You know that feeling when you’ve been laid off, burned out, or discarded by a company you gave everything to? That hollow sensation where you can’t quite remember who you were before corporate machinery got hold of you?
There’s a word for what you’re experiencing: death, of the slow, spiritual kind.
The kind where pieces of yourself have been scattered by tense conference rooms, dancing-around-the-issue Zoom calls, office politicking, “strategy” offsites, performance reviews, and “culture fit” conversations until you look in the mirror and barely recognize the person staring back.
Spiritual death is not the end of your story.
This is the primary space where I support my Pocket Witch clients, with high-touch attention to gathering, reclaiming, and rebirthing the inner magic that makes you YOU. To help you on your own journey of resurrection, I’ve created a guided meditation with one of the most ancient resurrection wisdom-keepers of all: Goddess Isis of Ancient Egypt.
The Famous Books of the Dead (And Why They Matter to Your Career)
The famous books of Ancient Egypt often concern affairs of the dead.
Death is the beginning of a long, dangerous journey through the Underworld, where the goal is to reach the final trial: judgment. There, your heart is weighed against the feather of Ma’at. If you pass, you then proceed to the Field of Reeds – a paradise awaiting those of good moral and ethical conduct in life.
I’ve always been drawn to this cosmology, because it fascinates me that it wasn’t enough just to be a good person in life in order to reach paradise. In death, the Underworld traveler must also overcome various monsters, temptations, and challenges. Each of these trials require a spell. The dead were buried with these, written down carefully for reference with each snapping alligator.
But these spells have a common theme, which is the focus of our attention today. To accomplish these acts of powerful magic, it was necessary to embody the gods. Often, Osiris.
As you read Osiris’s story today, I want you to consider your own setbacks. The times you’ve felt betrayed, exploited, discarded, or felt the kiss of capitalist death. There are lessons in this myth that can help us recover the parts of ourselves lost to these hurts.
Towards the end of this post, I have recorded a guided audio meditation for you to use to explore this deeper – and a PDF you can grab to journal your discoveries.
Raising Osiris from the Dead
Osiris was the first King of the Lands. When he was 28 (or in the 28th year of his reign, depending how you read it), he was murdered by Set, his jealous brother and Lord of the Desert.
The Goddess Isis was stricken with a grief so terrifying that her wails caused people to die of fright. She recovered the body, but Set – ever the foil – found it. He proceeded to dismember Osiris’s body into 14 pieces and scattered them across the land of Egypt.
Isis refused to accept this as the end of the story. Even in her grief, she knew she wielded great magic.
She searched everywhere — from marshlands to cities — gathering each piece of Osiris with fierce devotion. When she found them all (except his phallus – she fashioned him a new one), she used her magic to resurrect him just long enough to conceive a child, an heir:
Isis put forth her protecting power for thee, she scattered abroad those who were her enemies, she drove back evil hap, she pronounced mighty words of power, she made cunning her tongue, and her words failed not. The glorious Isis was perfect in command and in speech, and she avenged her brother. She sought him without ceasing, she wandered round and round the earth uttering cries of pain, and she rested not until she had found him.
She overshadowed him with her feathers, she made wind with her wings, and she uttered cries at the burial of her brother. She raised up the prostrate form of him whose heart was still, she took from him of his essence, she conceived and brought forth a child, she suckled it in secret and none knew the place thereof; and the arm of the child hath waxed strong in the great house of Seb. The company of the gods rejoiceth and is glad at the coming of Osiris’s son Horus, and firm of heart and triumphant is the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris.
Osiris returned to the underworld, and Isis took each piece of his body back to the place she had found it. She buried them, and there became sacred grounds: temples formed on these locations, and cities sprung up around them.
Her journey of gathering transformed the entire landscape. This story of a murder turned into sacred myth that would sustain the spiritual life of Ancient Egyptians for thousands of years.
The Power of Embodiment
It is standard practice in Ancient Egyptian spells to call upon the Gods not as external helpers but as embodied energies. In the Book of the Dead, the traveler of the underworld – the deceased – often calls upon Osiris, not necessarily as an aide, but as an identity or a title that is assumed.
For example:
“I, the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace; whose word is truth in the Beautiful Amentet, by the Domain of Eternity.”
