Grail Sciences
Grail Sciences is a Podcast that reveals the most occulted (hidden) information on the planet about how we as a species create our reality both individually and collectively. Come join us on a journey of self-discovery and freedom and learn how to change the world by changing your own story and become a Master of Destiny.
Grail Sciences
Why did the Queen of Heaven Risk Everything and Descend into the Underworld?
Inanna, queen of heaven, who descended into the underworld. It is among the oldest stories of the mythology of the world, but also one of the most significant. James Bleckley of the Oldest Stories Podcast sits down with Nathaniel Heutmaker of the Grail Sciences Podcast to discuss this ancient tale from both an historical and an occult perspective.
The Grail Sciences Podcast covers the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail and a variety of occult topics. Nathaniel is deeply read in a variety of world traditions, and expertly weaves it all together over at grailsciences.com/
The Oldest Stories Podcast covers the history, myth, and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, from the invention of writing until the fall of Nabonidas. James has been filling out the story of the oldest civilization for over 6 years at oldeststories.net
It might make most sense in that case to start with Inanna seducing Enki. And then that sort of creates the foundation for who she is as a character, as a person. She's just obsessed with getting more power. And then that leads quite naturally, I think, into her descent into the nether world. I've pulled up one of the ETCSL one where it just opens up from the great heaven. She set her mind on the great below. And it's like, oh yeah, she wants this. She just wants more stuff. I know ladies like that. And that's the idea. She's that kind of lady. And just writ large up in the heavens. And yeah. I think that'd be a good, a good outline, generally speaking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that sounds fine with me and whatnot. You know, we could also talk uh briefly, I guess, about like her fault centers and like how like that kind of stuff and how she spread.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll be I'll be honest with you. I don't really understand why she was so popular, which is sort of it's like I get why in a sense I understand. Oh, yeah, she's a really compelling character, and she fits an archetypal role that's very it's universally recognizable. Of course, she's spread out a long way, but it's like Enki is also really interesting. Why doesn't he spread out all over the place the way Ishtar does? And I a part of me really does chalk it down to the cultic prostitution practices and the fact that Ishtar's hot. I really, I really think that it's not very highfalutin psycho-mythic, but I really think part of it comes down to Ishtar's hot, it's why she goes everywhere. And Enki, he's cool, but you know, it's not the same thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, one could also make the case for it to a certain extent that it she also plays the role of like the divine priestess that goes into stuff with it and making it so that way it anoints the various different priest kings, uh city-state kings and whatnot that come out of it. And and and and and so if the if they're looking for a ritual that can validate them as I'm the worthy one for what it is, you can't really get that from Enki, let's say, anywhere near as easily as you can from from her, because you have the you know that's that's part of the whole all the shepherd kings being moved, the human being being moved up into a divine level of status, and that kind of thing with it too, and a justification for that in in some sense or another. I'm not saying that that is the key moment, but I'm also saying that partly if you're looking at it from not just a popular perspective, like you're talking about, but also from a political, like you know, achievement perspective and maintaining and gaining power from it and whatnot, it might be well, hey, we can adopt this for our own purposes. You get where I'm coming from.
SPEAKER_00:So no, that makes sense because the other the other primary god kings who are who come basically after Ishtar is no longer the primary queen of heaven in quite the same way. You get Enlil, Marduk, and Asher, and each of them is very heavily tied to a particular place, whereas Ishtar franchises like McDonald's, she's everywhere. Like McDonald's is American for sure, and Ishtar is from Uruk for sure, right? But but you get you know, I've had McDonald's in in Thailand, I've had McDonald's in Korea, went to McDonald's in Cyprus, and it's McDonald's. And when if what you need is if what you need is a Queen of Heaven, you go to the Queen of Heaven franchise.
SPEAKER_01:So in my opinion, that this partly has to do with a a concept in terms of her role there, of the Earth Mother motif that's going on there. And using that from I'll use the Indo-European one as an example because it's the easiest one to kind of pull from, you know, that you know, it's it's a way of making it so we that you the king has power and and whatnot, and he has a divine right to rule, and it's kind of Sumerian's variant of of that, is is what it is. And and I'm not saying that they're exactly the same because they're not, they have their own variant. I'm just saying that, like, in terms of a simplification of that, that I think that's why she spread. And if you take it her like as a component of she represents the land in a way as well, because even though she's the queen of heaven, she's also the queen of earth, right? So when you have that part of it going on there, to me, I think that's a big part of what's happening here, that there's a there's the divine marriage to her specifically, which you can't get from somebody else from it. And since she's the only female figure that fits that role in the Sumerian, you know, pantheon, it makes it so that way it's she's the one. If you're going to go that route, if that's going to be what spreads out, that that's the only one that can spread out, too. So I think it's all this I think so. I think it's also the popularity of what you're talking about right here. That's just that's just the layman's aversion of stuff with that. But I also think the priest class and the political class and whatnot, they're like, Great, if this is working with the people too, we can use that to spread out further. You get where I'm coming from?
SPEAKER_00:So oh yeah. No, you definitely get that Sargon of a Cad was a huge force in spreading, in spreading, in spreading Ishtar worship all over the place. And yeah, that's some that's honestly sitting down and really studying in Hedwana's. That's Sargon of Akkad's daughter was in Hedwana, and she wrote some of the most important Ishtar hymns. Yeah, no, Ishtar as Earth Mother is definitely because I can see it from a Queen of Heaven standpoint, but like I have in my head like Earth Mother as a sort of motherly figure, but Ishtar's a very different take on it. But I mean it can still fit in the category, it's just uniquely interesting. Like in Greek in the Greek pantheon, they would they would have taken Ishtar on not as an earth mother, they would have taken her on as Venus, of course. Not that's Roman, of course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, I get you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. They they would have taken her on as as a as as the passionate love goddess side, and they would have had their own earth mother because she in a Greek sense, she doesn't they've already got their own earth mother done. Look at it, is a lot more benevolent and gentle than Ishtar. But interestingly, of course, with the descent, it is a you've got Demeter, and of course, I don't remember any of the Greek names today, or for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I mean you've got with the descent, you've got yeah, you've got Demeter, the the grain goddess, Persephone and then Cora, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it uh it fits the dying and re rising motif better from the Greek angle, but then if Ishtar is the earth mother for the Sumerians, man, she's a crazy mother. She's like she's like those people that have have crazy mothers.
SPEAKER_01:Well, she doesn't necessarily there were other ones that were beforehand that fit that role much better, like ninja and that kind of stuff. But what I'm saying is that if you're looking at it from the political side of things and using that as your tool for what's going on in order to fulfill that enrollment of the divine kingship, let's say, you know, as universe is like a priest king for a city-state or whatever it is, that's you're playing that role. There's only one that can fit that role for what it is. And I think that's how she became more prominent. And then going with the notion of her, you know, descent and then you know, type of resurrection that comes out of that with it, too. Plus, what you were talking about with, you know, it fitting with the seductive nature of that, it made it so that way it fit what the general populace would accept that also the priest class and the political class could accept and go and use to maintain their power. And I think that's that's what happened here. I don't she's not the original one that occurred there. I think that's how she supplanted that, so to speak, and kind of became became that in the end. That's my take on it. I don't know if that's definitively true or not. I don't even know if you can prove that or not with it, but all I see is that I see that there's the trajectory that's at least a plausible hypothesis that goes on there with it. That that's all I'm trying to uh uh state there, let's say, and and whatnot.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, that's it's definitely reasonable. And I mean, some of the spread comes along with Sargon, but a lot of the spread happened in the pre-literate period, during the Uruk period, as because Uruk was the or seems to have been the center point for a lot of the colonial foundation, like the the city of Asher, founded by Sumerian colonists during the Uruk period. Possibly, depending on how you read the story of Enmercar, there were possibly even uh Sumerian colonies sent out to Afghanistan for the tin mines over there, and that could be related to Enricar.
