The Descent & Rebirth of Inanna as a Map for Psychological Transformation (with Meditation Exercise)

This article was from the Inanna workshop in March 2022— it has been edited for clarity.

The Sumerian myth of Inanna and her descent to the underworld is very much alive today—I hear it echoed in the inner lives of women I work with and I have felt squarely in this domain myself as I became a new mother in 2019, right before our entrance into pandemic life.  

One of the reasons I believe we are experiencing a renaissance of interest in these ancient stories, including the myth of Inanna, is because of how externally disoriented a lot of us feel in the world. While we might be managing our lives, raising our kids, working, and getting through, there's a deeper disorientation around how to trust the external world.

Myths are orientating. They orient us to the world around us, and they have been tools for orientation throughout humanity’s history. Although this particular myth might be always present in the unconscious, by bringing it into our consciousness, we might find a place to land within it. Even if things are in disarray, we can attune this myth to our own lives to establish how they relate to us, what they mean to us, and how we can learn their lessons.

The myth of Inanna is very important to me personally. This myth has given me a way of understanding archetypal psychology in a lived way. Sometimes, when you dip your toe into archetypal psychology, it can feel very removed and hard to apply to lived experience. My intention here is to give you a taste of what it might look like to apply archetypal psychology to our own lives.

Let’s explore an overview of depth psychology and archetypes before we dive into this particular myth. In the pop-culture landscape, people talk about archetypes and gods and goddesses as though they are our personal psychological parts, but archetypal psychology thinks of archetypes in a different way than the term is commonly used. Let’s start with a shared understanding.

DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY

Depth psychology is a branch of psychology concerned with psychological transformation. It's not a psychology of coping, and it's not a psychology of feeling better. It's not necessarily concerned with security; it's not concerned with happiness. It's a psychology that is concerned with soul and wholeness, in the full meaning of those concepts.

What really distinguishes depth psychology from positive psychology or behavioral psychology modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy, is that, in depth psychology, we're not necessarily looking for cultural adaptation or contentment. Aligning with the wholeness of a person, including Soul, is embedded within depth psychology. It's the study of the unconscious so it's a psychology that locates itself in appreciation for things that we do not have conscious control over.

Rather than assuming that we have control over what we feel, (and to a limited extent, we do), depth psychology is interested in the places we don't have control over in ourselves—our dreams, our bodies, our longings, and our complexes. Depth psychology is concerned with eventually leading us to the “Self,” with a capital “S.” Some think of this archetype of the Self as a higher power or God or the soul, but no matter what you label it, the idea is that we are born with a template for our lives and the Self guides us towards the fullness of this template. The journey towards fullness is called individuation.

What is individuation? It is basically the point of psychic life in depth psychology. The idea is to become who you're meant to be. One example you may have heard is of an acorn growing into an oak tree; no matter the conditions, no matter the inner desires, no matter any events, an acorn can never become any kind of tree other than the kind it was meant to be, an oak tree.

The way that we suffer and the way that we grow is the same way in which the acorn starts to listen to the oak tree, eventually, becoming the oak tree. That's what individuation is about—fulfilling this inner template by listening to our longings, dreams, and emotions.

ARCHETYPES & SYMPTOMS

Archetypes exist in the wide, unconscious field which is called the collective unconscious. Myths and mythic patterns also emerge from the collective unconscious. It’s important to distinguish between an archetype (the deep energetic pattern) and the archetypal image (the image in which an archetype emerges into consciousness).

An archetype resides in the deep psychic riverbeds in our unconscious. When we talk about myths, they are culturally relative, and it can be easy to confuse an archetypal image with the archetype, itself. In this story, Inanna is an archetypal image that emerged from a pattern in the collective unconscious, but the images and examples that it inspires in each of us can, and will, vary.

Myths are inherent. In them, the gods can change, but the riverbeds—the psychic riverbeds—are already present. This distinguishes pop culture “archetypes” from true archetypal psychology. In pop culture references, the attitude sounds like, “I'm going to embody my inner Athena.” Athena, the archetype, is already present psychologically, possibly even through what we consider to be psychological symptoms or pathology—learning to listen to these experiences is what we are look at.

