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Images of Death
A friend shared, in a locked post, an entry about a particularly gruesome crucifix that has recently been removed from a church in West Sussex because it scared the children and did not create a welcoming atmosphere.
She also included a link to an image of the crucifix in question. And yes, it's fairly gruesome.
But as I absorbed the image, I was startled when I saw it not through the lenses of my Christian upbringing and symbolism, but through those of my current Underworld practices.
Ereshkigal is not a "death Goddess" -- but she is a Dark Goddess, and she is the Queen of the Great Below, the Land of the Dead. One of the discussions I've been having with myself is that my relationship with Ereshkigal is very positive, and Her image in my mind is usually attractive: and yet many of Her primary depictions in literature are grim and terrifying, reflecting humanity's fear of death and decay. Have I been avoiding dealing with that very real aspect of Her nature?
Seeing this crucifix, I saw an image of Inanna's rotting corpse hanging on the hook in Ereshkigal's throne room, a vivid reminder of the fatal end which no one, not even the Queen of Heaven, could escape -- and yet there is, as in Christianity, a simultaneous faith that death is not the end, that even in the midst of the most gruesome despair, there will be liberation, re-creation, transformation. My work with Ereshkigal is significantly about having the courage and faith to dare the dark places, the fear, the loss and the dis-memberment, and win through to transformation, and help others to do so as well.
"Let her paint on an inch thick, to this end she must come," said Hamlet to Yorick's skull. So must we all. . . and yet we will pass beyond. . .
So where does that leave me in my images of my Queen of the Great Below? I'm not sure. . . but I think I would be wrong to leave images like this out of my iconography.
She also included a link to an image of the crucifix in question. And yes, it's fairly gruesome.
But as I absorbed the image, I was startled when I saw it not through the lenses of my Christian upbringing and symbolism, but through those of my current Underworld practices.
Ereshkigal is not a "death Goddess" -- but she is a Dark Goddess, and she is the Queen of the Great Below, the Land of the Dead. One of the discussions I've been having with myself is that my relationship with Ereshkigal is very positive, and Her image in my mind is usually attractive: and yet many of Her primary depictions in literature are grim and terrifying, reflecting humanity's fear of death and decay. Have I been avoiding dealing with that very real aspect of Her nature?
Seeing this crucifix, I saw an image of Inanna's rotting corpse hanging on the hook in Ereshkigal's throne room, a vivid reminder of the fatal end which no one, not even the Queen of Heaven, could escape -- and yet there is, as in Christianity, a simultaneous faith that death is not the end, that even in the midst of the most gruesome despair, there will be liberation, re-creation, transformation. My work with Ereshkigal is significantly about having the courage and faith to dare the dark places, the fear, the loss and the dis-memberment, and win through to transformation, and help others to do so as well.
"Let her paint on an inch thick, to this end she must come," said Hamlet to Yorick's skull. So must we all. . . and yet we will pass beyond. . .
So where does that leave me in my images of my Queen of the Great Below? I'm not sure. . . but I think I would be wrong to leave images like this out of my iconography.
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(I'm prompted to recall the last Solstice Mumming at my dad's, when a styrofoam mannequin head on a stick was serving as the "talking severed head" in the Otherworld, and my stepmother kept saying to my youngest sister, who was about 8 at the time, "It's not real, it's not real, it's not real." You'd think a kid would know that an undecorated, white styrofoam head on the handle of a shovel wasn't real...?!?)
I was reminded immediately, though, when viewing that crucified depiction of Jesus of the image of Akhenaton that I had in my head when I was writing "The Appearance of Ereshkigal in Egypt"...
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"Scary" is the larger-than-life crucifix that greets you when you enter a certain old-fashioned Lithuanian R.C. church here in downtown Baltimore--flesh-tone paint, brown hair, red-paint blood pretty much everywhere. And the Virgin Mother throwing a faint nearby, I think. Yeow.
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The black'n'crispy crucifix FJ linked to... didn't I see him in a Bones episode?
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I had the same thought!!
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Did you watch last night? Two of my favorite episodes: Zach's return and the Gravedigger - who is still out there and seems to have been forgotten by the writers.
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