Lady Liberty

6:01 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Article by Grace Powers

When Frederic Bartholdi unveiled his colossal sculpture of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, spectators wanted to know who the masculine-featured diva was that served as his model. Was she his mother? His wife? His mistress, perhaps?  Some speculated that she was the Egyptian goddess Isis, Mary Magdalene or the Biblical Whore of Babylon.

Others argued that Lady Liberty wasn’t a lady at all, but a man in drag. Bartholdi took the secret of her identity to his grave....but he left behind evidence.

HER BODY
    Bartholdi shamelessly copied three designs from other sculptors for his American monument - one for her body, one for her pedestal and another for her head.  His first copied design was the Colossus of Rhodes built in 304 BC as a celebration of freedom. Like the statue of liberty, it rose to the same height from head to toe and loomed over the entrance to another busy harbor on the island of Rhodes. The Statue of Liberty’s radiating crown with its seven giant sun-ray spikes is a carbon copy of the Rhodian sculpture built in honor of the Sun God, Helios. His seven rays symbolized the seven seas and seven continents over which he ruled. It took twelve years for the sculptor, Chares of Lindos, to build his giant ‘wonder of the ancient world’. Fifty-six years later, the island of Rhodes was struck by a violent earthquake that shook the giant off his feet and cast him down like a child’s toy into a broken and ruined heap.

HER  PEDESTAL
     To build the pedestal, stairway, observation deck and torch, Bartholdi copied another ‘wonder of the ancient world’ - the four hundred foot tall Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt which had been commissioned by Ptolemy I, in 290BC. Tourists could climb up to the observation platform at the first le vel and continue climbing to the very top of the tower where a smaller balcony showcased the breathtaking panorama of sea and sky.  For 1500 years, it stood on Egypt’s island of Pharos in Alexandria Harbor.  The multiple mirrors at the top of the lighthouse reflected sunlight during the day. At night, its leaping flames licked the star studded sky and guided seafarers into Alexandria harbor.

HER HEAD

  To create his American Statue, Bartholdi used the same mystery woman that he had sketched for his failed Egyptian statue.
THE FAME
      Investigative reporters in America had a reputation for digging up dirt on people. Bartholdi feared they would dig up his dirty little secret that the Statue of Liberty was a recycled version of his failed Egyptian statue. To cover up the truth, he altered the robe and hairstyle on his American statue and added spiked rays emanating from her crown like the Colossus of Rhodes.

       Bartholdi built a four-foot clay miniature model first, then a complete nine foot tall (2.85 meters) cast in plaster, followed by four more proportional enlargements until it had grown to one-fourth the size of his planned masterpiece. With each increase in size, nine thousand mathematical calculations and measurements had to be painstakingly made.

      Freemason Gustave Eiffel designed and engineered the intricate skeleton for the statue using four gigantic steel supports as the main structural framework.  Eiffel’s claim to fame was his phallic 984-foot tall Eiffel Tower of iron and steel.  By 1876, Liberty’s thirty-foot long arm traveled to the United States with Bartholdi and turned him into a household name across America. Once Americans learned that they would be able to climb up to the balcony of the sky high torch for a mere fifty cents and gaze at the million dollar view of New York harbor, they were sold on it. The gleaming copper head also went on display creating an even bigger sensation but not big enough to solve the unending problem of raising the money to complete it.

THE LIE
       The American press turned ugly.  Reporters tore into Bartholdi like a pack of pit bulls when they discovered that the Statue of Liberty was a dusted off version of his rejected Egyptian statue. “The Statue is not a statue of liberty at all,” they protested. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with liberty!”

      By  trivializing the facts, Bartholdi bobbed and weaved, ducked and side stepped the accusations. “My Egyptian statue for the Suez canal ended then and there. Any resemblance it may have had to New York’s Statue of Liberty is purely coincidental”, defended Bartholdi in broken english. The American press didn’t buy it. They reported that the French sculptor had outright lied to the American people when he told them he had fashioned only "one" terra-cotta model for the Suez Canal project.  In reality, he had made five!  All of them were prototypes of the future Statue of Liberty, some with a torch or lantern in her left hand, some with it in her right hand.  In all of them, she is wearing a long Greek chiton (χιτών). Over the chiton, she is wearing another garment, called the himation (ἱμάτιον).

