Inanna's descent into the underworld and what it means for women
Why we must make the Journey Home.
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Maureen Murdock, the author of The Heroine’s Journey, wanted to understand how the model of “Hero’s Journey” related to women, in healing the inner split between them and their deeply inherent feminine nature.
She was a student of Joseph Campbell so she reached out to him in the year 1981, before writing her book. She narrates his response in the introduction of The Heroines’s Journey.
Campbell was of the view that “women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological tradition, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she is the place that people are trying to get to. When a woman realizes what her wonderful character is, she is not going to get messed up with the notion of being pseudo-male.”
Well, that just pissed me off and I can only imagine how Maureen felt when she heard those words. In her response, she wrote the book The Heroine’s Journey, which in my opinion is recommended reading for any woman on the quest to return to her true essence.
When I think back to my early days when I stood at the Zero Point of Journey Home to Self, I remember a constant feeling of dissatisfaction. It was like a piece of the puzzle from my life was missing. From the look of it, the picture looked complete. I had the career, the house, the husband, the kids, the success, the fame, the money.
But you know how sometimes when at the end of the day you pour yourself a glass of sparkling water (or wine, I don’t judge!), and then the million tasks and needs of your family take over, so you set the glass down on the counter only to forget all about it.
Then sometime during the next day, as you are walking around the kitchen wiping counters and picking off dirty dishes, you see that glass and you suddenly realize how parched you’ve been all day long so you pick the glass up even though it looks dirty, and you take a big gulp.
You immediately scrunch up your nose because this water tastes like warm piss. But, because this is the only glass in front of you and you feel guilty wasting the water, you keep drinking that awful bubble-less liquid.
{Yeah, I left a lot of juicy metaphors in there for you to ponder over}
I felt all those things. I felt as if the fizz had been taken out of my life and all I was left with was a dirty glass of tasteless liquid.
I know now from my research and from talking to other women, that I wasn’t alone in this feeling.
According to a recent study done by the American Psychological Association, women continue to report higher stress levels than men stating that “they’re stressed, misunderstood and alone.”
Particularly between the ages of 30-55, describe having feelings of discontentment and a lack of meaning and purpose in their life.
Many high-functioning, high-achieving women have successful careers and have checked all the boxes that society deems as “must have” by the time they turn a certain age. Kids, Spouse, Dog, a Mortgage, Car, and at least one designer bag. Yet, they look around their life and wonder “What’s all this for?”
In the quest to achieve societal success, many women realize that they are now exhausted, over-scheduled, and, dealing with many stress-related ailments, physical, emotional, and mental.
We wonder “How the hell did I get here?”
I believe we got here because the world was made for men. As little girls when we dreamt of big careers and adulthood, we didn’t add “physical, emotional damage to our body, mind, and soul” to the list.
The model for success or even a personal transformation journey (case in point “The Hero’s Journey”) did not take into account our feminine nature, which is deeply intuitive and cyclical.
We all suited up and started our quest on the Hero’s Journey, a model that ignored our nature, our essence, and frankly our existence. We merely were a destination on the model. A touch point. A thing to grab, own, tame, and control.
I am not okay with that! I am not a destination, I am not someone to be controlled or tamed or dressed up and paraded around parties. And if you’re still here, I believe you are not okay with it either.
2 years ago when I started talking about the 4 Initiatory paths on Journey Home to Self, I was met with pin-drop silence from the women around me. Perhaps I wasn’t saying it the right way or the women around me were all so high on the the patriarchal drug of success (just like I was at one time) that they didn’t think that they needed to take the Journey Home to Self.
I knew from my experience that the portal to these 4 Initiations opens up with Crisis. That had been my experience after going through a complete breakdown. I wanted to see if we could avoid this Crisis, and happily trot around our life without ruffling any feathers and still become the women that we came here to be.
But as I continued to be met with trepidation or avoidance, I began to doubt the wisdom of my experience. My journey felt lonely and ordinary. I asked myself repeatedly “Why? Why do women need to take the Journey Home to Self?”
I found my answer within the wisdom of mythology of “Inanna’s descent into the underworld.”
As with any Mythology, there are several versions of this story. The one I share here is perhaps the most pertinent to the Journey we must take as women to come back to our true essence.
Queen Inanna, the Mesopotamian Goddess of light, was a strong, successful, powerful woman, well respected and adored in her community. She lived a life of comfort and luxury, certain of her place in the world, until one day, she heard a whisper calling her to the Underworld.
This call came out of nowhere and even though it caught her attention and mystified her, she ignored it.
The Underworld is ruled by her sister, Ereshkigal. Unlike Innana, Ereshkigal is the Queen of Darkness and Shadows. She rules the dead and all that lies in the shadows. Naturally, this was a place of uncertainty and fear so Queen Inanna had no plans to set foot in that dark tomb-like place.
