Inanna, The Vulnerable And Eternal Warrior
In one of the most famous myths to come down to us from ancient Mesopotamia, Inanna teaches us how strength and wisdom can be achieved through the courage of vulnerability
The sound of a bejeweled necklace hitting the tiled floor rang out through the Library of Found Things, foreshadowing the thud of a cuneiform tablet containing one of the oldest and most meaningful stories in the world. The tale of Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld is one of boldness, cunning, fear and, ultimately, personal power.
From the Great Heaven the Goddess Inanna set her mind on the Great Below.
Inanna saw that her power in Heaven was fulfilled. She felt comfortable on her lofty throne and she saw order in her world from atop it. However, she felt unfulfilled. She saw the great expanse of Earth - its creatures and chaos - and she wanted to expand her powers to incorporate it too.
One day, Inanna heard the terrible news that the husband of her sister, the mighty Erishkagal who was Queen of the Underworld, had died. She looked down upon the world and decided that this was an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: bring her condolences to her sister and fill the void in her soul by taking on the powers of the Underworld.
Since this was a formal visit as a dignitary of Heaven, Inanna began to put on the trappings of her royal power. She collected her divine powers in her hand and she put on a travelling turban. Then she added a wig for her forehead. Then came the royal lapis lazuli bead necklace around her neck. She placed the twin-egg pendant at her breast and covered her body with a pala dress, the symbol of ladyship. She put on mascara, a pectoral, a gold ring on her hand and held the lapis lazuli measuring rod.
As she was dressing for her journey, her minister Nincubara came into her quarters. Nincubara was horrified when Inanna revealed her plan. Inanna brushed the minister’s tears away and asked a favour of her. Knowing the dangers of any interaction with the Underworld, Inanna gave Nincubara instructions to lament the death of her mistress as soon as she left. Then, if she had not returned in three days, she was to make a round of the gods’ houses and beg them to help Inanna in her ascent from the Underworld.
“First, visit Enlil, god of winds and storms, and ask him to protect me in the Underworld and not let any harm come to me. Enlil may not help, so you must go to Nanna, the moon god, and make the same entreaty. If Nanna does not help, you should then turn to Enki, the god of water and human culture.”
With this, Inanna departed. When she came to the first gate of the Underworld she found it guarded. Neti, the guard of the gates of the Underworld, asked who was banging on his door. Inanna told him that she had come there to pay her condolences to her sister. No deity had passed this door before so Neti went to Ereshkigal to ask what to do.
“Let her pass,” Ereshkigal slapped the side of her thigh and laughed, “but bar each of the seven gates of the Underworld ahead of her. Tell her that, before she can pass through each gate, she must remove an item of her royal regalia.”
Neti did as he was told and, at the outer gate, Inanna obliged her sister’s ruling and removed her turban. At the second gate, she removed the lapis lazuli beads at her neck and they were carried away from her. At the third gate, she gave away the twin-egg pendant at her breast and so on until Inanna stood at the seventh and final gate to the Underworld in nothing but the pala dress. She peeled the fabric from her shoulders and let it fall like snow to the ground, leaving her completely naked.
She stepped through the gate and her sister rose from her throne with a grin and guided Inanna to sit on it. Inanna did so, naked and vulnerable in this new world. Then the Anunna, the seven judges, entered the throne room and directed their judgement towards the naked queen. They looked at her and their gaze was one of anger. They spoke to her in the harshest, guilt-ridden words. They rained down their judgement upon Inanna until she sat slumped in the throne, nothing more than a corpse.
Then they hung her cadaver upon a hook.
After three days and three nights, Nincubara went to Enlil and begged for his help but he refused. Then she went to Nanna and he too refused to help. Dejected, she ran to the house of Enki and begged him to help Inanna in the Underworld. He was worried about Inanna and so he took some dirt and made two beings - not human, inert - called Kur-jara and Gala-tura whom he ordered to take The Life-Giving Plant and The Life-Giving Water down to the Underworld to find Inanna. They will offer you many prizes in the Underworld, he told the inert beings, but you are to refuse them all in place of Inanna.
The two golems flitted down to earth and they slipped through each of the gates of the Underworld unnoticed, being as they were neither gods nor mortals. They surprised Ereshkigal on her throne and she praised them for arriving in her palace unnoticed. She offered them a riverful of water, but they refused. She offered them a field of grain, but they refused that too. They pointed to the corpse of Inanna hanging from a hook and Ereshkigal knew that this was Enki’s doing.
She took down her sister and placed her before Kur-jara and Gala-tura. They sprinkled the seeds of The Life-Giving Plant upon her. They sprinkled The Life-Giving Water upon her and Inanna woke with a start. She looked at the two golems and she saw the wisdom and benevolence of Enki. She breathed and felt the wisdom of the Underworld merge with her own. It filled the gap she had longed to fill and she was more powerful than she could ever have imagined. She took their hands and walked back through the open gates of the Underworld to join Nincubara and the other gods in Heaven.
There is so much to unpack in this story, not least because it comes down to us in many versions from Sumerian, to Babylonian and Assyrian. Inanna - or Ishtar as she is often known later - is a fascinating goddess and one that has been worshipped and vilified (can you guess who by?) for almost the entire span of human culture. She is often touted as a goddess of femininity and fertility, a kind of mother-figure, but that would limit her powers enormously. Yes, Inanna was female, yes she was associated with the planet Venus and love, but first and foremost she was called the Queen Of Heaven and that Queen was a warrior.
In this form, Inanna was the goddess of divine law and political power and that comes through in the myth from the very beginning. She surveys the world from her lofty throne and decides that she is lacking some form of wisdom to add to her power. Some kind of wisdom that will benefit her and, by default, the world upon which she governs. So, what was the wisdom Inanna learned?