Bartholdi had already admitted on record that the model for the Egyptian project was an Egyptian woman. His earliest 1870 model with the torch-lifting pose was the most damning evidence. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the American statue, ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’, was a dusted off version of the aborted Egypt statue, ‘Egypt Bringing Light to Asia’. Both were colossal, robed, torch-bearing women serving as lighthouses, both were sited for key points astride major world waterways and both passed their ‘symbolic messages’ from one continent to another.

       To further Americanize his recycled Egyptian statue, Bartholdi added the date of the American Declaration of Independence onto the cover of the book held in the statue’s left hand - July IV MDCCLCCVI.  No one asked why the date was written in ancient Roman numerals.  No one clued in to the connection between Lady Liberty and the ancient Roman goddess ‘Libertas’  which is latin for ‘Liberty’.

PIGGYBANKS OF AMERICA
        Because of the stellar costs of the French gift to America, the brotherhood decided that French and American citizens should foot the bill. French citizens would pay for the statue.  American citizens would pay for the pedestal and foundation. Masonic brothers from both France and the United States formed a fund-raising committee called the Franco-American Union.  By the time Libertas was ready to be shipped from France, little progress had been made on the other side of the Atlantic. Controversy continued to swirl over the origin of the statue and its mammoth costs.

Some American citizens had the good sense to ask, “why does the gift’s pedestal cost as much as the gift itself and why should we foot the bill for our own gift?”  Americans living outside of New York considered it New York's statue. "Let New York pay for it!" To make matters worse, the wealthy French and American elite were allergic to the word ‘non-profit’ and wanted no part of the costly ‘non-profit’ project.

       Public apathy in America became almost as monumental as the gift itself.  By 1884, after years of pedestal fund-raising, only $182,491 had been raised.  The fundraising committee brainstormed the idea of a public lottery. They pried open public wallets   with prizes that included two works of art by Bartholdi himself.  In another scheme, they sold signed clay models of his statue to both the French and American public. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs (approximately $750,000 U.S.) had been raised but ‘completing her’ in time for America's 100th anniversary was an impossible dream.

      Lady Liberty’s trip to America had to wait until she had a pedestal to stand on. In the meantime, she was grounded in Paris.  Joseph Pulitzer, a Jewish multimillionaire and owner of the American financial newspaper, The World, saw a golden opportunity to increase the size of his newspaper circulation. “Let us not wait for the millionaires to give this money,” said the multi-millionaire. “It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America." Pulitzer’s World newspaper circulation surged by almost 50,000 copies and  single-dollar donations from grandmothers and pennies from the piggybanks of America’s schoolchildren began trickling in.

STRANGE RITUALS
      By the time pedestal construction got underway, work had to be delayed until the cornerstone was laid in strict accordance with Masonic rituals.  By American tradition, cornerstones of major public and private buildings like the Washington monument had to be "consecrated" first with full Masonic rites and ceremony.  The tradition began in 1793 when Freemasonic U.S. President George Washington personally laid the cornerstone of the Capitol Building with the assistance of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Maryland.

       It rained cats and dogs on August 5, 1884, the day of the private cornerstone ceremony.  The elite guests boarded a boat draped with the red, white and blue flags of France and the United States. The vessel ferried approximately one hundred Freemason members of the Grand Lodge of New York, U.S. civic officials and the visiting French Masonic Grand Officers to Liberty (Bedloe's) Island.   A United States Army band played the French National Anthem, "La Marseillaise," followed by "Hail Columbia" which named “the band of brothers joined” in its lyrics.

MYSTERY BOX
     The cornerstone was laid on the raised northeast corner of Liberty’s pedestal with the same trowel used by Masonic President George Washington.  Masonic men in black lowered a mysterious copper box inside the cornerstone containing a collection of strange mementos; twenty bronze medals of Masonic Presidents including Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson and Garfield, a portrait of sculptor Bartholdi, a list on parchment of the Masonic Grand Lodge officers and a medal commemorating the erection of an Egyptian obelisk in Central Park at 81st street.  Like the Washington monument, obelisks are tall, narrow, needle-like monuments built in honor of the Egyptian sun God ‘Amen’ (also spelled ‘Amun’ or ‘Amon’) meaning ‘the hidden one’.

