Descent of Inanna: Underworld Journeys
From the Great Above Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below.
My Lady abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.
Inanna abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.[1]
The underworld journey appears again and again in human mythologies. These narratives vary widely across time and place, but have in common a reckoning – with death, with unknowing, with what we fear most – from which their protagonists emerge forever changed. Of these stories, the descent of Inanna, ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sexuality, and feminine power, to meet her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, has been at the front of my mind as the planet Venus has embarked on her retrograde journey for the past few weeks. Venus’ retrograde cycle was historically connected to this story in ancient Mesopotamia, as she was known here as Inanna; every eighteen months, she brightens in the night sky, slows, and then descends out of view for 40 days, re-emerging in the same slice of sky as a morning star.
In the myth[2], Inanna is called to the land of the dead from her throne in the heavens, passing through the seven gates of the underworld, compelled at each to shed an article of adornment until she arrives at the nadir completely naked. Coming face to face with Ereshkigal, stripped of her riches and glory, Inanna is forced to confront her sister’s anguish. Forced to bear, for a moment, the weight of her sister’s solemn role as judge of the dead, witness to their pain and wrongdoings and suffering as they release their earthly existence. She occupies “the lowest point in the heavens, the Imum Coeli, the private place, the underworld, where history is stored, where the dead go, where pain and wisdom collects.”[3] Here, at this deepest point in the cosmos, Inanna is condemned by Ereshkigal, her body strung up on a meat hook and left for dead. At this bleakest moment, two celestial intersex beings come to Inanna’s aid. Upon reaching the underworld, these beings offer a sympathetic ear to Ereshkigal, listening to and acknowledging her pain and sorrow in full and holding it with her.[4] In return for their gift of compassionate relationship, she releases Inanna’s body to pass into the Above once again. Inanna thus returns initiated, humbled and made more whole through her struggle.
This story has struck me deeply ever since I first heard it years ago. I interpret Inanna’s descent as an act of submission, of stripping herself of her (other)wordly splendor and going willingly into the unknown, the feared, the shadowy depths. Of ceding control to another goddess, allowing herself to be subjected to a painful ordeal to gain access to the wisdom of the underworld. Which is, itself, about surrender. Accepting pain and grief and sorrow as an inevitable part of existence; sitting with it, witnessing it, not shying away from it. To be with what Ereshkigal sees, with our own shadow. I think something powerful can happen when we consciously choose to submit, to receive pain, to let go of the trappings of our worldly lives and seek contact with what scares us. There are some truths we can only understand by allowing ourselves to be suspended on the meat hook, so to speak, naked and prone. And there is some pain that we can only move through, be released from, through bringing it into the open and allowing ourselves to witness it. Inanna returns to heaven, but she is not the same goddess she once was, forever changed by her journey.
This necessity, I believe, is part of why the underworld sojourn repeats across so many traditions, and why cultures the world over have created rituals to facilitate this kind of reckoning in our own lives. Ritual, like a scene, session, or dynamic, creates a container for this kind of intense excavation, for making contact with that which we fear. One thing I love about working with astrology is the centrality of cycles to its practice: unlike the archetypal hero’s journey, this experience is not singular, but one we return to again and again, changed each time we approach and emerge from its gates. Venus will soon be reborn, visible to us again as she glitters in the early morning sky. What has she learned on this journey? What have we?
Sources:
[1] http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/myth/Descent%20Of%20Inanna.pdf
[2] http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/inanaitar/
[3] https://austincoppock.com/scorpio-2018-oct-23-nov-21-ordeal-and-ascent/
[4] https://chaninicholas.com/venus-retrograde-october-2018/