore of existence and had gazed upon the beings who build up the physical body and the etheric body, when he had stood before the silent Goddess from whom warmth and light come forth for the innermost parts of the human soul, he said to himself: That is Isis. This is the mute and silent Goddess whose countenance cannot be unveiled to one who sees only with mortal eyes, but only to those who have worked themselves through to the shores which have been described, so that they can see with those eyes which go from incarnation to incarnation and thus are no longer mortal. For an impenetrable veil hides the form of Isis from mortal eyes.”

In another lecture entitled, The History of Christian Rosenkreutz – The European Mysteries and Their Initiates (Berlin, May 6, 1909, GA 57), Rudolf Steiner states: “You have often heard how man today can be led to the Initiates, how his thinking, feeling, and willing can be so trained that he can set out on the path leading to the “Mothers.” This is the path which the pupils of all the

Mysteries have had to tread in quest of fully conscious clairvoyance. It was known in the ancient European Mysteries that the true being of man is hidden and must be sought in its concealment. The saying went: Isis is seeking for the Being from whom she proceeded. To be initiated was to live through all those processes which enable the soul of man once again to behold its true origin and to unfold the faculty which will unite it again with its spiritual origin. It was known that the true being of man is hidden and must be sought in its concealment. To be initiated was to live through all those processes which enable the soul of man once again to behold its true origin and to unfold the faculty which will unite it again with its spiritual origin.”

Thus, we are guided by Steiner to find the New Isis as the being of Sophia that is hidden behind the statue of the Representative of Humanity. It is incumbent upon the seeker to find this hidden Sophia and to consciously “lift her veil” to reveal the spiritual path to the spirit and find new life.

From: The Search for the New Isis, the Divine Sophia: The Quest for the Isis-Sophia, Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, December 24, 1920, GA 202

When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the divine Sophia, the wisdom that enables us to see into the world with understanding, worked in a twofold way. Divine wisdom, heavenly wisdom, worked in the revelation to the poor shepherds in the fields, and in the revelation to them we find our new knowledge. We do not lack Christ; but the knowledge of Christ, the Sophia of Christ, the Isis of Christ is what is lacking.

Modern human beings must understand the mystery of Christmas in a new way. They must realize that they first of all seek Isis, in order that Christ may appear to them. The cause of our misfortunes and the problem of modern civilization is not that we have lost Christ, who stands before us in a far greater glory than Osiris did in the eyes of the Egyptians. It is not that we have lost him and need to set out in search of him, armed with the force of Isis. No, what we have lost is the knowledge of Christ Jesus, insight into his being. This is what we must find again with the power of Jesus Christ who is in us.

The soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it feels committed to experience the new Isis myth within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and then places her body into the infinity of space, which has become the grave of Isis, a mathematical abstraction. Then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery, made possible through the inner force of spiritual knowledge. In place of the heavens that have become dead, this knowledge places what stars and planets reveal through an inner life, so that they then appear as monuments to the spiritual powers that weave with power through space.

We are able to look at the manger today in the right way only if we experience in a unique way what is weaving with spiritual power through space, and then look at that being who came into the world through the child. We know that we bear this being within us, but we must also understand him. Just as the Egyptians looked from Osiris to Isis, so we must learn to look again to the new Isis, the Holy Sophia. Christ will appear again in his spiritual form during the course of the twentieth century, not through the arrival of external events alone, but because human beings find the power represented by the Holy Sophia. The modern age has had the tendency to lose this power of Isis, this power of Mary. It has been killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of humankind. And the confessions have in part exterminated just this view of Mary.

This is the mystery of modern humanity: Fundamentally speaking, Mary-Isis has been killed, and she must be sought, just as Osiris was sought by Isis in Asia. But she must be sought in the infinite spaces of the universe with the power that Christ can awaken in us if we devote ourselves to him in the right way.

Let us picture this rightly, let us immerse ourselves in this new Isis myth which must be experienced, and let us fill our souls with it. Then we will experience in a true sense what humankind in many of its representatives believes, that this new myth fills the holy eve of Christmas, in order to bring us into Christmas day, the day of Christ.

