What does 'Apples of Isfet' Even Mean, Anyway?

I know 'Apples of Isfet' is a strange title for blog. There's a little blurb below the title explaining things, but I feel it would be useful to go into a little more detail.

Isfet is an ancient Egyptian concept, closely related to ma'at. To the Egyptians, ma'at meant truth. When one died (and assuming one had enough money and power to justify the expensive burial and mummification ceremonies), the soul would travel to the Scales of Anubis. There, the heart of the deceased would be weighed against the Feather of Ma'at. Those who had done more good than ill in their life possessed a heart which weighed less than the Feather; those whose hearts were heavy with sin would outweigh the feather. Light-hearted souls were permitted entry into the Afterlife, while those with heavy hearts were consumed by the chimaera, Ammut (Ammut would travel to the Sahara to defecate, so sinners could look forward to an eternity as a little demon turd, baking underneath the desert sun forever).

The Egyptians believed strongly in order and hierarchy. Given that the stability of their culture was dependent on nothing so much as the Nile flooding on time each year, this is easy to understand. Everyone fit in, somehow, to the system of law and order.

Western culture is not so very different. We're not dependent on the weather so much, but we love our order. We love our established patterns, our habits. We love them so much that we are threatened when someone challenges them - when we are told , for instance, that we have lived an unfairly privileged life, when we are told that our society is massively unjust towards certain subgroups of people (the farther away you get from being a white, middle-class, heterosexual male, the more unjust it tends to be). Some intellectuals like to refer to this system as the patriarchy.

I like to use ma'at.

The patriarchy isn't simply the purview of men - women can buy into the patriarchy with all the vim and vigor of even the most entrenched misogynist. It also doesn't just come into play sometimes and not other times. Truth is in the eye of the beholder - and depending on where you stand in your relationship to the patriarchy, you have a different viewpoint on things. Like ma'at, the patriarchy is a web which overlays our entire society. It is accepted as truth - how many times has an injustice gotten the reaction, "That's just the way things are"? Such is ma'at.

Isfet is the opposite of ma'at. It is the chaos which comes when the established order is threatened or even dismantled. It is working for change, working to redefine 'established truths'. When Betty Freidan questioned, she was doing isfet. When Martin Luther King, Jr. preached civil disobedience, he was preaching isfet. And Malcom X's passioned writings are also isfet, since they all sought a redefinition of what was true and just. Isfet is my particular way of questioning and challenging things.

But why apples?

In the beginning, there was Eden, and man and woman lived in idyllic harmony. They wanted for nothing, all was provided. They had no consciousness, and therefore no reason to be either content or discontent. They sought comfort the way a creature seeks comfort and shied away from pain as an animal would. God ruled that his children would be protected from suffering and chaos - they lived a life of perfect ma'at, and bringing isfet was forbidden.

There was an angel in Heaven, one of God's most beloved of the Heavenly Host. He was the Morningstar, and there was no angel who was as beautiful or loved God more. Because humans were God's greatest creation, he loved them and adored them more than any other angel. And he saw what was within them, the immense potential they had. They were capable of comprehending mysteries angels only dreamed of.

They also had the infinitely precious gift of Free Will. They could do anything, be anything, become anything they wished. But as the Morningstar watched, he saw that the humans squandered their Free Will. Their intellect and creativity, which was nothing less than a spark of the Divine, was being wasted. They sought only to meet the most base of needs, and had no reason to ever want for more.

So the angel, appalled at such waste of potential, rebelled. He came to Eden and whispered the secrets of self-awareness and consciousness to Eve. To her, he gave the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Like Prometheus giving fire to the prehistoric Greeks, Lucifer the Morningstar gave humanity the bump needed to bring them from animal to realize their potential as man.

Within the Garden of Eden, or Garden of Ma'at, there is no need to question. Life is comfortable - restrictive, yes. But there is nothing to threaten you while you are in the Garden.

Except your own choice, the exercise of your own Free Will. Are you going to eat the Fruit of Knowledge and realize your own nakedness? There is a reason Eve and Adam left the Garden after they ate the apple - because once you realize what Eden is, it stops being Paradise and starts being prison. And there's no going back. Once you give up Eden, you're forever cast out of the Garden. Not only that, but those who would bring others out of the Garden, the Morningstars, are creatures of corruption to be feared, reviled and cast out.

Apples are also sacred fruit of the Discordians, to whom nothing is really sacred. Eris threw a golden apple inscribed with 'Kallisti' into a wedding party, and thus kicked off a chain of events which culminated in the Trojan War. The apple was itself nothing special, but became a catalyst for much greater things.

So what are the Apples of Isfet?

Draw your own conclusions.

That's what this blog is for.