No one questioned why a medal commemorating the erection of an Egyptian obelisk was placed inside the box.  After the cornerstone was found to be square, level and plumb, the Freemason Grand Master applied the mortar and the stone containing the Masonic box of strange mementos was lowered into place.  The Grand Master struck the stone three times with a gavel and declared it duly laid. Then the elements of "consecration" were presented - corn, wine, and oil known to be the "master's wages" in the days of Hebrew King Solomon.


The descent to the underworld

12:49 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
The descent to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world,including Christianity. The hero or upper-world deity journeys to the underworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge. The ability to enter the realm of the dead while still alive, and to return, is a proof of the classical hero's exceptional status as more than mortal. A deity who returns from the underworld demonstrates eschatologicalthemes such as the cyclical nature of time and existence, or the defeat of death and the possibility of immortality.[1]

Katabasis[edit]

Main article: katabasis
One meaning of katabasis is the epic convention of the hero's trip into the underworld.[2] In Greek mythology, for example, Orpheus enters the underworld in order to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living.
Most katabases take place in a supernatural underworld, such as Hades or Hell — as in Nekyia, the 11th book of the Odyssey, which describes the descent of Odysseus to the underworld. However, katabasis can also refer to a journey through other dystopic areas, like those Odysseus encounters on his 20-year journey back from Troy to Ithaca. Pilar Serrano[2] allows the term katabasis to encompass brief or chronic stays in the underworld, including those of Lazarus and Castor and Pollux.

Mythological characters[edit]

Mythological characters who make visits to the underworld include:
Ancient Sumerian
  • Enkidu, in a tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, usually considered a later addition to the tale
  • Gilgamesh descends to the underworld to meet Utnapishtim in a quest for immortality
  • Inanna descends to the underworld with gifts to pass through the seven gates of the underworld
Ancient Egyptian
Ancient Greek and Roman
The return of Persephone, byFrederic Leighton (1891)
Judeo-Christianity
Norse paganism and Finnish mythology
Welsh mythology
Angel showing hell to Yudhisthira
Other

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ David Leeming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 98 online; Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets (Cambridge University Press, 2004) passim; Death, Ecstasy, and Other Wordly Journeys, edited by John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (State University of New York, 1995) passim; Bruce Louden, "Catabasis, Consultation, and the Vision: Odyssey 11, I Samuel 28, Gilgamesh 12, Aeneid 6, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and the Book of Revelation," in Homer's Odyssey and the Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 197–221.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b Pilar González Serrano, "Catábasis y resurrección". Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie II: Historia Antigua. Volume 12, pp. 129–179. Madrid, 1999.
  3. Jump up^ Robert Graves. The Greek Myths, 27. k, which cites Pausanias' Description of Greece 2.31.2.

Further reading[edit]

  • Walter Burkert, Homo necans.
  • Janda, M., Eleusis, das indogermanische Erbe der Mysterien (1998).
  • Rachel Falconer, Hell in Contemporary Literature: Western Descent Narratives since 1945, (Edinburgh University Press, 2005/07)
  • World of Dante Multimedia website that offers Italian text of Divine Comedy, Allen Mandelbaum's translation, gallery, interactive maps, timeline, musical recordings, and searchable database.
  • Shushan, Gregory (2009) Conceptions of the Afterlife in Early Civilizations Universalism, Constructivism and Near-Death Experience. New York & London, Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-4073-0

Female (Genitals/Genital) Symbolism

3:17 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT

Female (Genitals/Genital) Symbolism

Yoni
"Vulva," the primary Tantric object of worship, symbolized variously
by a triangle, fish, double-pointed oval, horseshoe, egg, fruits, etc.
Personifying the yoni, the Goddess Kali bore the title of Cunti or
Kunda, root of the ubiquitous Indo-European word "cunt" and all its
relatives: cunnus, cunte, cunning, cunctipotent, ken, kin, country.
The Yoni Yantra or triangle was known as the Primordial Image,
representing the Great Mother as source of all life.1 As the genital
focus of her divine energy, the Yantra was adored as a geometrical
symbol, as the cross was adored by Christians.
The ceremony of baptismal rebirth often involved being drawn
bodily through a giant yoni. Those who underwent this ceremony
were styled "twice-born." 2
Yoni Yantra

