Reflections by Olivia Robertson

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I wish to share with you a very strange trance event that took place in the Temple of Isis at the Autumnal Equinox, 1990. I've never found an explanation. It is only when I studied the Gnostic Gospels recently, a new idea came to me. I've never written or indeed spoken of the event and the only witness of it, Jonathan Cott, author of "Isis and Osiris", with ourselves in it, and "Omm Sety", a wonderful book. This lady was one of our members. He's now gone, he's passed into the next world. Well, I'll tell you about it, quite a certain amount of moral courage when I'm 91, so I might as well say all I know, before I do also join him over there.

In 1990, Jonathan was writing about the Fellowship of Isis for his book "Isis and Osiris". This was because Omm Sety, mystic of Abydos, had joined the Fellowship of Isis just before she passed. His book, "Omm Sety" was very successful. The publishers, Doubleday, had an editor-in-chief Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It was she who suggested that Jonathan write of present day Priestesses of the Ancient Egyptian faith. In my correspondence with her, she asked the titles once given to Isis and then conferred on the Virgin Mary, Sedes Sapientiae, Seat of Wisdom, Regina Caeli, Queen of Heaven, and Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. I now think of the Roman Empresses who were Christians, the Pompai, well, the Priestess of Isis was, Livia the Archpriestess of the whole show, wife of Augustus. But they continued with that and moved on to the Virgin Mary, with the famous St. Helena, wife (mother) of Constantine, becoming a saint.

In that autumn, Jonathan used our ceremony of the restoring of life to Osiris by his wife Isis, as a base of reception on the FOI, however he also attended a private Isis wedding rite of a Priestess and Priest of Isis, performed by my brother Lawrence and myself. It turned out to be extremely and rather weirdly private. I hadn't intended it to be like that. I invited no guests except Jonathan. Indeed an eerie atmosphere enveloped the Castle and grounds like, like a mist. I felt slightly entranced myself. We began the ceremony in the old Abbey, 14th century ruins, later made Gothic by my ancestors in the grounds. It was then that the Priest(ess) entered walking trance. She described all this to us later. This Priestess has all her psychic centers open, and is able to enter altered states like so many of us. Her husband is also an occultist. Her future husband. But there ostensibly, the bridegroom did not enter in this experience at all, he was rather puzzled and a bit hurt. After the earthly Isis Wedding rite, the bride, who seemed to be still in trance, gradually came round and told us what she'd experienced.

In the Abbey, it began. She suddenly found herself, not wearing Indian red robes, she was a middle-aged lady. She found herself as a very young girl, full of joy, wearing white. She realized, she somehow knew, that she was reenacting the wedding of Cana. She went through our ceremony in this altered state. She described what it was like. She told us that Mother Mary was a middle-aged lady, very sensible, wearing blue and presiding efficiently over the proceedings. She was standing in the east by our Pisces altar. However, her whole attention was upon the bridegroom. The bride was much in love. He was with his male companions, but in an adjoining Healing Chapel. He wasn't in the same place, but there was a window - an indoor window - joining. In this Healing Chapel in the southeast, there was a large painting of Isis as the Winged Isis right across the sky with Sirius and Orion. And below her was a ceramic figure of Osiris, in the form of Horus, coming up from the Earth. That's how they have it in Egypt: the Sky Goddess, the Star Goddess, is Nuit or Isis and the earthly man is coming up from the earth, Geb it's called often.

The bride said that the bridegroom was Christ. This is an embarrassing thing to say, but I've got to do it. This Priestess is Pagan, not a Christian. It was very embarrassing you see, those sort of words, she was so embarrassed. I asked what the bridegroom was like and she said he was absolutely wonderful. So in the mind of this young girl, she adored him, she was in ecstasy. As the ceremony continued, the trance began to wear off. When it was ending, I suddenly asked Jonathan, who was sitting in the south - was he Jewish? He said he was. I felt he had to be. He was the only witness and he was sitting the south, by our south gateway. In some instinctive way I felt it had to be there.

There was still this odd, cut-off atmosphere. We all went upstairs to have a wedding meal. The weird feeling about being totally cut off from the rest of the world persisted, as if we were between two worlds. Suddenly it was broken by the arrival of unexpected visitors.

What had happened? Nobody spoke about it much. The possible answer I thought was that the Priestess had joined as millions of nuns who'd become Brides of Christ through the ages. But she was not interested in such a role. She lived as wife with her partner in the usual way. Why did this event occur with such emphasis on spiritual consciousness?

It was only after I had speculated about a possible marriage of Christ and Mary, Mary Magdalene - Alchemical Marriage - that I wondered, had the wedding of Cana had been this marriage? I got quite nervous thinking of all this because people sort of kill each other about dogmas of religion. You know, it's nice and peaceful being Ancient Egyptian, nobody's going to kill you about that, usually. You know they fight between Amun-Ra and Akhenaten, but they don't murder you.

But why was Mary supervising the provision of wine? Why was she arranging the ceremony? Why no record? Anyway. People will say "that's perfectly simple." They were definitely excommunicated. Later all records were destroyed. Christ and all his followers said they had to rely on women from Herod's household to feed them. They had nowhere to sleep, nowhere to be. To protect future children, remembering Herod, both families, even at that time, needed a secret wedding. Because some believed that he was descended from a God, Akhenaten. Caesarion, son of Caesar, and Cleopatra had been murdered and it was rumored that a Priest in the - this is all hearsay - a Priest in the Temple of Amun who was a direct descendent of Akhenaten, but also a brilliant astrologer and Priest of Amun-Ra, combined the qualities of the Good Shepherd holding his staff, and of the Holy Spirit, the Aten of Akhenaten. So he was very monotheist and pantheist and had the Hieros Gamos, the Sacred Marriage, because they wished to unite after the murder of Caesarion, they wished to unite the tradition of the Ancient Egyptians with Moses, son of an Egyptian Princess. They wanted, for some reason - I think it was the role of the Prophets, they were wonderful Prophets, and they wanted to join them.

Anyway, that is that story. I hope to be fair-minded, so I leave this mysterious wedding open, not to analysis, but to the creative imagination. What is more delightful, than a mystery - of love!