The main content of the mystery of Isis is the death of Osiris and Isis’s search for the dead Osiris. We know that Osiris, the representative of the being of the sun, the representative of the spiritual sun, is killed by Typhon, who, expressed in Egyptian terms, is none other than Ahriman. Ahriman kills Osiris, throws him into the Nile, and the Nile carries the body away. Isis, the spouse of Osiris, sets out on her search and finds him over in Asia. She brings him back to Egypt, where Ahriman, the enemy, cuts the body into fourteen parts. Isis buries these fourteen parts in various locations, so that they belong to the Earth for ever after.

The Isis myth must show itself as being fulfilled in another way in our time. We cannot lose the Christ and what he, in a higher form than Osiris, gives us; but we can lose, and we have lost, what is portrayed for our Christian understanding standing at the side of Osiris – Isis – the mother of the savior, the Divine Wisdom, Sophia. If the Isis myth is to be renewed, then it must not simply follow the old form – Osiris, killed by Typhon-Ahriman and carried away by the waters of the Nile, must be found again by Isis in order that his body, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman, may be sunk into the Earth. No, in a sense, we must find the Isis myth again, the content of the mystery of Isis, but we must create it out of imagination, suited to our own times. An understanding must arise again of the eternal cosmic truths, and it will when we learn to think and compose imaginatively, as the Egyptians did. But we must find the right Isis myth.

The Egyptian was permeated by luciferic powers, as were all human beings who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha. If luciferic powers are within the human being and stir the inner life, moving and weaving through it, the result will then be that ahrimanic powers will appear as an active force outside the human being. Thus the Egyptians, who were themselves permeated by Lucifer, rightly see a picture of the world in which Ahriman-Typhon is active.

It is not the Osiris, but the Isis myth that has to be fulfilled in our time. We cannot lose the Christ and what He gives in a higher form than Osiris; but we can lose, and we have lost, that which we see portrayed by the side of Osiris – Isis, the Mother of the Savior, the Divine Wisdom, Sophia. If we wish to renew the Isis myth, we cannot take it in the form in which it has been transmitted to us – Osiris who is killed by Typhon-Ahriman and carried away by the waters of the Nile, who must be found again by Isis, in order that his body, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman, may be sunk into the Earth – no, my dear friends, we must somehow find the Isis myth again, the content of the Isis Mystery, but we must form it out of Imagination, suited to our own times. An understanding will come again for the eternal cosmic truths, when we learn to create in the world of Imagination, as the Egyptians did. We must find the true Isis myth.

We have not lost Osiris – the Christ – we have lost that which for us takes the place of Isis. Lucifer has killed it, but the Isis-Being killed by Lucifer was not sunk into the Earth, as Typhon sunk Osiris into the Nile; Lucifer carried the Isis-Being, the divine wisdom whom he had killed, out into the world’s spaces; he sunk her into the world’s ocean. When we look out into this ocean and see the stars moving only according to mathematical lines, then we see the grave of the world’s spiritual essence; for the divine Sophia, the successor of Isis, is dead and must be brought back to life.

We must give form to this myth, for it sets forth the truth of our times. We must speak of the dead and lost Isis, the Divine Sophia, even as the ancient Egyptians spoke of the dead and lost Osiris. We must set out in search of the dead body of the new Isis, the dead body of the Divine Sophia, with a force which, although we cannot yet rightly understand it, is nevertheless in us – with the force of the Christ, with the force of the new Osiris. We must approach luciferic science and seek there the coffin of Isis; in other words we must find in that which natural science gives us something which stimulates us inwardly towards Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. This brings to us the help of Christ within – Christ, Who remains hidden in darkness if we do not illuminate Him with Divine Wisdom.

Armed with this force of the Christ, with the new Osiris, we must set out in search of Isis, the new Isis. Lucifer does not cut Isis in pieces, as Ahriman-Typhon did with Osiris; on the contrary, Isis is spread out, in her true shape, in the beauty of the whole universe. Isis shines out of the cosmos in an aura of many shining colors. We must learn to understand Isis when we look out into the cosmos; we must learn to see this cosmos in an aura of shining colors. But just as the Ahriman-Typhon cut Osiris into pieces, so Lucifer blurs and washes out the colors in all their clear distinctness, blends and merges into one single whole the parts which are so beautifully distributed over the heavens, the limbs of the new Isis which go to make the great firmament of the heavens.

