Osiris

**Pantheon**: Egyptian

**Title**: Broken God of the Afterlife

**Authority**: Male Principle

## Information

Osiris became one of the most important and popular gods in Ancient Egypt, mainly because he promised non-royal believers that resurrection and salvation from death were for everyone, poor as well as rich. Originally he was identified with each dead pharaoh, and his son Horus was identified with the reigning successor.

Osiris married his sister Isis, and his brother Seth married Isis’s sister Nephthys. According to legend, Osiris was at first made an earthly king by his father Geb, the Earth God. Osiris ruled wisely, teaching his people about agriculture and the arts. But Osiris’s brother Seth was jealous and vowed to kill him.

Seth invited Osiris to a feast and showed the guests a fine coffer, promising that whoever fitted inside would be the owner. Osiris stepped inside the coffer and it fitted perfectly. Seth slammed the lid tight and he and his followers threw the chest into the Nile.

Isis searched for her husband and at last discovered the chest at Byblos on the Phoenician coast. She brought Osiris’ body back to Egypt and conceived a son by her dead husband, hiding herself in the rushes of the marshes of the delta while awaiting the birth. Seth discovered the body of Osiris, hacked it into pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt so that he could never be restored to life. But Isis searched once more and, assisted by Nephthys, remodelled the bones into Osiris’ form and restored her husband to life once more.

When their son Horus, the Sky God, became a youth, he fought to avenge his father against Seth. The divine judges, including Thoth, god of wisdom, met in the Great Hall of Judgment and decided that Osiris should become not a living king once more, but eternal King and Judge of the Underworld. Osiris was also god of vegetation, the fertile, flooding Nile and the corn, and so represented the annual dying of the land and rebirth with the flood. He is normally pictured as a man, bound in mummy wrappings.

Osiris is an important icon of the annual cycle of sacrifice and resurrection but, as with all the sacrifice gods, it is the female power that causes the resurrection. Like other sacrificed and restored gods, Osiris thereby represents the integration of animus and anima and sacred sex magick. He can be used in rituals for the balance of male/female energies or where the female in the High Priestess role takes the lead. He is also good for any magick that relies on a cycle of regeneration following a natural ending.

## Smite Lore

Never has there been, nor shall there be a king more perfect than Osiris. Son of the Earth God, Geb, Osiris was divine royalty by birth, and all the land his birthright. Benevolence and prosperity were the hallmarks of his reign. Would that he had been left to shape the world, but the jealousy of his brother, Set, changed the course of fate.

Seeking to usurp the throne, Set deceived and murdered his brother, tearing his body to pieces and casting them across the land. Isis, Osiris' wife, secretly fled while Set plunged the kingdom into darkness. For years she toiled to reassemble her husband while his spirit form, his Ba, endured. Yet for all her searching, she could not find every part of him, and Isis was forced to reanimate Osiris without. Though not strong enough to defy Set in this incomplete form, Osiris gave Isis a son that would topple the tyrant Set and restore balance to Egypt.
What remains of Osiris is a fragment of what he once was. Robbed of his crown over the earth, he now governs the realm of the dead with the same benevolence he ruled the living.