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Published by Bear & Company
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
An initiatory guide to the empowering transition of midlife
• Takes the ancient Egyptian story of Isis to guide you through the unraveling and rebuilding process of midlife crisis and awakening
• Explores the tarot cards and astrological transits that are relevant to the midlife journey and offers numerology techniques to reveal their impact on your life
• Provides metaphysical teachings, guided meditations, divinatory tools, and practical body-centered wisdom to support your sacred midlife pilgrimage
Women entering their middle years are moving into the deep magic of archetypal transition. They’ve left behind the fresh face of the Maiden and the nurturing role of the Mother but haven’t yet reached the wisdom of the Crone. Bridging the gap between these stages, Sarah La Rosa presents an initiatory journey to embrace the inner authority that arises in midlife and embody the sacred feminine archetype of the Wild Queen.
La Rosa brings together empowering mythic stories of surrender, resurrection, and transformation. Using the ancient Egyptian story of Isis to guide you through the unraveling and rebuilding process of midlife crisis and awakening, she explains how to come out stronger, more resilient, and more confident.
Midlife Isis explores the themes and revelations of tarot cards associated with midlife, including the Hanged Man, the Empress, and Death. With unique card spreads, La Rosa will help you understand how each card has impacted your journey. She also gives in-depth explanations of the astrological transits that are most relevant to midlife awakening and provides metaphysical teachings, guided meditations, divinatory tools, and practical body-centered wisdom to support you. By making the sacred pilgrimage of Isis your own, you will come to see your middle-aged years unfold as a revelation of grace, authenticity, and sovereign personal power.
• Takes the ancient Egyptian story of Isis to guide you through the unraveling and rebuilding process of midlife crisis and awakening
• Explores the tarot cards and astrological transits that are relevant to the midlife journey and offers numerology techniques to reveal their impact on your life
• Provides metaphysical teachings, guided meditations, divinatory tools, and practical body-centered wisdom to support your sacred midlife pilgrimage
Women entering their middle years are moving into the deep magic of archetypal transition. They’ve left behind the fresh face of the Maiden and the nurturing role of the Mother but haven’t yet reached the wisdom of the Crone. Bridging the gap between these stages, Sarah La Rosa presents an initiatory journey to embrace the inner authority that arises in midlife and embody the sacred feminine archetype of the Wild Queen.
La Rosa brings together empowering mythic stories of surrender, resurrection, and transformation. Using the ancient Egyptian story of Isis to guide you through the unraveling and rebuilding process of midlife crisis and awakening, she explains how to come out stronger, more resilient, and more confident.
Midlife Isis explores the themes and revelations of tarot cards associated with midlife, including the Hanged Man, the Empress, and Death. With unique card spreads, La Rosa will help you understand how each card has impacted your journey. She also gives in-depth explanations of the astrological transits that are most relevant to midlife awakening and provides metaphysical teachings, guided meditations, divinatory tools, and practical body-centered wisdom to support you. By making the sacred pilgrimage of Isis your own, you will come to see your middle-aged years unfold as a revelation of grace, authenticity, and sovereign personal power.
Excerpt
The Passion of Isis: Part One
There are perhaps countless retellings of the Isis-Osiris story. Many versions. Like all archetypal stories, there are overlapping episodes and deviations curious and particular to the region, the time period, and the culture that shared the story. There has never (yet) been found a single, original, comprehensive story of Isis from beginning to end, with all her journeys and exploits, trials and tribulations. Depending on the author, time frames and specifics shape-shift and morph here and there, making the goddess holographic, appearing one way in a certain light, another way in a different aspect. This is absolutely appropriate for a goddess, as she appears before her devotees as they need to see her to be effectively changed. This version is my own, from the different (varied) versions I have absorbed, along with my own intimate vision. But even as I wrote these words, I could hear her voice changing, and I sense that my writing of her story will shift again as I continue to listen deeply inward.
Isis and Osiris in the Holy Black Land
Adored by the people, Isis and Osiris came to Abydos to reign over the fertile black soil of the Nile delta in Eg ypt. They taught the people agriculture and animal husbandry, how to tend and how to cultivate a better quality of life, richer and efficient, in harmony with the cycles and seasons of the divine Nile waters. They taught the people how to resolve conflict in meaningful and mutually respectful ways.
