Some New Ideas About "The Descent"
Feb. 5th, 2010 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosI've been working with Horned God energy recently, and an oracle I received reaffirmed part of that with a mention of "the bull." The term rattled around in the back of my head for several days, then finally resolved itself while I was walking across the parking lot on my way in to work yesterday.
Gugalanna, "The Great Bull of Heaven", was Ereshkigal's first husband. Inanna (who had become Ishtar at the time this story was written down) sent him to attack and kill Gilgamesh when Gilgamesh refused her sexual advances and mocked her. Gilgamesh's friend Enkidu killed Gugalanna and the two mocked and threatened Ishtar with his remains (probably his genitals).
The earlier version of The Descent, gives no reason for Inanna's decision to enter the underworld. In the later Ishtar version, she tells the gatekeeper that she has come to share the mourning rituals for Gugalanna.
When all that finally came together in my head, my first thought was If my husband had died because he was defending the honor of my spoiled outlaw sister, she would be the last person I'd want around while I was mourning!
Then it occurred to me that the stories of The Descent end with Inanna consigning her mortal husband Dumuzi to the underworld in her place.
Apparently when gods die, they are utterly destroyed, for Gugalanna did not end up back in the underworld with his wife. She reigned alone until Nergal was sent down to atone for his rudeness to her messenger.
I have not yet arrived at any new insights or conclusions about the goddesses yet, but this has sparked some interesting thoughts on my own personal journey. . . .
My own initiation onto the underworld path began with the death of LM, who I considered my husband. Although I had not associated closely with Inanna in the previous few years, I had been very close to her a decade or more before. In fact, my association with her was the strongest I'd had with any goddess until my work with Ereshkigal.
Suddenly I saw a new way of working with the archetypal elements of the Descent, one in which the journeyer took on the identities of the goddesses in succession. This is not a reinterpretation of what the original stories were meant to convey. This is taking universal motifs from the story and playing with them for growth and healing. The archetypal roles are not the same as the deities who originated them.
In my own case, the journey might look like this. . .
After the death of LM, I felt my life coming apart at the seams. I made an involuntary descent, mourning the pieces of life and self which were lost with him, feeling myself diminished and weakened as I fell further and further into the depths of grief and depression. At the bottom of the path I was unrecognizable to myself, not the person I had been before, as Inanna entered the throne room of Ereshkigal "naked and bowed low."
Ereshkigal blasts Inanna with the eye of death, and the next time we see her She is in labor pains. The kurgarra and galatur empathize with Her and She is comforted. In the original story, She gives them whatever they want and they ask for Inanna's corpse, which they bring back to life.
But what if, instead, Ereshkigal's birth pains are the journeyer's painful efforts to complete the initiatory journey? What if, instead of being a side of meat turning green on a peg, Inanna's "hanging time" was seen as a chrysalis? What if "Ereshkigal giving birth" is experienced as the shattered Inanna giving birth to herself as the Queen of the Underworld, embracing her shadow and pain and coming to terms with them? The kurgarra and galatur are allies in this process, providing encouragement and sympathy as she does the hard, painful work.
When the process is complete and the Queen of the Underworld is stable and at peace on her throne, Inanna is resurrected and is able to rise again to the upper world. In the original story she rises with the Eye of Death, indicating that somehow she has gained some of the power of the underworld. For an individual working with these themes, it becomes symbolic of having risen from the underworld not just healed but transformed into more than she was before, having the powers of both realms to draw on instead of only one. Integral to this new identity would be the freedom to move in both worlds, for balance and empowerment.
A similar and perhaps more elegant journey could be done with Persephone.
Gugalanna, "The Great Bull of Heaven", was Ereshkigal's first husband. Inanna (who had become Ishtar at the time this story was written down) sent him to attack and kill Gilgamesh when Gilgamesh refused her sexual advances and mocked her. Gilgamesh's friend Enkidu killed Gugalanna and the two mocked and threatened Ishtar with his remains (probably his genitals).
The earlier version of The Descent, gives no reason for Inanna's decision to enter the underworld. In the later Ishtar version, she tells the gatekeeper that she has come to share the mourning rituals for Gugalanna.
When all that finally came together in my head, my first thought was If my husband had died because he was defending the honor of my spoiled outlaw sister, she would be the last person I'd want around while I was mourning!
Then it occurred to me that the stories of The Descent end with Inanna consigning her mortal husband Dumuzi to the underworld in her place.
Apparently when gods die, they are utterly destroyed, for Gugalanna did not end up back in the underworld with his wife. She reigned alone until Nergal was sent down to atone for his rudeness to her messenger.
I have not yet arrived at any new insights or conclusions about the goddesses yet, but this has sparked some interesting thoughts on my own personal journey. . . .
My own initiation onto the underworld path began with the death of LM, who I considered my husband. Although I had not associated closely with Inanna in the previous few years, I had been very close to her a decade or more before. In fact, my association with her was the strongest I'd had with any goddess until my work with Ereshkigal.
Suddenly I saw a new way of working with the archetypal elements of the Descent, one in which the journeyer took on the identities of the goddesses in succession. This is not a reinterpretation of what the original stories were meant to convey. This is taking universal motifs from the story and playing with them for growth and healing. The archetypal roles are not the same as the deities who originated them.
In my own case, the journey might look like this. . .
After the death of LM, I felt my life coming apart at the seams. I made an involuntary descent, mourning the pieces of life and self which were lost with him, feeling myself diminished and weakened as I fell further and further into the depths of grief and depression. At the bottom of the path I was unrecognizable to myself, not the person I had been before, as Inanna entered the throne room of Ereshkigal "naked and bowed low."
Ereshkigal blasts Inanna with the eye of death, and the next time we see her She is in labor pains. The kurgarra and galatur empathize with Her and She is comforted. In the original story, She gives them whatever they want and they ask for Inanna's corpse, which they bring back to life.
But what if, instead, Ereshkigal's birth pains are the journeyer's painful efforts to complete the initiatory journey? What if, instead of being a side of meat turning green on a peg, Inanna's "hanging time" was seen as a chrysalis? What if "Ereshkigal giving birth" is experienced as the shattered Inanna giving birth to herself as the Queen of the Underworld, embracing her shadow and pain and coming to terms with them? The kurgarra and galatur are allies in this process, providing encouragement and sympathy as she does the hard, painful work.
When the process is complete and the Queen of the Underworld is stable and at peace on her throne, Inanna is resurrected and is able to rise again to the upper world. In the original story she rises with the Eye of Death, indicating that somehow she has gained some of the power of the underworld. For an individual working with these themes, it becomes symbolic of having risen from the underworld not just healed but transformed into more than she was before, having the powers of both realms to draw on instead of only one. Integral to this new identity would be the freedom to move in both worlds, for balance and empowerment.
A similar and perhaps more elegant journey could be done with Persephone.
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