In archetypal psychology, the approach is one of understanding that Athena is already there, and to attempt to embody an archetype is inflated at best and dangerous at worst. It would simply be a practice of the ego complex acting like Athena, not such a bad thing if that means to practice tapping into your own wisdom, self-esteem, and clear mind. At worst, the ego complex is subsumed by the unconscious and no longer has access to other parts.

C.G. Jung is known for his historic statement that “the gods have become diseases…and [produce] curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room” (CW Vol. 13, para 54). This idea means that archetypes are embedded in our psychological symptoms.

James Hillman elaborated on Jung’s statement, establishing the field of archetypal psychology. His understood that because we have forgotten reverence towards the sacred—we don't have altars to Athena or Zeus or gods or goddesses anymore—but they exist nonetheless, and since we don't revere them consciously, they have emerged as symptoms unconsciously.

To me, this is very relieving because there's meaning to our suffering. Rather than trying to cope away a symptom, the idea here is that the symptom itself has a core; it has a center that is archetypal, and the energy that moves the symptom is an archetype.

One example is that depression in depth psychology is not so much a place or state to cope with but one to relate deeply with and imagine into. We might need coping tools to get through our mundane lives while we're in a period of depression—and that's where I also like to incorporate dialectical behavior therapy, because we all could use some coping tools—but that's not really the end of the game. Depression or anxiety or relational problems through the lens of depth psychology are examined as things that could change our lives if we relate to them, rather than simply trying to overcome them. The psychology is relational; we're relating to symptoms rather than overly pathologizing them or coping with them.

I am also distinguishing that I’m not talking about parts work psychology here. In parts work psychology, the view is that there are various conflicting parts of a person that make up the whole identity (Goldstein, 2021). Part of me says this, part of me says that. Parts work is a very helpful form of depth psychology, but it's a different tradition from what we’ve been discussing. However, it can also be a useful tool to increase inner coherence and meaning-making.

THE MYTH OF INANNA

The myth of Inanna is an ancient Sumerian myth. There are many translations and interpretations, and I'm going to give an overview of her story, based on the translation from Wolkstein and Kramer (1983).

The poem starts with an amazing first line: "From the great above, she opened her ear to the great below."

This first line sets the stage for what's about to happen—the above is listening to the below. This brings us into the context. Many scholars agree that the poetry that contains the original myth was written as a funerary liturgy—it was a song for the dead. This is important—we are in the realm of death.

This is a myth of death, descent, and rebirth, but it's not necessarily the butterfly-in-the-cocoon kind of rebirth. It's a murderous rebirth.

The poem tells how Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, is called to the underworld to pay respect to her sister Ereshkigal, goddess of the underworld, following the death of Ereshkigal's husband. Inanna knows the risk of entering the underworld and prepares by asking her aid Ninshubur to keep watch. If she doesn't return within three days, Ninshubur should seek help from the other gods.

Inanna enters the underworld with all her upper-world regalia—clothing, jewelry, stones, and more. The gatekeepers of the underworld announce to Ereshkigal that Inanna has come, and Ereshkigal insists that Inanna enter as everyone enters the underworld—naked and surrendered. At each of the seven gates Inanna encounters, she is stripped of one layer of her upper-world vestments. At the final moment of descent, Inanna encounters her sister and Ereshigal kills her. Inanna is hung on a meat hook and her flesh rots.

Meanwhile, following Inanna’s orders, Ninshubur appeals to the gods, but only one of them will help save Inanna. Enki, god of water and wisdom, agrees to help, and with the dust under his fingernail, he creates two tiny beings—the galtur and the kurgarra—to mourn with Ereshkigal. Enki gives the galtur the Water of Life, and he gives the kurgarra, the Food of Life; these items will restore Inanna. The galtur and the kurgarra are such small beings that they're able to move through the gates of the underworld undetected.

When these dust-beings reach Ereshkigal, she's wailing, as though she's in labor. In fact, different translations describe the wailing as labor pains. As she wails, these two dust-beings wail with Ereshkigal.

She says, "Oh, oh! My insides."

They say, "Oh, oh, oh! Your insides."

"Oh, oh, oh! My pain."

They echo, "Oh, oh, oh! Your pain."

