And is it different than the time you exist in?
Here in the US, we just set our clocks back an hour, returning that daylight hour we borrowed in the spring. We all just decide to agree on this human-determined construct of time by which we will lead much of our lives until next spring.
There are rhythms of time that are natural, of course. The risings and settings of sun, moon, and stars. Sleeping and waking, eating and fasting. Some things cycle back eternally; the days, the nights, the seasons. Some things are experienced and do not return; like history. And yet, each cycle, when completed, becomes part of history. And every day in history was once part of a cycle.
Neheh, on the left; Djet on the right; Neheh is sometimes Heh (as you see here; there’s no “n” shown in His name label) and Djet is sometimes identified as Heh’s female counterpart, Hauhet
The ancient Egyptians had names for these two ways humans experience time. The great German Egyptologist Jan Assmann explains that the Egyptian concepts are based not only in these two types of time experiences, but also on the time system inherent in the ancient Egyptian language. He writes that, instead of a language that is based on three main tenses (past, present, future) as ours is, Egyptian is based on the idea of the thing in time being either perfected or not perfected. Assmann calls these perfective and imperfective.
Perfective time, the ancient Egyptians called djet time. When something is perfected and completed, it exists in djet. Neheh time refers to ongoing repetition and regeneration. (The regenerative aspect seems crucial to me; neheh isn’t just an eternal hamster wheel for us, but is the time in which all things are renewed and reborn.) The heavens exist in djet. The earth exists in neheh. The world of the Deities is djet. The human world is neheh.
Two Gods are representative of these time concepts: Osiris is djet and He has an epithet to prove it. He is called Wenennefer, “He Who exists in perfection.” Re, the Sun God, rises and sets each day in neheh time. The union of Osiris and Re each night is one of the Great Mysteries. It is by uniting with djet that neheh can continue. I should note as well, that the identification of Re with neheh time and Osiris with djet time is not exclusive. Each God is, in one text or another, also connected with the other type of time.
The perfection of djet is prior to the repetition and renewal of neheh, since neheh cannot perform its cyclical and renewing function without regular reconnection with djet. After death, the ancients wanted to enter into djet, the time of the Deities. The mummy was created as a perfect, eternal body for the dead. Moral perfection on the scales of Ma’et ensured passing the judgment of Osiris, joining Him in djet time.
Perfective and imperfective time aren’t the only ways scholars have translated and discussed neheh and djet time, as you can see from the graphic here. Quite a few have translated neheh as “time” because it is the everyday way humans experience time with its cycles and renewals of the days and seasons. Time is then paired with “eternity” for djet is perfected and unchanging—as westerners often think about eternity. Others have designated neheh and djet as “circular” and “linear” time, “ongoingness” and “completedness,” “all-time” and “not-time,” “eternal change” and “eternal sameness,” “infinity” and “everlastingness,” “the existent” and “the non-existent,” “temporal reality” and “changeless, atemporal reality.” All of which, I think, can help us start to wrap our brains around these Egyptian concepts. At least a little.
So.
What can we do with these Egyptian notions in our desire for connection with Isis? Besides being interesting in and of themselves, are these ancient Egyptian temporal concepts of any help to us in our relationship with Her?
Perhaps we can answer the question in the title of this post? As a Deity, Isis exists in the everlastingness of djet time, right? But then do we not also experience Her in our world of changes? In the risings and settings of the sun, moon, and stars? In our daytime offerings and nighttime dreams? I keep coming back to the Great Mystery of Osiris and Re. Each needs the other. The cycles of the Sun God need to touch and unite with the Eternal to continue. The perfection of the Eternal needs to touch and unite with the forces of renewal to express itself.
I am just starting to explore this. I have more reading to do. But in the meantime, I’m going to try a little meditation to see what I can learn or experience.
Do let me know if you have any interesting intuitions, too.
Isiopolis 
I’ve read before that our experience of time is as fourth dimensional beings: we have length, width, and height going forward in time. Only forward. A fifth dimensional being would be able to go to any point in time and would have full access to the entire timeline. This must be what the Gods experience. They can step into our fourth dimension of time to engage with us but then can step back out into Their native experience of time. This also would explain why we can engage with the Gods at different points in Their lives in the “wrong order” like worshipping Horus as an adult one day and then worship Horus in the form of a child the next day. As completed beings of the fifth dimension, there isn’t a single point of Their own lives that isn’t also happening at the same time.
Greetings Dear Isidora
I’m from Iran. I’m going to be an Isian. I’m doing a few things I’ve found online on a daily basis. Since we are under sanctions, I can’t buy your books in print but I can buy ebooks. Would you please publish the two books electronically?
Until then would you please guide on where and how to begin?
Thanks🙏
May Isis guide you and protect you.
Thank you🙏♥️
Thank you for this post.
I’ve always felt that the Gods need us as much as we need them.
Why do you believe that?
Of course, as a mortal, firmly rooted in Djet time, I have no Idea what the Gods truly want, think, or need. But I’m theorizing that that intersection between Nehneh and Djet time is what many magic users call Liminal Space, or Between the Worlds, the place where dimensions meet and we can communicate with the gods and affect the future. The Gods, at least from what I’ve observed, need us to use their power and influence that they can impart to us Between the Worlds to affect changes in the Djet.
It is this interaction with the Divine that heals our souls and, just possibly, aids the Gods in their divine purpose.
I think this might clarify why “First Time” is so very, very important–and why it appears, at least, that even the gods were stuck, somehow, in dealing with “First Time,” at least in their interactions with our time. First Time might be the intersection of Neheh and Djet time, and thus, what is done at/in First Time is essentially unchangeable–as in the somewhat parallel story of Demeter and Isis, when the Goddess, in the process of changing the queen’s baby into an immortal, is interrupted by the understandably frightened queen! Once the spell/process was broken or interrupted, it was then impossible to change–the child could then NOT be immortalized, as Isis had intended. The First Time, as an intersection of the two times (if only from our perspective?), might represent a sort of “collapse of the wave function,” if you’ll pardon the fractured physics . . .
Yes, this is so interesting. The book I’m reading out this suggests that First Time is the separation/simultaneous creation of neheh and djet. I have many more pages to explore!