SPEAKER_01:I would say that there would at least be that way for trading posts, if if nothing else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I guess you've got two core periods when the Ishtar cult would have spread, and in both times you do have that political, that political side of it working for you.
SPEAKER_01:So that's it fits her character as well. She herself originally is looking for more political power in a way. I mean, it's not that way from a divine, it's a divine political power, if you will, rather than a human one, but the gods are examples for how human beings are supposed to behave for whatever culture that they're a part of and whatnot. So I think that's just how they were like, yeah, we can totally use this for what's going on there. I'm gonna pull from another tradition to help showcase and illustrate this a little bit, kind of another theme here that I think that's playing out with it because it's um pretty straightforward as high and compared to other traditions. And I'm not saying this is what's happening here, but I see a potential parallel, let's say, for what's going on there. And I do know it happens in a lot of other traditions throughout the world. And if you if you take the notion of when civilization began, but not before there was like stateless areas and whatnot, like actual city-states being built, and we're staying in one location and we're not like semi-nomadic or whatever, or pastoral herders or that kind of thing, like actual city-states being built. From that point forward, you also get to where you need to defend that territory from outside areas and whatnot. And what you see is that you have this warrior class that typically has to play that role of defense of some sort for what's going on, and that they're the they're the ones you're seeing first, and these are always men. And then you have well, almost always men. Then what you have is that you have the hitter hidden hidden aspect and the inner aspect of things with it, which is the women, then they're hidden away, and the same thing with the children and that kind of stuff, and they're not at the outskirts, and they play a similar role in that regard for that. So, like in the Nordic tradition, which regardless of whether it's the Bronze Age all the way up to the Viking Age and whatnot, you can see that in some of the stories or in some of the artwork for what's going on, that the masculine is always like they're gods or whatever it is, the masculine components of other entities, so like the male elves and that kind of stuff, they're always easy, they're always straightforward, they're always upfront, they're always right there that you can see because it fits what was happening with what their society would know and understand deeply. Whereas the more feminine characters, the more feminine entities that are going on, they're not just gods or goddesses, but other things that are that way in the Nordic tradition, they're more blurred, and it's harder to tell what exactly they are and how they play out with it. And so, you know, if you take that with like the bicameral brain idea, where you have one side that's more analytical and like wanting to piece parse things out and put things in the boxes and label everything, and the other side is more of a generative, intuitive, wild, harder to understand where things come from, the insightful aspect of things. It's just that same parallel that's playing out here for things with it. And if you see that with Inana, she was obviously a feminine figure, she's representing that feminine energy, that feminine stuff that's going on with it. Obviously, she has masculine components as well because she has a warrior in some sort as as well. I'm not saying that she's fully one way or the other for what's going on there, but that makes it so that way in the case of that, it also goes back to okay, I'm it's kind of like marrying of the soul of the land idea again, the heart, the part you can't see, but you want one because it's a warrior time period, you want a land that can defend itself to a certain extent, too, hence her warrior aspects. Now, is that the truth of the matter? I don't know. I'm just saying I see parallels, is what I'm trying to see, say with it from other traditions. And I think that there's at least a semblance of truth, a kernel, if you will, and whatnot, and that has its own Sumerian variant or Babylonian variant and whatnot that pops up in various different time periods.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, no, there's definitely a period of masculinization of all the Sumerian pantheon as the Akkadians come in, and of course, there's there's a period in time around Sargon of Akkad, around the Akkadian Empire, where Ishtar actually starts getting referred to with masculine pronouns from time to time, and she does not end up becoming male, but a number of a number of Sumerian gods do get replaced by male equivalents during that period and over the centuries after that. But uh, and so while Ishtar does take on some masculine elements, she never gets fully gender swapped because she is so essentially feminine in a way that there is no male equivalent to a lot of her tropes.
SPEAKER_01:Hence why I'm saying that I think it fits pretty darn well with the stuff that I was setting forth that like it historically it also fits the evidence. Does it does it prove that it's true? No, but it does prove that the hypothesis is not completely nonsensical.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, no, that's I think something like that was probably in somebody's mind 5,000 years ago. Right. But whose mind, who knows?
SPEAKER_01:Who the heck knows, man? Some of these people you know they don't even write who they are when they write this stuff, or they use a, you know, they use a fake name, you know, sometimes too, even. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, the ancient writers would almost never put their name and claim authorship. You can get the names of copyists, but the scribe. Yeah. Even a copyist who was, or even a scribe who was writing something new would claim that he was just copying it. My favorite one is oh I can't remember one of the theodices, one of the great theodices of Mesopotamia. It ends with this, it's clearly a very composed piece, but it ends with, I am the scribe, so and so, and I didn't write any of this, it all came to me in a dream from the gods. Because he's like, I can't, he can if you just make something up, well, that's not credible, but if you're copying something from the ultimate source of knowledge, and they really did believe that there was an ultimate source of knowledge, of ideas, of all things. Yeah, and that actually, I didn't intend it to segue, but it segues quite nicely into Enki and Inanna.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we can just go from there if you want, and I feel like we've shouldered in a little bit of her back enough, you know, people have some idea of who she is and what she represents.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, so Enki, before we get into Inanna, he is God of the waters, he is god of magic, and those two are in a sense the same thing. In the cosmology of the ancient Mesopotamians, the origin of the world was water, just like in the biblical Genesis, and the every and all the continents floated on a giant ocean. And they thought if you dug far enough down, you would get to the giant ocean at some point. And so Enki is sort of that fundamental source. He's the source of all magic, he's the source of knowledge, he gets equated to Thoth in Egyptian pantheons because of this sometimes. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:I would put his Enki's son as the one that would be anyway. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, no, uh, for the writing thing, yeah. But as the uh in his aspect as god of magic, and he is, of course, the creator of humanity because he fashions all the people out there.
SPEAKER_01:Uh Ninhursog are the two main ones, and then his son also helps up in certain stories a little bit, so yeah, and there is there are fragments of a tradition where he may have been a creator god in some like a universal creator god in some tradition fragments.
SPEAKER_00:So that gets us to Inanna. There was a time in Mesopotamian myth history, it's like the time of the gods when all the myths happened, when all the you know the divine myths. So we're in this era where I guess humanity does exist because there are cities and temples, but it's still very early in primeval time. And Enki lives in his city of Eridu. And of course, Eridu has a good claim to be one of the oldest cities in the world. They, the Mesopotamians thought it was the oldest city in the world, which is why, of course, it's the seat of this foundational god. And Inanna is born into this divine society, and she doesn't really have a purpose. Like she is an Anunnaki, which is a son, not a son, a uh child of on, like a direct descendant of the great god Ahn. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And therefore, those are those that are gonna be watching later on this. Aan is the great granddaddy, if you will, of all that, and he's the sky father, the heavenly father type notion of things, with it very briefly about him. Please continue.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the on and the the children of Aan are sort of the great gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. There's also a class of Igigi who are like the lower gods, sort of more like your your river spirits and your mountain spirits, things like that. And she's a great god, but she doesn't really have anything going for her. She doesn't have to be.
