The Egyptian deity Isis under many names appears as the principle of natural fecundity among nearly all the religions of the ancient world. She was known as the Goddess with ten thousand appellations and was metamorphosed by Christianity into the Virgin Mary, for Isis, although she gave birth to all living things - chief among them the Sun - still remained a virgin, according to the legendary accounts.
During the Middle Ages the troubadours of Central Europe preserved in song the legends of the Egyptian Goddess Isis. They composed sonnets to the most beautiful woman in all the world. Though few ever discovered her identity, she was Sophia, the Virgin of Wisdom, whom all the philosophers of the world have wooed. 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. To the modern seeker she is the epitome of the Great Unknown, and only those who unveil her will be able to solve the mysteries of life, death, generation, and regeneration.
The essay by Manly Palmer Hall that our publishing house is now proposing to modern readers, Isis, the Virgin of the World, was one of the most interesting chapters of his monumental work The Secret Teachings of All Ages, published in San Francisco in 1928.