John Augustus Knapp, “Saitic Isis” (1926)
“The statues of Isis were decorated with the sun, moon, and stars, and many emblems pertaining to the earth, over which Isis was believed to rule (as the guardian spirit of Nature personified). […] she personified Universal Nature, the mother of all productions. […] The deity was generally represented as a partly nude woman, often pregnant, sometimes loosely covered with a garment either of green or black color […] The green color alludes to the vegetation which covers the face of the earth, and therefore represents the robe of Nature. The black represents death and corruption as being the way to a new life and generation. […] The serpents under her feet indicate that Nature is inclined to preserve life and to heal disease by expelling impurities and corruption.
The ancients gave the name Isis to one of their occult medicines […]. Her black drape also signifies that the moon, or the lunar humidity--the sophic universal mercury and the operating substance of Nature in alchemical terminology--has no light of its own, but receives its light, its fire, and its vitalizing force from the sun. Isis was the image or representative of the Great Works of the wise men: the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, and the Universal Medicine.
“Nature contains Nature, Nature rejoices in her own nature, Nature surmounts Nature; Nature cannot be amended but in her own nature”. Isis, or Nature personified, carries with her the sacred fire, religiously preserved and kept burning in. a special temple by the vestal virgins. This fire is the genuine, immortal flame of Nature--ethereal, essential, the author of life. […] Isis was Sophia, the Virgin of Wisdom […] Isis represents the mystery of motherhood, which the ancients recognized as the most apparent proof of Nature's omniscient wisdom and God's overshadowing power.”
— Manly Palmer Hall; “Man: The Grand Symbol of the Mysteries” (1947)
