During my darkest moments, I was called to venture into the underworld and meet Ereshkigal. From her I learned lessons of surrender, compassion, and acceptance.
The Story
Her glamorous and beautiful sister, Inanna, was given heaven and earth to rule over, but Ereshkigal was sentenced to rule over the underworld. While Inanna lived among the light and the living, Ereshkigal was consigned to a dank, dark world where rotting corpses lined the walls and the stench of death filled the air. When Inanna decided that she was going to venture into the Underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal was just a little suspicious that her sister was coming to take over her meager and desolate kingdom.
In preparation for her visit, Inanna dressed in the vestments of her queendom and knowing that no one returned alive from the Underworld, Inanna asked her faithful servant, Ninshubar, to sound the alarm if she hadn’t returned in three days. When she arrived at the gate of the Underworld, she knocked boldly and demanded entrance from Ereshkigal’s chief gatekeeper Neti. After consulting with his Queen, Neti bolted each of the seven gates to the Great Below. At each of the gates, a piece of Inanna’s royal finery was removed and when she questioned why, she was told “Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
After all of her finery was removed, the holy priestess of heaven was allowed to enter Ereshkigal’s holy sanctuary “naked and bowed low.” Once inside, Inanna’s reception was quite different than the sisterly visit she may have been imagining. The judges of the underworld surrounded her and passed judgment upon her, Ereshkigal struck her, and she was turned into a rotting corpse and hung on a meat hook on the wall.
It was only after the tiny and genderless creatures sent by Enki to rescue Inanna showed Ereshkigal compassion that Inanna was released, but she was required to send someone to serve in her stead. After returning to her realm, she chose to send her consort Dumuzi who had, instead of mourning her death, usurped her throne.
The Lessons
When I was a teenager, Gone with the Wind was my favorite book and each time I read it, I identified with a different character. The first time through I identified with the strong willed and arrogant Scarlett, the next time with the dashing Rhett, and the third time through with Melanie as the heart of the book. It was much the same with Inanna’s Descent. I was familiar with the story from Inanna’s perspective and the first time I actually read the story was shortly after my divorce when I was at a low point in my life. I identified with Inanna’s strength in willingly venturing into the underworld and I found courage and hope in knowing she had ventured into the darkness and come out whole. I called upon Inanna many times for strength during those dark days and the messages I received were ones of surrender. I had to let go of my arrogance, my hope on the future, and other beliefs that were holding me back. If I could let go of those, I could emerge from the darkness.
Ereshkigal’s lessons came when I thought there was nothing more to learn from the story. My view was that Inanna had safely escaped the clutches of the wrathful Ereshkigal and left her where she belonged, in the dark and dank underworld. However, deep in my heart I knew that Ereshkigal was not wrathful, she was hurting and alone. As I started to open my heart, I started to identify with Ereshkigal and I realized that I was just as hurt, just as resentful, and just as alone. My lashing out at my ex’s girlfriend was the same as Ereshkigal’s rage toward Inanna and although I never physically harmed her, there were days it was only the thought of jail that kept her safe from my physical wrath. The deep anger and resentment burning in my soul only started to heal when I allowed myself to feel the healing power of compassion.
Recently I’ve reread the story of Ereshkigal and Inanna and I’ve found that this time through I was able to identify with both women and come to an acceptance of myself as both the arrogant Inanna and the deeply hurt Ereshkigal.
Living the Lessons
The lessons of the Gods are deeper, richer, and more intense than any lessons we learn within a school room. There are some who say that life continues to present the same lessons to us over and over in different forms until we learn them. Such was the case with the lessons of Ereshkigal and Inanna as I continued to be presented with the same lessons even though I thought I had learned them and integrated them into my life. However, I’ve come to realize that while I may have learned them intellectually, I needed to learn them on a more spiritual lesson to truly integrate them into my life.
Compassion
Ereshkigal’s heart was cold toward her sister and it was only the compassion of tiny and genderless creatures that melted her heart enough to allow her to release her sister. As Ereshkigal lay moaning with stomach (some would say labor) pains, the kurgarra and galutar echoed her pain back to her. Their compassion softened her heart, “Who are you, moaning-groaning-sighing with me? If you are gods, I will bless you. If you are mortals I will give you a gift.” The kurgarra and galutar refused the gifts of water and food, but asked instead for Inanna’s rotting corpse. Once they received it, they sprinkled food and water on it and she was restored to life.
