Why did the Queen of Heaven Risk Everything and Descend into the Underworld?

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Inanna, queen of heaven, who descended into the underworld. It is among the oldest stories of the mythology of the world, but also one of the most significant. James Bleckley of the Oldest Stories Podcast sits down with Nathaniel Heutmaker of the Grail Sciences Podcast to discuss this ancient tale from both an historical and an occult perspective. 

The Grail Sciences Podcast covers the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail and a variety of occult topics. Nathaniel is deeply read in a variety of world traditions, and expertly weaves it all together over at grailsciences.com/

The Oldest Stories Podcast covers the history, myth, and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, from the invention of writing until the fall of Nabonidas. James has been filling out the story of the oldest civilization for over 6 years at oldeststories.net

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
It might make most sense in that case to start with
Inanna seducing Enki.
And then that sort of createsthe foundation for who she is as
a character, as a person.
She's just obsessed with gettingmore power.

(00:20):
And then that leads quitenaturally, I think, into her
descent into the nether world.
I've pulled up one of the ETCSLone where it just opens up from
the great heaven.
She set her mind on the greatbelow.
And it's like, oh yeah, shewants this.

(00:41):
She just wants more stuff.
I know ladies like that.
And that's the idea.
She's that kind of lady.
And just writ large up in theheavens.
And yeah.
I think that'd be a good, a goodoutline, generally speaking.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
Yeah, that sounds fine with me and whatnot.
You know, we could also talk uhbriefly, I guess, about like her
fault centers and like how likethat kind of stuff and how she
spread.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13):
Yeah, I'll be I'll be honest with you.
I don't really understand whyshe was so popular, which is
sort of it's like I get why in asense I understand.
Oh, yeah, she's a reallycompelling character, and she
fits an archetypal role that'svery it's universally

(01:36):
recognizable.
Of course, she's spread out along way, but it's like Enki is
also really interesting.
Why doesn't he spread out allover the place the way Ishtar
does?
And I a part of me really doeschalk it down to the cultic

(01:58):
prostitution practices and thefact that Ishtar's hot.
I really, I really think thatit's not very highfalutin
psycho-mythic, but I reallythink part of it comes down to
Ishtar's hot, it's why she goeseverywhere.
And Enki, he's cool, but youknow, it's not the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 (02:25):
Well, one could also make the case for it to a
certain extent that it she alsoplays the role of like the
divine priestess that goes intostuff with it and making it so
that way it anoints the variousdifferent priest kings, uh
city-state kings and whatnotthat come out of it.

(02:45):
And and and and and so if the ifthey're looking for a ritual
that can validate them as I'mthe worthy one for what it is,
you can't really get that fromEnki, let's say, anywhere near
as easily as you can from fromher, because you have the you
know that's that's part of thewhole all the shepherd kings
being moved, the human beingbeing moved up into a divine

(03:08):
level of status, and that kindof thing with it too, and a
justification for that in insome sense or another.
I'm not saying that that is thekey moment, but I'm also saying
that partly if you're looking atit from not just a popular
perspective, like you're talkingabout, but also from a
political, like you know,achievement perspective and

(03:30):
maintaining and gaining powerfrom it and whatnot, it might be
well, hey, we can adopt this forour own purposes.
You get where I'm coming from.

SPEAKER_00 (03:40):
So no, that makes sense because the other the
other primary god kings who arewho come basically after Ishtar
is no longer the primary queenof heaven in quite the same way.
You get Enlil, Marduk, andAsher, and each of them is very

(04:00):
heavily tied to a particularplace, whereas Ishtar franchises
like McDonald's, she'severywhere.
Like McDonald's is American forsure, and Ishtar is from Uruk
for sure, right?
But but you get you know, I'vehad McDonald's in in Thailand,

(04:22):
I've had McDonald's in Korea,went to McDonald's in Cyprus,
and it's McDonald's.
And when if what you need is ifwhat you need is a Queen of
Heaven, you go to the Queen ofHeaven franchise.

SPEAKER_01 (04:38):
So in my opinion, that this partly has to do with
a a concept in terms of her rolethere, of the Earth Mother motif
that's going on there.
And using that from I'll use theIndo-European one as an example
because it's the easiest one tokind of pull from, you know,
that you know, it's it's a wayof making it so we that you the

(05:01):
king has power and and whatnot,and he has a divine right to
rule, and it's kind ofSumerian's variant of of that,
is is what it is.
And and I'm not saying thatthey're exactly the same because
they're not, they have their ownvariant.
I'm just saying that, like, interms of a simplification of
that, that I think that's whyshe spread.
And if you take it her like as acomponent of she represents the

(05:29):
land in a way as well, becauseeven though she's the queen of
heaven, she's also the queen ofearth, right?
So when you have that part of itgoing on there, to me, I think
that's a big part of what'shappening here, that there's a
there's the divine marriage toher specifically, which you
can't get from somebody elsefrom it.

(05:51):
And since she's the only femalefigure that fits that role in
the Sumerian, you know,pantheon, it makes it so that
way it's she's the one.
If you're going to go thatroute, if that's going to be
what spreads out, that that'sthe only one that can spread
out, too.
So I think it's all this I thinkso.

(06:12):
I think it's also the popularityof what you're talking about
right here.
That's just that's just thelayman's aversion of stuff with
that.
But I also think the priestclass and the political class
and whatnot, they're like,Great, if this is working with
the people too, we can use thatto spread out further.
You get where I'm coming from?

SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
So oh yeah.
No, you definitely get thatSargon of a Cad was a huge force
in spreading, in spreading, inspreading Ishtar worship all
over the place.
And yeah, that's some that'shonestly sitting down and really

(06:50):
studying in Hedwana's.
That's Sargon of Akkad'sdaughter was in Hedwana, and she
wrote some of the most importantIshtar hymns.
Yeah, no, Ishtar as Earth Motheris definitely because I can see
it from a Queen of Heavenstandpoint, but like I have in

(07:15):
my head like Earth Mother as asort of motherly figure, but
Ishtar's a very different takeon it.
But I mean it can still fit inthe category, it's just uniquely
interesting.
Like in Greek in the Greekpantheon, they would they would

(07:37):
have taken Ishtar on not as anearth mother, they would have
taken her on as Venus, ofcourse.
Not that's Roman, of course.

SPEAKER_01 (07:50):
Yeah, yeah, I get you.

SPEAKER_00 (07:52):
Yeah, yeah.
They they would have taken heron as as a as as the passionate
love goddess side, and theywould have had their own earth
mother because she in a Greeksense, she doesn't they've
already got their own earthmother done.
Look at it, is a lot morebenevolent and gentle than
Ishtar.

(08:12):
But interestingly, of course,with the descent, it is a you've
got Demeter, and of course, Idon't remember any of the Greek
names today, or for whateverreason.

SPEAKER_01 (08:25):
Yeah, but I mean you've got with the descent,
you've got yeah, you've gotDemeter, the the grain goddess,
Persephone and then Cora, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (08:36):
Yeah, and it uh it fits the dying and re rising
motif better from the Greekangle, but then if Ishtar is the
earth mother for the Sumerians,man, she's a crazy mother.

(08:57):
She's like she's like thosepeople that have have crazy
mothers.

SPEAKER_01 (09:01):
Well, she doesn't necessarily there were other
ones that were beforehand thatfit that role much better, like
ninja and that kind of stuff.
But what I'm saying is that ifyou're looking at it from the
political side of things andusing that as your tool for
what's going on in order tofulfill that enrollment of the
divine kingship, let's say, youknow, as universe is like a

(09:23):
priest king for a city-state orwhatever it is, that's you're
playing that role.
There's only one that can fitthat role for what it is.
And I think that's how shebecame more prominent.
And then going with the notionof her, you know, descent and
then you know, type ofresurrection that comes out of
that with it, too.
Plus, what you were talkingabout with, you know, it fitting

(09:44):
with the seductive nature ofthat, it made it so that way it
fit what the general populacewould accept that also the
priest class and the politicalclass could accept and go and
use to maintain their power.
And I think that's that's whathappened here.
I don't she's not the originalone that occurred there.

(10:07):
I think that's how shesupplanted that, so to speak,
and kind of became became thatin the end.
That's my take on it.
I don't know if that'sdefinitively true or not.
I don't even know if you canprove that or not with it, but
all I see is that I see thatthere's the trajectory that's at
least a plausible hypothesisthat goes on there with it.

(10:30):
That that's all I'm trying to uhuh state there, let's say, and
and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 (10:34):
Yeah, no, that's it's definitely reasonable.
And I mean, some of the spreadcomes along with Sargon, but a
lot of the spread happened inthe pre-literate period, during
the Uruk period, as because Urukwas the or seems to have been

(10:57):
the center point for a lot ofthe colonial foundation, like
the the city of Asher, foundedby Sumerian colonists during the
Uruk period.
Possibly, depending on how youread the story of Enmercar,
there were possibly even uhSumerian colonies sent out to

(11:21):
Afghanistan for the tin minesover there, and that could be
related to Enricar.

