I think I've found something real: the missing mother in Abrahamic religions, embedded in the word Israel itself.
I know that sounds radical, but I think the evidence is there—linguistically, historically, archaeologically.
It Started With Santa
A few years ago, I was trying to figure out what to tell my kids about Santa Claus. Not just "is he real," but what does this whole tradition actually mean? And if we're celebrating Christmas, what are we really celebrating?
That question led to a bigger one: What religious community, if any, do we want to be part of?
Our kids have a Jewish last name from their grandfather (a rabbi's son who once brought home a discarded Christmas tree because he thought his family couldn't afford one—they let him keep it). I'm no longer Catholic. It never felt right to me, even as a kid. I couldn't understand why the Church wouldn't let people love who they wanted. If people want to love each other, why stop them? Then the whole child molestation cover ups and that was enough for me.
So I started researching. And what I found surprised the heck out of me.
To share a tiny bit about me- I am an engineer trained to look at science and tease apart the red herrings to get to the root. I essentially reverse-engineered our traditions while putting my sons to nap over the last 5 years!
I lost my mom at 17, and feel like I am on a path of self discovery that is only just starting…
You Can Tell the Whole Christmas Story Without Mentioning Christianity
I realized I could explain every modern Christmas tradition—Santa, the tree, the mother-and-child imagery, the gifts, the celebration itself—without ever mentioning Christianity.
Santa himself is a mashup of Nordic/Siberian shamanic traditions, gift-giving customs, and solstice celebrations.
We know this because ONE symbol cannot be explained any other way: The chimney. Why does he come down a chimney? Because in the deep deep north, when the doors are blocked by snow, there are ancient journals in Siberia telling of people entering the yurt in the smoke hole- the “chimney”. This entered the american conciousness the same time as the Siberian railroad was being built, around the late 1800’s. Also explorations continuing to find the north pole, then you get their reindeer and the amanita magic mushroom, and the fact they grow under pine trees and the reindeer absolutely love them, and look like they are dancing and flying when eating them!
The tree comes from Germanic traditions, like celebrating the winter solstice when evergreens stay alive through the darkest time of year.
There was an influx of Germanic people in the 1800’s, when Puritans in America had banned Christmas for being too pagan in the 1600s.
Germans also celebrated Motre Nacht— Christmas Eve called “Mother’s Night”).
The mother-child image (Mary and Jesus) is identical to Isis and Horus from Egypt—thousands of years older, same pose, same iconography. Imagery of Isis and Mary on graves is literally indistinguishable for a 200 year time period in ancient Roman Graves. Isis was one of the most prominant religious structures, possibly with 10% or more of temples devoted to her throughout the Roman Empire- strange for a foreign woman to have such a presence! This would have been right around the time Jesus would have walked (if that happens to be historical)
Turns out there was ancient trade between Egyptians and Germanic people around 2,000 BC by the evidence of blue beads that were found throughout the Mediterranean. There are ancient links with Germanic and Egyptian threads that could have happened pre-memory or historical documentation holds- but retains in name. More on this soon enough…
The date (December 25) isn't Jesus's birthday—it's the winter solstice (later adjusted when the calendar shifted). It's when ancient cultures celebrated the "birth" of the sun returning.
Romans celebrated “death days”. Birthdays are an Egyptian celebration.
Christmas is a solar holiday that Christianity stamped its name on.
And once I saw that pattern, I couldn't unsee it.
The Sacred Year: Christianity Stamped Itself Onto the Sun
I kept digging. And I found that Christianity placed its major holidays on the four most important solar points of the year:
Winter Solstice → Christmas (December 25) – the sun's "rebirth"
Spring Equinox → Easter (movable, but tied to the full moon after the equinox) – fertility, resurrection, life returning
Summer Solstice → St. John's Day (June 24) – peak light
They even say he fell as the other rose, like the sun and the moon, 6 months apart from Jesus’ supposed bday (chosen 300 years after his death)
Fall Equinox → All Saints' Day (November 1) – honoring the dead, equal day/night
These aren't arbitrary dates. They're the seasonal cycle—the year as a body, moving through fertile and fallow periods, light and dark, life and death.
Christianity didn't invent these celebrations. It absorbed them.
And when I started tracing where they came from, everything pointed back to Egypt.
Solstice and Christmas used to literally be on the same date, Dec 25th, until 1582 when the calendar switched from Julian to Gregorian, and put an artificial split of 4 days between the two dates.
Easter Isn't a Christian Word—It's a Goddess
I was all excited I had figured out Christmas, and writing about it, when spring came along. I paused and looked it up, and this was when everything fell into place. My course changed totally- at the very least, it expanded.
The word "Easter" is Germanic. Everywhere else in the world, Christians call this holiday Pascha (Passover), because it's tied to the Jewish Exodus story. English is a mutt of a language between ancient pagan Germanic tribes in Britain with Latin Europeans trying to take over. And we find very important things in what they used to call things. All the romantic Latin based languages call Easter some variation of Pasha, like the Paschal lamb.