Yoni Mudra

 Yoni Yogini

Triangle
 Tantric tradition said the triangle was the Primordial Image, or the
female Triangle of Life.1 It was known as the Kali Yantra, representing
Kali as Cunti, or else as the Yoni Yantra, or sign of the vulva.2 In
Egypt the triangle was a hieroglyphic sign for "woman," and it carried
the same meaning among the gypsies, who brought it from their
original home in Hindustan. 3 In the Greek sacred alphabet, the delta or
triangle stood for the Holy Door, vulva of the All-Mother Demeter
("Mother Delta").
Most ancient symbol systems recognized the triangle as a sign of
the Goddess's Virgin-Mother-Crone trinity and at the same time as
her genital "holy place," source of all life. The triangle represented the
Virgin Moon Goddess called Men-Nefer, archaic deity of the first
Mother-city of Memphis. 4 The triangle itself was worshipped in much
the same way that modern Christians worship the cross. Concerning
this, Oriental sages said: "The object of the worship of the Yantra is to
attain unity with the Mother of the Universe in Her forms as Mind,
Life, and Matter ... preparatory to Yoga union with Her as She is in
herself as Pure Consciousness." 5
The triangle was everywhere connected with the female trinity,
and a frequent component of monograms of Goddesses. To the
Gnostics, the triangle signified "creative intellect." 6 
Kali Yantra

Vesica Piscis
"Vessel of the Fish," a common yonic symbol, the pointed oval,
named from the ancients' claim that female genitals smelled like fish.
Mother Kali herself appeared in a Hindu story as "a virgin named
Fishy Smell, whose real name was Truth," like Egypt's Goddess Maat.1
Egyptians said Abtu, the Abyss, was "a fish who swallowed the penis
of Osiris," but this abyss was also "The Fish of Isis," therefore a sexual
metaphor. Aphrodite's principal rites at Paphos took place under the
sign of Pisces, the Fish. Aphrodite, Isis, Freya, and other forms of the
Goddess in sexual aspect appeared veiled in fish nets. 2 See Fish.
The vesica piscis was an unequivocally genital sign of the sheilana-
gig figures of old Irish churches. The squatting naked Goddess
displayed her vulva as a vesica, as did the temple-door images of Kali in
India. 3 One of the old pagan ideograms of sexual union was adopted
by the church to represent the Feast of St. Nicholas on the runic
calendar: a vesica piscis enveloping a male furka.4
The pointed-oval fish sign was even used by early Christians to
represent the mystery of God's union with his mother-bride- which
is why Jesus was called "the little Fish" in the Virgin's fountain. 5
This female enclosure was much used in Christian art, especially
as a superimposition on Mary's belly, with her child within. Sometimes
Christ at his ascension was shown rising into a heavenly vesica, as
if returning to the Mother-symbol. The vesica was also shown as a
frame for figures of Jesus, God, and saints.
Another name for the same sign was mandorla, "almond," which
also represented a yoni. In the cult of the Magna Mater, an almond
was the feminine conception-charm for the virgin birth of Attis.

Sheilanagig/Isis-Aphrodite

Vesica Piscis on Notre Dame de Reims Cathedral in France
17th Century Central Tibeten Thanka of Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra Rubin Museum of Art

Mandorla

"Almond," the pointed-oval sign of the yoni, used in Oriental art to
signify the divine female genital; also called vesica piscis, the Vessel of
the Fish. Almonds were holy symbols because of their female, yonic
connotations. Almonds had the power of virgin motherhood, as shown
by the myth of Nana, who conceived the god Attis with her own
almond.1 The candlestick of the Jews' tabernacle of the Ark was
decorated with almonds for their fertility magic (Exodus 25:3 3-34).
Christian art similarly used the mandorla as a frame for figures of God,
Jesus, and saints, because the artists forgot what it formerly meant.