SPEAKER_01 (11:27):
I would say that there would at least be that way
for trading posts, if if nothingelse.

SPEAKER_00 (11:33):
Yeah.
So I guess you've got two coreperiods when the Ishtar cult
would have spread, and in bothtimes you do have that
political, that political sideof it working for you.

SPEAKER_01 (11:50):
So that's it fits her character as well.
She herself originally islooking for more political power
in a way.
I mean, it's not that way from adivine, it's a divine political
power, if you will, rather thana human one, but the gods are
examples for how human beingsare supposed to behave for
whatever culture that they're apart of and whatnot.

(12:10):
So I think that's just how theywere like, yeah, we can totally
use this for what's going onthere.
I'm gonna pull from anothertradition to help showcase and
illustrate this a little bit,kind of another theme here that
I think that's playing out withit because it's um pretty
straightforward as high andcompared to other traditions.
And I'm not saying this iswhat's happening here, but I see

(12:34):
a potential parallel, let's say,for what's going on there.
And I do know it happens in alot of other traditions
throughout the world.
And if you if you take thenotion of when civilization
began, but not before there waslike stateless areas and
whatnot, like actual city-statesbeing built, and we're staying
in one location and we're notlike semi-nomadic or whatever,

(12:54):
or pastoral herders or that kindof thing, like actual
city-states being built.
From that point forward, youalso get to where you need to
defend that territory fromoutside areas and whatnot.
And what you see is that youhave this warrior class that
typically has to play that roleof defense of some sort for

(13:15):
what's going on, and thatthey're the they're the ones
you're seeing first, and theseare always men.
And then you have well, almostalways men.
Then what you have is that youhave the hitter hidden hidden
aspect and the inner aspect ofthings with it, which is the
women, then they're hidden away,and the same thing with the
children and that kind of stuff,and they're not at the
outskirts, and they play asimilar role in that regard for

(13:38):
that.
So, like in the Nordictradition, which regardless of
whether it's the Bronze Age allthe way up to the Viking Age and
whatnot, you can see that insome of the stories or in some
of the artwork for what's goingon, that the masculine is always
like they're gods or whatever itis, the masculine components of
other entities, so like the maleelves and that kind of stuff,

(14:00):
they're always easy, they'realways straightforward, they're
always upfront, they're alwaysright there that you can see
because it fits what washappening with what their
society would know andunderstand deeply.
Whereas the more femininecharacters, the more feminine
entities that are going on,they're not just gods or
goddesses, but other things thatare that way in the Nordic
tradition, they're more blurred,and it's harder to tell what

(14:22):
exactly they are and how theyplay out with it.
And so, you know, if you takethat with like the bicameral
brain idea, where you have oneside that's more analytical and
like wanting to piece parsethings out and put things in the
boxes and label everything, andthe other side is more of a
generative, intuitive, wild,harder to understand where

(14:43):
things come from, the insightfulaspect of things.
It's just that same parallelthat's playing out here for
things with it.
And if you see that with Inana,she was obviously a feminine
figure, she's representing thatfeminine energy, that feminine
stuff that's going on with it.
Obviously, she has masculinecomponents as well because she

(15:04):
has a warrior in some sort as aswell.
I'm not saying that she's fullyone way or the other for what's
going on there, but that makesit so that way in the case of
that, it also goes back to okay,I'm it's kind of like marrying
of the soul of the land ideaagain, the heart, the part you
can't see, but you want onebecause it's a warrior time
period, you want a land that candefend itself to a certain

(15:27):
extent, too, hence her warrioraspects.
Now, is that the truth of thematter?
I don't know.
I'm just saying I see parallels,is what I'm trying to see, say
with it from other traditions.
And I think that there's atleast a semblance of truth, a
kernel, if you will, andwhatnot, and that has its own
Sumerian variant or Babylonianvariant and whatnot that pops up

(15:49):
in various different timeperiods.

SPEAKER_00 (15:50):
So yeah, no, there's definitely a period of
masculinization of all theSumerian pantheon as the
Akkadians come in, and ofcourse, there's there's a period
in time around Sargon of Akkad,around the Akkadian Empire,

(16:14):
where Ishtar actually startsgetting referred to with
masculine pronouns from time totime, and she does not end up
becoming male, but a number of anumber of Sumerian gods do get
replaced by male equivalentsduring that period and over the

(16:35):
centuries after that.
But uh, and so while Ishtar doestake on some masculine elements,
she never gets fully genderswapped because she is so
essentially feminine in a waythat there is no male equivalent
to a lot of her tropes.

SPEAKER_01 (16:55):
Hence why I'm saying that I think it fits pretty darn
well with the stuff that I wassetting forth that like it
historically it also fits theevidence.
Does it does it prove that it'strue?
No, but it does prove that thehypothesis is not completely
nonsensical.

SPEAKER_00 (17:12):
So yeah, no, that's I think something like that was
probably in somebody's mind5,000 years ago.
Right.
But whose mind, who knows?

SPEAKER_01 (17:26):
Who the heck knows, man?
Some of these people you knowthey don't even write who they
are when they write this stuff,or they use a, you know, they
use a fake name, you know,sometimes too, even.
So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (17:37):
Well, I mean, the ancient writers would almost
never put their name and claimauthorship.
You can get the names ofcopyists, but the scribe.
Yeah.
Even a copyist who was, or evena scribe who was writing
something new would claim thathe was just copying it.

(18:00):
My favorite one is oh I can'tremember one of the theodices,
one of the great theodices ofMesopotamia.
It ends with this, it's clearlya very composed piece, but it
ends with, I am the scribe, soand so, and I didn't write any

(18:24):
of this, it all came to me in adream from the gods.
Because he's like, I can't, hecan if you just make something
up, well, that's not credible,but if you're copying something
from the ultimate source ofknowledge, and they really did
believe that there was anultimate source of knowledge, of

(18:47):
ideas, of all things.
Yeah, and that actually, Ididn't intend it to segue, but
it segues quite nicely into Enkiand Inanna.

SPEAKER_01 (18:58):
Well, we can just go from there if you want, and I
feel like we've shouldered in alittle bit of her back enough,
you know, people have some ideaof who she is and what she
represents.

SPEAKER_00 (19:07):
So yeah, so Enki, before we get into Inanna, he is
God of the waters, he is god ofmagic, and those two are in a
sense the same thing.
In the cosmology of the ancientMesopotamians, the origin of the

(19:28):
world was water, just like inthe biblical Genesis, and the
every and all the continentsfloated on a giant ocean.
And they thought if you dug farenough down, you would get to
the giant ocean at some point.
And so Enki is sort of thatfundamental source.

(19:53):
He's the source of all magic,he's the source of knowledge, he
gets equated to Thoth inEgyptian pantheons because of
this sometimes.
Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 (20:05):
I would put his Enki's son as the one that would
be anyway.
Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 (20:09):
Oh, yeah, no, uh, for the writing thing, yeah.
But as the uh in his aspect asgod of magic, and he is, of
course, the creator of humanitybecause he fashions all the
people out there.

SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Uh Ninhursog are the two main ones, and then his son
also helps up in certain storiesa little bit, so yeah, and there
is there are fragments of atradition where he may have been
a creator god in some like auniversal creator god in some
tradition fragments.

SPEAKER_00 (20:45):
So that gets us to Inanna.
There was a time in Mesopotamianmyth history, it's like the time
of the gods when all the mythshappened, when all the you know
the divine myths.
So we're in this era where Iguess humanity does exist

(21:07):
because there are cities andtemples, but it's still very
early in primeval time.
And Enki lives in his city ofEridu.
And of course, Eridu has a goodclaim to be one of the oldest
cities in the world.
They, the Mesopotamians thoughtit was the oldest city in the

(21:29):
world, which is why, of course,it's the seat of this
foundational god.
And Inanna is born into thisdivine society, and she doesn't
really have a purpose.
Like she is an Anunnaki, whichis a son, not a son, a uh child
of on, like a direct descendantof the great god Ahn.

(21:53):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (21:54):
And therefore, those are those that are gonna be
watching later on this.
Aan is the great granddaddy, ifyou will, of all that, and he's
the sky father, the heavenlyfather type notion of things,
with it very briefly about him.
Please continue.

SPEAKER_00 (22:08):
Yeah.
So the on and the the childrenof Aan are sort of the great
gods of the Mesopotamianpantheon.
There's also a class of Igigiwho are like the lower gods,
sort of more like your yourriver spirits and your mountain
spirits, things like that.
And she's a great god, but shedoesn't really have anything

(22:32):
going for her.
She doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_01 (22:34):
As the ancients would say, she doesn't have a
destiny, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 (22:37):
Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly what it is.
And so she she wants to becomegreater.
Like at this point, her primarycharacter motivation is
ambition, as far as I can tell.

