The Ambition of Isis

Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Isis, the Nile goddess of fertility and magic and secrets, had an ambition. Ra, her father, was the sun god and ruled over the lands of Egypt. It is his radiance that makes the land of the Nile an unforgiving place that only the industrious and the persistent thrive. But it was time for a new ruler and Isis had a plan. As Ra grew older, Isis, guised as a loving daughter, wiped away his sweat and the spittle that dripped from his mouth. She tended his every need. Unknowingly, in her solitude, Isis would squeeze the cloth in which she had gathered every spittle, every drop of sweat and formulated a potion. With her own magick, she turned the potion into a snake with venom made potent from greatest diety of the Nile. Apep, king of the serpents was born. Apep slithered beside Ra while he was alone and bit him and the poison rushed through the diety's bloodstream and he was paralyzed. Doomed to die, he whimpered out for his other children to come to his side and only Isis came. In return for the antidote, she claimed, he must give her his secret name.

There was hush in the Nile. For one moment, the great river stood still. As the whispered secret name passed from Ra's lips to Isis' ears, the balance of power has shifted. She administered the antidote and Ra, no longer the most powerful diety of the Nile, took his barge Matet and flew into the heavens to simply handle his responsibility, the sun. Isis then gave the seat of power to her husband, Osiris, lord of agriculture and all growing things in the Nile. And together, became the new rulers of Egypt.

We step through our lives everyday and without knowing, we are gathering experiences and moments with which we become wiser. When we dispense advice, where does it come from? It comes from our own personal experiences or the personal experience of others. Someone has been through it and learned the hard way. From that, we are given the chance to not make the same mistake.

Wisdom, I guess, is the application of things we learned from mistakes that we have made or mistakes of others which we have imbibed into ourselves. One can be wise without being smart and the opposite is just as true.

But as a writer, as a gatherer of stories, wisdom is also the ending of every story. What do we take with us from that experience? Tell it in a more interesting way, and you've got yourself a story that people will look for and would want to hear again. The trick is in the telling. Tell it well and they'll want to hear it again. Tell it well and they will learn. Tell it well and they wouldn't have to go through what you did to know that what you say is true.

Everything that happens in my life is used for a story that is just waiting to be written. Why keep all that wisdom for myself? And there's only so much human experience I can take. That's why we are all here. So that we can share it. I've never been to the Antartic but maybe someone who has has not been to Palawan. Come sit by me. Let's talk awhile.

What I'm trying to decide is whether what Isis did was mean or cruel? In the realm of man, it probably is, but in the realm of gods and goddesses, when it is time to move on, it is time to move on. And Isis was the goddess of secrets, she probably knew it was time for a change and maybe Ra didn't know it. Maybe he wouldn't have ever let it go. Maybe that is her justification for it.

When I use something that happened to me as a story, I feel a little like rapist at times. I violate the others who are part of that story as well. But that's where fiction comes in, a chance to play around with what really happened, to hide and disguise the others that were there. To hide and disguise my true role in the story. It allows us our dignity. That's all I can offer in recompense.

For the ambition of Isis, already, I offer my apologies.