Isis’s miraculous, magical accomplishment of successful resurrection became a blueprint that inspired millennia of Ancient Egyptian thought and cosmology. The blueprint offered eternal life and renewal on the other side of great suffering and death. In the Underworld, what she had done for Osiris is also done for the deceased.
To die and seek resurrection is to assume the identity, or title, Osiris.
“I have knitted myself together, I have made myself whole and complete. I shall renew my youth. I am Osiris Himself, the Lord of Eternity.”
This is the power available to you right now. You don’t need to wait for perfect conditions or permission from the systems that scattered you. You can begin gathering your pieces today.
What “Scattered Pieces” Look Like in Corporate Life
When I broke into the tech industry, I felt like I had won the lottery. Not only was it really hard to go from teacher to freelancer to tech girlie, but it took a lot of luck. I didn’t want to miss the chance at financial stability, so I threw myself – with devotion – into my new career.
I’m embarrassed to admit how much of myself I abandoned in order to do that.
Here are some of my scattered pieces in my Osiris Map, from four career transitions:
My creativity:
- I stopped painting entirely – something I’d loved since childhood – because I didn’t see it as “productive”
- I stopped sewing because handmade clothes didn’t “fit in.” I completely changed my personal style to match my new role
- I abandoned poetry writing, which had been my spiritual practice for years
My health:
- I got food subscription services so I could spend less time cooking and more time working (plus plenty of DoorDash)
- I was drinking heavily to socialize after work, even though it gave me migraines, because I believed building relationships was more important than my health
- I took pride in how busy I was, while having no time or energy for friends or family
My authenticity:
- I modulated my voice and vocabulary to sound more “professional”
- I hid my spiritual practices completely, worried they’d damage my credibility
- I performed a version of femininity that wasn’t mine
My dreams:
- I turned down a fully-funded PhD in anthropology I’d worked so hard for, because now I had a “stable” tech job (*cries in layoffs*)
- I stopped asking big questions about systems and justice because it felt “too political” for work
- I abandoned my dream of writing books because I was “too busy building my career”
Each felt small at the time. Practical. Smart, even.
But collectively, they left me feeling like I was playing a character in someone else’s story. Collectively, they made me feel like I was falling apart.
I had to hit the brakes and hard reverse each one.
Understanding Set: The Necessary Dismemberment
It would be tempting to see Set’s role in this story as purely evil, but he isn’t. He was also worshipped throughout Ancient Egypt; temples to him were plentiful and well-funded. Even Pharaohs — living heirs of Osiris — took Set’s name.
Why?
You might interpret Set in many ways. We can see how he wields charisma (he had many co-conspirators in his murder of Osiris, after all) and serves as a powerful force for survival in the desert. Often seen as a God of Chaos, he’s also an indiscriminate force of taking whatever he wants and seeking to make the world to his liking. As such, he represented violence and combat, but also survival and contending.
For our purposes, we could ask him to represent work and labor under capitalism.
As a metaphor for capitalist labor, this is an energy that can be creative (innovation, problem-solving, building), playful (team bonding, company culture, gamification), communal (collaboration, shared goals, “we’re a family here”), and generative (income, stability, professional growth).
But it’s also controlling (surveillance, metrics, “accountability”), unpredictable (layoffs, reorganizations, market volatility), weaponized (performance reviews, stack ranking, “culture fit”, systemic prejudices), and dismembering (the slow erosion of who you are outside your job title, and disregard for sustainability and human rights at scale).
Set, like work itself, isn’t evil. It’s an energy with a double-edged nature: ferocious survival.
Your Osirian Myth: A Framework for Recovery
How has this storm dismembered you? How have you been scattered? Take the holistic view.
What did you trade in for “professionalism”? What parts of your authentic self did you hide? Your accent, your humor, your political beliefs, your spirituality, your creative expression?
What did you sacrifice to the altar of “productivity”? What hobbies, relationships, rest, or joy did you abandon because they weren’t “useful” or “career-advancing”?
What did you lose to conformity? What dreams, values, or versions of yourself did you leave behind to “fit in” or “move up”?
What was stolen by burnout? What aspects of yourself (maybe patience, creativity, curiosity, integrity, or hope) were consumed by chronic stress and overwork?