(22:57):
She's basically like a ball ofwanting stuff, and so she
obviously she wants power inorder to get more things.
Not just, I mean, she wantspower for power's sake, I think,
but she also wants all thethings that go along with it.
But you can't have anything ifyou don't have power, and the

(23:20):
Sumerians were very pragmaticpeople, they would have
recognized if you don't have theability to get what you want,
then you just yeah, you're justout of luck.
And so Inanna did not want to beout of luck, so she is like, I
want power.

(23:41):
Where do I go?
You go to that source, and herjourney to Uruk isn't very well
described, or I mean her journeyfrom Uruk, which is her city, to
Eridu, which is Enki, which isEnki's much older city.
It's not like described in muchdetail, but it has the feeling

(24:04):
of going to the source.
Sort of like traveling throughbackwards through time.
Uruk's a younger city, Eridu,Eridu is an older city, Enki's
an older god, Anana's a youngergoddess.
And so she's going back to thissource, and she's meeting with

(24:27):
uh Enki, who's the embodiment ofknowledge, wisdom, magic, sort
of the primeval source of allthings, which is a good place to
go if you want to get stuff.

SPEAKER_01 (24:42):
Uh and uh and also the in the case of for the
people for humanity, the creatorof them, at least one of the
prime cremators of them.

SPEAKER_00 (24:52):
Yeah.
And so she goes up and she meetswith Enki, and she wants his
power, and he's not gonna justbe like, hey, here, have some
power.
He's not quite that benevolent.
He does sometimes give thingsaway, but not to not to Inanna,

(25:13):
not in this story.
And so Inanna is up, goes up tohim, hey, can I have some power?
And he's like, Nah, not really.
And he's and she's like, Well,let's get drunk.
And this is where Inanna beingvery attractive is a core part
of her personality.

(25:34):
At one point, I'm not quite surewhich story, I'm not quite sure
if it was this story or adifferent one, but Inanna goes
to her father on, and her fatheron is and he and she's
complaining, why didn't you giveme more power and stuff?
And An's like, hey, I made youreal sexy.

(25:55):
What more do you want?
And so she uses her body toseduce Enki, gets him super
drunk, they party, and as he'sfalling asleep, she steals the
meh.
And I don't know that anybodyknows quite what the reading of

(26:17):
the word is, but yeah, we wewrite it M E.
It's got a cuneiform sign, ofcourse.

SPEAKER_01 (26:25):
And the these mez are I don't think of destiny
almost.
Yeah, no, they are they'rerelated to the tablets of
destiny, but I don't think wehave a concept for no, we don't
have something that's a directuh cognate to it or direct

(26:45):
parallel or whatever that youcan do in it in terms of just a
small phrase, it's not a thing.

SPEAKER_00 (26:52):
I mean, we can describe it, of course, but
yeah, and the closest that I'veever come to is you know, when
you're playing like the videogame civilization and you
research a technology in thetechnology tree, and that
technology gives you theability.

SPEAKER_01 (27:08):
Now you can produce archers, you can build certain
buildings, and these metersystem or pottery or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 (27:16):
Yeah, yeah, and these met are kind of like that.
It's it gives you it's one oneis the met of literacy, there's
one that's beer brewing, there'sone that's bread making, there's
one that's blueprints almost.
Yeah, but then there's like alsoblueprints of abstract things,
like more.

(27:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (27:37):
It's not just it's not just physical, it's just
blueprints in general foranything.

SPEAKER_00 (27:41):
Yeah.
And and also blueprints ofmagical things as well.
So she she just grabs them all.
It's not clear that they don'tseem to be physical things, they
seem to be ineffable, but beingdivine, she just like absorbs
these powers.
And then she runs.

(28:02):
And of course, she gets chased.
She has a head start becauseEnki was, you know, drunk, but
he gets woken up and there's abig chase, and it's very
exciting.
But I think the chase doesn'treally matter.
I think that's just to keep thekids engaged in the in the

(28:23):
excitement of the story.
And but then she makes it toUruk, she's got all these
powers, and then boom, she isestablished as the Queen of
Heaven, having taken, in asense, kingship from Enki.
And at the same time, Eridu hasbeen supplanted by the city of

(28:44):
Uruk.
And this is metaphorically thestart of the Uruk period in
history.
It's also, of course, the startof Inanna being queen of the
gods and her time to just befantastic.

(29:07):
And so that is the that's thelegend of how she gets started.
And then most of the things thatwe're talking about.

(29:51):
And there's there's alsosomething to the the like the uh
Prometheus stealing fire fromthe gods sort of thing.
The The Enki way of doing thingswas always heavily related to
the priests.
Enki whispered secret.
If you look at the the Sumeriankings list, it's got those

(30:14):
ancient mythical kings.

SPEAKER_01 (30:16):
And Enki for a hundred thousand years or
something.

SPEAKER_00 (30:23):
Oh, longer than that, some of them.
Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_01 (30:25):
I'm just saying, like it's something that no
mortal could possibly even beginto do.

SPEAKER_00 (30:29):
Oh, yeah.
And that's because Enki waswhispering magical secrets in
their ears.
Enki is very much an occult godof magical secrets and things
like that.
And when Inanna steals the powerfrom Enki, she is in a sense

(30:54):
democratizing the mes ofcivilization.
She's democratizing, she'smaking it available to uh
non-priestly people, things likewriting, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 (31:15):
If that actually made it so that way other people
besides just this elite class,let's say, got to have that,
which we know to a certainextent that that actually opened
up uh and during this era too.

SPEAKER_00 (31:26):
Yeah.
And what we see in Sumer is inthe old days, the kings of a
city-state were Ensi, which isessentially a priest king.
Whereas after the Uruk period,what you start to see more and
more are Lugal, which literallymeans strong man as the king.

(31:48):
The word for king changes from apriestly title to just a strong
man.
And you see some of thattransition in Gilgamesh himself,
who is just the embodiment of astrong man, who in a sense
rejects some of what the godswould would offer other kings.

(32:13):
Yeah.
And he just tries to make hisown way by his own strength.
And you see it ebb and flowthroughout the early dynastic
period of Sumerian history,where sometimes the cities will
be dominated by priest kings,sometimes by these strong men.

(32:34):
And then the greatest of thestrong men was Sargon the Great.
And after that point, you don'treally get, except for like one
or two occasional instances, youdon't really get priest kings
anymore in Mesopotamia.
And that stealing the Mez fromEnki and giving and having

(32:59):
Ishtar receive them.
And then of course, being awoman, she can't hold on to them
in her own right.
She needs to share them with aman because women can't rule,
obviously.
But even as a goddess, there'san element of incompleteness to

(33:21):
the feminine in the Mesopotamianmindset.
Like these are people who went3,000 years without a single
confirmed ruling queen.
So they're not they're notfeminists, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 (33:39):
No.
No, not in terms of any of thepolitical side of things with
it.
But they also, the women, atleast, you know, in certain
regards, had better stuff goingfor them than other parts of the
world during that same timeperiod.
We're talking specifically forsure onward, where they were

(33:59):
allowed to get an education andthat kind of things, with the
which other like like when we'retalking education here, we are
talking about for you knowmaking it so they can read and
write and these other things forit, whereas you know that isn't
the case with othercivilizations that are of the
same time period.
So it's not to say that theywere completely against women

(34:21):
either, just to be clear on thatfront with that they were they
were more sympathetic in thatregard than say other ones where
they just didn't give a damn atall.

SPEAKER_00 (34:31):
Yeah, no, there is a spectrum of being not a feminist
for sure.
Yes.
But so the legend goes thethere's of course there's no
single coherent mythic cycle forInanna or Ishtar because of

(34:55):
course she was so prominent forthousands of years across such a
wide geographical area that it'simpossible to have one mythic
cycle because it's not even thesame people anymore.
Yeah.
But what you do get is everysingle is that true?

(35:16):
I think it might be true.
Every single Inanna story mightbe about her desiring more power
in some way.
Sometimes it's not like powerexplicitly, sometimes it's more
like respect.
There's one story where shefalls asleep under a real nice

(35:40):
tree and gets assaulted, andthen she spends a very long time
just hunting down the guy whoassaulted her and giving him a
very bad time of it.
And that's sort of and there's ashe feels very much like she's
lost something in beingassaulted and desires to get

(36:05):
that back.
I mean, I in a sense, you couldsay pretty much every story is
the hero desiring something.
There's very few stories thatvery few things happen without
someone desiring something.
But maybe that's just why she'sso fundamental.