Although the lessons of surrender and acceptance were the first I learned from an intellectual level, compassion was the first lesson I learned from a spiritual level and it was the lesson that helped me to truly learn the other lessons. My divorce left me shattered into thousands of pieces and I knew the only hope of healing that I had was to assemble a team of experts to try and put me back together again. I put out a call to the universe to help me build a loving and supportive network and the universe provided in amazing ways.
The first member of my support network was my beloved dog Luke, who gave me someone to get up for each morning and whose love reminded me of the good things in life. The second member of my team appeared when I stumbled into a small spiritual shop seeking shelter from a storm. Within the comforting realm of this small store, I found someone who would show me tremendous compassion, but would teach me the lessons of boundaries, forgiveness and reconciliation through a rocky patch in our relationship. In another instance of serendipity, I found the third member of my team, my acupuncturist, via a flyer on a signpost at a bus top (a flyer he has no recollection of posting). Other members of my team include members of a support group, friends, and fellow priestesses. Each of these individuals has their strengths and weaknesses, but what they share is open mindedness and compassion.
Like Ereshkigal, I was filled with anger, resentment, and a need for revenge until I was shown compassion. My support team listened to me rail against the injustices in my life over and over until I finally started to believe I was worthy of love and compassion. One of the things I realized after entering therapy was that sometimes I was too compassionate to other people. I always wanted to see the other person’s point of view and often took their side at the cost of my own self-interest. Despite my ex-husband repeatedly hitting me, emotionally abusing me, and putting me down because I “needed to be put in my place,” I always looked for the good in him and made excuses for his bad behavior.
My support team helped me to realize that for me to heal I had to stop justifying and rationalizing his behavior. He was a jerk. He hurt me. End of story. It didn’t matter what kind of childhood demons he was battling, no one has the right to emotionally torment and abuse another person.
Therapy helped me come to the understanding that one of the most important lessons of Ereshkigal and Inanna is compassion. It was compassion that allowed Ereshkigal to open her heart and release Inanna and it was learning to have compassion for myself and acknowledge the wrongs done to me that helped me to see that I did not deserve to be abused and that his behavior was wrong.
The lesson of self-compassion was tested after I had a soul retrieval. I was in a dark place after my soul retrieval as the various pieces of myself that had been integrated brought their own dark memories back to my psyche. My guides were screaming at me that I had to learn these lessons on my own and that no one else could help me process them. I reached out to the shaman who had performed my soul retrieval and he received the same message: I had to talk to my guides directly. Others in my life insisted that they needed to play intermediary and I ended up setting hard boundaries with a friend and distanced myself from him for over a year. He reached out at the end of that year and we had both grown and changed enough that we were able to forgive, reconcile, and move on into a relationship that is much stronger and healthier than our original friendship.
Having compassion for ourselves can be difficult as it means learning to put ourselves first and to quit excusing other people for their bad behavior. Having compassion for ourselves also means knowing when to say yes to relaxing and taking care of ourselves and no to pushing our bodies and souls beyond their limits. This is a lesson I am still learning as there are times when I feel lazy for heeding my bodies call for rest and want to continue to push myself beyond my limits. I am slowly learning that compassion for myself means taking care of me even if it means disappointing others.
Surrender
Surrender was the second lesson I learned from Ereshkigal and Inanna. My marriage and my old life was swept away in a tidal wave of anger and hurt and there was nothing that I could do to change the situation. My ex-husband announced to our children after 22 years of marriage that he no longer wanted to be married. As with the rest of our marriage, he did not even give me the respect or dignity I deserved by telling me first.
Much like Inanna, I was left hanging on the meat hook of life to rot. Deep within my soul, I knew that in order to start over I had to let go of everything that was holding me back. I had to let go of my belief that love could conquer all, I had to let go of my belief that someone outside of myself was responsible for my happiness, and I had to let go of my fear. Metaphorically, I had to allow myself to be stripped bare so that I could surrender to the darkness.
As I underwent this process, my beloved deities were there to support me and encourage me. During one of my very darkest hours as I was sobbing in my bed, I felt Yemaya’s presence and all of a sudden I was sitting on a porch swing at her house while she rocked me and held me. I sobbed out my fears of never being loved, of being alone forever, and every other irrational fear I had. She held me and loved me unconditionally and I felt her strength flow through me.
Lying sobbing in the darkness, I realized that surrender was a terrifying word for me. As someone who has had suicidal ideations, it would be all too easy to lose my way in the darkness. However, I learned that surrender to the darkness, meant honoring and acknowledging my feelings while not acting on them. Surrendering meant opening up to the darkness and to the hurt and acknowledging it.