The “whispers” Inanna heard are very similar to the SOS signals from our Soul/Higher Self. Discontentment, a feeling of “what am I missing”, or ““Well, I don’t feel bad but I don’t feel good either” are the check engine lights we most often ignore.
And then as it happens in our lives, a crisis blasts the door to the underworld open. In Inanna’s case, it was the death of her sister’s husband, God Nergal. Inanna decided to travel to the underworld to pay her last respects.
Inanna adorns herself in her finest, her royal crown and necklace, bracelets, golden rings, a breastplate for armor, and a thick, royal cloak.
As Inanna begins her journey, there are 7 gates she must pass to gain access to Ereshkigal’s palace. These 7 gates have been closed and bolted on the orders of Queen of the Underworld and Inanna’s nemesis, Ereshkigal.
As Inanna passes Gate 1 to 5, the gatekeeper asks her “Who are you and why have you come?”
She replies “My name is Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Please let me in. I have come to see what I have not yet seen, to experience what I’ve not yet experienced, and to learn what do not yet know.”
At every gate, she is asked to relinquish an item she has on her.
Gate 1, she has to give up her crown, a symbol of her power and influence.
Gate 2, she has to give up her bracelet
Gate 3, she has to give up her necklace
So and so forth.
As she passes these gates, she realizes that she is being made to give up all her adornments and items that made up her “identity”. This shedding leaves her vulnerable.
When she approaches Gate 6, she is asked again “who are you and why have you come?”
This time, Queen Inanna says “My name is Inanna. And… I hardly remember what I came here for…”
Without being asked, her breastplate is taken from her. Now her heart is exposed, and she is at her most vulnerable without it. She wonders if it is worth continuing on this insane journey. As she looks back, she realizes that the path she has taken to reach this far has disappeared. She has no choice but to continue forward.
Eventually and after much difficulty, Inanna reaches the 7th and the final gate. The journey has been hard. She is muddy and bruised. Her cloak is torn in several places.
She taps on the gate gently, “Hello? I am here… and… that is all.”
At the 7th gate, she is asked to hand in her final piece of clothing, her cloak, without which she is naked and completely vulnerable.
This is not the end of Inanna’s struggle. In the story, she has to die completely and stay in the liminal space for 3 days after which she is brought back from the dead and given a Re-birth.
But let’s talk more about the 7 Gates. Just like Inanna has to pass through these gates and shed a piece of adornment that was vital to her identity at the beginning of her Journey, we must also shed the layers of societal and cultural conditioning that have held us back from discovering our most authentic selves. Our true essence only comes forth and shines when it is devoid of any ego-based identity and patriarchal conditioning.
In my experience, as we pass the Four-Stage Initiatory Path on the Journey Home to Self (Water, Air, Fire, and Earth), 7 layers of social and cultural conditioning must be peeled away from us.
These are:
Unworthiness
People Pleasing
Perfectionism
Shame
Guilt
Rage
Any or all Ego-Based Identities (Unhealthy attachment to Success, Fame, Money, or any other social construct that we use to “prove our worth”, “belong” or “fit in”)
None of these 7 are good or bad, they are either expressed in light form (as an expression of Inanna) or shadow form (as an expression of Ereshkigal).
For example; Rage isn’t bad. Our rage serves a purpose. When suppressed, our Rage can turn into a physical as well as emotional imbalance or dis-ease.
But when expressed via Writing, Art, Dance, Yoga, Shaking, Breathwork, Tears, and Safe Sacred Spaces, it can be alchemized into pure power.
The Descent of Inanna shows us that an aspect of us has to die for us to be reborn again. Women have their work cut out for themselves. We cannot reach our full potential and reconnect with our deeply intuitive nature which is our true essence, unless, we peel away the layers and generations of social conditioning.
According to World History Encyclopedia “Inanna in this piece, so the interpretation goes, is not a`whole person' until she appears vulnerable before her`darker half', dies, and returns to life. At the poem's end, this interpretation asserts, Inanna, through her descent into darkness, the shedding of the trappings of her former self, confrontation with her`shadow', death of who she was, and final re-birth, is now a complete individual, wholly aware.”
I would like to add to this that she is now fully aware of her innate power and her potential. Her beauty radiates from within. She is Complete, Whole, and fully merged with her true essence, her higher self.
I think back to the initial years of journaling page after page on Journey Home to Self, asking myself again and again; Why??? Why do we (women) need to take this Journey Home?
I am now reminded of a line from my favorite protagonist of this year, Daisy Jones from the show Daisy Jones & The Six that explains this beautifully and perhaps would have been a perfect response to Campbell.
In the show (and the book), Daisy’s date steals her line stating that “he will use it someday in his work and that she (Daisy) is his muse.”
Daisy storms off, screaming,
“I have absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”
End of fucking story.
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Thanks so much!
With much love,
Deepshikha