Veil of Isis
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The veil of Isis is a metaphor and allegorical artistic motif in which nature is personified as the goddess Isis covered by a veil, representing the inaccessibility of nature's secrets. It is often combined with a related motif, in which nature is portrayed as a goddess with multiple breasts who represents Isis, Artemis, or a combination of both.
The motif was based on a statue of Isis in the Egyptian city of Sais mentioned by the Greco-Roman authors Plutarch and Proclus. They claimed the statue bore an inscription saying "I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle." Illustrations of Isis with her veil being lifted were popular from the late 17th to the early 19th century, often as allegorical representations of Enlightenment science and philosophy uncovering nature's secrets. Authors at the end of the 18th century, foreshadowing the Romantic movement, began using the lifting of Isis's veil as a metaphor for revealing awe-inspiring truth. Helena Blavatsky, in Isis Unveiled in 1877, used the metaphor for the spiritual truths that her Theosophical belief system hoped to discover, and modern ceremonial magic includes a ritual called the Rending of the Veil to bring the magician to a higher state of spiritual awareness.
