by

JANSEN ESTRUP

Even when they know better certain news outlets and politicians still rant about ISIS, though it is officially ISIL, IS, the Caliphate or Daesh. Admittedly ISIL (Islamic State in the Levant) is no longer an apt description. The terrorist organization should properly be called ISIAAA (Islamic State in Asia, Africa, Americas), if media reporting has any validity.

This confusion seems unnecessarily complex, contrived, opportunistic and intentional.

All parties have a particular social order in mind, and so do those who blame Isis for the upheaval in formerly stable (if tyrannical) countries. Some, no doubt, do it to cloud the reason for instability, to protect themselves from blame, from admitting to loss, waste and greed.

Others do it to promote new fears, new opportunities in new wars.

But they all have one underlying purpose in mind. The war they all fight is against women and children more than rival patriarchal orders and ambitions. There is, beneath the superficial layers, little difference between the three One God faiths. All, with so much law, elevate men and subjugate women.

Thus, it seems plausible, the acronym is directed against one of the oldest and most powerful symbols of womanhood, the ancient Egyptian goddess, Isis. Many thousands of women in the world are named Isis in her honor, and not just in the Islamic world. Isis is a Mediterranean name, Italian, Greek, Hispanic as well as North African, Asian and Classical.

More important to Christians, the Egyptian goddess was the healer of Osiris, the Black (dark) Sun. Osiris rose in the East as Ptah, climbed the ladder of the sky to become Amen-Ra and finally died at the hands of his brother, Set, as he descended into darkness in the west. Every night, it was Isis who revitalized Osiris (Orion) in the stellar Eridanu River, gave him baptismal, salvation, regeneration, rebirth so that he could be 'reborn' again in the east.

The very notion of redemption and eternal life comes down to us from Isis and her cult following.

And that is why patriarchs of yesterday and today besmirch her name, in order to obliterate women's power base, to hide her (and women themselves) behind veils and lies, and ultimately, to relegate her to a dim time of legend, lore and myth – or forgotten completely. Like Mother Mary whose second class status we celebrate several times a year, the rich and powerful wish to 'keep her in her place.'

But in their ever shaky palaces the powerful are never secure, so every little breeze trembles the towers. Had they ignored the ISIS linkage few would have remembered the ancient goddess. By jamming it down the airways, we rank and file, mythological ignorant, comic book/graphic novel fans are suddenly interested.

The feminine principle was once the prime mover. Imagine that!

So let us mourn the harrassment of Isis, but embrace her own rebirth. She seems destined for a new appreciation amid humanity's resurgent reliance upon her.