Isis brought to the people the partnership of marriage; she gave to the women the teachings of Hathor, of midwifery and the women’s mysteries of birth and blood. As the divine couple, they represented all life-giving forms of bonding, of love. The love of family. The love between twin flame souls embodied, mirroring each other’s true essence.
Their brother and sister, Set and Nephthys, themselves sibling-spouses, were given the red lands littered with difficult rocky terrain, desert heat, and barren ground. Their people were hunters, not farmers, warrior-like, braced for battle. Set, deeply jealous of his brother’s inheritance and successful kingship, grew angrier and more resentful as he watched the flourishing land abound under the skilled hands of Osiris and his beautiful wife.
When Isis left the palace to attend some distant engagement, Osiris threw a harvest celebration, opening wide the palace doors in openhearted invitation to his brother Set. The harvest had been plentiful, and he wanted to share the wealth with his family, offering the ample resources and blessings to all the people of both red and black lands.
The Murder of Osiris
When Set burst into his brother’s royal hall, accompanied by seventy-two of his rowdiest warriors, Osiris greeted him warmly.
Set let himself be swallowed in his brother’s embrace with a secret smile filling his chest, a black deception winding its way through chest and belly.
The party wore on for many long hours, with feasting and drinking, dancing and entertainments from all over the land, and the spirits of the people were high with joy and gratitude for a bountiful season.
Set watched his brother carefully, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It had taken a while, but after an entire day and night of drinking and feasting, the crowds were drowsy and spent, the advisors and guards lax and lazy, and Osiris sat glazed and relaxed on his chair. It was time.
He stood from his seat next to Osiris, and gestured grandly.“Brother! I have fashioned a magnificent treasure in your honor, as thanks for your generous invitation to this exceptional feast. I commissioned the greatest craftsmen in our lands, purchased the rarest gems, inlaid the entire piece with the purest gold. It is truly a gift worthy of a king. Only the man that can lie down in this treasure, and be fit to its dimensions with absolute perfection, may call it his own forever.”
As he spoke, his warriors carried a man-size box into the room, setting it down carefully. Stunning, startling yet alluring in its decoration, it called to the king with a siren song.
Osiris fit perfectly within the beautiful box. His body took on a luminous, otherworldly glow within the walls of gold. He smiled up at Set even as his brother looked down on his face one last time, speculative and mocking.
The change in his expression happened so fast that Osiris didn’t have time to process what had happened. Set shouted a sharp command and chaos erupted in an instant.
Men rushed forward with a lid that nobody had seen. They threw the lid down and drove large iron nails deep into its lip on all four sides simultaneously, hideously, turning the beautiful artwork into a horrifically decorated coffin.
Osiris bellowed furiously, pounding his fists against the lid in futility. Set only laughed. “To the river!” he ordered, and the coffin was hefted onto the shoulders of the warriors.
Set and the coffin bearers marched quickly and silently out a side door to the wide, flowing waters of the Nile, where they threw the jewel-encrusted box to the center of the river. The cries from within grew faint at the distance, and with the strength of the current already doing its work, the box bobbed a bit and then began traveling out of the city, slowly filling with water as it went.
The Wandering Isis
When Isis arrived in Abydos with her entourage, she found the palace in a state of shock and grief, confusion and panic rife in the great halls and temples. Word had spread like a hateful wildfire over the hills that the good king was dead, and Set marched on Abydos within a day’s time to completely take over and rule the black land.
A great hysteria fell on her head and throat, collapsing her chest and ribs, but not before she rent the air with a howling, enraged wail.
“Osiris is dead! Osiris is dead! The Beloved is taken! Where is the Beloved? My love, my Osiris. My husband. Soul of my soul. Gone, gone, gone!”
Those around her were startled. This display by their queen was unlike anything any of them had ever witnessed, or even thought possible by their poised, calm, peaceful Isis. It was more than unsettling to observe her grief. It was terrifying. She seemed to be going insane before their eyes, unaware of their presence.