SPEAKER_01 (36:25):
And that's that's probably part of it too.
And in the case of the story youwere talking about where she's
assaulted, of course, to methat's a very different type of
power that she's seeking out,though, than than than like the
political one or whatever.
And and in that one, I wouldclassify it as uh just a general
human desire to want to takeback that their own sovereignty
within themselves and being ableto choose and whatnot, which is

(36:47):
not the same thing as I want togain more over other people, you
know.

SPEAKER_00 (36:52):
So yeah, but I mean I mean, that's her desire for
power is not just a politicaldesire.
It is much deeper than that.

SPEAKER_01 (37:01):
And it's much more myriad than that.
That one I think is like it'snot necessarily the same
category as all as as the otherones.
So I I don't know.
That one we could you could saymaybe is part of the same ones
as wanting to gain power in somesort or whatever, but it could
also be its own separate one.
And I I agree with that.
You're like maybe for that one.

(37:22):
I like your analysis of like howwell, maybe, maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 (37:26):
Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 (37:27):
I think you set aside that one, they're all
about her trying to gainsomething, though, that wasn't
originally hers, per se, becausethat whatever it was that
happened then was originallyhers, and then it was taken
away, you know, like her senseof self and dignity there.

SPEAKER_00 (37:42):
So yeah, and then what at one point there's a a
mountain that does not bow downfor her, and show so she goes
because the mountain is tootall, so she goes to war with
the mountain for being too tall,and eventually she uh flattens
the mountain.
I mean, that's desiring dignityor honor or something like that,

(38:05):
and I think would be thatreverence, yeah.
There we go.
And so the ultimate culminationof all of her desire for power
is the descent to the underworldbecause she is hanging out one
day, and it doesn't the versionI'm usually work off of, which I

(38:31):
don't know where I've just putit.
There we go, doesn't reallystart with a motivation.
It the version, and I mean,there of course would be been
many versions.
I as far as I know, there'sthree primary texts of the
descent to the underworld invarious degrees of

(38:52):
fragmentation.

SPEAKER_01 (38:54):
Yes, yes, unfortunately, but the we do not
have a complete story of herdescent into the underworld for
anybody that's gonna be watchingthis part of stuff in the
future, which just doesn'texist.
We only have fragmented versionsof it, and one of them is
Akkadian on there, which has alittle later time period.

(39:15):
One of them, and I think theother two are Sumerian, if
memory serves me correctly.
I know at least one of them isSumerian, though.

SPEAKER_00 (39:21):
Yeah, the the good Sumerian one that I like, it
just begins with Ishtar orInanna is up in the heavens, and
she decides to take over theunderworld just just because.
And the most interesting partabout how it begins, though, is

(39:51):
that this is that she's acharacter fundamentally driven
by a desire for more, a anambition, a a push to obtain
more things.
But as soon as she sets her mindon the underworld in the story,

(40:16):
before she does anything else,she abandons everything she has
in this world.
And it goes through a big oldlist.
She abandons all of her offices.
She was apparently a priest, andshe abandons her priesthood.
She abandons all these varioustemples that she's got in all

(40:38):
these cities.
Of course, A Anna is her, is oneof her big temples in Uruk.
And it just lists, she's got atemple in Kish, she's got Ur,
Uma, she's got a temple inAkkad, Bad Tibira in Adab, in
Nippur, in Shurapag.

(41:00):
These are all huge temples inhuge cities.
Well, I mean huge temples.

SPEAKER_01 (41:06):
For the era, for the era, for the era.

SPEAKER_00 (41:07):
Yeah, for the era.
And she is abandoning all ofthese things even before she
begins passing through thegates.
Just as soon as she wants totake over the underworld, she
gives up.
This is basically all of herworldly possessions.
And it's like what is it aboutbeing ambitious and wanting to

(41:35):
conquer this new thing thatallows you to abandon the old
thing?
Is it about wanting the newthing so much you give up the
old thing?
Or is it something more like youwant the underworld and you
cannot have the underworldunless you sacrifice your

(41:59):
mortality?

SPEAKER_01 (42:02):
In the case of the underworld, obviously it's
death, it's the realm of thedead, and that kind of stuff.
And so if you're doing this andyou're doing it from a let's say
she is a model, an example ofwhat to do here with it.
The only way that a human beingcan go into the underworld and

(42:25):
then eventually resurrect insome form or another.
Her resurrection story is verydifferent from other
resurrection stories, but let'sjust for the sake of example
here for where I'm going withthis, you know, it's it is that
with it.
It shows the process of how youhave to, in order to conquer

(42:45):
death, if you are a spiritualperson and you want to make it
so that way you have thisactual, I don't want to call it
enlightenment because I didn'tnecessarily have the same notion
of that, like uh from a BuddhistHindu perspective, but something
akin to that with it, it showsthe process of how you have to
let go of all of these differentthings uh that are the worldly

(43:06):
things, which is what she has,in order to make it so that way
you go, and obviously we haven'tgotten to this part yet, but at
the end of all the gates thatshe goes through, she's
literally naked in front ofEricskal, excuse me, Erichal,
and she is there and had to giveup literally everything in order

(43:30):
to even get to that level, justlike you would, and you're you'd
be completely laid bare what itis on on that front, if if the
human being was taking the thejourney, and you're left, say,
with just your soul, which as wetouched on before, could be what
she represents in a a certainmetaphorical poetical way in

(43:53):
terms of the land itself andwhatnot, representing the the
soul of that.
But if you take that concept,the soul concept, or the spirit
of the land or whatever thatrepresents your spirit or soul
in the realm of the dead now,for what's going on there, it
makes it so that way it'sshowcasing the exact same
process that the individual hasto do when they're taking this

(44:16):
journey back to it.
And even if it's not for like awhat do you call it, from from
like a spiritual illuminationstandpoint and whatnot, almost
every culture, and you cancorrect me if I'm wrong, but I
have seen nothing that indicatesotherwise from this.
They bel meaning the Sumeriansin this instance believed in
reincarnation or thetransmigration of the soul or

(44:37):
whatever you want to call it insome capacity or another, and it
could just be explaining thismyth and then how coming back
again in the rebirth for that.
So I I look at it from I look atone of the possible explanations
for what you're talking aboutthere, as for the audience, that
is, not necessarily why she'sdoing it, but for the audience

(44:59):
and that kind of stuff, that theonly way that they could do that
is this exact same process.
It's an elimination ofeverything else and preference
for death and then rebirth.

SPEAKER_00 (45:10):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
The interesting thing, well, Imean, there's a lot of
interesting things.
An interesting thing is thatshe's given up all of her
worldly possessions.
But now that she's done that,she goes to her various servants
and says, okay, now let'sprepare to go to the underworld.

(45:35):
And so she takes on her sevendivine powers, which you'd think
would be things that areinternal to you, divine powers.
These are mes that we weretalking about earlier.
And but how they represent inthis story is as external

(45:59):
things.
So she's got a turban that sheputs on, and the exact something
on your head, the exacttranslation of things on your
head isn't always clear.
Yeah.
Well, and and it's she and thenshe has a necklace of lapis

(46:20):
lazzley beads, then she hasanother wig, maybe on her
forehead, or some kind ofpossibly a diadem on her
forehead.

SPEAKER_01 (46:32):
From my understanding, it's more of a
diadem, but that's debatable, ofcourse.
So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (46:38):
And then one of her one of her divine powers, her
mes, is mascara.
And this this mascara is calledis called let a man come, let
him come, which uh it's likesexy mascara, is one of her
great magical powers.

(47:00):
And then, you know, she's got aring, she's got a pectoral sort
of slap.
Yeah.
And yeah, it's just it'sfashion, but it's also like so
many of her divine powers centeraround being really sexy.

(47:21):
But she's she's putting them on.
You would think divine power ormes is something inherent to the
soul.
But for the Sumerians at least,it almost seems like very little
is inherent to the soul, justsort of the core being of you is

(47:46):
within your soul.
Everything else, your kingship,your relations, your every other
part of you beyond this sort ofcore identity piece of you is
external, is something you wearupon yourself the way you would
wear a hat or mascara orsomething.

