Queen of Swords

Things close to my heart which involve skulls. . . .

Ereshkigal
Pirates
Hamlet
Freemasonry

And that list led to the delightfully off-beat combination "Ereshkigal's Pirate."

Herself is very much into law and appropriate boundaries. . . but there must be some kind of fantastical story which could be developed from that image.

[x-posted]


I firmly believe that most of the essential work of spirituality is done in the bits and pieces of daily life: not just maintaining regular practices, but making choices that align with my beliefs and values, maintaining the bonds of relationship with those around me, seen and unseen, and etc.

But then there are the Other Times, when it's necessary to do something bigger, more intense, more deep. This seems to be one of those times.

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My ordination was February 14th.
Today is the first day since then that my energy has felt normal.
That's quite probably the longest high I've ever been on.
Somewhat to my surprise, I'm not crashing.
I should probably thank the daily magical-energy practices I've been doing.

As things settle out, I'm aware of feeling more deeply rooted than I've been in a long time.

And I'm aware of all the things yet undone -- but I feel a bit more capable of actually accomplishing them.

I'm going to be revisiting my Stephen Covey/7 Habits principles, starting with my mission statement. When I first started working the Covey system, my mission statement was "To bring light." "Light" to me meant the illumination of the mind, new ideas, different perspectives. It's one of the things I'm good at. But today I was realizing that it no longer quite fits as a mission statement.

Today, it feels more like my mission is more about living in the borderlands and reporting back. I'm not stopping with that; it's something I need to meditate on.

The three fundamental truths of my personal existence are these: I am a priestess of Ereshkigal; I am Lohain's wife; I am Wolfling's mother. It feels very strange to write those and realize that never before in my life have I defined my existence in terms of my relationships to others -- with the possible exception of my identity as "[Dad]'s Daughter." I've never been that kind of person. I seem to be changing. (What was your first clue, right?)

And yes, two of the three others in the above paragraph are non-incarnate. That's also a fundamental fact of my life.

My fundamental ethical values are what they have been for decades: Wisdom, Integrity, Courage, Tenderness, Humor. My other values include Creativity, Spirituality, Stability (I'm responsible, after all, for maintaining a stable life for Wolfling). I'm doing my best to add Fitness/Health to that list, but I'm still working on integrating it.

My To-Do List doesn't cycle through as often as I want it to. I have items that linger for months, items that relate to projects I supposedly care about. I'm working with a therapist right now on why that is, trying to get to the roots of some deep issues around avoidance and denial that stand in the way of becoming what I say I want to be, do what I want to do.

And of course that begs the question Do I actually want to do these things, achieve these goals? I believe so, but I have a hard time associating less-than-pleasant immediate tasks with the payoff of the goal in the future. It's embarrassingly childish.

There's more to process, but Wolfling and I are due at my parents' house for dinner soon.

In the course of a conversation on someone else's LJ, this comment was made:

Ereshkigal is Not Nice, At All.

That is, of course, the common opinion of Ereshkigal. Since I haven't talked all that much about Her in this journal, I thought it was worthwhile to post my response here:


I used to be of that opinion. Since going to to work for Her full time, my perspective has changed.

Inanna is about violating boundaries. Ereshkigal is about enforcing and defending them. Ereshkigal is also about Facing Your Shit, dealing with your shadow, facing the darkness and going through transformation so you can rise again as more than what you were. She's one of the gods who manage the spiritual forges, those who help us be healed by hardship rather than destroyed by it. She and Inanna are the opposing-but-complementary-poles on the Descent-and-Ascent path of transformation.

In my direct experience with Her, She is a tough but supportive boss who doesn't accept excuses or quibbling, but who is willing to answer questions and respond to arguments, and She is quick to give praise when it's been earned. She's not cuddly, but She is compassionate, in a tough love kind of way. She won't blink or flinch as She hangs you up on a hook, but She doesn't do it just for fun.

Do you know the musical Into the Woods? Toward the end, the Witch sings:

You're so nice
You're not good, you're not bad
You're just nice.
I'm not good, I'm not nice
I'm just right
I'm the witch
You're the world

I think they make an appropriate response to any allegation of Ereshkigal not being "nice."

Not Her job.

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.

Me: I have become a vortex. All of my energy has been going in and down. I need to change that. It's not healthy. I need balance. I'm thinking about Inanna and her ascent. I need to work with those energies again. Can I work with her again now?

Ereshkgial: Yes, you can work with her again now. You could not do so before because you would simply have done so as "part of the story" and part of your old habits. You needed to get to the place where you claimed the upward journey as part of this life, this cycle.

And a little later. . . .

Lohain: Losing you made me bitter and hard. I rejected life. I don't want to see you make the same mistake. You're on the upward journey. Embrace all of it.

I'm finally making doing the kind of work again in my spiritual life that I can write about coherently in an unfiltered post to my main journal. There's been a lot going on, but so much of it has involved Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) and/or sacred sexuality -- not to mention being very much in the figuring-out-what-it-means phase -- that writing publically has been problematic. But I made some cognitive connections recently. . .

First: Ereshkigal. She's the goddess who rules Irkalla, the Sumerian underworld. She's most widely known these days as the sister of Inanna. When Inanna finally makes it through the seven gates of the underworld during The Descent of Inanna and enters Ereshkigal's throne room "naked and bowed low," Ereshkigal "fixes her with the eye of death," kills her, and hangs her body on a peg for three days until a couple of innocuous messengers arrive, empathize with her labor pains, and move her to generosity. Her lesser known myth, called Ereshkigal and Nergal is about how she comes to marry and share her rule with Nergal, the god of war and disease. Whether their story is one of the gradual subjugation of the Divine Feminine to the Divine Masculine, or one of sacred marriage and the re-enchantment of the Sumerian underworld is a matter of personal perspective.

Although I started doing underworld work shortly after uncrowned_king died, Ereshkigal is not someone I deliberately contacted. The connections were made during two inner journeys that started out with me either not knowing where I was headed or getting something different than what I had expected.

I'm realizing a couple of things about Ereshkigal.

1. The Descent of Inanna has been a powerful myth for me, a significant source of both healing and inspiration, but previously I've only addressed it from Inanna's side, her perspective. Working with Ereshkigal and her side gives me a more holistic understanding of the myth and, on a deeper level, a participation in the energies that preside over descent rather than make a descent.

2. In both her primary myths, others violate her and/or her realm in some way. For whatever reason, people think they can cross her with impunity. In both cases, they are proven wrong -- but it's an interesting pattern, however limited the source material.

3. Looking back on the three words/phrases I posted yesterday: they are all shadow aspects of myself, things that aren't usually talked about openly or touching parts of myself that I have marginalized and/or hidden over the years. Ereshkigal, as Queen of the Underworld, is in a psychological sense a queen of our suppressed and hidden selves. Through my work with Her, I've been strengthening these shadowed parts of myself so I can draw on them with more confidence -- and more openness. My base of personal power is widening and deepening.

( Still more, so I'll cut for length )

Feral: a creature who was domesticated but is now wild, living outside the boundaries and rules of domesticity

Underworld Priestess: one who works with deities and contacts in the underworld, sometimes one who helps others spiritually excavate and illuminate the shadow aspects of their own lives, and/or who helps others make deliberate, voluntary descents or heal from involuntary ones

Hierodule: literally "sacred slave" but in common usage, one who channels the love of the divine (usually a goddess) through erotic and/or sexual contact; one who worships using the ritual of the hieros gamos ("sacred marriage") either with a mortal partner, with a spirit partner, or with a deity.

And yes, I am all three of these things.