INTRODUCTION

Inanna’s Return

Goddess of Sacred Female Power

My Lady looks in sweet wonder from heaven.

The people of Sumer parade before Holy Inanna.

The Lady Who Ascends into the Heavens, Inanna, is radiant.

Mighty, majestic, radiant, and ever youthful—

To you, Inanna, I sing!

“THE JOY OF SUMMER,” PRAISE HYMN FOR INANNA,

TRANSLATED AND RETOLD BY DIANE WOLKSTEIN

AND SAMUEL NOAH KRAMER

INANNA, GODDESS RISING

The Sumerian deity Inanna is becoming one of the goddess zeitgeists of our time. After being buried underground for millennia in what is now modern-day Iraq, her rediscovery and reawakening in the popular imagination foretells of Inanna’s most famous myth becoming reality. The story of her descent to the underworld and eventual rebirth mirrors our current historical moment. I agree with Jungian Sylvia Brinton Perera’s assessment that the timing of Inanna’s return from the literal underground is not a coincidence; her rebirth is part of the rising wave of Sacred Feminine consciousness around the world. For many of us, encountering the living presence of the Divine Feminine for the first time feels like coming home.

There’s a pattern in many ancient myths of powerful goddesses going into hiding because of patriarchal hubris. Goddesses from vastly different traditions—ranging from Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of the grain; to Oshun, the West African Yoruba goddess of fresh waters; Amaterasu, the Japanese Shinto sun goddess; Corn Woman, the Lenape Nation’s corn spirit; the Hindu goddesses Sita, daughter of Earth, Sati, the first divine consort of Shiva, and Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance and auspiciousness; and Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of eroticism and war, and her Akkadian counterpart, Ištar—all have myths that tell the story of how the Divine Feminine left this world in one way or another and the disastrous effects that resulted.* In each account, an act of disrespect toward her Sacred Feminine Power is to blame.

One story that resonates with me deeply is Sati’s withdrawal from this world as told by Shiva tantric practitioner and teacher Sally Kempton. Sati, meaning “She Who Is,” is a manifestation of Shakti, the Great Goddess, who incarnates as the divine consort of Shiva, the Great Yogi.1 Their union represents the two fundamental, entwined aspects of the absolute reality: Shakti (Power) and Shiva (Universal Mind). Recognizing that there has been a gradual devaluation of women, she stipulates to the man who will be her father that though she is taking a semidivine form as Sati, she must still be honored as the Great Goddess.2 Otherwise, she won’t hesitate to leave the world.

Well, we can imagine how it goes. After many years, Daksha, her father, forgets his promise. He shows irrevocable disrespect toward Sati and the Divine Feminine more broadly by snubbing her husband, Shiva. Sati follows through with her promise. In one version of this story, the goddess self immolates from within; in another version, she jumps into a ritual fire pyre. In both versions, she withdraws her sacred essence from this world. Kempton names patriarchal hubris as the culprit, “[Daksha] embodies patriarchy’s inability to see the primal divinity of the feminine. [Sati] leaves because she knows that if the dignity of the feminine is not recognized, true union of the masculine and the feminine is not possible.”3

But thankfully, many of these stories tell us that the goddesses return, albeit after the male gods learn their lesson and agree to respect the place and power of the Sacred Feminine. For example, Yeye Luisah Teish describes how the Yoruba goddess Oshun leaves the world after the gods disrespect her. But when Oshun withdraws to the moon, she takes the essence of the life-giving “sweet waters” with her. The consequences are dire because “the sweet moisture of the Earth is the essence of Oshun. Nothing can be done on this planet without her.”4 The gods begin to panic and beg her to come back. Oshun agrees upon the condition that they “apologize,” and “[she] tells them, ‘Don’t let it happen again.’”5 She returns, and the world comes back into working balance.6

But Yeye Teish reminds us that this story has an important meaning for humanity: “[Oshun] requires that we apologize for wrong behavior . . . and do the work of repair. And on that she is relentless. . . . One of Oshun’s rules is, that which is not appreciated is taken away.”7

The message of both these myths is clear: Life is not one-sided. The Divine Feminine is not secondary, but intrinsically woven into the fabric of life itself. Harmony, abundance, peace, and flourishing require a respect and reverence for the Sacred Feminine dimensions of life.

In the Western psyche, however, the Divine Feminine was never fully buried. Though broadly depotentiated, she persists in biblical figures like Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, Lilith, and Eve, to name a few. And in living traditions, such as Hinduism and several Indigenous cultures of the Americas, for example, the Divine Feminine resisted her full erasure, too. But now, after thousands of years of varying degrees of repression, goddesses from all over the world are reemerging from the depths of patriarchal sublimation. The ancient myths tell us that many of these goddesses and sacred beings portray unapologetic strength, primal creativity, eroticism, and self-possession—what a vision to behold!

Inanna is part of the groundswell of the rising Divine Feminine. However, in the myth of her descent to the underworld, the patriarchal impetus behind her journey isn’t immediately apparent—after all, she chooses to descend. But why? When I consider this myth in the broader context of Inanna’s other stories, as well as the royal ideological agendas shaping the period in which these myths were first recorded, her journey can be read as a profound act of reclaiming wholeness as a Great Goddess. Doing so also reinstates the Sacred Feminine back to her proper place in communion with the Sacred Masculine.

The Inanna that’s come down to us today was shaped, in part, by mythic propaganda that served to reinforce patriarchal social, political, and reproductive agendas of an elite class. As I illustrate in chapter 7, Inanna was transformed into a sexual fantasy for powerful men to project their hopes, dreams, and aspirations onto. And in other instances, Inanna’s status, agency, and desires were disrespected and dismissed by male gods who flaunt their positions and power over the goddess.

Inanna’s chosen death in the underworld, then, can be seen as a symbolic unburdening of the identities imposed upon her as Mesopotamian society became increasingly patriarchal. Her subsequent rebirth signals a reemergence of Sacred Feminine Power not only for ancient Mesopotamians but for us today, too. She expresses erotic agency, celebrates her vulvic power, and is also a formidable presence on the battlefield. These character traits make for a dynamically rich, yet paradoxical goddess.

We are now in the time of her total return, as foretold by these myths, and this is evidenced by the ripples happening in the collective for the past century or so that are unsettling the worldwide grip of patriarchy. Thus, her return as a cultural zeitgeist is also critical because she has reawakened as an empowering myth model for contemporary women.

The rediscovery of Inanna’s descent myth occurred within roughly a century of several other findings that are changing humanity’s perception of history. These include the discovery of the gnostic text “The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene),” which revolutionized our understanding of Magdalene’s role in the early Christian movement, and important archaeological discoveries such as Çatalhöyük, a likely matriarchal and goddess-centric Neolithic Anatolian community.8 These findings, among countless others, reveal a history strewn with evidence of female power, authority, and reverence that was simultaneously reinforced by and equally supported the rise of the modern feminist movement.

Like a wave building in strength and momentum in the middle of the ocean, the Divine Feminine is powerfully resurfacing at the individual and collective levels. She is heading for the shore with the force and unrelenting power of a tsunami wave. What will humanity choose to do with her return and the renewal of her power? While we may not yet know the answer, Inanna’s myth is one of a handful of sacred blueprints. Hers provides us clues as to how to move forward with reverence and respect for the feminine aspect of the divine.