Queen of Swords

This evening I watched a DVD of Diane Wolkstein doing a dramatic performance of her version of The Descent of Inanna.

The DVD actually included most of the texts from her book, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, but "Descent" was my focus. It wasn't until Inanna began the actual entry to the underworld that I finally figured out what had been nagging at me throughout the performance: the formality of it.

Wolkstein is quite aware that her texts are poetry that follow a particular form, and her performance is correspondingly constrained. She moves about the stage gracefully, but it's the grace of a ritualist. It's the grace of a Queen of Swords.

And that's not what Inanna is like -- not the Inanna I know, anyway.

Inanna is passionate, brash, arrogant, reckless -- and none of those qualities were present in the serene figure Wolkstein presented. Her declaration of intent to visit The Great Below was announced with calm detachment, not eager adventure. The instructions to Ninshubur regarding how to rescue her were solidly reasonable, not an almost off-hand thought. The passage through the seven gates, a process during which Inanna is methodically stripped of power, of pride, of confidence, was rushed through, with dimming lights signaling the exterior change but nothing of the interior one.

Wolkstein's serene, reserved formality reminded me of the studious formality of an earnest novice Performing Shakespeare without understanding or communicating the rough vitality that underscores the archaic language loaded with centuries of baggage.

At the same time. . . it did me a great deal of good to watch the performance and listen to the words and be reminded of the many reasons why I felt close to Inanna for as long as I did. Ereshkigal herself has called me "Inanna's get". I partake of her passions. I partake of her association with sovereignty and kingmaking. And long before I was taken in as Ereshkigal's bitch and priestess, I, like Inanna, willfully pushed my way through the gates of the underworld, allowing much of what was most precious to me to be stripped from me and ultimately needing rescue to ascend again.

I found a piece of myself this evening. Not just in the performance, but in the company of the man who shared the DVD with me. The evening ended with a delightful, passionate, healing exchange of fierce kisses and caresses. . . something which has been long absent in my life.

It did feel strange to be kissing someone besides LM, but it also felt right and good. This is part of me. The passion is part of me. It probably would have happened whatever we had watched this evening. . . but there is something ritually appropriate about this.

Hmmm. . . The last time something like this happened was after my second degree initiation at Pantheacon last year, when my "sacred stranger" helped me ground and seal those energies. Interesting that this is happening almost exactly a year later, after a ritual involving Inanna and Ereshkigal.

I'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. . . .

( The personal side. )

A couple of days ago, anax_anarkhos said something to me about my emergence from my grieving making me seem like "Persephone kissing the springtime." That image took my breath away -- and it was all the more startling because I've never identified with Persephone. Inanna emerging from the underworld, yes -- but never Persephone.

Except that Inanna hasn't 'been there' for me recently. I think she's waiting for me to grow back into her. She's so passionate. I think she's waiting for me to rediscover my passions before we start to working closely again. It's part of my need to be new. Persephone is definitely 'new' to me. . . In ways I never expected.

A couple of years ago, all adrift, I went into meditation to get a sense of where I was. I found myself in a wild wood, at night. I found a clearing, then set out a ring of small stones and sat down within it. I had a cauldron and a blade. I knew that I had to sit there until I found my answers.

Now when I go within I am standing naked on the top of a grassy hill. A pleasant breeze is blowing and I'm facing the early morning light -- about as classically "East" as one can get. Eventually I need to walk down the hill, to rejoin the living world, but for the moment I'm still in the borderland. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, but my skin still feels the heat of the underworld. It would be so easy to step back into the welcoming shadows. . . into the welcoming arms. . .

This is what I wrote during my afternoon break at work:

I've been thinking of Persephone a lot from my hilltop. . . Behind me, my passionate husband, bound to his place in the underworld. My heart is with him, but I can not live there all the time.

Not even if Zeus had not decreed it.
[A new thought there, and a radical one. . . What if Zeus's decree had been not to appease his siblings but because it truly was in the best interests of the girl?]

Before me, somewhere beyond the hills, is my mother. . . I've blamed her for trying to keep me a child -- but did I project my own fear onto her? It's easy to grow into a new person when you're in a new place, but harder to carry that newness back into the familiar places.
[Adria knew that, with the very air of her high school trying to press her back into her previous shape, her familiar roles. . .]

