“The ways of the Underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
The Sumerian myth of the Goddess Inanna of the Upperworld and her Dark Sister, Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Underworld, is the first recorded myth engraved on stone tablets dated 5000 years ago. This myth represents a way of initiation for women: a powerful conscious descent into the underworld to heal and reclaim our full feminine instincts and energy patterns.
Join me this May in a conscious descent and initiation to relcaim the force of your deeper feminine instincts and energy in my Unleash Your Wild Creative Daemon program.
Queen Inanna who has everything, the gifts and the graces of the Gods and a Lover beyond compare, internally hears the call of her Dark Sister in the Underworld…. hears her lament…. and CHOOSES to make her descent to visit her.
She must move through the 7 formidable Gates in her journey and face the Guardian of the Gateways. At each Gate, she is demanded to give up a piece of her regalia which represent the 7 powers in the world that she is identified with: her crown, her lapis lazuli necklace, her double strand of beads, her breastplate, her gold bracelet, lapis scepter, and the royal robe.
When Inanna questions why her regalia is taken… “What is this?”
She is told…
“Quiet Inanna! The ways of the Underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
When Inanna finally arrives at the throne of her sister, naked and bowed low, Ereshkigal is INFURIATED at her presence. Ereshkigal was exiled into the Underworld by the father gods and ignored, all the while feared by them. Inanna has been enjoying all the Upperworld pomp and circumstance as its Queen, while Ereshkigal sits on her dark throne, unloved and unseen, tending to the exiled and the dead.
Ereshkigal ‘fastens the eye of death’ upon Inanna, speaks her words of wrath, and “utters against her the cry of guilt.” She strikes her down, killing her, and hangs her upside down upon a hook.
After three days and three nights, Inanna’s attendant in the upperworld goes for help. The god Enki fashions two little creatures from the dirt under his nails and instructs them to sneak through the cracks of the Gates into the Underworld and once there, to fully empathize with Ereshkigal’s suffering. They arrive to Ereshkigal moaning and groaning…
“Oh! Oh! My inside!”
The two creatures cry back…
“Oh! Oh! Your inside!”
She groans…
“Oh! Oh! My belly!”
They sing…
“Oh! Oh! Your belly!”
And this continues, until Ereshkigal is cracked open to her heart by being so compassionately witnessed and empathized with. She stops. Looks at them and asks…
“Who are you? Moaning – groaning – sighing with me? If you are gods, I will bless you! If you are mortals, I will give you a gift!”
The two creatures ask for the corpse of Inanna, and true to her word, Ereshkigal releases the dead Inanna to them. They pour the sacred water and earth of Life upon her, and Inanna is resurrected.
This myth ROCKS!! The power in it is the recognition that the Descent into our depths is part of our cycling psyches. Our Dark Sister MUST be communed with. She calls to us in our depressions. She calls to us in our pain and suffering. She calls to us in our personal deep wounds. She calls to us so that we may discover what has been placed in exile through our ignorance and then love and embrace these hidden aspects of our selves, learn from their wisdom, and be gifted into greater wholeness in our lives.
I invite you to sign up for a complimentary 20 minute session and allow me to gift you with new insight into your magnificent dark underworld mystery.
Unfortunately what most of us do rather than listen to Her, rather than turn and commune with our exiled self, we numb ourselves through drugs, addictions and busy distractions, running as far away as we can seeking after an ever elusive happiness. Yet we will never find our fulfillment without making the descent to reclaim our Dark Sister and her profound empowering ways.
This myth is specifically about the mystery rites for women. It instructs us in the deeper nature of the power and movement of our psyches, our female instincts and energy patterns. It is a return to the goddess as a mirror and renewal in a feminine source-ground and spirit.
Most of us are “daughters of the father”, and have successfully actualized ourselves in our masculine-oriented society often at the expense of our feminine instincts… our deeper sourced wisdom held within our bodies. Our culture holds little value for these ways and thus in many cases we too have refused them or in most cases are not even aware of this deeper tao of womanhood.
We were not taught these ways by our mothers, nor they by their mothers. We have not known of these mysteries nor embodied their wisdom for thousands of years.
This myth and descent is the work we get into in my Unleash Your Wild Creative Daemon program. It is a magnificent journey into the wild terrain of your psyche, making a descent into your exquisite deep instinctual nature to learn its profound ways and be gifted by its transformative healing empowering nature. It is about reclaiming your embodied wisdom as woman and living from a new ground of your wholeness. I invite you to join my next group in May.
The myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal represents the essential nature of the deeper feminine that is now being resurrected on our planet. Without it, no true healing can take place. May She rise from the Underworld in each one of us through our ardent hearts and take Her true place in all of our psyches…both in men and women… and on our beloved planet Earth.
It is OUR time. Our revolution to put the feminine back on her throne.
Join me in my 12 week Unleash Your Wild Creative Daemon program and learn to dance with and AWAKEN these powerful energies of your true nature so they become your scepter of female power in all areas of your life! Learn more about it here.
I also invite you to sign up for a complimentary 20 minute session and allow me to gift you with new insight into your magnificent dark underworld mystery.
The painting that you see here I did over a two year period during the deepening of my perimenopausal experience. As you can see, the first figure is my body stripped bare and staked upside down. My psyche carried me into its darkness where I was initiated by its profound transformative energies over this period. I worked these energies in authentic movement, expressive painting and authentic writing. My gift from Her, my Dark Sister and my resurrected Lover Queen, are the radiating jewels of embodied wisdom you read here. In honor of Her sacred deep hearted ways, I now give them to you.