What ISIS Means To Me [Video]

I have a hunch I am not alone in this.  Every time I turn on the news or check my CNN app on my phone I see ISIS.  The new face of global terror is referred to by an acronym that takes me back to my childhood.  I am quite familiar with another Isis . . . a mystical, mighty and powerful one.  And, believe me, I much prefer mine.

Now, I must tell you.  I am writing this blog not to diminish the severity and threat of our modern-day ISIS.  I think their brand of terror is despicable and I think we and our foreign allies should do everything in our power to eradicate them.  I believe recent videos in which their appointed "executioner" beheads captives are basically the multimedia equivalent of poking the bear and I am glad the bears of this world are showing their claws and gnashing their teeth this week with a series of airstrikes.  ISIS is evil personified.  But it wasn't always.

I am writing this blog to refer back to a time when Isis was synonymous with good rather than evil.  A time (in the mid 70's) when, as a kid, I was convinced and firmly believed that good, as campy as it was sometimes portrayed, always prevailed.  Oh Mighty Isis!

Who remembers this?

The Secrets of Isis was a live-action CBS adventure series that was planted in the Saturday morning cartoon line-up in 1975 and 1976.  JoAnna Cameron starred as high school science teacher Andrea Thomas, who, on a random archeological dig in Egypt, unearthed a powerful amulet.  That amulet gave her the powers of the Egyptian goddess Isis.  Andrea always wore that necklace (thank goodness it went with virtually everything) and  anytime she needed to summon its powers she would simply say "Oh Mighty Isis!"

Among Isis' powers: she could command the powers of the Earth (air, fire, water, weather); she had superhuman strength and could basically bench press boulders and trees; she could control gravity and even manipulate the molecular density of her body (not kidding); and she could fly!  With a simple incantation, Isis could take flight.

Say it with me! "O zephyr winds which blow on high, lift me now so I can fly!"

This is what ISIS means to me.  And no matter what kind of war the modern-day version wages they will never replace "Isis" in my memory.  For me, Isis, like Wonder Woman, and The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman and Captain Marvel (from Shazam!), was a symbol of good in the world. With campy abandon she battled evil forces to save the day.  With Isis, good always trumped evil.  That's the primary lesson that I learned in those two seasons of The Secrets of Isis.  And now ISIS needs to learn that lesson as well.