Veil of Isis
The veil of Isis is a metaphor and
The motif traces back to a statue in the
Illustrations of Isis with her veil being lifted were popular beginning in the late 17th century, often as allegorical representations of
The veil of Isis was often combined with a related motif, portraying nature as a goddess with multiple breasts, who represents Isis, Artemis, or a combination of both.
Origin at Sais
The first mention of the veil of Isis appears in On Isis and Osiris, a philosophical interpretation of
Sais was the cult center of the goddess
Three centuries years after Plutarch, the
Proclus said the statue was in the
Personification of nature
Several other sources influenced the motif of the veiled Isis. One was a tradition that linked Isis with
A second influence was a tradition that nature is mysterious. It goes back to an aphorism by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE, which is traditionally translated as "Nature loves to hide." Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene in the 1590s personified nature as a woman with a veil, though without a direct connection to Isis,[6] although Isis appears elsewhere in the work.[7] Several illustrators in the 17th century used the anonymous woman with a veil in the same way. In the 1650s, Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus explicitly explained Isis's veil as an emblem of the secrets of nature.[8]
The frontispiece to
Personification of mystery
Another interpretation of Isis's veil emerged in the late 18th century, in keeping with the
This interpretation was influenced by the ancient
Immanuel Kant connected the motif of Isis's veil with his concept of the sublime, saying, "Perhaps no one has said anything more sublime, or expressed a thought more sublimely, than in that inscription on the temple of Isis (Mother Nature)." According to Kant, the sublime evoked both wonder and terror, and these emotions appeared frequently in the works of late 18th and early 19th-century authors using the motif of the veil. The ecstatic nature of ancient mystery rites themselves contributed to the focus on emotions.[19] Friedrich Schiller, for instance, wrote an essay on Egyptian and Jewish religion that mostly copied Reinhold's work but put a new emphasis on the emotional buildup that surrounded the mysteries. He said it prepared the initiate to confront the awe-inspiring power of nature at the climax of the rite. Similarly, a frontispiece by Henry Fuseli, made for Erasmus Darwin's poem The Temple of Nature in 1803, explicitly shows the unveiling of a statue of Isis as the climax of the initiation.[12]
Parting the veil
The "Parting of the Veil", "Piercing of the Veil", "Rending of the Veil" or "Lifting of the Veil" refers, in the
See also
References
- ^ a b Griffiths 1970, p. 131.
- ^ a b c d Assmann 1997, pp. 118–119.
- ^ Griffiths 1970, p. 283.
- ^ Griffiths 1970, pp. 284–285.
- ^ Hadot 2006, pp. 233–238.
- ^ Hadot 2006, p. 237.
- ^ Quentin 2012, pp. 145–146.
- ^ Hadot 2006, pp. 237, 240–242.
- ^ Hadot 2006, pp. 1, 237–243.
- ^ Assmann 1997, pp. 134–135.
- ^ Hadot 2006, pp. 318–319.
- ^ a b Assmann 1997, pp. 126–134.
- ^ Bremmer 2014, pp. 110–114.
- ^ Macpherson 2004, pp. 241–245.
- ^ Macpherson 2004, pp. 245–248.
- ^ Assmann 1997, pp. 115–125.
- ^ Hadot 2006, pp. 267–269.
- ^ Assmann 1997, p. 120.
- ^ Hadot 2006, pp. 269–283.
- ^ Ziolkowski 2008, pp. 75–76.
- ^ Greer 1997, pp. 51–53, 73–75.
Works cited
- ISBN 978-0-674-58738-0.
- Bremmer, Jan N. (2014). Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-029955-7.
- Greer, John Michael (1997). Circles of Power: Ritual Magic in the Western Tradition. Llewelyn Worldwide. ISBN 978-1-56718-313-9.
- Griffiths, J. Gwyn, ed. (1970). Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride. University of Wales Press.
- ISBN 978-0-674-02316-1.
- Macpherson, Jay (2004). "The Travels of Sethos". Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for 18th-Century Studies. 23.
- Quentin, Florence (2012). Isis l'Éternelle: Biographie d'une mythe féminin (in French). Albin Michel. ISBN 978-2-226-24022-4.
- Ziolkowski, Theodore (Summer 2008). "The Veil as Metaphor and Myth". Religion & Literature. 40 (2).
Further reading
- Baltrušaitis, Jurgis(1967). La Quête d'Isis: Essai sur la légende d'un mythe (in French). Olivier Perrin.
- Bricault, Laurent, ed. (2000). De Memphis à Rome: Actes du Ier Colloque international sur les études isiaques, Poitiers – Futuroscope, 8–10 avril 1999. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-11736-5.
- Goesch, Andrea (1996). Diana Ephesia: Ikonographische Studien zur Allegorie der Natur in der Kunst vom 16.–19 Jahrhundert (in German). Peter Lang.
External links
Media related to Nature with a veil at Wikimedia Commons