3.3 Ereshkigal's Lament

Inanna's Path. An archetypal journey of descent, shedding, facing, transforming, and returning.

The kurgarra and the galatur clung to the ceiling of Ereshkigal’s throne room. With their many eyes, they saw the body of the Queen of Heaven swaying slightly from a hook. Her skin was ashy and gray, no longer the shimmering deep bronze glow of a goddess. Her eyes stared lifelessly ahead and yet she seemed to sway with every groan that spilled from Ereshkigal. The Queen of the Dead was huddled on a couch that someone had pushed against the far wall - as much distance between the two of them as possible. She groaned and wept, her powerful body curled into a naked fetal seed.

Ereshkigal had killed Inanna, but she couldn’t part with the body because they were one another. She couldn’t bear the sight or smell or nearness of it though, so she huddled against the wall like a caged cat. Inanna was deep in the World Womb, but Ereshkigal was in labor and her heart was breech. She had contracted, dilated, and closed down over and over again for 3 days - an act of Nature midwives call the predator instinct. Her primal animal body knew it wasn’t safe to be reborn in a world without integration, so like a deer being hunted by a lion, Ereshkigal had unconsciously worked against herself.

Transformation was not for only one. Transformation was in the integration of both.

“The hero must put aside his pride, his virtue, his beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.”
-Joseph Campbell