But in English and German, we say Easter—which comes from Eostre (or Ostara), a Germanic goddess of spring and fertility. As mentioned by a CHRISTIAN guy Bede in 800 AD, before all of the Germanic lands were Christianized.
Why?
Because when Christianity spread into Germanic lands (around 800 AD), the people were already celebrating the spring equinox as a month-long festival dedicated to this goddess, literally, Eoster Month.
And here's the kicker: Eostre/Ostara comes from the same root as "East"—the direction of the rising sun, where light returns every morning.
Traditional roots will say the “aust” root has to do with dawn, the sun rising, with unknown origins beyond that. But I dug further.
That root? IST. ASET. ISIS.
She is the Egyptian mother goddess.
In Hebrew and Egyptian religions, the consonants are preserved, while the vowels are changeable, like accents in speech. The root, _ST remains.
And the -t ending in Egyptian is distinctly feminine.
She was only renamed Isis in Greek, taking the IS sound twice. Her hieroglyph is literally a throne, and you pronounce her name as literally…. “EEST”.
She is the site of the rising sun, the solstice that appears when the Nile river floods, like the birth waters, we all start from the womb. Rebirth, baptisms, happen in water, because it is essentially a return to the mother. A concious choice at rebirth in a specific religion.
Fast forward a little, and I was noticing her name in places in maps, when I recognized something bigger.
IS-RA-EL: The Name That Changes Everything
This is where I think I found something real.
The word Israel predates Judaism by about 300 years. Around 1,200 BC, the region was Canaanite, heavily influenced by Egyptian religion. A land, not quite an official one, was named Israel before Judaism even formalized (around 900 BC).
When you break down the name linguistically:
IS-RA-EL
IS = Isis (Aset in Egyptian) – the Egyptian mother goddess, the seat of power, the morning sun.
RA = The Egyptian sun god, the child, the sustaining light, noon day light
literally pronounced “Ray”, like our sunray or reign of a queen.
He was also known as Horus, giving us the word for Horizon.
In some traditions, Ra is grows up to become father; in others, he (and sometimes she) is the divine child (like Horus, whose name gives us 'horizon'). Either way, Ra represents generative solar power—the life force that sustains everything. Pharoahs could be queen or king, male or female. And they were seen as an embodiment of the sun god. A reincarnation of the sun.
EL = The Canaanite word for "god" (you see it in Michael, Gabriel, Israel), the setting sun, wisdom, experience.
Mother - Father - Child.
That's the original trinity.
Not Father-Son-Holy Spirit (three males and a neutered ghost).
But the family structure itself—the union that creates life.
Everyone recognizes EL as "god" in names. But IS and RA are hiding in plain sight.
And when you start looking, you see this pattern everywhere.
The word for “spirit” in Hebrew, ruach, is feminine. In Greek, pneûma, it becomes neutral.
In Greek, the term σοφία (sophía), meaning "wisdom," is often used in a way that can imply a feminine divine presence, sometimes equated with the Holy Spirit.
The most important part: Judaism does not exist in a vacuum. Neither does Christianity. Jews are the people that were Canaanites, left to live in Egypt (most likely from famine) and thrived for 300 years, until they eventually went back to Canaan. And it was those following Moses (an Egyptian name) who became Jews [after he got the sign from god at the top of a mountain, under the influence of a burning psychedelic acacia plant]. So Jews do not exist without Egypt. They were Canaanites who came back after 400 years of Egyptian influence. And that is exactly when we see the name Israel first appear, in Egyptian writing. Well before Judaism was set it. The first Monotheism was even seen in Egypt in those years just prior to the Hyksos rule.
Note: There is even more fun history when you realize that a Semetic group of people ruled Egypt for 100 years, quite brutally, until Egyptians took it back. All that happened right before the Exodus. Essentially, because of that period of foreign rule, Egypt started taking control of lands around Judea and the Levant. They generally stayed on their own soil, seeing it as perfect, where they wanted to die- not to conquer and expand. But in this case, it was a rough Semetic group called the Hyksos that may have driven all the trouble that lead to the Exodus… It is like finding empathy in history for why people did what they did…
The land of the Jews was a mix of Canaanites and Egyptian traditions, exactly what you would expect if the origins are Is, Ra, and El.
The Pattern Repeats Across Africa
In Algeria, there's a place called Tamunrasset. It's Berber/Tuareg, and when you break it down:
T-AMUN-RA-ASET
Amun (Amen)= The Egyptian father god (like El)
Ra - The divine child again (male or female)
Aset = Isis (same as IS in Israel)
Same pattern. Mother-Father-Child.
They just swapped who came first, the dad, then the child, then the mother.
This isn't coincidence. This is cultural transmission—the same structure spreading across North Africa and into the Mediterranean through trade, migration, and shared religious understanding.
Isis Was Everywhere in Rome—Then Christianity Erased Her
At the height of the Roman Empire, an estimated 10% of all Roman temples were dedicated to Isis.
600+ temples. Across the entire empire. From Britain to North Africa.
