Daughter of Isis - Lilian Nirupa (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📗

Let the Nile and your heart talk to each other. Then you will come back to me and give me your answer. In the meantime, you have my blessings.”
With that, the Goddess disappeared, leaving Lizla alone, to her puzzled thoughts.
Lizla spent the rest of the day accompanied by Iris and Ila-Re, the two young priestesses who had been with her on the rebirthing preparation. Together they explored the different facilities of the temple of Isis. It was located southwest of the capital city of the province, at a distance of about 80 miles. The grounds were large, several hundred acres, and it combined the different aspects of the Isis Mysteries. A healing center was dedicated to women, childbirth preparation and delivery for the priestly families and the noble classes, although on occasion, ordinary citizens were received when a doctor interceded for a patient. The religious study center and the Mysteries were closed to the public, as was the Inner Temple, which only the Elected could enter. The Temple Beautiful and the Temple of Love were dedicated to the development and refinement of the different arts of femininity, which the Egyptians had developed extensively.
Classes in art, incense preparation, dance-exercises, the making of candles, incense, perfumes, cosmetics, body reconstructing and swimming were conducted by special priestesses whose life-long dedication to the development of the excellence in womanhood and of their sacrifice to Isis.
Trying to keep her thoughts away from the morning experience, Lizla found the grounds fascinating. The food was excellent, well balanced by the famous beauticians who made the princesses of Egypt famous worldwide.
By the evening, she saw Ra-Ta again and to him she confided her strange experience. He was deeply moved. So the Goddess had special plans for his disciple! He was honored to be an instrument of it. He also felt fascinated by the prospect of discovering the writings of the Ancients. He had heard a lot about them. Regarding the political problems, he frowned and thought. That was the way of the world. It was one of the blessings of belonging to the Priesthood. In spite of the strong political influences they had on the Pharaoh and the court, they were spared direct involvement with worldly affairs. They acted as counselors and then could retire. He preferred it that way.
But he would never try to influence her in either direction. The Goddess was right. How had she said it? “It would be between the Nile and her heart.” Strange were the ways of women, even among the heavenly ones. He sighed, and rose to open the door, as he heard knocking. He was pleasantly surprised to see the athletic figure of Psusennes. He was one of the largest donors to the temple. Many beautiful things had been done through his support.
The Prince entered and bowed to the Priest, requesting his blessings. Then he simulated surprise at seeing his cousin Lizla. She had not seen him for a long time, although she had heard stories of his magnificent palace. With her own father had she had visited his famous zoological garden when she was a child. Somehow now, Lizla felt his eyes scrutinizing her figure and her face a little too daringly.
Answering his salute with a proud good night and bowing to her master, she departed.
“Ah Ra-Ta!” Psusennes started after she left. “When did you cultivate that beautiful flower?”
Ra-Ta looked at him with an all-knowing look. “Leave her alone, my Prince, she is just a child.”
“Not for long, my reverend Priest, not for long. Is she destined for the priesthood?”
“We do not know yet. She went through her rebirthing yesterday.”
“Rebirthing a woman, so young. Who is she?” Psusennes was now quite puzzled.
“Ah, my Prince, there are some things I cannot tell even you, not for now, anyhow. By the way, what brings you here at this time? It is lion hunting season.”
“False alarm, my dear Priest, false alarm. I’ve got the wrong news, Altamira,” he smiled.
The Priest nodded. Yes, Altamira and Psusennes were the latest story running through most palatial corridors lately --
Psusennes continued, “Well I’ve heard she was with child and looking ill, but false alarm. She is with child all right but she still looks adorable. I can’t wait to see her again free and joyful, in her childlike daily playful dancing.” He restrained himself. Ra-Ta was one of the Highest Priests; one of the Ten who held the Key to the Mysteries. Even a privileged prince like him had to revere his holy figure.
Ra-Ta had other thoughts too. He did not believe in coincidences. The Goddess had brought Lizla and Psusennes together at this time, when most Egyptian women are ready to know Love. He felt he did not have to wait for the morning to know Lizla’s decision. He had lived long enough to see the finger of fate pointing in the right direction.

Chapter 3 – The Vision Of The Nile
The morning had arrived in splendid clear skies. Lizla took a deep breath and mentally murmured the celebrated RA invocation to the rising sun. Religion had never been a mere duty to her. The life of the soul was very present to her consciousness, partly because of her psychic nature. Religion was deeply ingrained in the daily lives of the Egyptians in general, since they were quite aware of the underlying patterns of energy that move and protect all things. They called them spirits. They were spirits of the planets, of the plants, of the rocks, of the Nile, of the animals, and of course, each human being has his or her ka, a psychic double and soul.
