Go Fig!

[the_gneech]

It's interesting that a websearch on Isis turns up tons and tons of results, whereas a search on the son she worked so hard to nourish and establish, Horus, returns far fewer results -- and most of them refer more to the fact that he is Isis' son, rather than, y'know, king of the universe.

I wonder, from Isis' POV, is that success, or failure?

-The Gneech

Edit: It's worth noting that the "Eye of Horus" symbol also returns more (and more interesting) results than just searching on Horus himself. Gotta be rough on a god, when your eye is more famous than the rest of you put together!

Another Edit: Sauron informs me that he knows just how Horus feels. Myself, I'm a bit dubious of this. But it's an interesting parallel! How did The Eye go from being the all-seeing protective eye of the divine, to being "the evil eye" of Sauron (and indeed of Count Olaf)? These are things I wonder about as I try to look busy at work all day.

Another Another Edit: Odin popped up to inform me that he had a comment on the whole eye motif, but just as he was going to tell me about it, he was attacked by the Midgard Serpent. Horus, still scraping Apep scales off of his skirt, said, "I know just how he feels." Chummy lot, these ancient dieties.

Comments

[galish.livejournal.com]

Heh, you been reading "Flick" the comic?

http://www.graphicsmash.com/series.php?name=flick&view=current

Gal'ish

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Um, no ... but I could if it would please you. :)

-The Gneech

[galish.livejournal.com]

Well I was asking because the storyline so far in that comic is that they are on a ship called "The Eye of Horus" and it controls the universe bubbles of reality.

Good comic, if only 2 times a week.

Gal'ish

[hantamouse.livejournal.com]

Everything I know about Egyptian mythology I learned from Stargate SG1.
I don't think they covered Horus. Even Isis only got a passing mention.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

Didn't they meet (and destroy) Horus once, or something?

-=TK

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but Horus has had so many other names, since every pharoah was the incarnation thereof... It's hard to keep track of them all!

-=TK

[richardf8]

How did The Eye go from being the all-seeing protective eye of the divine, to being "the evil eye" of Sauron (and indeed of Count Olaf)?

Sauron's gaze is panoptic, and is combined with a certain megalomania which sees not to protect, but to control. It is the eye not of the beneficent God-King, but of the fascist dictator. It is the gaze that disrupts freedom and destroys the good. The transition, I think, is a product of early to mid 20th century fascism and the unprecedented level of state control over the individual that modern surveillance technology makes possible. Orwell described it well in 1984, and Tolkien was, I think, responding to the same set of threats.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I'd buy into that, except the concept of the evil eye is a LOT older than modern surveillance technology...

-The Gneech

[richardf8]

I've always thought that the "Evil Eye" was about someone transmitting bad luck to you by looking and you in a certain way, although I will yield to your greater facility with folklore.

But this raises some interesting questions in my mind. The various forms of magic that require things like a bit of the subjects hair or fingernails suggest an almost instinctual understanding of the connection between tissue and identity, a connection regularly exploited by modern forensic techniques.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

It can be that; it can also be an emblem of an eye painted on some sort of talismanic object.

As for body parts and sympathetic magic relating to forensics, that kind of stuff happens all the time. New discoveries shed light on old observations, and vice versa ... one story that sticks in my head is of a mathemetician who was doing high-level theoretical math in base six, only to discover that bees had been using her formulae in their "dance of directions" since the beginning of time...

-The Gneech

[willowanderer.livejournal.com]

Gods just don't get that good press any more. They'll get chatty with just about anyone who'll jsut talk to them....

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

I think that as someone who made the decision to create Horus all on her own and actively strove to that end, Isis is probably a happy mother-god. She's certainly much better off than Mary, whose pregnancy was the Father's idea and took over her life. Her entire identity begins and ends with "gave birth to someone important," and that's all she gets to be, for all eternity. Yikes! If the modern folklore of homeless children is to be believed, the resentment eventually ate away her sanity and she snapped...

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Brr-rr-rrr! Creepy!

-TG

Go Banana!

[tsmith.livejournal.com]

(nt)