This is stunning because:
She was foreign (Egyptian)
She was female (in a patriarchal warrior culture)
Roman men were forbidden to marry foreign women
And yet Isis thrived for 600 years in Rome. Her name was the last hieroglyph ever written, in 396 AD, is dedicated to her, before the Roman law made it illegal to practice her religion (and they call it a “cult”) and destroyed the last royal family maintaining the practice.
Why did people like her so much? Because she offered what Roman gods didn't:
Personal relationship (you could pray to her directly)
Protection for mothers and children (when childbirth killed 50% of mothers)
Resurrection (the Isis-Osiris story promised life after death)
Accessibility (slaves, women, foreigners could all worship her)
Something for the rising middle class. A family structure.
Then Christianity came along.
For 200 years after Christianity began, archaeologists cannot tell the difference between Isis and Mary on tombstones.
Same pose. Same iconography. Same titles: Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Mother of God.
Christianity didn't erase Isis.
It transferred her.
Renamed her. Demoted her from divine to "blessed." Made her subordinate instead of sovereign.
But the people wouldn't let her go.
So she stayed—under a new name.
She Never Left
Here's what I think I've found:
The missing mother in Abrahamic religions is Isis/Aset.
And the evidence is embedded in:
The word Israel (IS-RA-EL)
The word Easter (from IST/ASET, meaning East—where the sun rises)
The direction East itself
The word Star (Stella Maris, Isis's title)
The 600 Isis temples in Rome
The 200 years of indistinguishable Isis/Mary imagery
The fact that Catholics still pray to Mary as Queen of Heaven—the exact title Isis held
She never left.
They just made us forget her name.
Why This Matters
If the original trinity was Mother-Father-Child—if the structure of creation itself was honored as sacred—then what we lost wasn't just a goddess. We lost the understanding that love creating life is holy. That partnership (not domination) is divine. That the body (not transcendence) is the temple. That women's generative power isn't sin—it's the source.
And if we can see that the goddess never actually left—that she's been here the whole time, renamed but present—then maybe we can stop fighting over whose version of God is "right" and start honoring what all these traditions were originally pointing to: life sustaining life, cyclically, gratefully, together.
I know this sounds bold. Maybe even radical.
But I think the evidence is there—linguistically, historically, archaeologically.
I'm not trying to destroy anyone's faith. I'm trying to trace these practices back to their actual origins so we can honor them more fully—with eyes open instead of closed.
And I think what we find there is love creating life.
Mother, father, child.
IS-RA-EL.
That's the trinity.
And it's been there the whole time.
A prayer in a single name.
What Was Taken
Let's be specific about what was taken.
The origins were taken.
We were told these practices started with Christianity. That they appeared fully formed 2,000 years ago. That everything before was "pagan" darkness that needed to be overcome.
This erased thousands of years of wisdom.
It erased Egypt teaching Greece teaching Rome teaching Christianity.
It erased the Nile Valley as the source of what we call "Western civilization.", or even being part of the Mediterranean picture.
It erased Africa from the story of human development. Not just where all people came from, where our most fundamental IDEAS came from.
The origins were stolen and replaced with a lie. One that made no sense.
The feminine was taken.
The goddess was removed.
Can you really have creation with two dudes and a ghost? No. For good reason.
Women's religious authority was stripped. Sacred sexuality was reframed as sin.
Mary was demoted from divine to merely blessed.
The woman, whose blood held the royal lineage, was now to be controlled as a man’s possession, along with their kids. When fertility could not be easily tracked under the new patriarchal system, a woman had to be sheltered to be certain of who to give his toys to.
She was a model of purity no woman could reach: motherhood without sex. Sex became sinful. Venerated became venereal. Crown became Crone. Lilith (Adam’s first lover) became forgotten and Eve was now the source of all evil. Story after story documents her fall. Always her fall.
The Holy Spirit was neutered—turned from feminine presence into abstract force.
Childbirth became punishment instead of creation.
Sex became ugly, rather than sacred.
Female pleasure became dangerous, a distraction, instead of the holiest act of all. LOVE CREATES LIFE.
Then we understand the concept of virginity existed in Egypt, it just did not mean “never had sex”. A woman was born a virgin daily, even if a mother, with the new sun, like “virgin” snow. The modern form was a mistranslation of the Egyptian word and concept, one we may never fully understand.
The entire half of divinity that was feminine—that held death and rebirth, that received offerings, that embodied the earth's fertility—was erased.
And we were told this was progress. Forget the old, the revered, the cultures that were thousands of years old. New means progress, rather than immaturity. Forget the women, forget the gods. We must move forward.
Rome tried to rewrite history. It erased an estimated 25 cultures, fully- or so it thought. But Egypt was the crown jewel. Providing the grain, gold and glory that would propel Rome into its heyday for 400 years until its own collapse, which then transferred into the Roman Catholic Empire. Egypt may have lost her memory for 2,000 years, but there is so much remains to be discovered. That IS being uncovered, since Napoleon spent just 3 years in Egypt and found the Rosetta Stone and opened everything back up. We just happen to live in a time of freedom and access as never before, that allows us to start to hear her voice again. To understand the lyrics we thought were lost.