SPEAKER_01:As the ancients would say, she doesn't have a destiny, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly what it is. And so she she wants to become greater. Like at this point, her primary character motivation is ambition, as far as I can tell. She's basically like a ball of wanting stuff, and so she obviously she wants power in order to get more things. Not just, I mean, she wants power for power's sake, I think, but she also wants all the things that go along with it. But you can't have anything if you don't have power, and the Sumerians were very pragmatic people, they would have recognized if you don't have the ability to get what you want, then you just yeah, you're just out of luck. And so Inanna did not want to be out of luck, so she is like, I want power. Where do I go? You go to that source, and her journey to Uruk isn't very well described, or I mean her journey from Uruk, which is her city, to Eridu, which is Enki, which is Enki's much older city. It's not like described in much detail, but it has the feeling of going to the source. Sort of like traveling through backwards through time. Uruk's a younger city, Eridu, Eridu is an older city, Enki's an older god, Anana's a younger goddess. And so she's going back to this source, and she's meeting with uh Enki, who's the embodiment of knowledge, wisdom, magic, sort of the primeval source of all things, which is a good place to go if you want to get stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Uh and uh and also the in the case of for the people for humanity, the creator of them, at least one of the prime cremators of them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so she goes up and she meets with Enki, and she wants his power, and he's not gonna just be like, hey, here, have some power. He's not quite that benevolent. He does sometimes give things away, but not to not to Inanna, not in this story. And so Inanna is up, goes up to him, hey, can I have some power? And he's like, Nah, not really. And he's and she's like, Well, let's get drunk. And this is where Inanna being very attractive is a core part of her personality. At one point, I'm not quite sure which story, I'm not quite sure if it was this story or a different one, but Inanna goes to her father on, and her father on is and he and she's complaining, why didn't you give me more power and stuff? And An's like, hey, I made you real sexy. What more do you want? And so she uses her body to seduce Enki, gets him super drunk, they party, and as he's falling asleep, she steals the meh. And I don't know that anybody knows quite what the reading of the word is, but yeah, we we write it M E. It's got a cuneiform sign, of course.
SPEAKER_01:And the these mez are I don't think of destiny almost. Yeah, no, they are they're related to the tablets of destiny, but I don't think we have a concept for no, we don't have something that's a direct uh cognate to it or direct parallel or whatever that you can do in it in terms of just a small phrase, it's not a thing.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we can describe it, of course, but yeah, and the closest that I've ever come to is you know, when you're playing like the video game civilization and you research a technology in the technology tree, and that technology gives you the ability.
SPEAKER_01:Now you can produce archers, you can build certain buildings, and these meter system or pottery or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and these met are kind of like that. It's it gives you it's one one is the met of literacy, there's one that's beer brewing, there's one that's bread making, there's one that's blueprints almost. Yeah, but then there's like also blueprints of abstract things, like more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's not just it's not just physical, it's just blueprints in general for anything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And and also blueprints of magical things as well. So she she just grabs them all. It's not clear that they don't seem to be physical things, they seem to be ineffable, but being divine, she just like absorbs these powers. And then she runs. And of course, she gets chased. She has a head start because Enki was, you know, drunk, but he gets woken up and there's a big chase, and it's very exciting. But I think the chase doesn't really matter. I think that's just to keep the kids engaged in the in the excitement of the story. And but then she makes it to Uruk, she's got all these powers, and then boom, she is established as the Queen of Heaven, having taken, in a sense, kingship from Enki. And at the same time, Eridu has been supplanted by the city of Uruk. And this is metaphorically the start of the Uruk period in history. It's also, of course, the start of Inanna being queen of the gods and her time to just be fantastic. And so that is the that's the legend of how she gets started. And then most of the things that we're talking about. And there's there's also something to the the like the uh Prometheus stealing fire from the gods sort of thing. The The Enki way of doing things was always heavily related to the priests. Enki whispered secret. If you look at the the Sumerian kings list, it's got those ancient mythical kings.
SPEAKER_01:And Enki for a hundred thousand years or something.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, longer than that, some of them. Oh, I know.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just saying, like it's something that no mortal could possibly even begin to do.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. And that's because Enki was whispering magical secrets in their ears. Enki is very much an occult god of magical secrets and things like that. And when Inanna steals the power from Enki, she is in a sense democratizing the mes of civilization. She's democratizing, she's making it available to uh non-priestly people, things like writing, things like that.
SPEAKER_01:If that actually made it so that way other people besides just this elite class, let's say, got to have that, which we know to a certain extent that that actually opened up uh and during this era too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And what we see in Sumer is in the old days, the kings of a city-state were Ensi, which is essentially a priest king. Whereas after the Uruk period, what you start to see more and more are Lugal, which literally means strong man as the king. The word for king changes from a priestly title to just a strong man. And you see some of that transition in Gilgamesh himself, who is just the embodiment of a strong man, who in a sense rejects some of what the gods would would offer other kings. Yeah. And he just tries to make his own way by his own strength. And you see it ebb and flow throughout the early dynastic period of Sumerian history, where sometimes the cities will be dominated by priest kings, sometimes by these strong men. And then the greatest of the strong men was Sargon the Great. And after that point, you don't really get, except for like one or two occasional instances, you don't really get priest kings anymore in Mesopotamia. And that stealing the Mez from Enki and giving and having Ishtar receive them. And then of course, being a woman, she can't hold on to them in her own right. She needs to share them with a man because women can't rule, obviously. But even as a goddess, there's an element of incompleteness to the feminine in the Mesopotamian mindset. Like these are people who went 3,000 years without a single confirmed ruling queen. So they're not they're not feminists, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01:No. No, not in terms of any of the political side of things with it. But they also, the women, at least, you know, in certain regards, had better stuff going for them than other parts of the world during that same time period. We're talking specifically for sure onward, where they were allowed to get an education and that kind of things, with the which other like like when we're talking education here, we are talking about for you know making it so they can read and write and these other things for it, whereas you know that isn't the case with other civilizations that are of the same time period. So it's not to say that they were completely against women either, just to be clear on that front with that they were they were more sympathetic in that regard than say other ones where they just didn't give a damn at all.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, there is a spectrum of being not a feminist for sure. Yes. But so the legend goes the there's of course there's no single coherent mythic cycle for Inanna or Ishtar because of course she was so prominent for thousands of years across such a wide geographical area that it's impossible to have one mythic cycle because it's not even the same people anymore. Yeah. But what you do get is every single is that true? I think it might be true. Every single Inanna story might be about her desiring more power in some way. Sometimes it's not like power explicitly, sometimes it's more like respect. There's one story where she falls asleep under a real nice tree and gets assaulted, and then she spends a very long time just hunting down the guy who assaulted her and giving him a very bad time of it. And that's sort of and there's a she feels very much like she's lost something in being assaulted and desires to get that back. I mean, I in a sense, you could say pretty much every story is the hero desiring something. There's very few stories that very few things happen without someone desiring something. But maybe that's just why she's so fundamental.