(48:10):
Uh robe or whatever.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (48:13):
Yeah.
I'm gonna bring up anotherculture.
I don't know how much you knowabout it, but I also know that a
lot of the people who arefollowing me initially and
whatnot, they're from groups ofpeople that I've been doing
stuff with the Nordic andGermanic stuff with it.
So I'm gonna bring that up alittle bit for what's going on
there.
In the the Germanic slash Nordicgroup of people with it, there

(48:34):
nine is the sacred number,basically, is what it is.
It pops up over and over again.
You got nine realms.
There's more, but there's likenine realms of the mean nine
realms uh for what's going onthere.
You have nine days for theinitiation rituals that they
have that they take place on.
You have three by three forcertain things, which of course

(48:55):
three by three equals nine forwhat's going on there, and then
of course, in this instance, togo directly showcasing what
we're talking about here, otherthan the physical body, they
have nine different parts thatmake up the self.
Now, there's a little bit ofdebate about exactly what these
nine parts are, and I don'tthink it has anything to do with

(49:15):
like a disagreement, if youwill.
I think it has to do with likechanges in time as well as like
various different localtraditions and that kind of
stuff, because we're talking ahuge geographical area at some
point where it's all of theScandinavian countries, you
know, and then parts of CentralEurope and that kind of stuff,

(49:36):
and we're talking about a timeframe that goes from about the
Bronze Age of almost 4,000 yearsago up until the Viking era,
there's gonna be some changes,and there's some different
things that are popping up withit.
But the point is that everysingle one of these things has
its own meaning, has its ownpurpose, has its own thing with
it, but it doesn't representeven your own divine essence

(49:59):
either.
It's just an aspect of it thatare all just like parts of that
particular thing, almost exactlythe same concept that's being
put forth in the Sumeriantradition, showcased by Inanna
here, with her taking off hervarious different garments and
other things that you're talkingabout with the maze and that

(50:20):
kind of stuff that make up heruh her core essence and whatnot,
and all that's left is just her.
And it's the same process there,from my understanding in the
Nordic tradition, that once youget rid of everything else or
what it is, you have one thingthat's basically left for it,
which is their version of a souland that kind of thing with it.

(50:41):
And then they even havesomething that's called
Hamingya, which would be aNordic slash Germanic version of
like karma, if you will.
And it's the combination, youryour Haminga is a combination of
all these other things that arethere, including your soul.
So, like it's like your lineage,it's like your your soul, it's
like your body and its purposeand whatnot, your jugula, as

(51:04):
it's called, which is like afollower spirit of some sort
that's there, and and etc.
So I I I think the point I'mtrying to bring up here is that
like this is not just somethingthat's necessarily unique to the
Sumerian concept here, either,but it's and and it's it's it's
fascinating to see how peoplesthat are thousands of miles

(51:26):
apart and thousands of yearsapart, even, can still have the
same general ideas, you know.

SPEAKER_00 (51:35):
Yeah, it's it's always amazing that I mean
fundamentally when you get tothese kind of stories, people
are looking at humans, and thecore of humanity is of course
the same everywhere you go, andso they end up with the same, a
lot of the same tropes coming upover and over, because people

(52:00):
are at some foundational levelstill people, which is which is
one of my favorite things doingthese 5,000-year-old stories.
Oh, yeah, people five thousandyears old.

SPEAKER_01 (52:12):
5,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 (52:16):
Mm-hmm.
And I'll bet if we went backfurther, we'd still find pretty
much the same till you go wayfar back, till we're basically
monkeys again, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 (52:25):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, there's some of thestories that we know of, like
the the cosmic hunt as anexample, it's been traced to
about a hundred thousand yearsago for how old it is, and in
terms of what can be donethrough what's called
phylogenetics.
So you know, it's uh taking thesame notion of what you do with
a genetic tree, but you're doingit with mythology.

(52:47):
And luckily, mythology doesn'tchange that much until some sort
of outside influence comes.
Typically speaking, there'sexceptions to this.
We're just talking in generalrule here, and so it makes this
that way you can come up withthe probability of how old this
is and like where its kernelsand sources are for stuff.
The fairyman, which is somethingthat most people are familiar
with in some capacity or anotherthat study mythology at all,

(53:08):
it's believed to be 30,000 yearsold for where that concept
originated from.
Some the kernels of the notionof what do you call it?
The like dragon slaying conceptand and whatnot, or some sort of
serpent originally is what itwas instead of a dragon, and
then it you know transmorgifiedinto a dragon a little later on,

(53:32):
you know, can be traced backabout 70,000 years ago in terms
of its very kernels, notnecessarily the full-blown
story.
And then we also have like wecall Mother Nature today, right?
So if you look at the Venusfigurines, some of this is a bit
controversial, meaning that itis a little bit out outside of

(53:56):
what people would like to hearand and whatnot, but technically
I have not found anything thattruly debunks it, so it's kind
of one of these things that youknow take with a grain of salt
for it.
But most of the Venus figurines,which I 100% agree that they
represent like an earth motherconcept of some sort, and uh and
uh some of them have been ableto be found that go back.

(54:18):
This one is undisputed, theydon't like to talk about it, but
this one's undisputed.
It's 350,000 years agoapproximately, and it was found
in Morocco.
There's another one that ismostly undisputed in terms of
the archaeological finding forit, in terms of like whether
it's actually that age or not,is the point.
I forget exactly where, butsomewhere in in Turkey, you

(54:38):
know, Anatolia region.
And and now there's another onethat has been found that I need
to wait on the final results forit because there's still like
stuff that's being siftedthrough to determine.
But if it's true, would put itat about two million years old.
Oh.

(54:59):
For what it is, and obviously,humanity, just as a very
briefly, in terms of our modernanatomical form and whatnot, is
a maximum of 300-ish thousandyears old, given the current
archaeological findings forthat.
So even if you go with theyoungest of these three ideas

(55:21):
here of 350,000 years old, forthat, somehow, somehow, this
notion of the Mother Earth ideais not just modern humanity as
Homo sapien sapien.
This concept was somehow passeddown interspecies-wise.
And if you go with the olderones of 800,000 and the oldest
of 2 million, then clearly it ismuch older than even humanity,

(55:45):
if you will, in terms of thecore uh kernel of the idea of
mother nature or nature beingfeminine in some form or
another, which is justabsolutely mind-boggling to me
how even just tiny kernels ofstuff can survive for that long,
potentially.

SPEAKER_00 (56:05):
Yeah, we don't get a lot of that stuff, but when we
do, it sure, it sure, it sure iscool.

SPEAKER_01 (56:12):
Yeah, it's like, what?

SPEAKER_00 (56:13):
What the heck?
Yeah.
So anyway, we're a little offtopic there, but no, that's
that's that's neat stuff.
I just I don't know where I'mat.
Anyway, let's see.

(56:34):
So in our story, then Inanna.
Yeah, that's cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 (56:42):
Anyway, Inanna is uh I promise we can talk more about
that later.
I promise.

SPEAKER_00 (56:47):
Yeah, um someday.
We got we got I'm I'm I'malready coming up with lists of
stuff to look into.
But so Inanna has put all herseven best divine powers
together, the ones that she'sgonna conquer the underworld
with.
And so first thing you do, ifyou're an ancient Mesopotamian,

(57:09):
before you do anything, is youpray to the gods and ask for
divine assistance and get thedivine omens.
And so even though she's a god,she still goes and prays to the
gods, and she prays to a goodvariety of them.
Please don't let me be destroyeddown in the underworld.

(57:32):
And it doesn't say if she gotany sort of answer from these
prayers, which sometimes is howprayers kind of go.

SPEAKER_01 (57:41):
Then she goes as someone with outside knowledge,
we know in some capacity oranother she does eventually.

SPEAKER_00 (57:48):
So yeah, so but uh yeah, so she goes to the palace
of Ganser, which seems to havebeen an actual temple to the of
the to the underworld.

SPEAKER_01 (58:03):
I agree with your your assessment that it seems to
have been an actual real place,even if we can't locate it
directly now.

SPEAKER_00 (58:09):
Mm-hmm.
Because they they did seem tobelieve that the gods were
walking around on their earth,not like in some alternate
realm.
And so she goes over to thisGanser palace, Ganser temple,
and she says, Hey, I'd like tocome into the underworld.
And the gatekeeper, Neti, is thechief doorman of the underworld,

(58:35):
and he says, Who are you?
Why should I let you into theunderworld?
So, oh, I'm I'm the goddessInanna, and I'm here to attend
the funeral of Goodgul Anna, whois the husband of Oreshkegal.
And of course, Oreshkegal is thegoddess queen of the underworld,

(58:57):
and so her reason for travelingto the underworld is to attend
the funeral of the king of theunderworld, at least
obstentively, that's why she'shere.
And and it's just that's justcrazy to me.

SPEAKER_01 (59:17):
Because he is he is a dead god, but he's also not
totally inactive because he'sthe dead god of the underworld,
and I mean if you're gonna havea it's just this weird
mind-boggling, like thing.
First off, how does a god die,so to speak, on one front?

(59:41):
And then, okay, even if you canaccept that they have maybe some
way that they can be killed andbut are otherwise immortal,
let's just say that for the sakeof argument.
How the hell does the god youknow, the ruler of the
underworld die inside of therealm of the dead?
What that's

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:00):
And the best part is our understanding of Good
Goanna's death is entirely fromthis one line.
Like there must have been atradition of this dead god of
the underworld that we'vecompletely lost.
The only reason we know he'sdead is because Inanna in this

(01:00:23):
one story happens to mention itvery briefly.
We don't know why he died, whenhe died, or anything.
We just know that at the pointthat this story is written,
Oreshkigal is the reigning queenof the underworld.
And she had a husband or has ahusband who is dead.

