Inanna: A Transformational Journey
By Char Tosi, Founder of Woman Within®
In 1987, seven women sat in a circle imaging how life would be different if all women discovered the power of who they are. Through the gifts and wisdom of many women who have attended and staffed Woman Within® Weekends, it has grown in depth and breadth, and many women have gained a new sense of wholeness. By watching women make this transformational journey, I realised that this modern-day journey is similar to the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna, recorded between 1900 and 3500 BC. By understanding this myth, you can better understand the journey you are about to take.
All women have a myth, a story to share. To understand your personal myth, it is important to learn from the time when mythology was the psychology of the day. Speaking in metaphors, ancient women passed down stories to describe their internal psychological stories. The myth of Inanna is still very much alive in women’s souls today, and by understanding her mythical journey, we can make sense of our stories, our personal myths. If we choose, we can make our journey through life conscious instead of letting life shape us by meandering along in and out of addictions looking for the soul of who we are. Here is the story in my words:
Inanna, Queen of the Upper world is married, a mother, and has many powers and treasures at her disposal. In the underworld of darkness lives Inanna’s sister, Ereshkigal, who is married to Gugalanna, and lives in the Great Unknown.
When Inanna gets the news that her sister’s husband has died, new feelings arise in Inanna and she knows she must go and be with her sister. Inanna dresses in her finest garments, puts on her precious jewelry, and places her crown on her head. She tells her faithful servant, Ninshubar, to send help if she does not return in three days.
As Inanna descends into the Great Unknown to meet her sister of darkness, she is greeted at each of the seven gates and stripped of her crown, her garments and her jewelry. At the end of her descent she stands naked before her sister, Ereshkigal.
As is customary in the Underworld, Inanna dies and is hung on a hook to rot. Three days pass and Ninshubar goes for help to the god of the Sky and the moon god, who refuse to help her. Finally, Enkil, the god of wisdom and water, agrees to send help in the form of two tiny creatures who are instructed to return Inanna to the Upperworld.
The creatures dart through the seven gates and offer Ereshkigal empathy by listening to her groans and her pain. Because she is heard, a part of her is healed and she offers them a gift. They ask for Queen Inanna and take her back up the seven gates.
When Inanna awakens, she knows her life has changed. She sees that her husband has not grieved her absence, but taken over her throne. She orders him to go to the Underworld in her place.
Inanna is a Queen. She has received abundance in her life, yet she does not feel complete. Like many women today, she is not fulfilled and feels something is missing in her life. A prestigious job, a relationship, children, a degree, recognition, the latest fashion, jewels, travel and parties – all leave a sense of emptiness inside. The soul yearns and longs for another dimension.
Women are like diamonds — multifaceted, mysterious and brilliant in how they reflect the light of who they are — and yet most women I have met are living as if they are a piece of coal — dark, unformed,
under pressure, useless, and burned out. Women are unaware of the power they possess because they have not taken a transformational journey to discover they are really diamonds, not coal.
In understanding your personal myth, it is important to remember that all characters and all events of the story are parts of who you are. You are Inanna. You are a Queen. You are Ereshkigal, the dark sister. You are the creatures. You are Ninshubar. You are multi-faceted and until you explore all the facets of yourself you cannot access all your internal power.
Inanna learns that her dark sister, Ereshkigal has lost her husband. Now Ereshkigal is Queen of the Underworld. What is the underworld? In our psyche that is a place that few want to go. It is the unconscious place where we store all of those parts of ourselves that we dislike, parts of us we love but can’t accept, and parts of us that have been hurt, abandoned, rejected or shamed. When the underworld overtakes us we find ourselves in a deep depression or wandering aimlessly through life looking for what is missing in our lives. When we make a conscious decision to go down into the underworld to discover a lost part of ourselves, our whole perspective on life changes.
The dark sister is the part of us that knows all the parts of ourselves we have lost. She has demanded a price from our psyche to keep charge of all these parts and we pay that price daily through body symptoms of illness, lost relationships, low self-esteem. The gold of who we are is buried in the darkness of what we have rejected. To find your gold it is necessary to make the descent.
To meet who you really are will not be an easy journey. It will take time. It will take a surrender of who you think you are in order to regain and embrace who you really are.
When Inanna decides to make this transformational journey, she is met with much dissension from her closest friend. Ninshubar tells her the journey will be dangerous and warns her that she may die. The truth is when a woman makes a conscious decision to look at who she really is, an old part of her does have to die in order for new parts of her to emerge. She will not be the same when she returns, and yet she must risk the journey alone. She cannot take anyone with her on this journey. This is hers and hers alone.
How often we want others to go with us and affirm and validate us? We are so afraid of looking in the mirror of our own souls that we search out others to see us and tell us who we are. So many others have told us that we are not enough and it is difficult to believe that we can survive such a treacherous path alone without someone to support us and to urge us onward. Yet, the support is there through a higher part of ourselves that knows we have learned ways to survive in the past and we can survive this journey, too. This is the part of you that is willing to take some action to make a difference in your life.
So, Inanna begins her descent. Picture her as a Queen. She is dressed in her finest. She has on her crown, her best diamond necklace and earrings, her favourite shoes and her diamond belt. Her skirt and cloak are the richest fabric money could buy. She looks like a million dollars. Imagine yourself dressed up for a gala celebration in the best you own, or wished you owned. It may take women many years to accumulate this kind of material adornment, and yet it is a metaphor of how we put on our best to look good.
All this adornment represents the persona we have worked long and hard to show to the world – the good girl look, the accomplished professional, the good mother, the queen of our home – yet often feeling more like a slave than a queen.
The first item to be removed is the crown. The crown represents the energy and power contained in our thinking process. In order to understand fully who we are, it is important to give up trying to solve all our problems through analysis and rational thinking.
Her earrings and necklace are taken from her to symbolise how she has not listened to her inner truth and has lost her voice in her effort to please those around her. Her garments symbolise how she has protected herself from feeling the pain of her past and present. If she lets others see her pain, she is exposed. All this stripping down represents the defences we have learned to survive. You will not be asked to literally strip down at this Weekend; however, you will be asked to set aside some of the
ways you have learned to keep you safe so that you can find some of the lost parts of yourself. Your old way of being in the world will need to ‘die’ so new, reclaimed parts can reveal their power.
The two creatures represent the part of you that must listen to the dark messages that chatter on in your head. When you stop to listen to them, instead of arguing with them or using them as weapons against yourself, you become more whole. It is the despised, repellent things in your unconscious that keeps you stuck in your forward growth. Listening to yourself is an act of Wisdom. Depression begins to heal when the hidden pain is named and honoured.
Once you have reclaimed those lost parts you will never be the same. You will speak with a different voice, you will see with different eyes. You will no longer ‘act’ like you are all goodness and light because you have seen and known your pain. After your ascent back to the Upper World, you will know you have a voice, you will know you can go deep within yourself and listen to the small voices inside of you that you can now set free so they will no longer hold you hostage by their mystery and emptiness.
By making this journey you will transform your inner masculine energy. The ‘old’ inner masculine is that part of you that was silenced, thinking without feeling and acting without thinking. By dethroning that part of your ‘old’ self, you can now integrate the ‘healthy’ masculine with the ‘healthy’ feminine of who you are. When this is accomplished, you will own the throne that symbolises the wholeness and power of the Queen you truly are.