SPEAKER_01:And that's that's probably part of it too. And in the case of the story you were talking about where she's assaulted, of course, to me that's a very different type of power that she's seeking out, though, than than than like the political one or whatever. And and in that one, I would classify it as uh just a general human desire to want to take back that their own sovereignty within themselves and being able to choose and whatnot, which is not the same thing as I want to gain more over other people, you know.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, but I mean I mean, that's her desire for power is not just a political desire. It is much deeper than that.
SPEAKER_01:And it's much more myriad than that. That one I think is like it's not necessarily the same category as all as as the other ones. So I I don't know. That one we could you could say maybe is part of the same ones as wanting to gain power in some sort or whatever, but it could also be its own separate one. And I I agree with that. You're like maybe for that one. I like your analysis of like how well, maybe, maybe not.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_01:I think you set aside that one, they're all about her trying to gain something, though, that wasn't originally hers, per se, because that whatever it was that happened then was originally hers, and then it was taken away, you know, like her sense of self and dignity there.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, and then what at one point there's a a mountain that does not bow down for her, and show so she goes because the mountain is too tall, so she goes to war with the mountain for being too tall, and eventually she uh flattens the mountain. I mean, that's desiring dignity or honor or something like that, and I think would be that reverence, yeah. There we go. And so the ultimate culmination of all of her desire for power is the descent to the underworld because she is hanging out one day, and it doesn't the version I'm usually work off of, which I don't know where I've just put it. There we go, doesn't really start with a motivation. It the version, and I mean, there of course would be been many versions. I as far as I know, there's three primary texts of the descent to the underworld in various degrees of fragmentation.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes, unfortunately, but the we do not have a complete story of her descent into the underworld for anybody that's gonna be watching this part of stuff in the future, which just doesn't exist. We only have fragmented versions of it, and one of them is Akkadian on there, which has a little later time period. One of them, and I think the other two are Sumerian, if memory serves me correctly. I know at least one of them is Sumerian, though.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the the good Sumerian one that I like, it just begins with Ishtar or Inanna is up in the heavens, and she decides to take over the underworld just just because. And the most interesting part about how it begins, though, is that this is that she's a character fundamentally driven by a desire for more, a an ambition, a a push to obtain more things. But as soon as she sets her mind on the underworld in the story, before she does anything else, she abandons everything she has in this world. And it goes through a big old list. She abandons all of her offices. She was apparently a priest, and she abandons her priesthood. She abandons all these various temples that she's got in all these cities. Of course, A Anna is her, is one of her big temples in Uruk. And it just lists, she's got a temple in Kish, she's got Ur, Uma, she's got a temple in Akkad, Bad Tibira in Adab, in Nippur, in Shurapag. These are all huge temples in huge cities. Well, I mean huge temples.
SPEAKER_01:For the era, for the era, for the era.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for the era. And she is abandoning all of these things even before she begins passing through the gates. Just as soon as she wants to take over the underworld, she gives up. This is basically all of her worldly possessions. And it's like what is it about being ambitious and wanting to conquer this new thing that allows you to abandon the old thing? Is it about wanting the new thing so much you give up the old thing? Or is it something more like you want the underworld and you cannot have the underworld unless you sacrifice your mortality?
SPEAKER_01:In the case of the underworld, obviously it's death, it's the realm of the dead, and that kind of stuff. And so if you're doing this and you're doing it from a let's say she is a model, an example of what to do here with it. The only way that a human being can go into the underworld and then eventually resurrect in some form or another. Her resurrection story is very different from other resurrection stories, but let's just for the sake of example here for where I'm going with this, you know, it's it is that with it. It shows the process of how you have to, in order to conquer death, if you are a spiritual person and you want to make it so that way you have this actual, I don't want to call it enlightenment because I didn't necessarily have the same notion of that, like uh from a Buddhist Hindu perspective, but something akin to that with it, it shows the process of how you have to let go of all of these different things uh that are the worldly things, which is what she has, in order to make it so that way you go, and obviously we haven't gotten to this part yet, but at the end of all the gates that she goes through, she's literally naked in front of Ericskal, excuse me, Erichal, and she is there and had to give up literally everything in order to even get to that level, just like you would, and you're you'd be completely laid bare what it is on on that front, if if the human being was taking the the journey, and you're left, say, with just your soul, which as we touched on before, could be what she represents in a a certain metaphorical poetical way in terms of the land itself and whatnot, representing the the soul of that. But if you take that concept, the soul concept, or the spirit of the land or whatever that represents your spirit or soul in the realm of the dead now, for what's going on there, it makes it so that way it's showcasing the exact same process that the individual has to do when they're taking this journey back to it. And even if it's not for like a what do you call it, from from like a spiritual illumination standpoint and whatnot, almost every culture, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I have seen nothing that indicates otherwise from this. They bel meaning the Sumerians in this instance believed in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul or whatever you want to call it in some capacity or another, and it could just be explaining this myth and then how coming back again in the rebirth for that. So I I look at it from I look at one of the possible explanations for what you're talking about there, as for the audience, that is, not necessarily why she's doing it, but for the audience and that kind of stuff, that the only way that they could do that is this exact same process. It's an elimination of everything else and preference for death and then rebirth.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. Yeah. The interesting thing, well, I mean, there's a lot of interesting things. An interesting thing is that she's given up all of her worldly possessions. But now that she's done that, she goes to her various servants and says, okay, now let's prepare to go to the underworld. And so she takes on her seven divine powers, which you'd think would be things that are internal to you, divine powers. These are mes that we were talking about earlier. And but how they represent in this story is as external things. So she's got a turban that she puts on, and the exact something on your head, the exact translation of things on your head isn't always clear. Yeah. Well, and and it's she and then she has a necklace of lapis lazzley beads, then she has another wig, maybe on her forehead, or some kind of possibly a diadem on her forehead.