(01:00:45):
And I mean it makes a kind ofsense.
Yeah.
It makes a kind of sense.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:50):
If it was any other realm, it would be had.
But since it's the underworld,it's like has had had has I
don't know.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:00):
Yeah, it does make a it does make a strange kind of
sense, but uh, she doeseventually.
Uh so Neti the doorman says uhhe you know radios down to
Oreshtagal and says you sayradio, yeah, yeah.
I like and it's not clear howhe's communicated, which is

(01:01:22):
interesting because in otherSumerian myths, you do see the
gods sending messengers, likeactual runners, to go transmit
messages, or the gods themselvesgo from place to place.
Here he does seem to be able tospeak at a time.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:43):
Telepathically almost.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:44):
Yeah, telepathically, or like you
said, through a radio or phoneor something like that.
Yeah, the only other thing I canthink is sort of
necromantically, the way that amedium in a ritual would be in
the living world and you knowspeak to the ghosts and stuff,
yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:04):
I can totally see that being the case uh for it
there too, for what's going on.
Absolutely.
That's why, like, in the I Iremember I had this question
that someone was asking me atsome point that had to do with,
well, okay, if there'sreincarnation and there's
necromancy for what's going onthere, how is it that we can
communicate with them on theother side of the veil if

(01:02:26):
they're dead, but they're alsobeen reborn here and that kind
of stuff with the which goesback to those various different
parts of the self, with that oneof them means the body and
whatnot, and then there's alsomemory that they have, at least
in the Nordic tradition, thatmakes it part of the parts of
the self or what it is, and it'sthe memory of the people that
are there and that's separatefrom these other things and

(01:02:48):
their actual essence, just likewe're kind of talked about here
for what's going on with it.
So I I like that concept of thenecromancy a lot.
I'm not saying it's true, but Ireally do like it.
I really do.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:59):
Yeah, I mean they he they just sort of say it as if
we obviously understand howcommunications with the undead
world work.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:09):
Well, that's the thing, is for them, they
probably knew when they weretelling these stories.
But since we're thousands ofyears apart and have no concept
of what the heck they're talkingabout, with that, we just kind
of have to kind of fill in theblanks for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:23):
So Reshkigal, she gets the message somehow, she
picks up her radio, and shehears from the doorman, hey,
Inanda's coming, and she'spretty clearly here to conquer
the underworld.
And like she's saying it'ssomething else, but everybody

(01:03:44):
knows exactly why she's here.
Yeah, and Oreshka Gall, sheshe's like she's biting her lip,
she's slapping her thighs, andthat's like a uh a uh a
frustration or sadness sort ofgesture for them, slapping the
thighs.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:01):
It's what you do at a at a funeral or something when
you're real upset, and she's andshe given more she knows this is
the idea that this mightactually be a funeral, too, for
what's happening, like an actualthat like that there is.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:16):
It's more that it's a that Inanna is a genuine
thing.
No, no, she's a genuine threat.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:22):
I get that, but the the point I'm trying to sure put
with the that notion for theaudience here is that this gives
even another layer of credenceto the notion that there was an
actual funeral of some sortgoing on there as well, in a
backhanded way, let's say.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:39):
Yeah, that's true, that's true.
You know, I wonder if I'd alwaysread this as Oreshkegal is upset
because Inanna's coming toconquer.
I wonder if Oreshkegal is upsetbecause she's sad that Inanna is
about to die.
I don't know, and I'm not surethat the story makes it clear.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:02):
That's kind of the point where we don't really know
some of these things or what'sgoing on there.
Well, I like it better when weknow, but I I agree, I agree,
but this is also interestingthat now we have these questions
that can be put forth thatpotentially other scholars can
go write a thesis on later on,too, you know.
So it gives us that.

SPEAKER_00 (01:05:23):
Yes.
So Arishkigal is like, Inanna'scoming, lock the seven gates,
and this is the most famous partof the descent part.
And Inanna has to pass throughseven gates in order to get to

(01:05:43):
the underworld.
And as she gets to each gate,she says, Hey, let me in.
I'm here to come into theunderworld.
And the gatekeeper says, Ah, butyou have to you have to remove
one article of clothing in orderto do this.
And so at each of the sevengates, she removes one of her

(01:06:07):
seven divine powers, and then bythe time she gets to the seventh
gate, she is naked, she hasgiven up all of her powers,
she's lost everything, and thenfinally she stands before Oresh
Gegal.

(01:06:28):
And this is she's losteverything, she is in a sense
dead, but the core of her beingis still there to stand to stand
in the underworld.
And then she causes Oreshkegalto rise from her throne, the

(01:06:51):
throne of the underworld.
And then Inanna sits on thethrone of the underworld, and
the seven Anun the seven highgods, they rendered a judgment.
As soon as she sits on thethrone, she is subjected to
judgment, and then she dies.

(01:07:13):
She turns into a corpse as aresult of this judgment.
And that's the core of thedescent into the underworld.
She does conquer it in a sense,but in that conquest, she
immediately becomes a corpse.

(01:07:34):
And this is different from thegod of the underworld
potentially being dead.
She is a corpse.
Being a corpse, she can stilltalk and stuff.
They hang her on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They end up hanging her on aroof or on a hook.

(01:07:56):
The underworld is like a giantcave, and from the roof of the
cave, they've got a big oldchain, and on that chain is a
big old hook, and they havestuck this corpse on the big old
hook.
And she just hangs there forthree days and three nights,
because it's always three daysand three nights.
That's how you know they'redefinitely dead.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:19):
And I can go into the meaning behind that at some
point if you want.

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:26):
Well, now, what does three days and three nights
mean?

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:31):
All right, so it's astrotheology that we're talking
about here.
I don't know if you're familiarwith that term or not.

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:38):
I've heard of it.
I haven't done anything with it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:41):
So, astrotheology, for those of you who don't know
in the audience that are gonnabe watching potentially later on
and whatnot, astro meaning starsand whatnot, theology meaning
religion, so stellar religion ofsome sort.
It has to do with the notion ofthe sun dying, at least in the
northern hemisphere.

(01:09:01):
In the southern hemisphere, thiswould be six months later.
But it would be making it sothat way it dies where it
doesn't move at all.
It looks like it's still forthree days during the time of
what we know as the wintersolstice until approximately the
25th of December for what'sgoing on again in the northern
hemisphere.
And obviously, since we're in inthis particular story, we're in

(01:09:26):
Sumeria, it's in the northernhemisphere, so it's these these
dates for what's going on there.
And it there's anotherconstellation that plays into
this, which is known as theSouthern Cross.
Okay, it literally looks like across.
And if you were to put the sunover it, it looks like it stays

(01:09:46):
there and doesn't move for threedays, but then on the third day,
it starts moving upward again.
Like it's completely flat, likeit's dead and whatnot.
Now, going into the underworld,what do you if you have it where
there's the realm of life andthe realm of death as the two
main components for what it is,and you have our realm being the

(01:10:07):
realm of life, and you have theother underworld being that with
it, and the sun represents theprimordial understanding of
where all life comes from onthis planet and whatnot, that
when it goes and sets, it lookslike it's going into the
underworld and is beingswallowed by it, and then it
comes back up through that.

(01:10:28):
So there's this resurrectionidea that happens from this
here, too.
And this is the original conceptof the any resurrection story is
playing around with thisparticular notion here from
that.
So it's because of those threedays where it literally sits
still, like from the point ofview of anybody who's an ancient

(01:10:50):
astronomer watching it, it doesnot move at all.
It literally just sits there forwhen it pops up, it stays there,
it stays at the same spot andstays at the same spot, and then
eventually it starts movingupward after three days for what
it is.
That is where the origins of thethree-day concept comes from.

(01:11:11):
That's all traditions, alltraditions that have that
three-day.

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:18):
I had not I had not thought about that.
I quite like that.
So Inanna is dead for threedays, and that's how you know
it's dead.
Three days.
That's your your solar death ina sense.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:33):
Bye bye!

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:34):
Yeah.
And I mean it makes sense.
If you don't get up for threedays, you're you're done.
That's uh that's uh, you'redone, skis.
And of course, Oreshkigalremains the queen of the
underworld, even though shestood up from her throne
briefly, Inanna's conquest endedvery quickly, just as long as it

(01:11:57):
took for the high gods to renderjudgment upon her.
And the the connection betweenjudgment and death, I think.
That's you see that in a lot oftraditions for sure.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:12):
Behind me is another one on my there.

SPEAKER_00 (01:12:14):
We go, yep.
Yeah, you've got your judgmentand your death right there.
But anyway, she has she hasdied, and she has sort of a
divine minister, a divinesecretary.

