The story of Isis

In the wake of the Riordan 'stupid dirty girl' fiasco, we find out the name of the little girl is Isis. While we've been extraordinarily busy these last few weeks, we inadvertently ran across the myth of Isis, the Egyptian goddess. We guess it was a bit of synchronicity.

The 6 year old insisted we read this one particular story in this wonderful book called The Lady of Ten Thousand Names, Goddess Stories from Many Cultures retold by Burleigh Muten, no matter there were plenty of other stories to read.

Isis, according to this book's version of the tale, endured great suffering and yet was able to turn her suffering into worthy deeds.

Isis married her brother, as did royalty in that day. However, her husband had a younger brother consumed by the second son syndrome: jealousy. This guy's jealousy led him to kill his Isis' husband. Isis goes to great lengths and magic to help her husband properly finish his journey through death; the story is long and horrific. The jealous brother nearly sabotages her efforts when he spies the body of this brother,cuts his brother up into 14 pieces, and lets the pieces be scattered by the current of the river. Isis finds the pieces and uses her magic to put her husband back together for a short bit. He finally completes the death journey properly. Later, Isis finds herself pregnant. Her son grows up to defeat his uncle, the proper karmic end.

We checked out other versions on line, and we see they are all more and less similar to the above. What we take from this story is the example of the incredible spiritual strength of Isis, who persisted in her life tasks, without giving up. We would curl up into a ball and feel defeated, given the enormity of what Isis faced. And so it seems befitting that the little girl Isis is worthy of her name and lives up to the legacy of her goddess namesake. Her parents couldn't have picked a better name.