Even as Typhon cut Osiris in pieces, so Lucifer blends the manifold colors that stream down to us from the whole aura of the cosmos into a uniform white light that streams through the universe. It is that light which Goethe combated in his Theory of Color, repudiating the statement that it contains all the colors, which in truth are spread out over the marvelous, manifold, and secret deeds of the whole cosmos.

We must pursue our search until we find Isis, and when we have found her, we must learn how to place out into the universe what we are then able to discover and to know. We must have a living picture in our minds of all that we have acquired through the newly-found Isis, so that the whole heavens become for us spiritual again. We must understand Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan from within. We must bear out into the heavenly spaces that which Lucifer has made of Isis, just as Isis buried in the Earth parts of the body of Osiris, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman. We must realize that through the force of the Christ we can find an inner astronomy, which reveals to us once more the origin and life of the cosmos, as grounded in the force of the spirit, and then, when we have this insight into the cosmos, awakened through the newly-found power of Isis, which is now become the power of the divine Sophia, then will the Christ, Who has united with the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, become active within us, because then we shall know Him. It is not the Christ we lack, my dear friends, but the knowledge and Wisdom of the Christ, the Sophia of the Christ, the Isis of the Christ.

First of all we must seek Isis, in order that Christ may appear to us. The cause of the misfortunes and troubles in modern civilization is not that we have lost the Christ Who stands before us in a far greater glory than Osiris did in the eyes of the Egyptians. We have not lost Him and need not to set out in search of Him, armed with the force of Isis – what we have lost is the Wisdom and knowledge of Christ Jesus. This is what we must find again, with the help of the force of Christ which is in us.

The soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it is willing to experience the New Isis Myth within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and transfers her body into the cosmic spaces, which have become a mathematical abstraction, or the grave of Isis; then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery through the impulse given by the inner force of spiritual knowledge, which places into the lifeless sky that which stars and planets reveal through an inner life, so that they appear as monuments of the spiritual powers that surge through space. We look in the right spirit towards the ‘manger’ when we first let the powers that surge through space kindle our feeling, and then look at that Being Who came into the world through the Christmas Child. We know that we bear this Being within us, but we must understand Him.

Just as the Egyptians looked from Isis to Osiris, so we must learn to look again to the new Isis, the Holy Sophia. The Christ will appear in spiritual form during the 20th century, not through an external happening, but inasmuch as human beings find that force which is represented by the Holy Sophia. The present age has the tendency to lose this Isis-force, this force of the Mary. It was killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of mankind. New forms of religion have in part exterminated just this view of Mary Sophia.

This is the Mystery of modern humanity. The Mary-Isis has been killed, and she must be sought, just as Osiris was sought by Isis; but she must be sought in the wide space of heaven, with that force that Christ can awaken in us, if we give ourselves to Him in the right way.

Let us picture this rightly, let us immerse ourselves in this New Isis Myth which must be experienced, and let us fill our souls with it. Only then shall we experience, in a true sense, this Holy Eve of Christmas, leading us into Christmas Day, the Day of Christ. My dear friends, this anthroposophical community can become a community of human beings united in love because of the search in which they set out together.

From: The Effects of Esoteric Development , The Being of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, February 3, 1913, Berlin, GA 145

The Greeks confronted Sophia, or Wisdom, as a being, so to speak, whom they could encounter standing before them in a particular place, two beings then – Sophia and the Greek – faced each other, as if Sophia were a definite objective entity, to be looked at, with all the objectivity of the Greek’s way of seeing. At the same time, however, the Greeks, because they still lived in the Intellectual Soul, had to express the directly personal relationship of their consciousness to the objectivity of the being facing them. This was necessary to gradually prepare the way for a new epoch, that of the Consciousness Soul.

How then does the Consciousness Soul confront Sophia? This is done so that it brings the I into direct relationship with Sophia while at the same time expressing – much more so than the objective being of Sophia – the activity of the I within the relationship between the Consciousness Soul and this Sophia. “I love Sophia” was the natural feeling of an age that still had to encounter the being we designate as Philosophy – an age that was preparing the Consciousness Soul and, out of the relationship between the I and the Consciousness Soul (on which the greatest value must be placed), was working toward representing Sophia as simply as it represented everything else. It was natural for the time of the Intellectual Soul – which was preparing for the Consciousness Soul – to express this relationship to Philosophy. And because things came to expression slowly and gradually, this relationship was being prepared during Greco-Latin times.