She pulled at her hair, ripping out handfuls from the root, uncaring of the pain. She called for Osiris over and over, growing hoarse with the effort and repetition.
Osiris’s watery coffin had been spotted bobbing a short while before sinking, making its way downstream out of the city toward the sea. The sheer impossibility of the murder was too much to bear, and added to the weight of an entire people’s trauma over losing their king in such a vicious, malevolent attack; Isis felt herself crumbling, imploding from within.
Her grief was wild, tormented. She cut off all that remained of her glorious hair in the way of the widows of her country and tore her clothes into rags. Gone was the queen, the great beauty, the diplomatic stateswoman, the shining one. In her place, a ragged dirt woman with perpetually swollen eyes, torn fingernails, and dirty bare feet took to the banks of the Nile, walking slowly but purposefully along the path Osiris’s body was rumored to have floated.
The people of the villages could not have recognized their queen, and so they kept their distance from her startling appearance, yelling at her if she came too close, herding their children away from her dusty body, scared she carried diseases or evil spirits.
She was rejected by all, mocked and isolated. But none of it made any difference to her. Isis was on a mission. Death would not, could not, triumph over her Osiris. She would not allow it. No. He would be found. And she would find him.
She stayed with the river, eyes sharp as a hawk’s, watching, waiting, as she picked her way forward carefully, single-mindedly.
As she searched, the coffin containing the slain king picked up speed with the currents and made its way out to sea. After many days, the box washed up on shore, resting at last within the roots and some branches of a tamarisk tree in the great city of Byblos.
The small tree wrapped itself around the coffin and grew over it, increasing its trunk size so quickly and becoming so abnormally large that the people of that land were stunned; it became the primary topic of conversation in the marketplaces, homes, and roadways.
The king of Byblos heard the tale. Intrigued, he sent palace guards to investigate. When they returned, it was clear they, too, were amazed at the unexplained phenomenon. Not only was the usually small tree enormous and imposing among the other plants along the shoreline, but there was something about this tree that felt magical, its spirit nearly visible in the aura surrounding the bark of its trunk.
The king decided then and there that this tree must be brought to his palace, desiring this magical spirit for his own delight as well as to make monument of its greatness within his seat of authority in the kingdom. He ordered the tree to be cut down, the massive trunk preserved and delivered to his home in the center of the city.
As his men brought the tree trunk to him, the king announced to the people that this divine gift was sent by the gods to become the central pillar of his palace.
The people cheered.
There are perhaps countless retellings of the Isis-Osiris story. Many versions. Like all archetypal stories, there are overlapping episodes and deviations curious and particular to the region, the time period, and the culture that shared the story. There has never (yet) been found a single, original, comprehensive story of Isis from beginning to end, with all her journeys and exploits, trials and tribulations. Depending on the author, time frames and specifics shape-shift and morph here and there, making the goddess holographic, appearing one way in a certain light, another way in a different aspect. This is absolutely appropriate for a goddess, as she appears before her devotees as they need to see her to be effectively changed. This version is my own, from the different (varied) versions I have absorbed, along with my own intimate vision. But even as I wrote these words, I could hear her voice changing, and I sense that my writing of her story will shift again as I continue to listen deeply inward.
Isis and Osiris in the Holy Black Land
Adored by the people, Isis and Osiris came to Abydos to reign over the fertile black soil of the Nile delta in Eg ypt. They taught the people agriculture and animal husbandry, how to tend and how to cultivate a better quality of life, richer and efficient, in harmony with the cycles and seasons of the divine Nile waters. They taught the people how to resolve conflict in meaningful and mutually respectful ways.
Isis brought to the people the partnership of marriage; she gave to the women the teachings of Hathor, of midwifery and the women’s mysteries of birth and blood. As the divine couple, they represented all life-giving forms of bonding, of love. The love of family. The love between twin flame souls embodied, mirroring each other’s true essence.
Their brother and sister, Set and Nephthys, themselves sibling-spouses, were given the red lands littered with difficult rocky terrain, desert heat, and barren ground. Their people were hunters, not farmers, warrior-like, braced for battle. Set, deeply jealous of his brother’s inheritance and successful kingship, grew angrier and more resentful as he watched the flourishing land abound under the skilled hands of Osiris and his beautiful wife.
