The Mission
ISIS: Mother Goddess linked to Healing, Justice and Wisdom
The acronym for our Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Youth and Space (ISYS) is linked to ISIS, arguably the most important deity from Egyptian mythology. ISIS was worshipped as the mother of all gods and the archetypical wife. Her origins are from the Nile Delta and unlike other Egyptian deities she was never associated with a centralized cult. Peripheral to other centralized cults until later Egyptian eras, the cult of ISIS became prominent when it began to absorb lesser cults and to expand beyond the reaches of the Egyptian empire to Europe and the Middle East. Beginning as a marginalized cult, the influence of ISIS grew slowly and expanded geographically until it was pervasive within the known world of the Romans. Temples to ISIS are found in the British Isles as late as the 6th Century of the Christian Era. Many of the priests and priestesses of the ISIS cult during the Roman era were known as healers.
The Egyptian “Book of the Dead” described ISIS as:
- She who gives birth to heaven and earth,
- She who knows the orphan,
- She who seeks justice for the poor people,
- She who seeks shelter for the weak people.
With this connection, ISYS strives to work with marginalized children, their families and communities; to highlight social and spatial injustices as they relate to young people; and to bring their knowledge and wisdom to planners, policy makers and society at large.
"[ISIS] is both wise, and a lover of wisdom; as her name appears to denote that, more than any other, knowing and knowledge belong to her." Plutarch, (1936) De Iside et Osiride, edited by Frank C. Babbitt.