Outwardly however, we can also see this relationship of human beings to PhiloSophia developing to a certain height in the pictorial representations of Philosophia floating down on clouds and, later, in Philosophia’s expression when we see her gaze full of kindly feelings that once again express the relationship to the Consciousness Soul.

We know that, though we live in the age of the Consciousness Soul, the Spirit Self is being prepared. Just as the Greeks lived in the age of the Intellectual Soul, and looked toward the dawn of the Consciousness Soul, so we live in the age of the Consciousness Soul and seek to prepare the age of the Spirit Self. The Greeks established Philosophy which first existed in Greece during the unfolding of the Intellectual Soul when human beings still directly experienced the lingering influence of the objective Sophia; and Philosophy then came into being. Dante could view her as a real being who brought him consolation when Beatrice was torn from him by death; in the same way, we now live in the age of the Consciousness Soul and look toward the dawn of the age of the Spirit Self, and we know in this way that something is again becoming objective to human beings – something that looks forward to the coming times that will be gained by what we have won through the time of the Consciousness Soul.

It must unfold that, once again, as a matter of course, a “Sophia” becomes present. But we must learn to relate this Sophia to the Consciousness Soul and bring her down directly to human beings. This is happening during the age of the Consciousness Soul and thereby Sophia becomes the being who directly enlightens human beings. After Sophia has entered human beings, she must take their being with her and present it to them outwardly, objectively. Thus, Sophia will be drawn into the human soul and arrive at the point of being so inwardly connected with it that a love poem as beautiful as Dante wrote may be written about her.

Sophia will become objective again, but she will take with her what humanity is, and objectively present herself in this form. Thus, she will present herself not only as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia — as the Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the very being of the human being, henceforth bears that being within her, and in this form she will confront enlightened human beings as the objective being Sophia who once stood before the Greeks.

Such is the progression of human evolutionary history in relation to the spiritual questions we have been considering. Here I must leave the matter to all those who wish to examine in even greater detail, following the destiny of Sophia, Philosophia, and Anthroposophia, how we may show how humanity develops progressively through those parts of the soul we call the Intellectual Soul, the Consciousness Soul, and the Spirit Self. People will learn how profoundly what Anthroposophy gives us is based in our whole being. What we receive through Anthroposophy is our very own being.

This being of Sophia once floated toward us in the form of a celestial goddess with whom we were able to enter into relationship. This divine being lived on as Sophia and Philosophia, and now we can once again bring her out of ourselves and place her before us as the fruit of true anthroposophical self-knowledge. We can wait patiently until the world is willing to test the depth of the foundations of what we have to say, right down to the smallest details. It is the essence of Anthroposophia that its own being consists of the being of the human, and its effectiveness, its reality, consists in that we receive from Anthroposophia what we ourselves are and what we must place before ourselves, because we practice self-knowledge.

The New Isis Myth, by Rudolf Steiner

From: Ancient Myths: Their Meaning and Connection with Evolution, Lecture III, 6th January, 1918, GA 180

It was in the age of scientific profundity, in the midst of the land of Philisterium. Upon a hill in spiritual seclusion was erected a Building which was considered to be very remarkable in the land of Philisterium.

If one wanted to use the language of Goethe one could say that the Building represented an ‘open secret.’ For the Building was closed to none, it was open to all, and in fact everyone could see it at convenient times. But far the greater number of people saw nothing at all. Far the greater number of people saw neither what was built nor what this represented. Far the greater number of people stood – to use Goethe’s words again – before an ‘open secret’, a completely open secret.

A statue was intended to be the central point of the Building. This statue presented a group of beings: the “Representative of Man”, then – Luciferic and Ahrimanic figures. People looked at the statue and did not know in the age of scientific profundity in the land Philisterium that the statue, in fact, was only the veil for an invisible statue. But the invisible statue was not noticed by people, for it was the new Isis, the Isis of a new age.

