The Tears of Isis — James Dorr

What do Medusa and the goddess Isis have in common? Are both creatresses through destruction? And why was Isis oftentimes depicted as weeping? Herewith are some answers as parts of a journey through art and creation, of sculpture and blood-drinking, crafting musical instruments from bone, revisiting legends of Cinderella and the Golden Fleece, of Sleeping Beauty and Dragons and Snow White-some of these, of course, well disguised. For is not art both the recasting of what is, as well as the invention of what is not? The Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney spoke of art as "making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature," so here there be vampires, and ghouls, and insects perhaps from outer space as well as from this Earth, and visions of Saturn and life in the sea, and other wonders "such as never were in nature," but, above all, Isis. The Weeping Isis. Isis with vulture wings, breasts bare and smeared with blood as in the earliest forms of her myth. And of course, as well, Medusa.