The Work America Must Do

Truth and Reconciliation Come After Rebirth

Original watercolor by Susan Kacvinsky

In ancient Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, descends through the seven gates to the underworld in an archetypal pattern of death and rebirth—a pattern I believe our culture is experiencing now. This is the 12th and final post about the archetype of death and resurrection, I believe we are currently experiencing in our culture. This post is the 12th and final essay of a multi-part series, though each part is a separate subject and stands alone. All previous posts are available at Modern Mythology.

Here’s the thing about the death and rebirth archetype: Once you’ve been dead, once the worst thing has happened, the underworld has marked you. No one returns from Hamlet’s “undiscovered country” unchanged. That’s important.

Most mythologists working with the Inanna myth stop at the resurrection, but that’s a mistake. People assume she rises back through the gates, regathers her symbols of power at each one, and then returns as she was before - only better.

The myth doesn’t say that. What actually happens is more instructive.

We will still be in the underworld when we finally arise from whatever death is coming for us. The Annuna, the underworld judges, bid us stop. There’s a balance between the worlds that must be maintained. If we leave the underworld, someone must take our place. Balance is exacting.

In other words: There must be consequences.

Bear in mind that these judges represent the generations of people who have suffered under a monotheistic, patriarchal capitalism whose prime directive from their god is: take dominion over the earth, her peoples, the animals of the land, and the fish of the sea. Absolutely fucking everything. How’d that turn out? Not so good.

That god. His arrogance is so great that he capitalized the word god and took it for his name to shove every other god into the underworld. He’s an angry, jealous god of war whose elevation to the only god has thrown the whole world out of balance. That god must bear consequences.

The privileging of perceived masculine traits over feminine ones, such as compassion and mercy, has pushed the divine feminine archetype to the underworld of the human psyche so far that most people now would tell you there is no such thing as a sacred feminine. They, like most of America, have been lied to. It was never inevitable that men be in charge.

The judges surround Inanna with demons, some smaller, some larger. One in front carries a scepter, though he “was not a minister,” and one behind carries a mace, though he “was no warrior.” So, there really is nothing new under the sun. People have been using false religion and creating scapegoat enemies to gain political power since ancient times. Hmmm. That sounds familiar.

Unlike modern senators and congresspeople, underworld demons are incorruptible. They don’t have children who can be sent pizza in the name of a judge’s murdered son.

The galla were demons who know no food, who know no drink.

Who eat no offerings, who drink no libations,

Who accept no gifts.

They enjoy no lovemaking,

They have no sweet children to kiss.

That’s the deal. Inanna must pick someone to take her place. She walks past three candidates; she tells the demons they must not take them, for they show the proper humility. Dressed in sackcloth and covered in dirt, they are actively grieving.

Given our current situation in the United States, if you are not grieving, you are probably gloating. Inanna is looking for that.

She finds it in her husband, Dumzi, sitting on a lavish throne, dressed in all his shiny accouterments of power, his “me.” Ironically, these mirror the ones Inanna lost in her descent. That’s right; the left's arrogance had to be shed first, and now the right will lose theirs. Dumzi is not grieving the loss of his wife, the divine feminine. He does not rise to celebrate her return because he is more concerned with losing power.

Inanna fastened on Dumuzi the eye of death.

She spoke against him the word of wrath.

She uttered against him the cry of guilt.

Ironically, again, she uses the exact words that Ereshkigal used against her when she was struck dead for her arrogance. The point here is balance.

Dumzi runs.

Here’s the myth's essential part for those about to die: There must be consequences when we blink back alive from the cultural death that is still hurtling toward us. How many times have we stood in a moment when there should have been consequences, and there were none? This cannot happen again.

Of course, the demons track the husband down. They’re demons - his demons.

They find him at his sister’s, and here’s the final twist we must all understand. She loves her brother as much as Pete Hegseth’s mother loves him: enough to change her story. She has compassion. Again, I ask: Who among us has not been lied to by arrogance?

Geshtianna, the sister, offers herself in his place. Her love for him moves Inanna. They make a deal. Dumuzi will spend half the year in the underworld, and his sister will spend the other half. But, Dumuze must go down first.

We must send our toxic, white supremacist, monotheistic, patriarchal, cruelly capitalist god to the underworld. He had his run at everyone else’s expense.

When asked how to put things back into balance, I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said:

“When I'm sometimes asked, 'When will there be enough women on the Supreme Court? ' and I say 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.”

Mythically speaking, this is what we must do. Nine women on the Supreme Court is the psychological equivalent of elevating the feminine culture-wide. Every justice, regardless of gender, should embody the qualities of the divine feminine. Everyone with political power should understand what it means to suffer. They should have served some time in the underworld. Every public servant should have Duende. Then, we will have balance.