The Descent of Inanna
This is the second of a series called Midnight Medicine which will be released weekly. To see the other posts in the series, follow this link.
This version of the story is adapted from a book called Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, by Sylvia Brinton Perera. It’s a slim little thing, just 68 pages, and it’s pretty academic. We’ve all heard of the Hero’s Journey detailed by Joseph Campbell, but without calling it that, this book described the heroine’s journey in all of it’s gory detail through the Sumerian myth of Inanna. It’s one historian’s interpretation of the poem about Inanna’s descent into the underworld.
Inanna is the Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, justice and political power. I think of her like Beyonce—flawless brown skin, hair flowing down her back. All is well in Inanna's world when she finds out her brother has died in the underworld. She wants to attend the funeral, but one is not supposed to go to the underworld and return. That’s kind of against the normal way of things. Not to be deterred, she went anyway. “[A]bandoned heaven, abandoned earth—to the Netherworld she descended.” Before she left, she told one of her servants and best girlfriend, Ninshubar, that if she doesn’t return in three days, she better ask the father gods for help.
Inanna begins her descent. At the very first gate, she announces her arrival. When the gatekeeper tells Erishkegal, Queen of the Great Below, that Inanna wishes to journey to the underworld, Erishkegal flies into a rage. Where Inanna is all beauty and serenity and queenly repose, Erishkegal is pure fury and emotion. Erishkegal demands that Inanna be treated just like everyone else who enters “the land of no return,” that she be brought “naked and bowed low.”
Inanna descends to the underworld and removes one piece of her regalia at each of the seven gates, letting go of everything that makes her a queen—her beautiful clothes, her crown, her scepter, her beauty, everything. By the time she arrives at the seventh level, she’s fully naked and “normal,” just like the rest of us. There she comes face to face with her older sister, Erishkegal.
Erishkegal is darkness incarnated. Now, Erishkigal is furious at Inanna’s hubris—how dare she enter her world, demanding entrance to see the body of her brother? So Erishkegal kills Inanna and impales her body on a hook, hanging her body to rot.
Back in the world of the living, Inanna’s girl Ninshubar is now worried since it’s been three days since Inanna left. First she goes to Enlil and Nanna, the sky god and moon god respectively. Nanna is also Inanna’s father. Despite the family relation, both gods scoff, saying she shouldn’t have gone to the underworld in the first place. In other words, she got what she deserved. Then Ninshubar goes to Enki, the god of water, knowledge, and creation. Enki mixes the dirt from under his fingernails with water and makes two sexless beings out of the clay. He then sends them down to the underworld—along with the food and water of life—to fetch Inanna.
But it wasn’t as simple as that, of course. The two beings were also faced with Erishkegal, but they did not confront her, nor did they try to take Inanna, nor did they try to exert their will with demands and a show of power.
Instead, they simply sat with her.
When the Queen of the Underworld moaned about her anger, they moaned with her. When she cried about her longing, they cried with her. When she raged, they raged with her. The beings mirrored Erishkegal and showed nothing but empathy until all of her emotions were spent.
Feeling finally empty of all of the emotions she had been carrying for eons, Erishkegal felt deep relief. "What can I give you in return?" she asked the two beings.
“Give us the body of Inanna,” they said, and she did. The two beings unhooked Inanna and fed her the food and water of life, while Erishkegal reminds Innana that she must send a substitute to stand in her place.
But when Inanna returned to her palace, what did she find? Her husband Dumuzi, sitting on her throne—not mourning, not in grief, but enjoying the fruits (and the beautiful servants) of her queendom.
When the guardians of the underworld appeared at the palace door hot on Inanna’s heels demanding a replacement, she turned and smiled at her less-than-loyal husband and pointed at him, giving the guardians permission to take him in her place.