Life was compounded of visible and invisible realities which interacted in a rhythmic dance, like the waters of the Nile refreshed the desert and the heat of the sun evaporated the waters, yielding three harvests of wheat a year. Life was sacred and death was another form of life whose entrance was celebrated like a trip into another world. Provisions, furniture and companionship were planned and arranged for the trip into the next world through elaborate ceremonies. The rich and powerful invested heavily in the mortuary preparations during their lifetimes and no victory or accomplishment was considered complete if its history was not reordered in the tomb of its author. This thirst for immortality made the presence of the Gods very real for the average Egyptian, man or woman.
They loved life, family and the fatherland passionately. Even among the powerful, travel abroad was considered a burden, and existence in another country, the most disgraceful thing that could happen – Exile! The natural rhythm of heaven and earth, river and land, Gods and people, rich and poor, intermingled like the four seasons, contributing to a rich and harmonious environment that makes life to be cherished and its secrets to be understood like few other civilizations before, or even after them. The wisdom of Egypt held universal fame and many wise men from other cultures, and even other ages, would draw from them the basis for their Mysteries and occult knowledge.
After a brief and silent breakfast, Lizla took a small bowl with some fruits and flowers for the noon offering and, accompanied by two slaves who carried her in a litter, she departed for the Nile.
She arrived there in about an hour, and giving orders to them to pick her up at sunset, she decided to walk about the river’s bank. She walked along the river, until she saw a small caravan that had stopped to refresh.
A little girl of about four years old was standing in the water, and her eyes seemed lost in thought as her father intoned the grateful invocation to the Nile God.
Lizla had a flashback to early childhood, when her own father had stood by the Nile invoking the all-beneficent God, and she had seen the Nile’s God in her mind’s eye, just like her grandmother described him. It had been a glorious ceremony, as her father was the last Pharaoh, who later died valiantly in the victorious war against the oppressive Assyrians. Her uncle reigned now, but her family still held a princely position in the palace. That grayish morning by the riverbank, she had held the image for the God, who had no face of stone. His sculpture was forbidden, but it was believed he possessed a man’s body with female breasts, symbolizing the fertility he provided to the land. Her grandmother had described him as the blood of the earth, and his mother-father figure had strongly impressed Lizla’s imagination. Then, she had stood by the river, watching her small feet turning pale under the water, and as the ripples came and went, her own feet seemed to lose consistency and reality, like the invisible God of the Father-Mother river. She felt one with the river, one with the blood of the land. She felt a child of the river, sharing his/her life. She felt flowing through her own blood the rivers with his/her enormous power to give, to create, and to destroy.
Watching that little girl standing by the river opened another insight in Lizla’s learning adventure. How much her knowledge had expanded in the last few weeks! That was what the Goddess had said. Let the river talk to her heart. But she was no longer a little girl now.
At that moment, a cry of terror burst like an icy dagger into her consciousness. A small child, playing with ripples, had gone too far, and a crocodile had caught her tiny arm. The mother had cried loudly. Father and mother, forgetting the danger, threw themselves into the river, ignoring the group of crocodiles that had come to the smell of blood. Armed with rustic farm tools, they fought desperately against the six or seven beasts in a bloody battle. Lizla felt frozen on the spot for a moment. The mother managed to rescue the little one, while a group of fishermen armed with stones fought bravely, taking the wounded man to the shore and succeeding in sending the rest of the beasts away.
Lizla forgot anything else about her former musings. Jumping to help, she found the man had both arms badly wounded. There was too much heart among the Egyptians to allow differences of classes to ignore the suffering of the poor. She had seen Pharaoh go out of his way many times to provide for a faithful servant. She had also seen him kill mercilessly a traitor or thief, and his whole family murdered and dismembered when they incurred his wrath.
But today, this fisherman’s valiant act moved Lizla to act quickly. She took off the veil of linen cloth she had to cover her hair from the morning mist and tore it into small strips to use as bandages. Then she emptied her fruit box, putting the contents on a small pile of sand. She approached the small group that surrounded the wounded man, lying on the beach. Her royal bearing and the clarity of her skin announced her as a noble. They let her through. She had learned the rudiments of healing in her early training. She also remembered the Goddess talking about the healing properties of the Nile waters. Lizla herself, having divine pharaoh’s blood, was considered part of the family of the Gods.
So armed with faith and compassion, she approached the valiant man. He could hardly breathe with pain, but he pointed first to the child. Lizla took a look at both. The child had been lucky. His small arms, well oiled by a dutiful mother, as was the custom, had been barely bruised and only scraped by the crocodile’s paw. He was an excellent swimmer and had given the beast a good hard time in trying to seize him again. The man was different: his right arm and left leg had fallen prey to