Fish
A world-wide symbol of the Great Mother was the pointed-oval sign
of the yoni, known as vesica piscis, Vessel of the Fish. It was associated
with the "Fishy Smell" that Hindus made a title of the yonic Goddess
herself, because they said women's genitals smelled like fish. 1 The
Chinese Great Mother Kwan-yin ("Yoni of yonis") often appeared
as a fish-goddess. 2 As the swallower of Shiva's penis, Kali became
Minaksi the "fish-eyed" one, just as in Egypt, Isis the swallower of
Osiris's penis became Abtu, the Great Fish of the Abyss. 3
Fish and womb were synonymous in Greek; delphos meant both.4
The original Delphic oracle first belonged to the abyssal fish-goddess
under her pre-Hellenic name of Themis, often incarnate in a great fish,
whale, or dolphin (delphinos). The cycles in which she devoured and
resurrected the Father-Son entered all systems of symbolism from the
Jews' legend of Jonah to the classic "Boy on the Dolphin." Apuleius
said the Goddess playing the part of the Dolphin was Aphrodite Salacia,
"with fish-teeming womb." 5
Her "boy" was Palaemon, the reincarnated young sun, made new
after sinking into the same abyssal womb as the dying god Heracles.6
The fish-goddess Aphrodite Salacia was said to bring "salacity" through
orgiastic fish-eating on her sacred day, Friday. The Catholic church
inherited the pagan custom of Friday fish-eating and pretended it was a
holy fast; but the disguise was thin. Friday was dies veneris in Latin,
the Day of Venus, or of lovemaking: Freya's Day in Teutonic Europe.
The notion that fish are "aphrodisiac" food is still widespread even
today.
The Celts thought fish-eating could place new life in a mother's
womb. Their hero Tuan was eaten in fish form by the Queen of
Ireland, who thus re-conceived him and gave him a new birth.7 In
another myth, fish were associated with the clots of "wise blood"
emanating from the Mother-tree with its sacred fountain, in Fairyland.8
They were called blood-red nuts of the Goddess Boann, eaten by
"salmon of knowledge" who swam in her sacred fountain. "Poets and
story-tellers, speaking of any subject difficult to deal with, often say,
'Unless I had eaten the salmon of knowledge I could not describe it."' 9
The fish symbol of the yonic Goddess was so revered throughout
the Roman empire that Christian authorities insisted on taking it
over, with extensive revision of myths to deny its earlier female-genital
meanings. Some claimed the fish represented Christ because Greek
ichthys, "fish," was an acronym for "Jesus Christ, Son of God." But the
Christian fish-sign was the same as that of the Goddess's yoni or
Pearly Gate: two crescent moons forming a vesica piscis. Sometimes the
Christ child was portrayed inside the vesica, which was superimposed
on Mary's belly and obviously represented her womb, just as in the
ancient symbolism of the Goddess.
A medieval hymn called Jesus "the Little Fish which the Virgin
caught in the Fountain." 10 Mary was equated with the virgin
Aphrodite-Mari, or Marina, who brought forth all the fish in the sea. On
the Cyprian site of Aphrodite's greatest temple, Mary is still worshipped
as Panaghia Aphroditessa.11 In biblical terms, "Jesus son of
Maria" meant the same as Yeshua son of Marah, or Joshua son of
Nun (Exodus 33:11), which also means son of the Fish-mother. Mary's
many Mesopotamian names like Mari, Marriti, Nar-Marratu, Mara,
were written like the Hebrew Mem with an ideogram meaning both
"sea" and "mother." 12 The next letter in the Hebrew sacred alphabet
was Nun, "fish."
Another biblical name for the Goddess was Mehitabel, none other
than the Egyptian Fish-mother Mehit in a Hebrew disguise. 13

Minaksi

"Fish-Eyed One," title of Kali as the yonic Eye: possible origin of the
European bards' Love-goddess Minne.

Acacia, catechu, Iusaas : Tree of life

11:42 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Part of a series on
Ancient Egyptian religion
Eye of Horus
Portal icon Ancient Egypt portal

Bottle of catechu
Catechu
Catechu (/ˈkætɨʃuː/ or /ˈkætɨtʃuː/)[1] is an extract of acacia trees used variously as a food additive, astringent, tannin, and dye. It is extracted from several species of Acacia, but especially , Senegalia catechu (Acacia catechu), by boiling the wood in water and evaporating the resulting brew.[2] It is also known as cutch, black cutch, cachou, cashoo, khoyer, terra Japonica, or Japan earth, and also katha in Hindi, kaath in Marathi, khoyer in Assamese and Bengali, and kachu in Malay (hence the Latinized [3]Acacia catechu chosen as the Linnaean taxonomy name of the type-species Acacia plant which provides the extract).
As an astringent it has been used since ancient times in Ayurvedic medicine as well as in breath-freshening spice mixtures—for example in France and Italy it is used in some licorice pastilles. It is also an important ingredient in South Asian cooking paan mixtures, such as ready-made paan masala and gutka.
The catechu mixture is high in natural vegetable tannins (which accounts for its astringent effect), and may be used for the tanning of animal hides. Early research by Sir Humphry Davy in the early 19th century first demonstrated the use of catechu in tanning over more expensive and traditional oak extracts.
Under the name cutch, it is a brown dye used for tanning and dyeing and for preserving fishing nets and sails. Cutch will dye wool, silk, and cotton a yellowish-brown. Cutch gives gray-browns with an iron mordant and olive-browns with a copper mordant.[4]
Black catechu has recently also been utilized by Blavod Drinks Ltd. to dye their vodka black.[5]
White cutch, also known as gambier, gambeer, or gambir, which is extracted from Uncaria gambir[6] has the same uses.