Blame Hades, blame Zeus, blame my mother. . . It leaves me the perpetual victim, always at the mercy of the will of others.

Hekate chuckles from her place under the apple tree. I hadn't seen her until this moment, but of course she is here at this crossroads.

"The rest of them are bound to their places," she tells me. "Only you are free to move. Only you have the full freedom of the crossroads. You are my heir-in-spirit, my god daughter."
[A gray, cloaked figure on the side of the bed in a little girl's dream. I am your mother she told me, and I cried back No, you're a witch!. I had the dream twice before I was five years old, vivid and terrifying. Never to be forgotten.]

Hekate gives me a key. "You control your own going out and coming in."

Inanna was stripped of her carefully-selected finery when she descended to the underworld, and we have no account of her picking any of it back up. I am naked on my hilltop. I must choose, choose deliberately and with full ownership of the consequences, what I will "put on" before I re-engage with society. What garb, what regalia, what roles and honors and secrets and silences will I wrap around me and use to adorn myself, to announce myself to the world and to others?

The choice is mine.

I have (almost) always seen Persephone as a victim.

Today, I experienced Persephone claiming her personal sovereignty.

Today I was affirmed as an initiate of the mystery of the sacred crossroads.

Yesterday evening I went to a Half Price Books in a neighborhood I usually don't visit. There I found a book called The Passion of Isis and Osiris: A Gateway to Transcendent Love, by Jean Houston. Given the startling way Isis broke into my meditation yesterday, and the issues I've been working with around sexuality and passion -- as well as the larger scope of my priestess work, it seemed less than a coincidence.

I started reading this morning, and while I'm still in the Introduction I'm feeling great satisfaction. Houston calls her work with myth and archetypes "sacred psychology" -- and it's very much in line with the way I interpret and process. I want to know more about it, beyond the scope of this book.

And there was this:

In its Jungian usage, "shadow" refers to the repressed and disavowed aspects of self. When these same shadow qualities are recognized and reconciled, there is often a movement toward greater maturity and depth of personality. Since time immemorial, myth and mythic knowing have served to balance shadow and light in individuals and in cultures, which has helped to prevent the exaltation of certain archetypal themes that, if played out unchecked and unorchestrated, could destroy the world.

Yes.

The bit about possibly destroying the world is a much larger scope than I think about, but certainly that is the ultimate consequence of destructive imbalances in individuals and cultures. This is my work, and on some level it always has been: the interpreting and healing and maturing of the soul through engagement with myth and archetype. This is the work which for me plays out in my relationships with Ereshkigal and Inanna and the energies they represent and help me to channel and balance. This is the process, the dance, that is implied by the name of this journal.

From this morning's altar time:

I am not just sexual desire. I am the desire that is at the root of all fertility and growth -- even creative fertility.

Inanna's stories portray her as having an intense lust for more. She won the me from Father Enki by getting him drunk and flattering him. She dared the forbidden journey to the Underworld. It could be seen that even her desire for the human kings, celebrated in the hieros gamos texts, is indicative of her unwillingness to be limited only to divine partners. She was never content with just what she had.

This also, of course, got her into trouble, which is one reason why I find it helpful to balance her energies with those of Ereshkigal, who is about maintaining boundaries.

But as I struggle to discern the appropriate expression of my personal sexuality at this time, it's very helpful to get back in touch with Inanna's indiscriminate desire, desire that is not limited to the sexually erotic.

Simple discontent saps our joy, makes us feel helpless and bitter, bogs us down. Divine discontent spurs us to become more. For me, Inanna is the personification of divine discontent. She is the passionate desire to have and to do and to be more than what we are now.

Tonight, I danced.

I danced for my husband, for Inanna, and for myself.

I danced in the relatively small space between my bed and my dresser, wearing my red pajama bottoms and an olive tank top. Nothing fancy. Nothing elaborate. Nothing sexy. (Except he always thinks I'm sexy.)

I danced for them and for myself with nothing but my energy, my intent, my love.

And it was enough.

