Part 1

If your first reaction is, “Well, heck yeah; She wandered all over looking for the bits of Osiris,” you would not be wrong. But I’m thinking of a different wandering Goddess motif—and not one that is usually associated with Isis.

This mythic theme is also known as the tale of the Distant Goddess, the Wrathful Goddess, or the Returning Goddess. Most people are familiar with it from the Egyptian text known as the Heavenly Cow.

In that story, humanity has rebelled against Re and He sends Hathor—in the form of the much-more-violent Sakhmet—to punish them. She overdoes things just a tad, almost wiping out all of humanity. To quell Her berserker rage, beer is colored red. Lioness Sakhmet laps it up like like blood, becomes drunk…and is thus “pacified.” Egyptian festivals celebrated Her peaceful…