(01:12:34):
In in Mesopotamian tradition,every god or goddess has a
personal minister, personalsecretary, attendant of some
sort.
Yes, an attendant who who isjust like attached to them in a
general sense.

(01:12:55):
And Ninkeber is Inanna'spersonal attendant.
So Inanna's dead.
So what is Ninkibur gonna do?
Because her her entire existenceis directly in mind.

(01:13:15):
And by uh so so Ninkebur goesaround to the various high gods
and says, Hey, Inanna's dead.
This is really sad and terribleand very bad.
And so first she goes, first shegoes up to Enlil, who is in some

(01:13:35):
traditions, Enlil is Inanna'sfather.
Who exactly Inanna's father ischanges from tradition to
tradition.
But she goes up to Enlil.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:47):
If you believe that, that would make Ma new or An the
grandfather of her, just for theaudience.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13:55):
Yeah, yes, and and so she so Ninkeberg goes up to
Enlil and says, Look, Ananna'sdead.
This is really sad.
And Enlil's like, What did shethink was gonna happen?
She wanted to conquer all of theheavens, and she'd been doing
that, and now she wants toconquer the underworld, but

(01:14:17):
like, really, what did she thinkwas gonna happen?
Who goes to the underworld?
Dead people, and you shouldn'tjust endlessly crave for power.
She's got what's coming to her,let her hang on that hook a
little while longer.
Who would ever the god Enlilsays, Who, having ended up in

(01:14:41):
the underworld, would everexpect to come up again?
Uh which is interesting becausethere are uh not a whole bunch,
but there are a decent number ofpeople that come back from the
underworld in Mesopotamianmyths.
Sure, but the question mighthave been the first one.

SPEAKER_01 (01:15:01):
I that's what I'm trying to indicate in my
analysis of things with that.
I think she's the first one thatactually does that.

SPEAKER_00 (01:15:08):
That's that's possible.

SPEAKER_01 (01:15:09):
That's no if that's true or not, but uh, it seems to
be that like, no man, you can'tcome back, that's it.
Then she creates this pathway ofbeing able to do so.
That's how I interpret the myth.
I no one can say that it'swrong, but also no one can say
that it's right because we don'tknow.

SPEAKER_00 (01:15:30):
For sure, and so uh the secretary, the minister
Ninkebert goes to Nana, goes toEnki, but he goes to all the
gods that Inanna had prayed tobefore setting out, and they're
all like, Look, what did youthink was gonna happen?

(01:15:52):
You gotta you gotta be clevererthan this.
But then he gets to Enki, andEnki, of course, god of magic,
source of all kinds of stuff,source of of light, of human
life in a very real sense.
He the Ninkeberg gets to Enki,and Enki's like, oh no, she's

(01:16:15):
dead.
Well, you know, I do have somemedicinal plants that might help
with being dead, because I havemedicinal plants for every
possible situation, and heremoves some dirt from
underneath his fingertip,because that's some magical dirt

(01:16:35):
under his finger, fingertip, andhe makes a life-giving plant,
and he makes some life-givingwater, and he gives it to the
secretary.
Here, give these medicines toInanna, which is which is great.
How do you come back?
How do you heal anything?

(01:16:56):
You just get the right medicinesfrom the god of magic and
medicine, and so then thesecretary goes down to the
underworld, and you know,there's all kinds of drama.
Don't drink anything in theunderworld, don't eat anything
in the underworld, touchanything at the end of the day.
Don't touch act like you'redead.

(01:17:18):
You gotta you can't dress upreal fancy, you gotta you gotta
be look, you're not a covert spymission.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:26):
This is how this works, okay?

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:28):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's there's another
Gilgamesh and Enkidu, whereEnkidu goes to the underworld,
not when he dies, but when hegoes down there to get a ball
that they had dropped into theunderworld, they were playing
playing a game and they theydrop a ball in the underworld,
and so Enkadu has to go downthere, and he gets similar.

(01:17:52):
The advice is very similar.
You have to dress like you'reall beat up, you have to put on
it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:00):
That advice is the same in the Nordic slash
Germanic tradition, it's thesame in other Indo-European
traditions, it's the same inShento tradition.
It's so you know, point is thatsome of these don't have any
like direct connection to eachother in any way, shape, or
form, and yet it's all the same.

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:21):
Uh, but so anyway, she uh the the secretary gets it
to Inanna and wakes her up withthis magic water, magic plant,
but she's still in the uncle.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:35):
By the way, in the Gilgamesh story, him doing it,
he has uh some sort of magicalplant thing that he has to get
too that's get taken away by asnake.
Yes, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:46):
He does, he does, and oh, it might be the same
plant.
Don't that's what I'm wonderingif it's the same one.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:54):
I don't know off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:57):
I'd have to look it up, and I don't have to.
I'm wondering if it's the sameplant or not.
Yeah, I don't have the sourcetext for Gilgamesh up right now,
but it could be anyway.
Inana takes her medicine like alike a good take your medicine,
children, it's good for you, andthen she wakes up, she's alive,

(01:19:18):
she's still got a hook in hergut, she's still hanging from
the ceiling, but she is able tospeak and really do stuff now,
and so she begs and begs toplease.
Can I come back to life?
And the ultimate resolution ofall of her drama is that you can

(01:19:44):
come to life, come back to life,but you have to trade life for
life.
There's never a reduction in thenumber of souls in the
underworld, it's a good thing.
It only increases.
Well, it all it only increases.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:00):
No, I mean, like it's always you if you get one,
you have to give one.
There's always that.
There's no you can't have, yeah,exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:06):
Yeah, so eventually, Inana is surrounded by some
underworld demons and hersecretary, and they go on a
little tour of the world of theliving, where Inanna is going to
pick who should be herreplacement.

(01:20:27):
And this is this is one of myfavorite stories.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:31):
This is one of my favorite parts of the story,
too.
I and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:35):
So she goes to she goes to, let's see, I always I I
can't I don't know any of thesenames by I don't know my heart.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:47):
Don't feel bad.
I don't either.

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:48):
Yeah, she goes to she goes to the house of Seg
Kersana in Umma, and someonenamed Kara, who seems to be like
one of her high priests, isweeping openly at how sad Kara

(01:21:13):
is that Inanna is dead, and thedemons are like, you know, we
could take Kara and you know, wetrade Kara for you, and then
Kara can be dead, you can bealive.
But Inana's like, you know, Karais my singer, she does my nails,
she does my hair, and she'slamenting for me, and she's

(01:21:35):
lamenting.
I couldn't, I couldn't betrayKara.
So then she goes to Bad Tabira,another city, and she sees
Lulul.
And Lulul is covered in dust,he's wearing filthy garments,
and he's weeping.
And she says, Oh, Lulul, he wasgreat.

(01:21:55):
And look at him, he's he'sweeping, it's great.
We we couldn't we couldn't uhkill him, he's he's doing great.
Now let's keep him going on.
So they go to the plain ofKulava, which is the region of
Uruk, and there is King Dumasid.

(01:22:17):
Now, Dumazid is Inanna'shusband, one of she has a lot of
husbands.
She goes through men likenobody's business, and none of
them come to good ends.
And Dumasid thinks he's theexception.
He finally, finally, she's dead.
That lady is out of my hair.

(01:22:39):
I don't have to deal with Inanaanymore.
He is feasting, he's got he'sgot he's got milk everywhere,
they're playing pipes andflutes, he's got all this
magnificent clothes on, and he'shad he is uh he is quite

(01:23:01):
relieved that the incrediblypassionate mercurial lady of his
life is no longer causing himany problems.
Of course, Inana sees this, andhe's just not a fan.

SPEAKER_01 (01:23:16):
So she chooses him.

SPEAKER_00 (01:23:18):
So she chooses him.
There is a story separate fromthis one.
In in some versions of thisstory, the demons just reach
out, they grab Dumazid, throwhim in the underworld.
There is a longer version ofthat story where the demons

(01:23:38):
chase him, and he is he ha he'sa shapeshifter, he changes shape
into like a snake and variousother usually unpleasant animals
to escape them.
And eventually he hides at hishouse and his sister, the demons
come up, they knock on, theyknock on Dumasid's house, and

(01:24:00):
his sister, Geshtan Anna, comesup and is like, oh, hello
demons, how can I help you?
What are you looking for?
And that we're looking for yourbrother, Dumasid.
She's like, Why are you lookingfor Dumasid?
Oh, we're gonna take him intothe underworld because he was
celebrating the death of hiswife, and she's like, Oh, yeah,

(01:24:21):
he really shouldn't have beencelebrating the death of his
wife.
And he's a terrible person, andthere's a number of stories
where Dumasid does really awfulthings to Geshton Anna, like
really terrible things to her,and she is very much a victim of

(01:24:41):
her brother, and still she'slike, Yeah, he's a terrible guy,
and he absolutely deservesdeath, but he's my brother, so
I'm not gonna tell you where heis.
And the demons torture her foran you know, round after
torture, yes, yeah, yes, andthey come up with all kinds of

(01:25:05):
various tortures, and she neverbetrays Dumasid, and this is
this is act actually turns outto be his salvation.
She never betrays Dumasid, butthe demons do eventually get him
anyway.
Then they throw him down intothe underworld, and it's Geshton
Anna, the loyal sister, who goesto all the gods and goes to

(01:25:30):
Inanna, who is Dumasid's in theunderworld, Inanna's come back
to life.