Here are more examples from my life and my clients’ experiences:
- You stopped reading fiction because it felt “frivolous” compared to business books
- You changed your hair, wardrobe, or style to look more “professional” or “executive”
- You hid your nerdy, niche, or esoteric interests to seem more “normal”
- You stopped playing music, dancing, or making art
- You abandoned dreams of pursuing creative fields because they weren’t “practical”
- You lost access to your intuition—that gut feeling that used to guide you
- You stopped sharing ideas freely because they were shut down or stolen too many times
- You masked your authentic enthusiasm to avoid being “too much”
- You buried your playful spirit under forced seriousness
- You compromised your ethical values through participation in systems you knew were broken
- You stopped speaking up about injustice because it was “too risky”
- You lost touch with friends who weren’t “professionally useful”
- You forgot what actually brings you joy outside of achievement
Too often, we’re told that these are just unfortunate side effects of building a career. But these are your scattered pieces, hidden across the landscape of your life.
And with Isis, you have the power to gather them again.
The Resurrection Isn’t About Going Back
Here’s what’s important to understand: Osiris doesn’t come back to life exactly as he was before. He becomes the Lord of the Underworld, a guide of souls, the god of death and rebirth and fertility. His old kingdom lives on through his wife, Isis, and his heir, Horus.
Your resurrection after corporate spiritual death won’t be about recovering your 22-year-old self or returning to some idealized past version of who you were. You’ve gained too much wisdom, come too far, and seen too much to turn back the clock.
But what you can do is acknowledge what was lost, and gather back the authentic expressions of you in order to integrate them into your next chapter. Some pieces will be easy to find; others will require deep excavation.
Your identity is emergent. You can always create something new. The temples and cities that grew where the pieces of Osiris were buried are a glorious metaphor for your scattered parts become sacred ground for future growth.
On the Wings of Isis: A Guided Audio Meditation
I’ve created a guided meditation where you’ll journey with Isis across your inner landscape to recover your scattered pieces.
In this practice, you’ll:
- Find yourself at the liminal space where sea meets desert
- Fly with Isis in her form as the great kite (bird of prey) high above the lands of your life
- Witness the monuments and markers of your past rising from the sand
- Descend to investigate what feels familiar, important, calling to you
- Recover scrolls that contain memories of who you were—the parts you thought were lost forever
This exercise can be repeated as many times as you wish. You might discover a hobby you loved that you haven’t touched in years, a dream you buried under “practical” concerns, a quality you possessed that you’ve forgotten, a relationship or connection you let fade, a belief or value you compromised, or version of yourself that’s been waiting for you to remember.
You may return to it years in the future and uncover new insights or discoveries. The goal is to take the bird’s-eye view of Isis as she searched Egypt for the scattered pieces of Osiris – or, in this case, you. What will you find? What story does each tell?
Begin Your Resurrection
I know what it feels like to be scattered. To look at your life and wonder where you went in all of this. To achieve everything you were supposed to want and still feel empty.
But you’re not broken. You’re not lost forever.
The scattered pieces are still there. They’re not gone. They’re just waiting to be found and gathered and integrated into the new kingdom you’re about to build.
PDF Download: The Osiris Map
What did you find while journeying through your inner landscape?
Did you remember a favorite band, a school you wanted to apply for, an abandoned hobby, or a friendship you’d let grow distant?
I’ve attached an Osiris Map — a lightweight framework to document and collect the pieces of yourself that have been scattered and you’ve found. Some of these insights might come through in the visualization exercise above. But if you’re uncomfortable with that format, you can also approach this reflectively:
- What did I love doing before I worried about whether it was “useful”?
- What parts of my personality do I hide at work?
- What dreams did I abandon as “impractical”?
- How did I dress/act/speak before I learned to “be professional”?
- What values have I compromised to succeed?
Write them down. Draw them. Make a list. However it feels right to you.
This post is part of my Scorpion Medicine framework for rebirth after the kiss of corporate death, inspired by nearly 10 years of working with the Goddess Isis. If you have questions, feedback, or need support, please pop me an email at bree@theworkwitch.jp.
Pocket Witch is high-touch coaching for women navigating career transitions and identity resurrections. We work with Tarot, ritual, and strategic clarity to figure out who you are now — not who you were, not who you’re “supposed” to be — and what you want to build from here.
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