SPEAKER_01:From my understanding, it's more of a diadem, but that's debatable, of course. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then one of her one of her divine powers, her mes, is mascara. And this this mascara is called is called let a man come, let him come, which uh it's like sexy mascara, is one of her great magical powers. And then, you know, she's got a ring, she's got a pectoral sort of slap. Yeah. And yeah, it's just it's fashion, but it's also like so many of her divine powers center around being really sexy. But she's she's putting them on. You would think divine power or mes is something inherent to the soul. But for the Sumerians at least, it almost seems like very little is inherent to the soul, just sort of the core being of you is within your soul. Everything else, your kingship, your relations, your every other part of you beyond this sort of core identity piece of you is external, is something you wear upon yourself the way you would wear a hat or mascara or something. Uh robe or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I'm gonna bring up another culture. I don't know how much you know about it, but I also know that a lot of the people who are following me initially and whatnot, they're from groups of people that I've been doing stuff with the Nordic and Germanic stuff with it. So I'm gonna bring that up a little bit for what's going on there. In the the Germanic slash Nordic group of people with it, there nine is the sacred number, basically, is what it is. It pops up over and over again. You got nine realms. There's more, but there's like nine realms of the mean nine realms uh for what's going on there. You have nine days for the initiation rituals that they have that they take place on. You have three by three for certain things, which of course three by three equals nine for what's going on there, and then of course, in this instance, to go directly showcasing what we're talking about here, other than the physical body, they have nine different parts that make up the self. Now, there's a little bit of debate about exactly what these nine parts are, and I don't think it has anything to do with like a disagreement, if you will. I think it has to do with like changes in time as well as like various different local traditions and that kind of stuff, because we're talking a huge geographical area at some point where it's all of the Scandinavian countries, you know, and then parts of Central Europe and that kind of stuff, and we're talking about a time frame that goes from about the Bronze Age of almost 4,000 years ago up until the Viking era, there's gonna be some changes, and there's some different things that are popping up with it. But the point is that every single one of these things has its own meaning, has its own purpose, has its own thing with it, but it doesn't represent even your own divine essence either. It's just an aspect of it that are all just like parts of that particular thing, almost exactly the same concept that's being put forth in the Sumerian tradition, showcased by Inanna here, with her taking off her various different garments and other things that you're talking about with the maze and that kind of stuff that make up her uh her core essence and whatnot, and all that's left is just her. And it's the same process there, from my understanding in the Nordic tradition, that once you get rid of everything else or what it is, you have one thing that's basically left for it, which is their version of a soul and that kind of thing with it. And then they even have something that's called Hamingya, which would be a Nordic slash Germanic version of like karma, if you will. And it's the combination, your your Haminga is a combination of all these other things that are there, including your soul. So, like it's like your lineage, it's like your your soul, it's like your body and its purpose and whatnot, your jugula, as it's called, which is like a follower spirit of some sort that's there, and and etc. So I I I think the point I'm trying to bring up here is that like this is not just something that's necessarily unique to the Sumerian concept here, either, but it's and and it's it's it's fascinating to see how peoples that are thousands of miles apart and thousands of years apart, even, can still have the same general ideas, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's always amazing that I mean fundamentally when you get to these kind of stories, people are looking at humans, and the core of humanity is of course the same everywhere you go, and so they end up with the same, a lot of the same tropes coming up over and over, because people are at some foundational level still people, which is which is one of my favorite things doing these 5,000-year-old stories. Oh, yeah, people five thousand years old.
SPEAKER_01:5,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago, whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. And I'll bet if we went back further, we'd still find pretty much the same till you go way far back, till we're basically monkeys again, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's some of the stories that we know of, like the the cosmic hunt as an example, it's been traced to about a hundred thousand years ago for how old it is, and in terms of what can be done through what's called phylogenetics. So you know, it's uh taking the same notion of what you do with a genetic tree, but you're doing it with mythology. And luckily, mythology doesn't change that much until some sort of outside influence comes. Typically speaking, there's exceptions to this. We're just talking in general rule here, and so it makes this that way you can come up with the probability of how old this is and like where its kernels and sources are for stuff. The fairyman, which is something that most people are familiar with in some capacity or another that study mythology at all, it's believed to be 30,000 years old for where that concept originated from. Some the kernels of the notion of what do you call it? The like dragon slaying concept and and whatnot, or some sort of serpent originally is what it was instead of a dragon, and then it you know transmorgified into a dragon a little later on, you know, can be traced back about 70,000 years ago in terms of its very kernels, not necessarily the full-blown story. And then we also have like we call Mother Nature today, right? So if you look at the Venus figurines, some of this is a bit controversial, meaning that it is a little bit out outside of what people would like to hear and and whatnot, but technically I have not found anything that truly debunks it, so it's kind of one of these things that you know take with a grain of salt for it. But most of the Venus figurines, which I 100% agree that they represent like an earth mother concept of some sort, and uh and uh some of them have been able to be found that go back. This one is undisputed, they don't like to talk about it, but this one's undisputed. It's 350,000 years ago approximately, and it was found in Morocco. There's another one that is mostly undisputed in terms of the archaeological finding for it, in terms of like whether it's actually that age or not, is the point. I forget exactly where, but somewhere in in Turkey, you know, Anatolia region. And and now there's another one that has been found that I need to wait on the final results for it because there's still like stuff that's being sifted through to determine. But if it's true, would put it at about two million years old. Oh. For what it is, and obviously, humanity, just as a very briefly, in terms of our modern anatomical form and whatnot, is a maximum of 300-ish thousand years old, given the current archaeological findings for that. So even if you go with the youngest of these three ideas here of 350,000 years old, for that, somehow, somehow, this notion of the Mother Earth idea is not just modern humanity as Homo sapien sapien. This concept was somehow passed down interspecies-wise. And if you go with the older ones of 800,000 and the oldest of 2 million, then clearly it is much older than even humanity, if you will, in terms of the core uh kernel of the idea of mother nature or nature being feminine in some form or another, which is just absolutely mind-boggling to me how even just tiny kernels of stuff can survive for that long, potentially.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we don't get a lot of that stuff, but when we do, it sure, it sure, it sure is cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's like, what?
SPEAKER_00:What the heck? Yeah. So anyway, we're a little off topic there, but no, that's that's that's neat stuff. I just I don't know where I'm at. Anyway, let's see. So in our story, then Inanna. Yeah, that's cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Anyway, Inanna is uh I promise we can talk more about that later. I promise.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um someday. We got we got I'm I'm I'm already coming up with lists of stuff to look into. But so Inanna has put all her seven best divine powers together, the ones that she's gonna conquer the underworld with. And so first thing you do, if you're an ancient Mesopotamian, before you do anything, is you pray to the gods and ask for divine assistance and get the divine omens. And so even though she's a god, she still goes and prays to the gods, and she prays to a good variety of them. Please don't let me be destroyed down in the underworld. And it doesn't say if she got any sort of answer from these prayers, which sometimes is how prayers kind of go.
SPEAKER_01:Then she goes as someone with outside knowledge, we know in some capacity or another she does eventually.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, so but uh yeah, so she goes to the palace of Ganser, which seems to have been an actual temple to the of the to the underworld.
SPEAKER_01:I agree with your your assessment that it seems to have been an actual real place, even if we can't locate it directly now.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. Because they they did seem to believe that the gods were walking around on their earth, not like in some alternate realm. And so she goes over to this Ganser palace, Ganser temple, and she says, Hey, I'd like to come into the underworld. And the gatekeeper, Neti, is the chief doorman of the underworld, and he says, Who are you? Why should I let you into the underworld? So, oh, I'm I'm the goddess Inanna, and I'm here to attend the funeral of Goodgul Anna, who is the husband of Oreshkegal. And of course, Oreshkegal is the goddess queen of the underworld, and so her reason for traveling to the underworld is to attend the funeral of the king of the underworld, at least obstentively, that's why she's here. And and it's just that's just crazy to me.
SPEAKER_01:Because he is he is a dead god, but he's also not totally inactive because he's the dead god of the underworld, and I mean if you're gonna have a it's just this weird mind-boggling, like thing. First off, how does a god die, so to speak, on one front? And then, okay, even if you can accept that they have maybe some way that they can be killed and but are otherwise immortal, let's just say that for the sake of argument. How the hell does the god you know, the ruler of the underworld die inside of the realm of the dead? What that's
SPEAKER_00:And the best part is our understanding of Good Goanna's death is entirely from this one line. Like there must have been a tradition of this dead god of the underworld that we've completely lost. The only reason we know he's dead is because Inanna in this one story happens to mention it very briefly. We don't know why he died, when he died, or anything. We just know that at the point that this story is written, Oreshkigal is the reigning queen of the underworld. And she had a husband or has a husband who is dead. And I mean it makes a kind of sense. Yeah. It makes a kind of sense.
