Isis and Baby Horus
From an archetypal and astrological perspective we are like the moment of our birth. All born in a given moment share the qualities of that moment. The miraculous, magical moment of the Winter Solstice, the longest, darkest night of the year, is a profoundly serious and powerful turning point in the Wheel of the Year. It represents both the end and the origin, the root and beginning of all things. In the cycle of the solar year it is the time of the death of the old sun and the birth of the new.
For the ancient Egyptians it is one of the times that commemorates the time of emergence recalling that time which they called the 'first time', the time before time when the ageless age of the Gods began. This is when the sun God Atum-Ra first stirred in the primordial sea of Nun and existence was born from apparent non-existence.
For the ancient Pagan world and for the Christian West the time of the Winter Solstice was the time of the birth of Gods. It is now that the dark womb of the Great Mother gives birth to the sacred Sun/Son and the whole world is born again with the birth of this Child of Promise. The solar Child was hailed as a savior, a hero, a child of wonder. He was Horus of the Egyptians, Apollo of the Greeks, Mithras of the Persians and Romans, Mabon of the Celts and even Jesus of the Christians; his birth held forth the promise of life, light and hope that spring would come again.
Isis and her son Horus were the most the most widely worshipped Divine Mother and Son in the ancient world, until the world became Christian under the Emperor Constantine. After the murder of her beloved husband Osiris, the God-King, at the hands of his evil brother Set, Isis fled and took refuge in the papyrus swamps of the Delta in northern Egypt. It was here that she gave birth to her son Horus on the day of the Winter Solstice after enduring a long and difficult labor. Because of her own travails in childbirth and the banishment she endured, and also because of the difficulty of raising and protecting her son from the evil One, she became the patroness of women about to give birth and the protectress of children. Horus was the Egyptian Savior God who later defeated his evil Uncle Set in battle and in a successful legal action before the Gods regained the throne of Egypt. Because of this the curse that had followed Isis and Horus for so long was finally broken and as the rightful heir Horus was vindicated. Egypt was now free of the tyranny of Set and the divine order was restored by Horus. After this all the pharaohs of Egypt were considered to be manifestations of the 'living Horus' on the throne of Egypt.