Some few persons of the land of scientific profundity had once heard of this remarkable connection between what was visible and what, as Isis-image, was concealed behind what was open and evident. And then in their profound allegorical-symbolical manner of speech they had put forward the assertion that this combination of the Representative of Man with Lucifer and Ahriman signified Isis. With this word ‘signified’, however, they not only ruined the artistic intention from which the whole thing was supposed to proceed – for an artistic creation does not merely signify something, but is something – but they completely misunderstood all that underlay it. For it was not in the least the point that the figures signified something, but that they already were what they appeared to be. And behind the figures was not an abstract new Isis, but an actual, real new Isis. The figures ‘signified’ nothing at all, but they were in fact, in themselves, that which they made themselves out to be. But they possessed the peculiarity that behind them there was the real being, the new Isis.

Some few who in special circumstances, in special moments, had nevertheless seen this new Isis, found that she is asleep. And so one can say: the real deeper-lying statue that conceals itself behind the external statue is the sleeping new Isis, a sleeping figure – visible – but seen by few. Many persons then turned in special moments to the inscription, which is plainly there at the spot where the statue stands in preparation, but which also has been read by few. And yet the inscription stands clearly there, just as clearly as the inscription once stood on the veiled form at Sais. In fact, the inscription stands there: ‘I am Man, I am the Past, the Present and the Future. Every mortal should lift my veil.’

Another figure, as a visitor, once approached the sleeping figure of the new Isis, and then again and again. And the sleeping Isis considered this visitor her special benefactor and loved him. And one day she believed in a particular illusion, just as the visitor believed one day in a particular illusion: the new Isis had an offspring – and she considered the visitor whom she looked on as her benefactor, to be the father. He regarded himself as the father, but he was not. The spirit-visitor, who was none other than the new Typhon, believed that he could acquire a special increase of his power in the world if he took possession of this new Isis. So the new Isis had an offspring, but she did not know its nature, she knew nothing of the being of this new offspring. And she moved it about, she dragged it far off into other lands, because she believed that she must do so. She trailed the new offspring about, and since she had trailed and dragged it through various regions of the world it fell to pieces into fourteen parts through the very power of the world.

Thus, the new Isis had carried her offspring into the world and the world had dismembered it in fourteen pieces. When the spirit-visitor, the new Typhon, had come to know of this, he gathered together the fourteen pieces, and with all the knowledge of natural scientific profundity he again made a being, a single whole, out of the fourteen pieces. But in this being there were only mechanical laws, the law of the machine. Thus a being had arisen with the appearance of life, but with the laws of the machine. And since this being had arisen out of fourteen pieces, it could reproduce itself again, fourteen-fold. And Typhon could give a reflection of his own being to each piece, so that each of the fourteen offspring of the new Isis had a countenance that resembled the new Typhon.

Isis had to follow all this strange affair, half-divining it; half-divining she could see the whole miraculous change that had come to her offspring. She knew that she had herself dragged it about, that she had herself brought all this to pass. But there came a day when in its true, its genuine form she could accept it again from a group of spirits who were elemental spirits of nature, could receive it from nature elementals.

As she received her true offspring, which only through an illusion had been stamped into the offspring of Typhon, there dawned upon her a remarkable clairvoyant vision: she suddenly noticed that she still had the cow-horns of ancient Egypt, in spite of having become a new Isis.

And lo and behold, when she had thus become clairvoyant, the power of her clairvoyance summoned – some say Typhon himself, some say, Mercury. And he was obliged through the power of the clairvoyance of the new Isis to set a crown on her head in the place where once the old Isis had had the crown which Horus had seized from her, that is to say, on the spot where she developed the cow-horns. But this crown was merely of paper – covered with all sorts of writings of a profoundly scientific nature – still it was of paper. And she now had two crowns on her head, the cow-horns and the paper crown embellished with all the wisdom of scientific profundity.

Through the strength of her clairvoyance there one day arose in her the deep meaning, as far as the age could reach, of that which is described in St. John’s Gospel as the Logos. There arose in her the Johannine significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through this strength, the power of the cow-horns grasped the paper crown and changed it into an actual golden crown of genuine substance.

“Isis-Sophia, Wisdom of God, she has been slain by Lucifer, and on the wings of the powers of the world carried her hence into the infinite space of the universe. The willing of Christ working in man shall wrest from Lucifer, and on the boats of spirit-knowledge awaken in human souls Isis-Sophia Wisdom of God.”