SPEAKER_01:If it was any other realm, it would be had. But since it's the underworld, it's like has had had has I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it does make a it does make a strange kind of sense, but uh, she does eventually. Uh so Neti the doorman says uh he you know radios down to Oreshtagal and says you say radio, yeah, yeah. I like and it's not clear how he's communicated, which is interesting because in other Sumerian myths, you do see the gods sending messengers, like actual runners, to go transmit messages, or the gods themselves go from place to place. Here he does seem to be able to speak at a time.
SPEAKER_01:Telepathically almost.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, telepathically, or like you said, through a radio or phone or something like that. Yeah, the only other thing I can think is sort of necromantically, the way that a medium in a ritual would be in the living world and you know speak to the ghosts and stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I can totally see that being the case uh for it there too, for what's going on. Absolutely. That's why, like, in the I I remember I had this question that someone was asking me at some point that had to do with, well, okay, if there's reincarnation and there's necromancy for what's going on there, how is it that we can communicate with them on the other side of the veil if they're dead, but they're also been reborn here and that kind of stuff with the which goes back to those various different parts of the self, with that one of them means the body and whatnot, and then there's also memory that they have, at least in the Nordic tradition, that makes it part of the parts of the self or what it is, and it's the memory of the people that are there and that's separate from these other things and their actual essence, just like we're kind of talked about here for what's going on with it. So I I like that concept of the necromancy a lot. I'm not saying it's true, but I really do like it. I really do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean they he they just sort of say it as if we obviously understand how communications with the undead world work.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's the thing, is for them, they probably knew when they were telling these stories. But since we're thousands of years apart and have no concept of what the heck they're talking about, with that, we just kind of have to kind of fill in the blanks for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00:So Reshkigal, she gets the message somehow, she picks up her radio, and she hears from the doorman, hey, Inanda's coming, and she's pretty clearly here to conquer the underworld. And like she's saying it's something else, but everybody knows exactly why she's here. Yeah, and Oreshka Gall, she she's like she's biting her lip, she's slapping her thighs, and that's like a uh a uh a frustration or sadness sort of gesture for them, slapping the thighs.
SPEAKER_01:It's what you do at a at a funeral or something when you're real upset, and she's and she given more she knows this is the idea that this might actually be a funeral, too, for what's happening, like an actual that like that there is.
SPEAKER_00:It's more that it's a that Inanna is a genuine thing. No, no, she's a genuine threat.
SPEAKER_01:I get that, but the the point I'm trying to sure put with the that notion for the audience here is that this gives even another layer of credence to the notion that there was an actual funeral of some sort going on there as well, in a backhanded way, let's say.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's true, that's true. You know, I wonder if I'd always read this as Oreshkegal is upset because Inanna's coming to conquer. I wonder if Oreshkegal is upset because she's sad that Inanna is about to die. I don't know, and I'm not sure that the story makes it clear.
SPEAKER_01:That's kind of the point where we don't really know some of these things or what's going on there. Well, I like it better when we know, but I I agree, I agree, but this is also interesting that now we have these questions that can be put forth that potentially other scholars can go write a thesis on later on, too, you know. So it gives us that.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So Arishkigal is like, Inanna's coming, lock the seven gates, and this is the most famous part of the descent part. And Inanna has to pass through seven gates in order to get to the underworld. And as she gets to each gate, she says, Hey, let me in. I'm here to come into the underworld. And the gatekeeper says, Ah, but you have to you have to remove one article of clothing in order to do this. And so at each of the seven gates, she removes one of her seven divine powers, and then by the time she gets to the seventh gate, she is naked, she has given up all of her powers, she's lost everything, and then finally she stands before Oresh Gegal. And this is she's lost everything, she is in a sense dead, but the core of her being is still there to stand to stand in the underworld. And then she causes Oreshkegal to rise from her throne, the throne of the underworld. And then Inanna sits on the throne of the underworld, and the seven Anun the seven high gods, they rendered a judgment. As soon as she sits on the throne, she is subjected to judgment, and then she dies. She turns into a corpse as a result of this judgment. And that's the core of the descent into the underworld. She does conquer it in a sense, but in that conquest, she immediately becomes a corpse. And this is different from the god of the underworld potentially being dead. She is a corpse. Being a corpse, she can still talk and stuff. They hang her on. Yeah. Yeah. They end up hanging her on a roof or on a hook. The underworld is like a giant cave, and from the roof of the cave, they've got a big old chain, and on that chain is a big old hook, and they have stuck this corpse on the big old hook. And she just hangs there for three days and three nights, because it's always three days and three nights. That's how you know they're definitely dead.
SPEAKER_01:And I can go into the meaning behind that at some point if you want.
SPEAKER_00:Well, now, what does three days and three nights mean?
SPEAKER_01:All right, so it's astrotheology that we're talking about here. I don't know if you're familiar with that term or not.
SPEAKER_00:I've heard of it. I haven't done anything with it.
SPEAKER_01:So, astrotheology, for those of you who don't know in the audience that are gonna be watching potentially later on and whatnot, astro meaning stars and whatnot, theology meaning religion, so stellar religion of some sort. It has to do with the notion of the sun dying, at least in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, this would be six months later. But it would be making it so that way it dies where it doesn't move at all. It looks like it's still for three days during the time of what we know as the winter solstice until approximately the 25th of December for what's going on again in the northern hemisphere. And obviously, since we're in in this particular story, we're in Sumeria, it's in the northern hemisphere, so it's these these dates for what's going on there. And it there's another constellation that plays into this, which is known as the Southern Cross. Okay, it literally looks like a cross. And if you were to put the sun over it, it looks like it stays there and doesn't move for three days, but then on the third day, it starts moving upward again. Like it's completely flat, like it's dead and whatnot. Now, going into the underworld, what do you if you have it where there's the realm of life and the realm of death as the two main components for what it is, and you have our realm being the realm of life, and you have the other underworld being that with it, and the sun represents the primordial understanding of where all life comes from on this planet and whatnot, that when it goes and sets, it looks like it's going into the underworld and is being swallowed by it, and then it comes back up through that. So there's this resurrection idea that happens from this here, too. And this is the original concept of the any resurrection story is playing around with this particular notion here from that. So it's because of those three days where it literally sits still, like from the point of view of anybody who's an ancient astronomer watching it, it does not move at all. It literally just sits there for when it pops up, it stays there, it stays at the same spot and stays at the same spot, and then eventually it starts moving upward after three days for what it is. That is where the origins of the three-day concept comes from. That's all traditions, all traditions that have that three-day.
SPEAKER_00:I had not I had not thought about that. I quite like that. So Inanna is dead for three days, and that's how you know it's dead. Three days. That's your your solar death in a sense.
SPEAKER_01:Bye bye!
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I mean it makes sense. If you don't get up for three days, you're you're done. That's uh that's uh, you're done, skis. And of course, Oreshkigal remains the queen of the underworld, even though she stood up from her throne briefly, Inanna's conquest ended very quickly, just as long as it took for the high gods to render judgment upon her. And the the connection between judgment and death, I think. That's you see that in a lot of traditions for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Behind me is another one on my there.