Vulnerability.
Wait! I know this sounds anathema to a ‘warrior mentality’. I know you’re ‘hustling’, I know you’re no ‘victim’. As you read this, you might even be wearing a T-shirt with the stencil “NEVER SURRENDER” on it, which actually surrendered its shape and colour to the washing machine long ago. It’s good to resist, to fight some things and not be a pushover but, the thing is, vulnerability is absolutely crucial to living an authentic and happy life in this world.
Béa Gonzalez and Jay Redelsperger discuss this in their podcast “The Gathering”. It’s popular to talk about how these ‘descent’ stories are psychological allegories for a journey inwards to discover our inner selves and to learn wisdom from that. This is an important ‘journey’ to take when trying to develop psychologically. However, another way of looking at this myth entails looking at Inanna as a Queen who is in control of her inner, loftier elements but who needs to get down in the dirt and experience the ‘real’ world.
This is an interesting way of looking at the Underworld. It is the vast expanse of other people, other factors from the weather to world politics, that affect us whether we like them or not. It is the condition of our trans-personal lives. Accepting that not everything can go our way, by choosing not to be a ‘victim’ is a huge leap of vulnerability.
Of course, some things that happen to us are terrible and unacceptable in any circumstances. I’m talking more about feeling like the world is out to get us because you’re having one of those days where absolutely everything - from stubbing your toe on the bedside cabinet to flunking that meeting with your boss - goes wrong.
Inanna’s most impressive act of bravery is going into this ‘world’ after shedding all of her armour and her prestigious stately trappings until she is naked and vulnerable to its reality. Brené Brown discusses this powerfully in her talk The Power Of Vulnerability.
After doing social health research for many years, she came to the conclusion that the most important bridge to a happy life was a sense of connection with others around us. People who have deep connections with family, their loved ones and also people who love themselves, she says, have Courage.
The word courage comes from the Latin coraticum which literally means ‘connected with the heart’. These courageous people see that the very things that make them vulnerable are the same things that are necessary to be authentic and making true connections with people requires that authenticity. Brené Brown says that these vulnerable, less shameful (because only psychopaths can live entirely without shame) people tell the world who they are with their entire heart. That is their courage.
In her research, Brown also found that there was one thing that unravelled this connection with others more quickly than any other: shame. People with shame feel that they cannot allow their ‘shameful’ aspects to be seen by those they’re connected with because they will lose that connection, be ostracised, exiled. In other words, they can’t be vulnerable.
So, what they do is they try to numb any sense of vulnerability. Humans are bloody great at numbing themselves. The problem is that you can’t numb a sense of vulnerability without numbing all emotions: joy, gratitude, happiness included.
This numbing leads to a lack of connection, a lack of purpose, and eventually a terrifying sense of vulnerability … which results in a cycle of ‘numbing’ again through the use of a couple of beers, a few snacks and maybe even a mind-numbing amount of Indica.
People also numb their sense of vulnerability in other ways. One such way is to turn uncertainty into certainty. You’ve met these people. They’re the “everything is black or white” kind of people. They’re the kind of people who accuse those who want to give any kind of thought or discussion of a complex issue of “moral relativism”. They say that there is Heaven and Hell and their god is the ONLY god worthy of a capital G.
Some people call them terrified arseholes but we won’t be so crass here.
Another way we numb our sense of vulnerability is to make everything ‘perfect’ around us. Vaccuum seven times a day, eat sandwiches over the kitchen sink because our homes should look like Show Homes and Show Homes do NOT tolerate fucking crumbs!
And one last way we numb ourselves is by convincing ourselves that our actions don’t have any effect on others. When we cut up that slow-poke on a road because we’ll be damned if we’re getting stuck behind them on a single carriageway. When we don’t hold the elevator door open, even though we heard the person running towards it because there’s plausible deniability in selective deafness.
When we numb ourselves we’re not being the ‘realistic’ hard-boiled warriors of the world we tell ourselves we’re being. We’re just sitting in our worldly trappings and piling more and more armour on top of us.
Inanna didn’t do that. That’s why she’s a goddess and I’m sitting here eating a bag of dried bananas. She embraced the ‘outer world’ in all its dirt, grime and unpredictability. She rejected her shame all the way through ‘hell’ until she stood completely naked and vulnerable. Then she took another step towards wisdom, regardless.
Inanna was a warrior goddess whom the great poet (princess and high priestess) Enheduanna wrote about in both her Hymn To Inanna, Inanna And Ebih and The Exaltation Of Inanna (Nin me šara). Each of these poems has Inanna in the role of a warrior and a destroyer of cities (a ‘city’ being a very common metaphor for the ‘self’ too, it should be noted). The latter poem has also been translated as “Mistress Of The Innumerable Me” which speaks volumes.
But it’s important to remember that Inanna’s role as a warrior is neither a role of aggressor nor fearful wall-surrounded defender. Inanna’s most famous act as a warrior is an act of surrender. Of discovering her vulnerabilities and being rewarded with wisdom for her bravery, her courage. She hung for three days and three nights (perhaps beginning a time-honoured tradition of the same period required to gain wisdom / divinity) and came back to life stronger because she had learned to love herself even in the darkest part of the universe.
It’s important not to put aside her association with love in favour of her being a “badass warrior”. She was both and that’s important when we consider the wisdom that she won through her courage became the single most important aspect of a ‘fertile’ life: love.
Love for oneself, love for one’s loved ones, and even love for the strangers we are inextricably connected with on this bizarre spinning pebble in a cold, dark universe.