Before every significant change for the better, circumstances have forced me to undertake Inanna’s journey: descend through the seven gates to Kur, the Underworld, so my personal worldview and victim identity could die. Neti, the gatekeeper, removed one of my superpowers at each of the seven gates. They stopped working, and though I could see my death approaching, I could not prevent it.
Inanna’s descent happens collectively, too. And the American ego has a deep shadow. Enamored with exceptionalism, we must deny much of our history to maintain our self-image. We ban books, take over school boards, mythologize, and whitewash. But you can’t keep any illusions in the Underworld.
The last gate is so tiny Inanna has to crawl on her hands and knees. Only then, naked and bowed low, can she enter. Judges who live in the Underworld find her guilty. Her shadow self, her furious dark sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, slaps her face so hard that Inanna drops dead. Then, Ereshkigal hangs her body from a meat hook to rot. Here’s the part most retellers of this myth gloss over. Inanna deserved every minute of this comeuppance.
What would bring a whole culture to its knees? My mind conjures pictures of Europe reduced to rubble after each world war—modern cities in Ukraine or Syria and all of Gaza. Forgive me for mixing my mythological metaphors; the cultural ego dies of the four horsemen: conquest, war, famine, and death. Ereshkigal and the fury she represents will demand her due.
I pray for light to return even though the sun has only dipped below the horizon. That kind of prayer—which seeks to avoid—is usually met with deafening silence. So, if one does pray, the only thing to pray for is the highest good for all. It's so simple—unless we get caught up in a story. I had a cherished outcome in the election. I know better, but…
We are already descending. The United States and perhaps other cultures, too, embarked on this trip to visit the shadow of the divine feminine years ago, possibly decades. That idea gives me pause because an ego-shattering is terrible; a collective one is worse. And death isn’t the end of that story. Your dead body is hung on a meat hook for three days to rot. Of course, this is the good news and the bad.
That’s the same three days that Jesus was in the cave with the boulder rolled across the entrance. She’s hanging from the world tree like Odin, though that’s for nine days. Sometimes, the threes come in multiples. She’s Attis and Quetzalcóatl. She’s dead - no identity at all. You aren’t who you were, and you’re not yet who you will be—three days of looking up from the bottom of the ocean, wondering how other people participate in the trance of going to work, of making money, of she-said and he-said, of there even being a right and wrong, of being in love, of raising children and making art - the collective trance that we will all live forever.
And mythological time is stretchy. Those three days are metaphoric. They can be years of darkness, of the fade-to-black, where an afterlife seems impossible. No one is even looking for you - yet.
So, let’s look at the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna and see what wisdom we can glean from this archetype. We can also try to determine how far along we may be in our journey because a descent that can take years in an individual's life can take generations in the collective. For example, can we name the gate where we stand?
First, to get the proper context, we must look at Inanna’s behavior in the prequel, The Epic of Gilgamesh. In that story, Inanna’s arrogance is responsible for the death of Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, her sister, Ereshkigal’s husband.
Inanna declared war on Gilgamesh because he refused to become her lover, citing her previous terrible behavior and lack of trustworthiness in affairs of the heart. Hearing this, Innanna fell into a “bitter rage.” She demanded that the other gods allow her to use Guglanna to avenge herself. After scores of people die, Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill Guglanna to save their city. The gods kill Enkidu in a terrible three-day illness to punish this cheek. You can’t have mortals taking out gods. But no one was happy with Inanna.
So in the opening lines of The Descent of Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth hears something:
From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below
From the Great Above the goddess opened her ear to the Great Below
From the Great Above Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below
Wolkstein and Kramer, 52
Inanna hears the wails of the grief she has caused by waging an unjust war to protect her pride and defend her ego. Did Inanna feel remorse? Did she seek to comfort or make amends? Perform an act of contrition? Does she dress herself in the rags of the grieving or cover herself in ashes as she later expects of her husband?
No. Inanna sets off to visit the grieving and lord it over them. She invites herself to a funeral where she isn’t welcome. First, she adorns herself with all the symbols of her power (which she had obtained through dubious means, but that’s another story). In a gauche display, she makes herself shine. She reminds me of the people gloating after the election, the predictable uptick in hate crimes - all the iterations of gleeful misogyny: Your body. My choice. Forever, and Make Me a Sandwich, which flooded social media. Inanna isn’t oblivious; she knows she’s not wanted.
And she has concerns for her safety. She concocts a plan B because her dark sister and all the denizens of the deep might not take kindly to her presence. She instructs her faithful servant, Nunshubur, on the details of a rescue plan should she fail to return in three days. And so we begin.
For our purposes today, we will leave Inanna at the first gate, all tarted up, about to pound on the door and demand admittance to her brother-in-law’s funeral as if everything were just fine, confident she can sane-wash everything that just happened.
Because descent is about a change in worldview, I want to stop and reflect on where we are now - who we are - so sure of ourselves, so confident we are right. What kind of people hear the cries of suffering and build a wall to keep refugees out even though our economy needs them? Don’t forget: this isn’t the first time. We were just as obdurate about Jews fleeing Hitler. How much of the cruelty of colonialism must be admitted to and felt? Is the wealth extraction of capitalism about to pay its debt to Nature or the generations of indigenous peoples, enslaved people, and other no-or-low-wage workers (like women relegated only to the production of the next generation of the labor force for hundreds of years)? For we are in a closed system. There is no over there - only here. There is no them - only us.
Even at my advanced age, secure in my privilege, where I feel I’ve earned (through decades of spiritual and psychological work) the right to withdraw into retirement and hum in my personal joy, a tingling tells me the descent has already begun, and will include me. I tremble because it’s always terrible. The ego has to die, yet it will do awful things to continue as though nothing has happened. That’s painful enough, but first, the ego must be mortified. That process doesn’t finish until you have completely lost control and must concede: I do not know what anything is for.
My friends, we could be headed for some dark days.
After that, perhaps we will rise from the dead, travel back through each gate, regain our powers, and use our newfound wisdom to make things right.
This is remarkable, convicting, and illuminating.