SPEAKER_00:We go, yep. Yeah, you've got your judgment and your death right there. But anyway, she has she has died, and she has sort of a divine minister, a divine secretary. In in Mesopotamian tradition, every god or goddess has a personal minister, personal secretary, attendant of some sort. Yes, an attendant who who is just like attached to them in a general sense. And Ninkeber is Inanna's personal attendant. So Inanna's dead. So what is Ninkibur gonna do? Because her her entire existence is directly in mind. And by uh so so Ninkebur goes around to the various high gods and says, Hey, Inanna's dead. This is really sad and terrible and very bad. And so first she goes, first she goes up to Enlil, who is in some traditions, Enlil is Inanna's father. Who exactly Inanna's father is changes from tradition to tradition. But she goes up to Enlil.
SPEAKER_01:If you believe that, that would make Ma new or An the grandfather of her, just for the audience.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yes, and and so she so Ninkeberg goes up to Enlil and says, Look, Ananna's dead. This is really sad. And Enlil's like, What did she think was gonna happen? She wanted to conquer all of the heavens, and she'd been doing that, and now she wants to conquer the underworld, but like, really, what did she think was gonna happen? Who goes to the underworld? Dead people, and you shouldn't just endlessly crave for power. She's got what's coming to her, let her hang on that hook a little while longer. Who would ever the god Enlil says, Who, having ended up in the underworld, would ever expect to come up again? Uh which is interesting because there are uh not a whole bunch, but there are a decent number of people that come back from the underworld in Mesopotamian myths. Sure, but the question might have been the first one.
SPEAKER_01:I that's what I'm trying to indicate in my analysis of things with that. I think she's the first one that actually does that.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's possible.
SPEAKER_01:That's no if that's true or not, but uh, it seems to be that like, no man, you can't come back, that's it. Then she creates this pathway of being able to do so. That's how I interpret the myth. I no one can say that it's wrong, but also no one can say that it's right because we don't know.
SPEAKER_00:For sure, and so uh the secretary, the minister Ninkebert goes to Nana, goes to Enki, but he goes to all the gods that Inanna had prayed to before setting out, and they're all like, Look, what did you think was gonna happen? You gotta you gotta be cleverer than this. But then he gets to Enki, and Enki, of course, god of magic, source of all kinds of stuff, source of of light, of human life in a very real sense. He the Ninkeberg gets to Enki, and Enki's like, oh no, she's dead. Well, you know, I do have some medicinal plants that might help with being dead, because I have medicinal plants for every possible situation, and he removes some dirt from underneath his fingertip, because that's some magical dirt under his finger, fingertip, and he makes a life-giving plant, and he makes some life-giving water, and he gives it to the secretary. Here, give these medicines to Inanna, which is which is great. How do you come back? How do you heal anything? You just get the right medicines from the god of magic and medicine, and so then the secretary goes down to the underworld, and you know, there's all kinds of drama. Don't drink anything in the underworld, don't eat anything in the underworld, touch anything at the end of the day. Don't touch act like you're dead. You gotta you can't dress up real fancy, you gotta you gotta be look, you're not a covert spy mission.
SPEAKER_01:This is how this works, okay?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's there's another Gilgamesh and Enkidu, where Enkidu goes to the underworld, not when he dies, but when he goes down there to get a ball that they had dropped into the underworld, they were playing playing a game and they they drop a ball in the underworld, and so Enkadu has to go down there, and he gets similar. The advice is very similar. You have to dress like you're all beat up, you have to put on it.
SPEAKER_01:That advice is the same in the Nordic slash Germanic tradition, it's the same in other Indo-European traditions, it's the same in Shento tradition. It's so you know, point is that some of these don't have any like direct connection to each other in any way, shape, or form, and yet it's all the same.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, but so anyway, she uh the the secretary gets it to Inanna and wakes her up with this magic water, magic plant, but she's still in the uncle.
SPEAKER_01:By the way, in the Gilgamesh story, him doing it, he has uh some sort of magical plant thing that he has to get too that's get taken away by a snake. Yes, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_00:He does, he does, and oh, it might be the same plant. Don't that's what I'm wondering if it's the same one.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know off the top of my head.
SPEAKER_00:I'd have to look it up, and I don't have to. I'm wondering if it's the same plant or not. Yeah, I don't have the source text for Gilgamesh up right now, but it could be anyway. Inana takes her medicine like a like a good take your medicine, children, it's good for you, and then she wakes up, she's alive, she's still got a hook in her gut, she's still hanging from the ceiling, but she is able to speak and really do stuff now, and so she begs and begs to please. Can I come back to life? And the ultimate resolution of all of her drama is that you can come to life, come back to life, but you have to trade life for life. There's never a reduction in the number of souls in the underworld, it's a good thing. It only increases. Well, it all it only increases.
SPEAKER_01:No, I mean, like it's always you if you get one, you have to give one. There's always that. There's no you can't have, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so eventually, Inana is surrounded by some underworld demons and her secretary, and they go on a little tour of the world of the living, where Inanna is going to pick who should be her replacement. And this is this is one of my favorite stories.
SPEAKER_01:This is one of my favorite parts of the story, too. I and yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So she goes to she goes to, let's see, I always I I can't I don't know any of these names by I don't know my heart.
SPEAKER_01:Don't feel bad. I don't either.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she goes to she goes to the house of Seg Kersana in Umma, and someone named Kara, who seems to be like one of her high priests, is weeping openly at how sad Kara is that Inanna is dead, and the demons are like, you know, we could take Kara and you know, we trade Kara for you, and then Kara can be dead, you can be alive. But Inana's like, you know, Kara is my singer, she does my nails, she does my hair, and she's lamenting for me, and she's lamenting. I couldn't, I couldn't betray Kara. So then she goes to Bad Tabira, another city, and she sees Lulul. And Lulul is covered in dust, he's wearing filthy garments, and he's weeping. And she says, Oh, Lulul, he was great. And look at him, he's he's weeping, it's great. We we couldn't we couldn't uh kill him, he's he's doing great. Now let's keep him going on. So they go to the plain of Kulava, which is the region of Uruk, and there is King Dumasid. Now, Dumazid is Inanna's husband, one of she has a lot of husbands. She goes through men like nobody's business, and none of them come to good ends. And Dumasid thinks he's the exception. He finally, finally, she's dead. That lady is out of my hair. I don't have to deal with Inana anymore. He is feasting, he's got he's got he's got milk everywhere, they're playing pipes and flutes, he's got all this magnificent clothes on, and he's had he is uh he is quite relieved that the incredibly passionate mercurial lady of his life is no longer causing him any problems. Of course, Inana sees this, and he's just not a fan.
SPEAKER_01:So she chooses him.
