B.S.

I've been rummaging on teh Intarwebs, and as always it's full of profound rubbish when it comes to mythology. IMNSHO it's disrespectful and lazy when Pagans just make up any old crap about their deities - doubly so if they're doing it to sell something.

Triply so if they're ripped off a living Native culture and then made up a bunch of crap about it so they can sell something. Today I stumbled across a pair of earrings, made by a Californian artisan, which pinches an Indigenous Australian design. I emailed the seller to ask for details on the design, and apparently neither she nor the artisan have the slightest idea what the figures represent - it took me about two minutes to find out online from an Indigenous art shop.

Despite what you may read online, the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna didn't create the universe, nor civilisation. Like a Greek god, She came later in the story of the cosmos, and rather than being born great, She made Herself great. To neglect that part of Her story, with its trickery and thievery, is to distort Her character. Nor was Inanna a mother goddess, nor a moon goddess, nor a comet goddess. She has so much personality in the surviving translated literature, She is such a unique individual, that blurring Her into generic roles means losing sight of her altogether.

When I first became a Wiccan, I was doing a lot of ritual and a lot of buying, and not much in the way of study. That's changed over thirteen years - now there's almost no ritual and no buying, and it's all study. I risk becoming a snob - but basic information about these deities is available to anyone at the local library.

Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart: 1

This book is by Jungian analyst Betty De Shong Meador, who first encountered Inanna as a symbol in a dream. After my previous posting I should immediately add that the book was published by the University of Texas Press, and that Meador has done her homework - also that her comments are very accessible. The first part of the book describes Meador's research into Enheduanna; the second part is Meador's translations of the high priestess' hymns to Inanna.

In the foreword, writing teacher Judy Grahn describes the struggle to grasp and translate the ancient poetry. "... finally, the sinuous, breathtaking, full body of the howling, spitting, untamed goddess writhed completely into view." Blimey! (The foreword itself is worth the price of admission.)

In her Introduction, Meador describes Enheduanna's passionate love for Inanna, and her effort to lift the goddess above all other Sumerian deities. Meador suggests the priestess may have done so to re-establish a balance between the power of nature and the human power of her conquering father, Sargon, and nephew, Naram-Sin. This is not merely fanciful - it was Sargon who first equated the Sumerian Inanna with the Semitic Ishtar, a symbolic part of uniting his new empire.

Meador describes the goddess thus:

In these poems we see that the very being of this goddess infuses and vivifies all nature and natural processes. She is the divine in matter. As such, she sustains the ebb and flow, the relentless paradoxical reality of the natural world. She exists between blessing and curse, light and dark, plenty and want, goodness and malevolence... Implicit in her presence is a divine plan, a sacred order and meaning. Enigmatic as the plan may be, it is [implied] by Inanna's careful attention to the workings of the world and the people in it."

She also succinctly explains the attraction of ancient goddesses to modern women: "...a spirituality grounded in the reflection of a divine woman, offering a full sense of foundation and legitimacy as females." (I add: in the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, no woman has ever been divine and nothing female ever will be. The female is a sort of useful add-on, not a fundamental part of the cosmos.)
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Meador, Betty De Shong. Inanna: Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2000.