While Ereshkigal has not given up an inch of Her authority over me, I have been encouraged more and more to work with Inanna. Ereshkigal grounds me, but it's Inanna who seems to be the one who will be helping me manifest necessary change in my professional, vocational, and creative life in the outer world.

Last night we had our first talk in quite a while. It boiled down to two strong suggestions from her: Be golden. Be brazen

"Golden" is a frequent epithet of goddesses of love, passion and beauty. Inanna wants me to allow the life force and sexual energy to course through me and make me "golden." She wants me to take joy in living, laugh more, allow my light to shine.

"Being brazen" is about internalizing Inanna's own disregard for convention. My place is on the edge, and I need to have the nerve to stand there and make my presence felt without fear of sanction. If I go too far into any one community, or trying to meet the expectations of a community rather than be true to my own sensibilities and sense of mission, I end up losing myself and forsaking the context of my gifts. Inanna belonged everywhere and nowhere. So did/does The Journeyer.

I need to be a golden, brazen, edgewalker.

I did my full practices last night, as well as a deep meditation with LM and the goddesses.

As I was aligning myself with the goddesses I apologized for my recent slackness. I was reassured that yes, things have been unusual recently, and they don't expect perfection. Ereshkigal told me that She was satisfied that when She did tap me, I responded promptly. Of course, it's always better to not fall of the practice wagon and need that tap in the first place, but it's also nice to be accepted as human.

I also revised my practice log for the week: removing the Tree of Life notebook line item (finished on the way to P-con), added "Morning Alignment" (tuning in to the goddesses each morning, something I haven't done before), and bolding "Devotional Writing" -- as I really need to do some serious work on the Ereshkigal Devotional. I should add that the "devotional" refers not just to the project but to the pure act of writing for/with Herself, as a tool for deepening that connection. I use the written word to connect deeply with myself and with other people. I believe I can also use it to connect more deeply with Her -- and Inanna.

Last night I also thanked Inanna for the influx of erotic energy into my life and the healing that has accompanied it. I thanked for her part in my ordination, and told her that I'm looking forward to getting to know her more deeply again.

I started my meditation by aligning myself with LM and my three patrons: Ereshkigal, Inanna and Tiwaz (who had also forged a deeper connection with me recently -- more about which later). It was an awesome and deeply gratifying experience to feel them close to me, and in particular to be more deeply aware of Tiwaz's protection of my home. At first I was feeling kind of amazed at the thought of them coming when I called -- but I was informed, with one of Ereshkigal's slightly less edged smiles, that it's the other way around: they are always present, always desirous of my company and attention (although not as supplicants, of course!). It is I who respond to their call.

The last two weekends have been extremely intense as far as focused work with Ereshkigal and Inanna. Actually, two weekends ago it was Ereshkigal and LM all day, yesterday it was all three of them in the morning, followed by an initiatory virtual intimate exchange.

I'm doing some deep excavations around how my sexuality and my spirituality intersect. There are patterns that seem to go back a very long way, patterns I need to understand if I am to go forward. I was reminded on Sunday morning that my sexuality has a great deal in common with Inanna's: it's unruly, transgressive. It doesn't fit well with being a wife.* It's where my feral nature comes from. LM called me his Feral Queen, and I loved the way the nickname combined both wildness and order. In some ways, it's both Inanna and Ereshkigal.

I don't yet understand how, but this weekend has made it even more clear than before that my sexuality is part of my priestess work. I don't think it will be any one particular way, or the same in all contexts. But I have to bring it with me to the altar, into Ereshkigal's throne room, into my public life as a priestess. It's part of the primal magic that I work with LM as my priest.




(*Standard disclaimers apply. I don't mean to imply that wives can't be sexy-wild. These are my own subjective archetypes and experiences.)

Tonight I'm supposed to have an in-depth encounter with Inanna.

I'm not yet sure what that's going to involve. Now that the work week is over and the girl is with her dad, I have the space to go within and ask what she wants and what I need to bring to the space and time.

The first thing on the agenda for today, however, is a hot shower. Last night's dance excursion wasn't all that intense, but it still involved a lot of movement in ways my body isn't used to, so I'm feeling a bit of soreness this morning, especially in my lower back.

*tries to remember the last time I engaged in "serious hip movement"