Derivative chemicals[edit]

The catechu extract gave its name to the catechin and catechol chemical families first derived from it.

See also[edit]


Iusaset (/juːˈsæsɛt/; "the great one who comes forth") or Iusaas /aɪˈjuːsəs/ is the name of a primal goddess in Ancient Egyptian religion. She also is described as "the grandmother of all of the deities". This allusion is without any reference to a grandfather, so there might have been a very early, but now lost, myth with parthenogenesis as the means of the birth of the deities from the region where her cult arose near the delta of the Nile. Many alternative spellings of her name include Iusaaset, Juesaes, Ausaas, and Jusas, as well as in Greek Saosis /ˌseɪˈoʊsɨs/.

Art[edit]

In Ancient Egyptian art, Iusaaset appears as a woman wearing the horned vulture crown with the uraeus and the solar disk in it, and she carries an ankh in one hand and a scepter in the other. The Egyptian vulture, most sacred to the ancient Egyptians and symbolizing Nekhbet, one of the Two Ladies protecting Egypt, was thought to reproduce though parthenogenesis also. This association might be the basis for the similar view about the motherhood of Iusaaset. The vultures also were considered extremely good mothers. The horns, the uraeus, and the solar disk make a religious connection to Batand Hathor.
The grandmother of the deities, Iusaaset, shown with her horned Egyptian vulture crown with the uraeus and the solar disk in it
Because of Iusaaset’s link to the vulture and uraeus, it can be assumed that she links together both upper and lower Egypt, much like the goddess Mut who she is also associated with.
Although her origins are unclear, Iusaaset seems to be attested quite early in the Egyptian pantheon, being associated with creation and the creation of the deities. Many myths relate that she was seen as the mother of the first deities and the grandmother of the following deities, having watched over the birth of the ones that were her grandchildren. She remains as a primary deity in the pantheon throughout all eras of the culture, even through the Persian, Hyksos, Greek, and Roman occupations, and regardless of changes in the specific myths.

Association with acacia tree[edit]

Iusaaset was associated with the acacia tree,[1] considered the tree of life, and thus with the oldest one known being situated just north of Heliopolis and, thereby, which became identified as the birthplace of the deities. Iusaaset was said to own this tree. The acacia tree was renowned for its strength, hardiness, medical properties, and edibility. Many useful applications gave it a central importance in the culture.

Changes in myths[edit]

One belief held that Iusaaset and Atum (Ra) were the parents of Shu and Tefnut, the first deities. In this myth she often was described as his shadow, sister, or wife. Later other goddesses also became associated with Atum and one variant even relates that he gave birth to the deities, although that variant seems to have been rejected by many cultural and religious centers.
During the Old Kingdom the Egyptians believed that Atum lifted the dead pharaoh's soul from the tomb to the starry heavens.[2] By the time of the New Kingdom, the Atum myth had merged in the Egyptian pantheon with that of Ra, who later was described as a creator and a solar deity as his cult arose. Their two identities were joined into Atum-Ra. After they were combined, Ra was seen as the whole sun and Atum came to be seen as the sun when it sets in the west (depicted as an old man leaning on his staff), while Khepri was seen as the sun when it was rising.

At these later times Iusaaset sometimes is described as the eye of Ra.

In Egyptian mythology, in the Ennead system of Heliopolis, the first couple, apart from Shu and Tefnut (moisture and dryness) and Geb and Nuit (earth and sky), are Isis and Osiris. They were said to have emerged from the acacia tree of Iusaaset, which the Egyptians considered the tree of life, referring to it as the "tree in which life and death are enclosed." Acacia trees contain DMT, a psychedelic drug associated with spiritual experiences. A much later myth relates how Set killed Osiris, putting him in a coffin, and throwing it into the Nile, the coffin becoming embedded in the base of a tamarisk tree.

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