Today is Day 1 of the five day feast of the “Victory of Horus”. Obviously I’m going to be celebrating it very differently. Last year I tried to rebrand the feast by meditating on a different aspect of the story each day. Today is the day where I reread the story of the Osirian Cycle and give my own thoughts about it. I plan to eventually write my own account of the story from Set’s point of view as a novelization, but of course that’s going to take some time to do.
I preface this essay to say that I mean no disrespect to any of the Netjeru (that’s Egypt’s Gods, to the uninitiated). Nor do I mean to disrespect or offend their followers. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with following any or all of these Gods. They can be a very beneficial and helpful presence in the lives of their followers. They all aid in the fight against isfet and the Chaos Serpent. When the chips are down, they put aside their differences and fight for what’s right.
I grew up reading Plutarch’s version, in which Set is a complete villain, nothing much ever being said about His motivations for killing His Brother. A lot of people come to Set via Satanism or the Left Hand Path, but I came to Set mostly through Kemeticism and Tamaran Wicca to a lesser extent, after a long detour with my ancestral deities. I took a good honest look at other materials besides the mainstream ones, and the more I saw, the more it was looking like neither side was completely in the right. And I just stopped and pondered certain aspects of the story, like the Lettuce Incident, as we’ll call it, where Isis severs the hands of Her own son and throws them into the Nile before concocting this cruel prank on Set, or the boat race where Horus cheated but suffered no consequences, and it seemed like they were being really unfair to Set. Then come to find out the story was largely rewritten after the cult of Osiris gained dominance in Egypt, and you start to see the cracks in the whole narrative. I started looking at the Pyramid Texts and other older sources that painted Set in a more positive light. And I gradually came over to His side. I didn’t even go out looking for anything that justifies Set, the information just kept turning up randomly. Even the Greek Magical Papyri gives us a little tidbit about the story that paints Isis in a negative light, when She cursed Her sister Nephthys out of jealousy for Her sleeping with Osiris. Another resource that tells things a bit differently is the book “Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods” by Dimitri and Christine Meeks, wherein we get an account of the shady, underhanded way Osiris assumed the throne by rebelling against and nearly killing His father Geb. The couple really scratched, clawed and backstabbed their way to the top. These varying retellings sometimes are more neutral than the rigidly pro-Horus version we always hear.
Pictured: The Spell from the Greek Magical Papyri wherein Isis curses Her sister Nephthys
Not to excuse or justify murder, but Set definitely had His reasons for killing Osiris, and it wasn’t just because he was jealous and evil. Nephthys sleeping with Osiris to produce Anubis may have been one major driving factor, but another big one that doesn’t get discussed much is that Isis stole Ra’s secret name by nearly killing him with poison. This caused humanity to question Ra’s power after seeing him at death’s door, leading to the debacle of Ra unleashing Sekhmet as revenge and nearly losing control of Her and causing humanity’s extinction, resulting in Ra having to abdicate the throne, which passed from a few different Gods before going to Osiris. Set, being very protective of Ra, may have seen Osiris’ rule as illegitimate and a result of Isis’ clever trickery. This is probably also why Ra was the only Netjer who stood up for Set when everyone else wanted Him to abdicate his throne.
I also sympathize with Horus to a degree, having been born for the sole purpose of avenging His father, growing up with stories about how evil his big bad uncle is, being forced to fulfill His mother’s aspirations and not His own. I don’t think Horus is the villain of the story, merely a tool used to fulfill his mother’s ambitions.
At any rate, I’ll have more to write in the coming days as I go through my meditations.
๐น֍֎๐น
~ Siamanto the Foreigner
๐ท๐ ๐๐๐ฏ๐ญ๐๐๐บ๐๐๐ ๐๐
ีีซีกีดีกีถีฉึ ีีฟีกึีจ
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