SPEAKER_01 (01:25:36):
I'm gonna pause you here for a moment just so the
audience knows something aboutthis record.
No, no, you're doing great.
I I love what you're doing withit, but Dumasid is not a god, he
is a mortal man that has beenmarried to Inanna.
So he has he does not have anydivinity inside of him and

(01:25:56):
whatnot, which is also part ofwhat pisses Inanna off so much
with him thinking that he cantake over her place and whatnot,
and and rule the way he's be andthe way he's behaving and that
kind of stuff.
That for the first time, youknow, a mortal thinks that he
can behave like she can.
And if you go with her wantingto have all the power idea that

(01:26:18):
we were laying out beforehand,it this must have been just
absolutely you know horrowingfor her, so to speak, for what's
going on there on thatparticular front there for
what's happening.
And yeah, I'll turn it back overto you.
I just wanted to make surepeople were realizing he wasn't

(01:26:39):
he's not part of the pantheon.

SPEAKER_00 (01:26:41):
Yes, now Dumazid is is his own rabbit hole for sure.
There is a lot of a lot going onbecause he does end up being
worshipped as a divine figure,but he is he is definitely king
of Uruk as a as a man initially.

(01:27:01):
So Inanna has now escaped theunderworld, Dumasid is now in
the underworld, Geshton Anna,the loyal sister, goes up, she
prays to a bunch of gods, andthey're like, I can't help you.
Uh, he's dead.
Dead people just that's whathappens to the dead, and she

(01:27:22):
goes up to Inanna, and she'slike, Hey, Inanna, I sure wish
you hadn't thrown my brother andyour husband into the
underworld.
That's not very nice.
And at first she's like, Yeah, Idon't care.
But then in unfortunately, thethe versions of this story at

(01:27:46):
this part are almost alldamaged, pretty much.
But what seems to happen is thatnot Areshkegal, Geshtan Anna,
yeah, weeps before Inanna andbegins to perhaps poetically
recite all the good things abouthaving a brother and all the

(01:28:10):
good things about having ahusband.
And she shows Inanna, look atall these lovers in the world
that have husbands, but youdon't have a husband because you
just threw him in theunderworld.
And I mean, from one point ofview, Inanna's gonna get another
husband.
She's not it's not the first andit won't be the last.

(01:28:32):
Inanna and Dumasid is weirdbecause Inanna has so many
lovers, but then there's also anentire genre of Mesopotamian
poetry that is Ishtar andDumasid, where they are
presented as the perfect lovers,eternally faithful, even though

(01:28:52):
we know that neither of them wasin fact faithful in any sense.
But it's sort of like that's onetradition, this is a different
tradition.

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:04):
Are you familiar with what is it?
I forget the the I think thePengali girls and and Krishna
tradition and whatnot.
I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 (01:29:13):
I don't know much Hindu stuff.

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:15):
All right, so I'll be very brief about this or
what's going on.
There's all these women that allwant Krishna in some form or
another, and there's like Idon't know, a hundred of them or
something like that.
There's just like this stupidamount that no man can ever be
with.
It's not possible, okay?
And because Krishna is obviouslya divine entity for what's going

(01:29:39):
on, he splits himself into asmany as can be done with it, and
then, of course, has his waywith all of them, just like they
all want.
So, why I'm bringing this up isbecause obviously there's a
difference between, say, themortal interpretation of things
and like how what cheating wouldbe first.

(01:30:00):
Is the God realm and that kindof thing with it.
And if you go back to the notionof like Inanna representing like
a soul of in some sort oranother, or spirit in some sort
or another, that can be for theland or for the like uh
individual soul in terms of thedescent, and then back through
the reincarnation process, as wepotentially laid out, is another

(01:30:23):
idea here for what's going onwith it.
And you do the same thing forthe muszi being the masculine
one instead of the feminineaspect for it, and you make it
so that way in that tradition,not the one we're talking about,
but the sub the sub-traditionthat you started to bring up for
it, that even if they arecheating from a human
perspective, that they'reactually not, it's just one

(01:30:46):
emanation of themselves that hasnothing to do with the core
essence that we've talked aboutbefore here, and that each one
just actually represents thespiritual ecstasy, the spiritual
soul that's there for it, andthe culmination of having
reached that internally withinoneself, so to speak.
So, in that instance, thevarious different lovers that

(01:31:09):
she has, again, this ispotentially this is one
interpretation of it based uponother mythologies that could lay
this out and show a showcase howthis is at least possible for
that.
That because that makes it sothat way it's more of each
person finding their own soulwithin it, and that each lover

(01:31:29):
with her is having all thesethings that happen with that.
In the Nordic tradition, youhave what's something that's
called your fugula, which is afetch, a follower of some sort,
kind of like the attendant thatInana has, and all the other
gods have, but sometimes it'scalled a personal norn.
And a norn is someone who weavesfate, the fate of the

(01:31:53):
individual.
So the soul would be what weavesthe fate of the individual,
clearly, from from thisparticular perspective of stuff
with it.
And in the case of the all theseother ones where fate is unkind,
you know, to them, because allthe stuff that happens to all
the lovers of that, it's becausethey never truly awakened their
own soul.
They always betrayed Inana, orshe's got had some slight with

(01:32:16):
them, or whatever.
So the soul is saying that youdidn't do what you were supposed
to hear with it.
But in the separate tradition ofDemuzi and her being always
faithful and the perfect divinecouple and all that other stuff
with it, it was what one shouldaspire to in order to make it so
that way you could like takecontrol of your destiny, if you

(01:32:36):
will, or whatever type skills.
Again, doesn't necessarily youdon't have to necessarily agree
with that interpretation.
I'm just laying out a potentialunderstanding that would explain
the two variants, if you will.
Yeah.
Not just not just from adifferent time or location and
period, which is also probablypart of it as well, of course,
but but also from aphilosophical understanding of

(01:33:00):
things with it for why each oneis behaving the way that it is,
even it seems completelyunrational, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 (01:33:08):
Yeah, no, I like that.
I like that sounds good.
So, yeah, so there is a there isa uh faithful aspect to Ishtar
for all that she is not exactlya model of faith.
For all that she is not exactlya model of faithfulness in other

(01:33:31):
senses, but in this case, she ismoved by Geshton Anna's tears
and her poetry about love, andshe's moved by the idea of love,
and she does say, okay, we'regonna make a deal, we're gonna

(01:33:51):
figure out how to bring Duma Zidback to life for half the year.
I don't know if you've everheard of anybody being brought
back to life for half a year.

SPEAKER_01 (01:34:04):
I don't I I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 (01:34:08):
This is this is definitely at least an influence
on the on the Greek, later Greekmyth.
Absolutely.
But Inanna is not going to theunderworld again.
She's too important.
Instead, she says, Well, GeshtonAnna, since you've since you
have pointed out that someoneshould let Dumasid come up for

(01:34:31):
half the year, since you pointedout the problem, you get to go
fix it.
So Geshton Anna, the loyalsister, spends half the year in
the underworld, Dumasid spendsthe other half the year in the
underworld.
And this tradition ofalternating who's in the

(01:34:53):
underworld would have pretty bigknock-on effects in other parts
of the and in other parts of themythos.
For example, in the biblicalbook of Isaiah, you hear Isaiah
complaining that all the Jewishwomen are celebrat are weeping

(01:35:14):
for Dumazid.
And they are, it's always funnyto me, they're not weeping for
Geshton Anna, the loyal sister.
They're weeping for Dumazid, whois a pretty irresponsible
person, but also an ideal loverof a sort.

(01:35:40):
Perishing, they're they'reweeping for the idea of their
lover going away.
And of course, Isaiah's like,no, you follow one God, none of
this weeping for Dumasid stuff.
But of course, they still have amonth of Dumasid in the Jewish
calendar, the Jewish lunarcalendar, because that's how big

(01:36:02):
a deal this story was.
That's the month where he was.
Oh, yes.
Yes, there's a lot going on.
Oh, for sure.
They loved them, they'reshepherds.

SPEAKER_01 (01:36:24):
And that's where you get the the Hyxos people and the
Hyksokes kings and all of that,which eventually go and take
over northern Egypt, you know,for a while.