As they do this echo, it soothes Ereshkigal enough that she asks the galtur and kurgarra what they would like in return. They ask for the flesh of Inanna, which Ereshkigal gives them. They sprinkle the Water and Food of Life over her body, and Inanna is restored to life. Then, she is able to pass with them back through the seven gates to the upper world.

However, Inanna is not a princess coming back to her throne. She has been murdered. And when someone eats something in the underworld, they then belong to the underworld.  Inanna had eaten the Water and Food of Life when she was in the underworld, so she now belongs to the underworld. To pay her dues, she has to send a substitute in her place; she can’t simply leave. She sends her husband, Dumuzi, who did not honor her while she was gone, and she also sends his sister, Geshtinanna, who ends up sharing the year with him.

This part is significant: it signals that Inanna doesn't just leave the underworld; there's a sacrifice made in her wake.

(Some interpretations of the myth say that Inanna actually went into the underworld under false pretense, wanting to usurp Ereshkigal's power. In that case, maybe there would be a reason for the murder. That's not the translation I work with, but you can think about it in terms that feel right to you and your own psychology.)

THE MYTHIC DESCENT PATTERN

Whether we know it consciously or not, most of us are familiar with this pattern of descent and rebirth. The way this might appear in our own lives is when we feel a call towards change, possibly first through noticing dissatisfaction and a longing for something unnamable. The call for change might eventually reveal a longing for something new and exciting, like marriage, a baby, or a career change. But if the call is asking for deep transformation, even if the call sounds beautiful, it often put us into the land of death and rebirth.

An important piece in the myth of Inanna is that she answers her call voluntarily. That isn't always the case with personal and collective initiations, and that makes this myth distinct from other initiatory myths like Persephone. (In Greek mythology, Persephone was abducted by Hades and taken to the underworld against her will—this is often a template for how depression feels psychologically.)

So, in terms of personal psychology, this myth might resonate with your own sense of longing, in particular, a longing for an experience that you knew would change you, although you couldn't have anticipated how.

For me, this longing clearly emerged when I heard a call to motherhood. For others, it could be a call into marriage, a career, or a move. But what’s important is the voluntary nature of the person answering the call, rather than having an event force the person to take action. You can think of the kind of emotional abduction that can happen with depression or after a trauma as being more similar to the Persephone myth, which did not have to do with any kind of voluntary action. In contrast, the Inanna story exemplifies a call we choose to answer, choose to act on, and choose to let change us.

So, what about the Seven Gates of the underworld that Inanna descends through? Some people have likened them to the seven chakras, which emphasizes a somatic element. Some people liken them to the cycles that the planet Venus goes through. Psychologically, the way that I think of these Seven Gates is that they represent the physical and emotional limits that someone must confront to live through this process of change—the complexes, the patterns, the internal limits that a person passes through in descent experiences.

This myth is also striking in terms of the murder that leads to Inanna’s death. Now, I've had some people in my own life who want to liken this feeling of death to a cocoon. We do have this really amazing movement culturally toward embracing rest and tending to the human nervous system—connecting with the Earth, embracing seasonality, for example, the book Wintering (May, 2020). This death is not that kind of “rest,” and I want to distinguish it, because we're talking about death, not rest. Those aren't the same thing. In this story, being murdered and hung on a hook is not the same as a period of self-care.

I find this myth relieving, because I have had a similar experience as a new mother. It was so raw, not a cocooning, restful, hibernating experience. So, in that sense, this myth has nothing to do with rest; nowhere in this story is Inanna resting, and nowhere in the Descent journey does the person undergoing the death/rebirth cycle truly rest, either.

Sylvia Perera (1981) wrote the seminal book about the myth of Inanna through a psychological lens. She wrote that “suffering is a primal way" – the moment of murder and death is “inchoate”, there is no way out, no obvious solution—it is full, chaotic surrender (p. 36). Then, she adds, "It's a sacrifice of activity which can lead even to rebirth and illumination when it is accepted as a way to let be... It suggests presence at its darkest level, such raw, impersonal, though potentially initiating miseries are Ereshkigal's domain" (p. 36).

