Do you remember the first time Isis made Herself—important—in your life? It’s been so long for me that I almost don’t. Almost, but not quite…

Isis accepted me as Her priestess more than 20 years ago. But even before that, I’d been dancing with Her for a while, though without commitment. I would often find myself reading about Her, looking at images of Her, wondering about Her. And the crazy thing was that I was actually looking for a Divine relationship; I was looking for “my” Goddess. But in my young rebelliousness, I thought a more obscure Goddess would be more appropriate for the uniqueness (okay, weirdness) of me. Isis, I thought, was way too ordinary; everybody knows Isis. At least the more mysterious Dark Sister Nephthys should be myGoddess. I must have closed the door in Isis’ face half a dozen different times. (I know; you’re cringing. So am I.)

Isis Fortuna will often throw you a curve ball. Go ahead, take a swing at it. This image of the Goddess is now in the Louvre in Paris.

But that’s why She’s a Goddess and I’m just human. This rejection did not put Her off at all. She simply kept coming back and tapping on my shoulder (please see my post on Isis the Ass-Kicker). No suspense in this story, eventually She wore me down and I began preparing to dedicate myself as Her priestess.

I did my research. I wrote my ritual. I made my absentions. On the appointed day, I began the rite. But about halfway through, I began to feel very faint. (In those days, this often happened to me in the presence of magical energy; I’d go very pale and start to pass out. Many is the time when my fellow ritualists had to stop and prop me up for a while.) Nonetheless, I determined to finish the ritual and did so while sitting on the floor in front of the altar. Well, part of the rite involved asking the Goddess to accept me as priestess. The answer was, “no.” But the elaborated answer was, “go study and come back in a year.”

And that’s exactly what I did. About a year later I reworked the same ritual, didn’t faint, and received Her acceptance. Not long after that, I got a strange and wonderful confirmation of Her acceptance, too. A woman I barely knew came to me on a mission from the Goddess. She’d had a dream of Isis that was so strong that she simply had to act on it. In the dream, Isis told her to come to me and give me a gift of earrings in the form of the Goddess. She did—and I knew that Isis had truly claimed me.

The path of the priestess or priest of Isis isn’t always what you expect. In fact, when things take a turn I didn’t expect, I usually consider it a sign that I’m in contact with true Divine energy. If things go just as I thought, it can mean that I’m merely fulfilling my own expectations. While that’s not always true, it is something to be aware of, a warning that you may be talking to yourself rather than talking to Isis.