When Isis left the palace to attend some distant engagement, Osiris threw a harvest celebration, opening wide the palace doors in openhearted invitation to his brother Set. The harvest had been plentiful, and he wanted to share the wealth with his family, offering the ample resources and blessings to all the people of both red and black lands.
The Murder of Osiris
When Set burst into his brother’s royal hall, accompanied by seventy-two of his rowdiest warriors, Osiris greeted him warmly.
Set let himself be swallowed in his brother’s embrace with a secret smile filling his chest, a black deception winding its way through chest and belly.
The party wore on for many long hours, with feasting and drinking, dancing and entertainments from all over the land, and the spirits of the people were high with joy and gratitude for a bountiful season.
Set watched his brother carefully, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It had taken a while, but after an entire day and night of drinking and feasting, the crowds were drowsy and spent, the advisors and guards lax and lazy, and Osiris sat glazed and relaxed on his chair. It was time.
He stood from his seat next to Osiris, and gestured grandly.“Brother! I have fashioned a magnificent treasure in your honor, as thanks for your generous invitation to this exceptional feast. I commissioned the greatest craftsmen in our lands, purchased the rarest gems, inlaid the entire piece with the purest gold. It is truly a gift worthy of a king. Only the man that can lie down in this treasure, and be fit to its dimensions with absolute perfection, may call it his own forever.”
As he spoke, his warriors carried a man-size box into the room, setting it down carefully. Stunning, startling yet alluring in its decoration, it called to the king with a siren song.
Osiris fit perfectly within the beautiful box. His body took on a luminous, otherworldly glow within the walls of gold. He smiled up at Set even as his brother looked down on his face one last time, speculative and mocking.
The change in his expression happened so fast that Osiris didn’t have time to process what had happened. Set shouted a sharp command and chaos erupted in an instant.
Men rushed forward with a lid that nobody had seen. They threw the lid down and drove large iron nails deep into its lip on all four sides simultaneously, hideously, turning the beautiful artwork into a horrifically decorated coffin.
Osiris bellowed furiously, pounding his fists against the lid in futility. Set only laughed. “To the river!” he ordered, and the coffin was hefted onto the shoulders of the warriors.
Set and the coffin bearers marched quickly and silently out a side door to the wide, flowing waters of the Nile, where they threw the jewel-encrusted box to the center of the river. The cries from within grew faint at the distance, and with the strength of the current already doing its work, the box bobbed a bit and then began traveling out of the city, slowly filling with water as it went.
The Wandering Isis
When Isis arrived in Abydos with her entourage, she found the palace in a state of shock and grief, confusion and panic rife in the great halls and temples. Word had spread like a hateful wildfire over the hills that the good king was dead, and Set marched on Abydos within a day’s time to completely take over and rule the black land.
A great hysteria fell on her head and throat, collapsing her chest and ribs, but not before she rent the air with a howling, enraged wail.
“Osiris is dead! Osiris is dead! The Beloved is taken! Where is the Beloved? My love, my Osiris. My husband. Soul of my soul. Gone, gone, gone!”
Those around her were startled. This display by their queen was unlike anything any of them had ever witnessed, or even thought possible by their poised, calm, peaceful Isis. It was more than unsettling to observe her grief. It was terrifying. She seemed to be going insane before their eyes, unaware of their presence.
She pulled at her hair, ripping out handfuls from the root, uncaring of the pain. She called for Osiris over and over, growing hoarse with the effort and repetition.
Osiris’s watery coffin had been spotted bobbing a short while before sinking, making its way downstream out of the city toward the sea. The sheer impossibility of the murder was too much to bear, and added to the weight of an entire people’s trauma over losing their king in such a vicious, malevolent attack; Isis felt herself crumbling, imploding from within.
Her grief was wild, tormented. She cut off all that remained of her glorious hair in the way of the widows of her country and tore her clothes into rags. Gone was the queen, the great beauty, the diplomatic stateswoman, the shining one. In her place, a ragged dirt woman with perpetually swollen eyes, torn fingernails, and dirty bare feet took to the banks of the Nile, walking slowly but purposefully along the path Osiris’s body was rumored to have floated.