This death experience is a primal one—all of our previous ways of coping (Inanna’s regalia) are stripped away—they can do nothing here. These are the times of life when we are fundamentally re-worked—we hit a bottom that has no way out on our own. This kind of psychic death is disorienting and can be traumatizing, but it can also be important and meaningful.

The word that resonates for me in Perera’s statement about Ereshkigal is impersonal. There is something in the impersonal, non-relating aspect of Ereshkigal that is vital. She's not attuned to Inanna's plea. She murders her, pins her. She sets the ultimate limit. This limit stops any normal activity. Nothing can be done until a larger force intervenes.

For me, the murder of Inanna is associated with the demonic (not demonic as in demon, but daimon—a larger guiding force in our lives) aspect of the psyche that needs to be reckoned with. Perera (1981) describes that this way: "For until the demonic powers of the dark goddess are claimed, there's no strength in the woman to grow from daughter to an adult who can stand against the forces of the patriarchy in its inhuman form" (p. 41). This interpretation highlights the developmental task of this Descent and the person facing a raw, impersonal energy that removes any final rose-colored glasses we carry with us from the “before times”—that time in our lives before we heard the call to take action and change.

MY STORY

How have I worked with this myth in my own life?

The myth of Inanna has always captured my attention. I think it's a myth about the times when we experience a Descent, when there's an initiation needed, when we need to grow up and we do so very quickly.

In my own life, I didn't have a lot of guidance on how to move through my recent descent experience. This myth was my safety net—it offered a map and meaning for my suffering.  

When I started my PhD work, the myth of Inanna really came forward . I started working with the myth academically, and then, in my personal life, I was grappling with whether I wanted to have a baby. I had a lot of questions around whether it was even ethical to have a baby on this planet, whether another baby was needed, etc. And during my analysis, I started to have dreams that guided me.

I had one dream about Kylie Jenner (I have SO MANY dreams about the Kardashian-Jenner crew… that’s for another time). In the dream, her baby is upstairs and far away. My therapist asked me when I recounted this dream, "So where's the baby?" And the dream planted a seed in my conscious mind. I started asking myself, “Where is the baby in my life?”

Then one day, I was dancing—I dance as personal spiritual practice—and I had this flood of desire for a baby. It just erupted into consciousness, and from then my whole life started orienting toward becoming a mother.

One of the things that really struck me about this desire was that it was not so much for the human baby that I now have (who is amazing and magical), but rather it was a desire I felt on a psychological level to become a mother. I felt like I had hit the edges of growth—there wasn't another program I could do, there wasn't another retreat to go on. I was already in a PhD program, but there were limits around what would make me more of an adult. The desire to become a mother was telling me, "Here's how you will become an adult, a grown-up woman.”

So, I said, "Okay, let's do it."

I threw myself into it. In a six-month span, my husband and I got married, bought a house, and gave birth, all while I finished my PhD work. It was insane, but that's what we did and I am grateful every day for the easy of my fertility journey which I know is not the case for many mothers.

So, when I think of “the call” in this myth, I can see how for me, it was a call to motherhood, but more so, it was particularly a call to deep psychological change. This call let me know that it was time to grow up in a way that I did not know how else to do.

ANSWERING THE CALL

Through the past few years of becoming a mother and then mothering during a pandemic, I have heard a voice in my soul saying, “I'm dying. I'm drowning. I'm dying. I'm drowning.” Then, after months and months, this faint voice, an echo in my mind said, "Oh, I'm dead now."

It was a slam.

When I heard that, I immediately felt located in the myth. It was almost like I hadn't fully connected to it until that phrase became clear—“I’m dead.”

I realized, "Oh, all my resources are gone. There is nothing left. Yes, I am dead.”

Now, I'm pretty high-functioning in the waking world—I finished my PhD with a 1-year-old in a pandemic while working, but there was a part of me that was not functional. I felt splayed out, hanging on the meat hooks. When I oriented myself and my feelings to the emotional landscape of the myth, it became clear where I was. Then, I felt an immense amount of relief.

Since then, I've been working with the images in this myth more and more.

I felt for the last few years a need to feel “better.” When this myth made itself more known in my life, I felt much more at ease; I could say with clarity that I didn’t actually need to feel “better,” I just needed to feel, to stay in this realm. I needed to listen, but I don't need to feel “better.”

