Twin Goddesses Don't Always Represent Good vs Evil

Whenever twin goddesses are around, it’s tempting to assume one is

Good and the other is Evil. But it’s not necessarily so! In Ancient Egypt, for example, Isis was the queen of the gods and represented motherhood, magic and fertility. Belief in Isis endured for centuries and worship of her even spread through the Roman Empire. The pharaohs of Egypt were often depicted as being her children. She was associated with the rebirth that Egyptians expected in their afterlife. Pretty much the good stuff came to Isis and from her.

 

Her twin sister Nephthys, although not depicted as evil, was associated with death, with battling demons, darkness and dangerous places like the edge of the desert. She and Isis were viewed by the Egyptians as different aspects of the same supernatural power.

One thing that is very useful to me in writing my paranormal novels of Ancient Egypt is the many varying interpretations and legends surrounding all their gods and goddesses. This enables me to pick and choose the aspects that work best with my worldbuilding and then stay consistent in my choices. In my new book WARRIOR OF THE NILE, Nephthys sets the events in motion and Isis takes a hand in how events turn out, not exactly as her sister had in mind. My human characters have to maneuver around the commands from the gods, yet still save Egypt. (If I’ve piqued your interest, you can find the story blurb on my web page and the book is out in September.)

I also write science fiction romance. When I was doing the world building for my award winning novel, WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM, I wanted to include an element of pure paranormal, along with the technical aspects of life in the far future.  Inspired by the timeless theme of the twin goddesses, I created the Red Lady of D’nvannae and her sister, the White Lady. They’re ancient beings, regarded as deities by many in the sprawling outer space world of the Sectors.  I’m not saying they’re meant to be Isis and Nephthys! Far from it. I just borrowed the idea of powerful celestial sisters.

The Red Lady has an army of highly dangerous followers who can be bodyguards or assassins. If both services are requested by opposing parties in the same case, she decides on a whim which to provide. If you can make the payment and contract with a member of the Brotherhood, the odds are high that you’ll achieve your goal, whether it’s your safety or someone else’s death. Her men and women are lethal. I modeled her very loosely after aspects of Kali, goddess of Time and Change and Darkness but the Red Lady  does not  equal Kali. My character IS known to be beautiful, greedy, sensual.

Marked with the flamboyant scarlet facial tattoo of his Order, Khevan, a senior member of the Brotherhood, plays a significant role in WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM . 

The White Lady is harder to quantify, if you live in the Sectors. Her servants go about doing good deeds, don’t accept payment and sometimes directly oppose the D’nvannae. Some of her followers take a voluntary vow of poverty and chastity.  I think most in my SF world view hers as a charitable organization. I will say she’s the only one who can control and contain the Red Lady, so what does that indicate about her power? Not that she chooses to act against her sister very often! The Lady in White also plays a small role in one scene of WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM.

Here’s an excerpt from WRECK, the first time Nick encounters Khevan, in the shuttle going up to the Nebula Dream:

Sipping his drink, he assessed the only other man on the shuttle who was as deadly as Nick himself could be when the occasion demanded -  a D'nvannae Brother, dressed all in close fitting, soft black leather, as they usually were when traveling outside their world. The swirling red tattoo all D'nvannae wore proudly inscribed on the right side of the face, as a sign of fealty to their Deity, was particularly well defined on this man. He must be senior in the hierarchy, given the number of details in the tattoo. Gotta earn those the hard way in the Lady's service. Halfway paying attention to a broadcast of an inter Sector sports semifinal, the Brother was unbraiding his long, jet black hair, signifying his contract had been successfully complet­ed and he was now at liberty to accept another.

Who on backwater Glideon might have needed such a high-priced, exotic bodyguard? Or been the target of such a re­lentless assassin? The D'nvannae could be hired for either pur­pose, conflicting offers resolved by the whim of the goddess.

Good. Evil. Complicated subjects, whether in ancient times or the far future!

WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM is available now on Amazon.

Happy New Year the Ancient Egyptian Way!

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year and is now settling back into everyday life, like I’m doing.

Since my book Priestess of the Nile comes out from Carina this month, I started thinking about the New Year in Ancient Egypt. If we were living in the land where my story takes place, we’d actually be celebrating somewhere in July, pegged to the rising waters of the Nile and inundation of the fields to start the planting. Making it hard to do adequate planning, the Nile can begin flooding anywhere within a roughly 80 day time frame.

Egypt was nothing if not organized, with a structure going all the way down from Pharaoh to local authorities, with armies of scribes keeping track of everything in neat lines of hieroglyphics. This eighty day window didn’t work for them. Can’t have Pharaoh on standby waiting for the river to rise!

Lacking instant communications the Egyptians had to have a system that would allow everyone in the country to know the moment the New Year had begun, so all could be in sync with Pharaoh.

The solution they found was grounded in science and mythology, like so many ancient cultures. The star Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. A quirk of its heliacal rising – the moment when it first becomes briefly visible above the eastern horizon just before sunrise, after a period of time when it had not been visible - makes it a perfect marker to anchor the calculations of the ancient New Year. Each day the star rises further and further in the sky until it disappears again, only to reappear a year later.

Sirius or Sepdet as the Egyptians called it, was a trustworthy predictor of the Nile flood season. The first new moon after Sepdet reappeared in the sky was the first day of the New Year. Even if the Nile hadn't begun to rise, that day was also deemed to be the official start of the flood.

The Egyptians believed the Nile flooded each year as Isis, Queen of the Great Ones (who appears in my novella) wept over the death of her husband Osiris. The bright star was said to be the goddess herself. Not to worry, Osiris rose from the dead with help – some legends credit the hero of my story, Sobek the Crocodile God, with assisting Isis in saving her husband. Osiris was considered the source of all life, including the vegetation that would grow after the Nile flooded with his wife’s tears, spreading rich black mud on the waiting fields.

This post isn’t long enough to go into the intricacies of the Egyptian calendar but there were five days of feasting and observances at the end of each year. The beer flowed freely according to some accounts I’ve read! New Year’s Day was the Opening of the Year and on Day 15 special offerings were made to ensure a good flood. Given the 80 day variation in the start of the flood, this Day 15 observance was pretty sure to fall during the actual rising of the Nile, thus making Pharaoh appear all knowing as he should be.

And their year would be off to a good start, life going smoothly!

What one thing are you hoping to see go differently in your New Year?