SPEAKER_00:So she chooses him. There is a story separate from this one. In in some versions of this story, the demons just reach out, they grab Dumazid, throw him in the underworld. There is a longer version of that story where the demons chase him, and he is he ha he's a shapeshifter, he changes shape into like a snake and various other usually unpleasant animals to escape them. And eventually he hides at his house and his sister, the demons come up, they knock on, they knock on Dumasid's house, and his sister, Geshtan Anna, comes up and is like, oh, hello demons, how can I help you? What are you looking for? And that we're looking for your brother, Dumasid. She's like, Why are you looking for Dumasid? Oh, we're gonna take him into the underworld because he was celebrating the death of his wife, and she's like, Oh, yeah, he really shouldn't have been celebrating the death of his wife. And he's a terrible person, and there's a number of stories where Dumasid does really awful things to Geshton Anna, like really terrible things to her, and she is very much a victim of her brother, and still she's like, Yeah, he's a terrible guy, and he absolutely deserves death, but he's my brother, so I'm not gonna tell you where he is. And the demons torture her for an you know, round after torture, yes, yeah, yes, and they come up with all kinds of various tortures, and she never betrays Dumasid, and this is this is act actually turns out to be his salvation. She never betrays Dumasid, but the demons do eventually get him anyway. Then they throw him down into the underworld, and it's Geshton Anna, the loyal sister, who goes to all the gods and goes to Inanna, who is Dumasid's in the underworld, Inanna's come back to life.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna pause you here for a moment just so the audience knows something about this record. No, no, you're doing great. I I love what you're doing with it, but Dumasid is not a god, he is a mortal man that has been married to Inanna. So he has he does not have any divinity inside of him and whatnot, which is also part of what pisses Inanna off so much with him thinking that he can take over her place and whatnot, and and rule the way he's be and the way he's behaving and that kind of stuff. That for the first time, you know, a mortal thinks that he can behave like she can. And if you go with her wanting to have all the power idea that we were laying out beforehand, it this must have been just absolutely you know horrowing for her, so to speak, for what's going on there on that particular front there for what's happening. And yeah, I'll turn it back over to you. I just wanted to make sure people were realizing he wasn't he's not part of the pantheon.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, now Dumazid is is his own rabbit hole for sure. There is a lot of a lot going on because he does end up being worshipped as a divine figure, but he is he is definitely king of Uruk as a as a man initially. So Inanna has now escaped the underworld, Dumasid is now in the underworld, Geshton Anna, the loyal sister, goes up, she prays to a bunch of gods, and they're like, I can't help you. Uh, he's dead. Dead people just that's what happens to the dead, and she goes up to Inanna, and she's like, Hey, Inanna, I sure wish you hadn't thrown my brother and your husband into the underworld. That's not very nice. And at first she's like, Yeah, I don't care. But then in unfortunately, the the versions of this story at this part are almost all damaged, pretty much. But what seems to happen is that not Areshkegal, Geshtan Anna, yeah, weeps before Inanna and begins to perhaps poetically recite all the good things about having a brother and all the good things about having a husband. And she shows Inanna, look at all these lovers in the world that have husbands, but you don't have a husband because you just threw him in the underworld. And I mean, from one point of view, Inanna's gonna get another husband. She's not it's not the first and it won't be the last. Inanna and Dumasid is weird because Inanna has so many lovers, but then there's also an entire genre of Mesopotamian poetry that is Ishtar and Dumasid, where they are presented as the perfect lovers, eternally faithful, even though we know that neither of them was in fact faithful in any sense. But it's sort of like that's one tradition, this is a different tradition.
SPEAKER_01:Are you familiar with what is it? I forget the the I think the Pengali girls and and Krishna tradition and whatnot. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know much Hindu stuff.
SPEAKER_01:All right, so I'll be very brief about this or what's going on. There's all these women that all want Krishna in some form or another, and there's like I don't know, a hundred of them or something like that. There's just like this stupid amount that no man can ever be with. It's not possible, okay? And because Krishna is obviously a divine entity for what's going on, he splits himself into as many as can be done with it, and then, of course, has his way with all of them, just like they all want. So, why I'm bringing this up is because obviously there's a difference between, say, the mortal interpretation of things and like how what cheating would be first. Is the God realm and that kind of thing with it. And if you go back to the notion of like Inanna representing like a soul of in some sort or another, or spirit in some sort or another, that can be for the land or for the like uh individual soul in terms of the descent, and then back through the reincarnation process, as we potentially laid out, is another idea here for what's going on with it. And you do the same thing for the muszi being the masculine one instead of the feminine aspect for it, and you make it so that way in that tradition, not the one we're talking about, but the sub the sub-tradition that you started to bring up for it, that even if they are cheating from a human perspective, that they're actually not, it's just one emanation of themselves that has nothing to do with the core essence that we've talked about before here, and that each one just actually represents the spiritual ecstasy, the spiritual soul that's there for it, and the culmination of having reached that internally within oneself, so to speak. So, in that instance, the various different lovers that she has, again, this is potentially this is one interpretation of it based upon other mythologies that could lay this out and show a showcase how this is at least possible for that. That because that makes it so that way it's more of each person finding their own soul within it, and that each lover with her is having all these things that happen with that. In the Nordic tradition, you have what's something that's called your fugula, which is a fetch, a follower of some sort, kind of like the attendant that Inana has, and all the other gods have, but sometimes it's called a personal norn. And a norn is someone who weaves fate, the fate of the individual. So the soul would be what weaves the fate of the individual, clearly, from from this particular perspective of stuff with it. And in the case of the all these other ones where fate is unkind, you know, to them, because all the stuff that happens to all the lovers of that, it's because they never truly awakened their own soul. They always betrayed Inana, or she's got had some slight with them, or whatever. So the soul is saying that you didn't do what you were supposed to hear with it. But in the separate tradition of Demuzi and her being always faithful and the perfect divine couple and all that other stuff with it, it was what one should aspire to in order to make it so that way you could like take control of your destiny, if you will, or whatever type skills. Again, doesn't necessarily you don't have to necessarily agree with that interpretation. I'm just laying out a potential understanding that would explain the two variants, if you will. Yeah. Not just not just from a different time or location and period, which is also probably part of it as well, of course, but but also from a philosophical understanding of things with it for why each one is behaving the way that it is, even it seems completely unrational, if you will.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I like that. I like that sounds good. So, yeah, so there is a there is a uh faithful aspect to Ishtar for all that she is not exactly a model of faith. For all that she is not exactly a model of faithfulness in other senses, but in this case, she is moved by Geshton Anna's tears and her poetry about love, and she's moved by the idea of love, and she does say, okay, we're gonna make a deal, we're gonna figure out how to bring Duma Zid back to life for half the year. I don't know if you've ever heard of anybody being brought back to life for half a year.
SPEAKER_01:I don't I I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00:This is this is definitely at least an influence on the on the Greek, later Greek myth. Absolutely. But Inanna is not going to the underworld again. She's too important. Instead, she says, Well, Geshton Anna, since you've since you have pointed out that someone should let Dumasid come up for half the year, since you pointed out the problem, you get to go fix it. So Geshton Anna, the loyal sister, spends half the year in the underworld, Dumasid spends the other half the year in the underworld. And this tradition of alternating who's in the underworld would have pretty big knock-on effects in other parts of the and in other parts of the mythos. For example, in the biblical book of Isaiah, you hear Isaiah complaining that all the Jewish women are celebrat are weeping for Dumazid. And they are, it's always funny to me, they're not weeping for Geshton Anna, the loyal sister. They're weeping for Dumazid, who is a pretty irresponsible person, but also an ideal lover of a sort. Perishing, they're they're weeping for the idea of their lover going away. And of course, Isaiah's like, no, you follow one God, none of this weeping for Dumasid stuff. But of course, they still have a month of Dumasid in the Jewish calendar, the Jewish lunar calendar, because that's how big a deal this story was. That's the month where he was. Oh, yes. Yes, there's a lot going on. Oh, for sure. They loved them, they're shepherds.
SPEAKER_01:And that's where you get the the Hyxos people and the Hyksokes kings and all of that, which eventually go and take over northern Egypt, you know, for a while.