Goddesses of our day, Inanna.

Goddesses of our day, Inanna.

According to the myth, Inanna was the most beautiful queen of the sky among the ancient Sumerians, always dressed in the finest silks and wearing a crown of stars on her head. Inanna became obsessed with meeting with his twin sister Ereshkigal, lady of the underworld and to be able to meet her went down to their dark realms since according to this she Inanna, was also in love with her sister's husband.

For the long-awaited meeting, Inanna asked her maid Ninshubur to dress her in her best galas and her most beautiful jewels, and to take her place in her absence, when Inanna arrived in her sister's kingdom to be able to enter, she was asked to go through seven tests Or portals, and leave in each of them some of her clothes, she, the goddess of fertility and love, came naked in front of her fearsome sister.

In the first door was stripped of his radiant and beautiful crown of stars, in the second lost his beautiful lapis lazuli, in the third lost his double collar and in the fourth was his medallion, in the fifth took his bracelet in the sixth He lost his scepter to measure, And in the last his royal garments.

Ereshkigal beat his sister to death, wanted her to know what it is to feel rejected as she had been all her life, after killing her kept her body hanging from a hook, until Inanna came back to life, And so this Form could experience the mysteries of life, pain, and death.

Ninshubur, after three days of Inanna's absence. And after having turned to his grandfather and his father, he sought Enki, his other grandfather who mourned the death of his granddaughter, and asked for his help; To rescue, The corpse of his granddaughter Enki created two instinctive and asexual creatures a Kurgarra and a galatur, And sent them to appear before Ereshkigal and reclaim the corpse of his granddaughter, one of those creatures sprinkled on the body the water of life And the other poured over him fed life so that Inanna could thus resurrect, but before returning from the underworld, he must have sought someone to take his place. Refusing to sacrifice Ninshubur or any of her children, she chose not painlessly to turn over her own husband Dumuzi, who had earlier asked her to divorce her and whose attitude had somehow contributed to the heroine's journey into the underworld.

Geshtinanna, the sister of Dumusi, offered to share her fate by agreeing that each of them, spend half of the year in the underworld, so Dumusi could return to fertilize the land.

For the ancient Babylonians, Inanna, she was called by the name of Ishtar, venerated as the goddess of sex and passion and represented as a beautiful woman escorted by a pair of lions whose symbol was the star and its sacred number 15.

In Sumerian mythology, Inanna was the goddess of love, war, and protector of the city of Uruk. With the arrival of Akkadians, Inanna is syncretized with the goddess Ishtar. Its representation was a bundle of vertical reeds with the curved upper part.

Associated with the planet Venus, it is identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and with the Astarté Phoenician. Among the Akkadians was known as Ishtar. According to Sumerian mythology, she was the daughter of Nannar (Sin in Akkadian, moon god) and Ningal (the Great Lady, the moon) and twin sister of Utu, known in Akkadian as Shamash. His consort was Dumuzi (demigod and hero of Uruk). Ishtar or Inanna represents the archetype of the Mother Goddess.

It had 7 temples, to which another eight can be added, although the major one was in Uruk (Eanna, dedicated to her and Anu).

Uruk had its celebrations several of sexual and violent character. Fragments of the Babylonian poem are preserved to Erra, in which the attitude of a king of Uruk, who does not treat with sufficient kindness to the prostitutes and courtesans to the happy boys who changed their masculinity by Femininity as well as the carriers of daggers, knives, blades and flint, since these, by their acts, please the heart of Ishtar. It seems that the fact that the young people slept in their beds was a matter of concern and copulation in the streets was a common practice. The role of prostitution is unclear and its possible ritual function has been discussed.

Denigrated in the Old Testament as the great prostitute of Babylon, she was the goddess of the ancient sexual mystery who was worshiped as the source of all life and embodiment of the power of Nature.

"She is the giver of abundance, the judge, the legislator, the goddess of time, as well as love and war" Her name means giver of light and derives from her role as queen of heaven she is the planet Venus as the star of the morning and sunset and his belt is the wheel of the zodiac? Descended into the underworld and restored the god of vegetation Tammuz and reviving it, Restored fertility on earth she represents feminine creative and attitude of strength.

Inanna through her journey to the underworld takes us on a spiritual pilgrimage a descent to the caves of the subconscious where hidden that part, unknown to us, invites us to recognize that shadow that dark part of our soul, and teaches us that each Travel to that part brings us back to rebirth, always richer in wisdom and experiences, teaches us that many times we must get rid of the ego, to meet the mysteries of life and death.

Inanna's journey to the Hells

The myth of the descent of the goddess Inanna (in Sumerian) or Ishtar (in Akkadian) to Irkalla or Erkalla (the underworld), constitutes one of the main Mesopotamian literary cycles and is known under several names, emphasizing those of Inanna's trip to the Hells and Inanna's Travel to the Country without Return. There are different poems about this myth, the first of which appeared in Sumerian times, and also have found paleobabilónicos examples. The poems, except for one Akkadian dating to the fourteenth century a. C. is written in Sumerian.

In Mesopotamian tradition, autumn and winter are times when the earth regains its strength and purity as opposed to spring and summer, times of flowering and fertility. In Sumer, this epoch (autumn and winter) was used for the same religious purpose, to regain strength and improve internally. Irkalla (land of no return) is the place to which impurities, bad habits, memories that are lost and the dead go. Death is a state of purification and improvement that leads to a new life.

In that context tells the Sumerian mythology that Inanna decided to go down to the underworld to face her sister and opposite deity, Ereshkigal. In the struggle Inanna dies, after which no being on Earth had a desire to mate: neither man nor animal. Before this, Enki creates to creatures without genre that deceive to Ereshkigal obtaining to him the corpse of the Goddess to whom they apply the "water of the life". Thus Inanna revives but has to find a substitute that takes its place in the underworld. On returning to Earth he finds that Dumuzi has occupied his post, so it is he whom he sends to the underworld.1

As a result, Dumuzi reigns during the fall and winter, while Inanna during spring and summer.

The fragments of poems give rise to interpretations. The story tells the arrival to Erkalla of Inanna on the occasion of the death of her husband Dumuzi. However, the Acadia version suggests that Inanna, hating him, gave it to the demons. The poem counts also the assault to the hell, governed by Ereshkigal, of Nergal, aided by Ea, and ends with the marriage and reconciliation of both.