I was brought to my knees on the eve of what would have been my 25th wedding anniversary. My beautiful, amazing, and talented 21 year old daughter had a psychotic break with reality. Her brother and I spent the entire night getting her checked in and settled into a psychiatric hospital and I was let rattled and shaken to the core. One of the hardest parts of this ordeal was leaving the hospital to go to a healing ritual I had planned months in advance. All of society’s lessons said that if I was a good mother I would cancel my plans to be there for her. However, the reality was that there was nothing I could do to help her. She, like every one of us, had to find her own way out of the darkness.
As the priestesses performing the ritual invoked each deity in turn, we all felt the energy shift until we felt surrounded by the otherworldly energies. As I lay sobbing on the ground in the middle of sacred space, my fellow priestesses covered me with a cloth representing Yemaya and I felt her love and healing energy flow through me. I surrendered to her love. I surrendered to the support of my fellow priestesses. And I surrendered to the hurt that I felt by the abuse I suffered during my marriage.
As I write these words exactly a year after this beautiful ritual, I’m again feeling the need to surrender to the darkness and to honor my feelings of grief, sadness, and aloneness. I’ve learned in the past year, that surrendering does not mean allowing the darkness to permanently overwhelm me, it means surrendering to the darkness with a safety plan firmly in place. Just as Inanna arranged for Ninshubar to sound the alarm if she did not return from the underworld after three days, it’s important for us to let people in and let them know when we’re in that dark place. Sometimes we just need their comfort and compassion, but other times we may need more active intervention and compassion for ourselves means being willing to accept that help.
For me, surrendering means walking into the darkness and letting go of everything I think is importance. I have to let go of my pride, my need to be loved, my outer self, my hope that my world will turn out the way I want it to. I have to surrender all of these things until I am hanging naked on the metaphorical meat hook in the darkness. Letting go means not trying to make things better, not trying to control the universe, just surrendering to what is.
Acceptance
When I have surrendered all that I think I am and all that I want my world to be, I can truly accept what is without the tinted glasses of perception. Each time that Inanna was asked to surrender one of her treasures, she was told that “The ways of the underworld are perfect and may not be questioned.” As I’ve faced a number of challenges over the last year, including an insane job, I’ve found comfort in these words as they’ve reminded me that there are things in life I just have to accept.
Accepting myself as perfectly imperfect is another lesson that I’ve had to learn this year. I’ve had to learn to accept my worth in spite of—or perhaps because of—my imperfections. Fortunately, the Old Ones always place teachers in our lives when we need them and I work with an amazing person who reminds me everyone makes mistakes and that it is okay to just fix things and move on. That has helped me realize that being human is perfectly acceptable and that mistakes are part of life.
Accepting myself has also meant accepting my right to set boundaries and the responsibilities and potential ramifications that come from setting those boundaries. I work for a small consulting firm that has no respect for personal time, personal lives, or anything unrelated to work. The expectation is that we are all available at all times no matter what our personal plans. I’ve realized that I am responsible for setting boundaries and maintaining them. I plan my days so that my work gets done, then I shut down. There is nothing so earth shattering that the world will end if I don’t answer an email. I am also responsible for whatever the potential ramifications boundaries are and being willing to stand my ground in spite of the potential ramifications is difficult, but each time I maintain my boundaries I feel my strength grow.
In learning to accept myself, I’ve also learned to forgive myself for being unable to be all things to all people. My now ex-husband had a heart attack five years ago and I didn’t answer the phone when he called. He berated me and said this was an example of how I didn’t care and wasn’t there for him. However, the reality of it is that I was there for him as I spent every waking moment at the hospital taking care of him. I’ve realized that his expectations that I be always available to him were unrealistic. Realizing that I cannot be all things to all people has helped me let go of the guilt I’ve felt for not meeting his unrealistic expectations. I’ve also come to accept that if our marriage shattered over one missed phone call, it wasn’t a marriage worth saving.
Conclusion
Ereshkigal is not a Goddess that most of us want to aspire to be as looking within the darkness of our own soul is not pleasant, but having the courage to stare into the abyss and love ourselves despite our anger, despair, and resentment can help us become whole. Having compassion for ourselves can help us surrender the parts of ourselves that are holding us back and accepting our situations can help us change our lives.
Cairn by Cairn 