The people of the villages could not have recognized their queen, and so they kept their distance from her startling appearance, yelling at her if she came too close, herding their children away from her dusty body, scared she carried diseases or evil spirits.
She was rejected by all, mocked and isolated. But none of it made any difference to her. Isis was on a mission. Death would not, could not, triumph over her Osiris. She would not allow it. No. He would be found. And she would find him.
She stayed with the river, eyes sharp as a hawk’s, watching, waiting, as she picked her way forward carefully, single-mindedly.
As she searched, the coffin containing the slain king picked up speed with the currents and made its way out to sea. After many days, the box washed up on shore, resting at last within the roots and some branches of a tamarisk tree in the great city of Byblos.
The small tree wrapped itself around the coffin and grew over it, increasing its trunk size so quickly and becoming so abnormally large that the people of that land were stunned; it became the primary topic of conversation in the marketplaces, homes, and roadways.
The king of Byblos heard the tale. Intrigued, he sent palace guards to investigate. When they returned, it was clear they, too, were amazed at the unexplained phenomenon. Not only was the usually small tree enormous and imposing among the other plants along the shoreline, but there was something about this tree that felt magical, its spirit nearly visible in the aura surrounding the bark of its trunk.
The king decided then and there that this tree must be brought to his palace, desiring this magical spirit for his own delight as well as to make monument of its greatness within his seat of authority in the kingdom. He ordered the tree to be cut down, the massive trunk preserved and delivered to his home in the center of the city.
As his men brought the tree trunk to him, the king announced to the people that this divine gift was sent by the gods to become the central pillar of his palace.
The people cheered.
Product Details
- Publisher: Bear & Company (October 8, 2026)
- Length: 352 pages
- ISBN13: 9781591435655
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Raves and Reviews
“Sarah La Rosa has written a masterpiece in Midlife Isis, offering a profound companion for any woman standing at the crossroads of change. Writing practically yet poetically while drawing upon the timeless myth of Isis and the archetypal wisdom of tarot, she guides women through one of life’s most transformative seasons. This is not simply a book about midlife—it is a book about awakening.”
– Isha Lerner, professional astrologer and author of the book/deck sets Inner Child Cards, The Power o
“Midlife Isis is a book of profound wisdom and true nourishment for midlife women. Sarah La Rosa is becoming one of my personal wisdomkeepers and favorite writers. She articulates so beautifully the soul-deep truths that we hunger for that our culture keeps from us. In a world that demands surface compliance, she offers practical and meaningful ways to explore our depths to uncover our own personal wisdom.”
– Lucy H. Pearce, author of Burning Woman, Medicine Woman, Creatrix, Crow Moon, and She of the Sea
“What a journey! In Midlife Isis, Sarah La Rosa takes us by the hand and reveals the mysteries of women’s midlife nature as seen through the stories of Isis and her sisters. Initiation into the Wild Queen archetype awaits—not maiden, not mother, not crone, but something else altogether. This book vibrates with wisdom, passion, and depth. It will ignite midlife women who are searching for teachings that will see them through crisis into the resolution of inner sovereignty.”
– Joanna Powell Colbert, artist and author of Gaian Tarot
“Midlife Isis is a soul tome that holds profound embodied wisdom, insight, and mystery. La Rosa’s words carry the reader through a mythopoetic, midlife odyssey that reveals our sacred power. Her prose captivates and seasons me as I read, steeping me in the ancient lineage of Isis through storytelling, insights of the tarot, and the wisdom that can only emerge from the firsthand lived experience of initiation. This is both a personal and ancient journey, crafted with soulful eloquence. A book to treasure.”
– Carly Mountain, author of Descent & Rising and Untamed Pleasure
“Midlife Isis is the companion women of a certain ilk have been waiting for. It is the manifestation of bone-deep knowing and whispered prayers for someone to say it out loud. In the vein of Women Who Run with the Wolves, Sarah La Rosa has lit the beacon that women in midlife will be unable to ignore—the call back into our ancient wisdom and power.”
– Stacey Ramsower, MA, SEP, somatic coach
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