Queen of Swords

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. )

The central challenge of my spiritual path right now is to become joyfully engaged in life while remaining unafraid of death.

I've got the second part down -- but not fearing death doesn't mean a lot if my life feels empty and joyless.

I need to spend more time with Persephone -- and more time connecting with things that can be sources of satisfaction and happiness in daily life. I do try to do the latter, but I feel as if I'm starting almost from zero.

I found this image a day or two ago. It's called "Persephone and Demeter" (by Susan Seddon Boulet), but the way things are developing for me, I prefer to see it as Persephone in her above and below manifestations. . . .





Click twice for full size

If you've been reading along and missed alfrecht's comment on my Persephone/sovereignty post, you may want to go back and glance at it. It seems that a word that insisted in being included had a deeper implication than I realized -- and more associations.

Last night, I was just settling onto the couch with Wolfling to snuggle, after writing that previous entry and then reading alfrecht's comment, when my phone alarm beeped to remind me it was time for my regular Tuesday evening household altar rite with Tiwaz and LM. I don't believe this! I cried, suddenly having a new appreciation of the term "god bothered."

I went to the altar and addressed myself to Tiwaz, but my head was still pretty much spinning from everything that had already happened, and it was hard to concentrate. I made sure to say my usual thanks for the safety and prosperity of our household, and then made what has been a recently habitual prayer for help in having the income I need to support myself and Wolfling comfortably.

For the first time, I felt some resistance. This is something I'm going to have to test with divination, but what I thought I was getting in response was a firm caution that we would be taken care of, but that I need to let go of some of my own expectations about what is best for Wolfling and what level of affluence I live in. There were some strong urges to follow through on some thoughts I've had about selling some excess stuff I've accumulated over the years, reducing my need for "x" amount of space, and being more conservative with my money.

I thought of more than one LJ friend who is a spirit worker of some kind, and whose focus is so much demanded on their Work that they are not able to maintain the kind of job(s) that they might otherwise have.

I've never had the career I grew up expecting to have. Over the past few years, I've said that it's been because I've not had the right kind of ambition for one, that I never knew what I wanted to be and didn't feel like putting out the effort for something I didn't want; maybe what's been going on at a deeper level has been preparation for this stage of my life when I'm to focus on Work rather than career.

Certainly I've been thinking for a while that the less I "need" to maintain, the more choices and flexibility I'll have when considering jobs -- both vocational (spirit related) and "day job."

I won't pretend that I wasn't troubled by what I thought I was hearing last night -- even as I found it somewhat ironic that after all I had just experienced I was worried about the gods somehow not taking care of me.

It was very hard to fall asleep last night. My head was still spinning. Finally I realized that despite all I had just been through and all I had written here and to a couple of friends, I had not yet addressed myself to Persephone directly. *headdesk

So I spent a few minutes doing that: thanking her for her attention and messages, telling her that I looked forward to learning more about what she has in mind, and etc. Honestly, I don't remember most of it. She didn't feel close yet, not like Ereshkigal. I did feel Ereshkigal last night, and She was smiling -- with a bit more pleasure and warmth than usual. I seem to be on the right path.

Strange, dense dreams last night, including an appearance by Bear -- in the midst of a bunch of other animals. But while many of them came closer -- even into my house -- Bear looked at me and wandered off into the woods. Bear has been my ally for many years, although I've never done the kind of close personal work that would develop that relationship more deeply. This morning, the only animal I remember being in my house was a large gorilla who mauled my breast.

I'm still feeling more than a bit overwhelmed this morning. . .

My grocery store has a large display of pomegranates. I guess I'll be picking one up soon. .

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.

This is unseasonal, and some of you may have seen it before, but I can't find it in the entries/tags for this journal, and I've been feeling the urge to post it. Maybe it's because, despite the actual season, I'm feeling like my own life-force has been returning more and more strongly over the past several weeks.


( A mythic episode, with erotic overtones, on the theme of the return of spring and the price some have to pay. )

It's raining gently up here -- a lovely change from the brutal heat of the past few days. I was happy to not have a hood or umbrella coming back from lunch, just taking in the feel of the rain on my skin.

As I walked, I felt like I was newly in the world again, newly open -- and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt and resistance.

Survivor's guilt is a tough thing. No matter how many times I come back to the intellectual knowledge that it's okay for me to heal -- that it's *necessary* for me to heal -- there is still something that feels wrong, feels traitorous, about it. Taking this latest step in coming back to life I have that feeling of treason more intensely than ever -- because I'm taking a much bigger, more conscious step than before.

During most of the past year the grieving/healing process has been slow and gradual. In contrast, I've processed a lot of ground over the past couple of days: first acknowledging a deeper grief than I'd been consciously in touch with and then consciously striving toward the upper world again.

Just walking half a block in the rain today I felt almost Persephone-like. Did she feel guilty, feel like a traitor to her husband, when she breathed fresh air again, felt the sunlight and rain again, and rejoiced? I wouldn't be surprised.

It's another stretch of both/and for me: learning to enjoy living again *and* loving and being in relationship with my husband in the otherworld.