Of course I bring in support, but I find something really inherently nourishing in relating to the mythic, to the archetypal, as a ground of resource.

I will continue sharing pieces of my story in the days that come, but I want to invite you to orient to the myth, in your own way. My ego complex orients me toward the Inanna character, but all the aspects of the myth have psychic energy—from Ninshubur, the attendant who watches Inanna as she descends, to the dust-beings who echo and resonate with Ereshkigal. So, I don't have an assumption that your story will bring you an experience that is the same as mine. I just offer my experience as an example.

MEDITATION

Now, let’s do some exploration, so you can locate yourself in the myth. Let’s see where you are in the myth already and to try to be specific about some conscious changes that you want to happen in your life, changes that the myth could elevate.

I encourage now to join me in a meditation. Afterward, you can journal if you want to.

I suggest 10 or 15 minutes of meditation.

For more meditations and workshops, check out my schedule of upcoming Teachings.

Take a breath and shake out—arms, hands, legs, feet. Now, still your body. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel your body in your chair. Close your eyes if you want to, or you can leave them open. Connect with yourself. Center.

Allow your emotional territory to arise in your mind and body. How do you feel in this moment?

Now, think of or sense into a primary symptom you've been struggling with lately. It could be anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, loss … any feeling you can't quite shake off or a problem you can't seem to solve. Invite this symptom as a portal into the myth, so you can tell you where you are.

See if the symptom lands in your body. If it lived somewhere, where would it live? If it's a feeling, see if you can feel the emotion somewhere physically. If this symptom had a wail, a cry, or an echo, what would it sound like? (For about two years, my symptom had the cry, “I feel like I'm dying.”) What is the cry that your symptom has?

If you have a sense of the cry, can it show you where in the mythic map it lives? Where in the Descent journey does this wail or cry take you?

Using your mind's eye—your imagination and intuition—allow this cry to show you where you might be in this territory. Then, pause, to let some of that unfold.

The next step is to relate the archetypal to the personal. Staying located in the mythic—wherever you found yourself in the myth—invite this question: What in me needs to change, die, or transform as a result of being in this place? What's trying to happen here?

If you don’t feel you have a sense of where you are in this myth, don't worry. Go ahead and jot down some notes. I value specificity, so if you value that too, here are some questions to guide your journaling and keep coming back to wherever you feel like you went into the myth:

·      Where am I in this myth? The map layout follows the pattern of call, descent, and death— where do I feel like I land?

·      Is there any particular image from the myth I feel really drawn to?

·      What in me or my life is asking to change?

·      In what ways am I resisting current reality? (Consider that this can be also feelings)

·      What does life want from me?

If there's one question that really speaks to you, you can focus on answering that. Or you can try to answer each one of these questions a little bit.

CONCLUSION

You can continue this exploration, analysis, meditation, and journaling on your own. Transition into asking yourself each of these questions, diving into your own answers, and sharing as much with other people as you want to. You might even begin to ask these questions from others, to explore how their answers are similar and overlap with yours or examine how different and varied they are from your own.

Collectively, I’d like to take a second and honor the Descent myth and the archetypal characters who populate it. Whatever way you find to be natural, offer gratitude for the ability to work with these ideas today.

 

REFERENCES

C.G. Jung Center. (n.d.) What is depth psychology? https://www.cgjungcenter.org/clinical-services/what-is-depth-psychology/

Jung, C. G. (1967). Commentary on "The secret of the golden flower" (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 13. Alchemical studies (pp. 1-56). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1929) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850990.1

Goldstein, E. (2021). What is “parts” therapy? Internal family systems explained. Integration Psychotherapy. https://integrativepsych.co/new-blog/what-is-parts-work-therapy-ifs

May, K. (2020). Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times. Riverhead Books.

Perera, S. B. (1981). Descent to the goddess: A way of initiation for women. Inner City Books.

Wolkstein, D., & Kramer, S. N. (1983). Inanna, queen of Heaven and Earth: Her stories and hymns from Sumer. Harper Perennial. https://www.amazon.com/Inanna-Queen-Heaven-Earth-Stories/dp/0060908548