Vered’s Blog

This week is dedicated to Inanna the Sumerian Queen of Heaven, (pronounced eh-na’na). Her teaching is all about the challenge of leadership. The ability to rise and fall again.

The Goddess Inanna ruled the people of Sumer, and under her rule the people and their communities prospered and thrived. Inanna was the queen of seven temples throughout Sumer. Probably the most important Sumerian contribution to civilization was the invention and creation of a standard writing and literature. Their literary works reveal religious beliefs, ethical ideas, and the spiritual aspirations of the Sumerians. Among these works are the hymns and stories of Inanna - which recorded a time in history when the patriarchy was beginning to take hold, and the position of the Goddess, although strong, was changing.

The hymns to Inanna are beautiful, poetic, and a testament both to her power and to her humanity. She outwitted Enki, the God of Wisdom and her grandfather, and she endowed the people of Sumer with wisdoms and gifts that inspired and insured their growth. Inanna herself is the Goddess of Love, and it is this aspect and power - creativity, procreativity, raw sexual energy and passion - that generates the energy of the universe. Her coupling with Damuzi is one of the most erotic and passionate passages in literature. The marriage is one of body and spirit, and Inanna’s passion and expectations link her to women all over the world.

The Goddess Inanna decided to descended to the realm of the underworld, the domain of her sister Ereshkigal. Inanna was Queen of Heaven and Earth, but she knew nothing of the underworld. Her quest for clarity and knowledge, as well as her sense of duty as Queen and Goddess, led her to the Earthly realm in the first place. She was a powerful ruler, and yet she felt a strong desire to challenge herself further. “My daughter craved the great below,” was the response of her father upon learning of her descent and death in the other realm.

In her innocence, she wrapped herself in ego, transformed into garments and jewels, and began her descent. Her sister Ereshkigal, upon hearing Inanna at the gates of the underworld, demands that Inanna must give up all of her earthly trappings before she can complete her journey. There are seven stations through which Inanna must pass before she meets Ereshkigal, her sister and rival. At the seventh and last, she meets Ereshkigal, who seizes Inanna and hangs her on a peg to die.

By the time she relinquishes her final garment, she is no longer the commanding Queen. She is open, exposed, and vulnerable. This knowledge, and acceptance of her vulnerability, as well as her first-hand discovery of the necessity of sacrifice and death for the cycles of life to continue, increased her power, her understanding, and her beauty.

Inanna’s encounter with Ereshkigal can be seen as a meeting of the creator and the destroyer - the light and dark aspects of the Goddess. For modern women, Inanna is a powerful role model. She indeed has it all: she is Goddess, protectors, sensuous, a politician par excellence, intelligent, beautiful, and powerful. She is aware of her position in the world, of her great responsibility.

We, like Inanna, challenge ourselves, often taking ourselves to task to know more, learn more, be more. But in the doing, in living this life, we too must know the power of the underworld and its mysteries, as well as know the power of compassion. Our personal growth, suffering and pain can be likened to physical death; our psyches journey to the underworld again and again. Old ideas, old visions, identities die; myths are shattered, and are created anew. We rise up, like Inanna, aware of our vulnerabilities, and the strength created from them.

Inanna is here to tell you that a journey to the Underworld is the way to wholeness for you now. It is time to dance with your shadow, reclaim what you’ve denied, and embrace your own Dark Sister/Dark Self.

You need all those aspects of yourself that your parents, caregivers, teachers, society have deemed unacceptable in order to achieve wholeness in your life. Whether it is your talent, your beauty, your inner vampire, your anger, your madness, you are required to surrender to the journey and embrace your dark side.

If you are already in the Underworld, the appearance of Inanna may signal that the time for your return is at hand. Journeys to the Underworld to embrace your dark side are a law unto themselves. They take a much time as they need to take- you can’t just fit them into your schedule. When it is time for you to journey, you will and you will not be done until you return. Take comfort in the fact that all journeys to the Underworld do end and that you will indeed return-much different from who you thought you were when you went.