The Goddess has a way of sneaking up on you. After the Persian Gulf War, synchronicity struck repeatedly, forcing me to ask, who is this Inanna anyhow? Multiple references—the many books, exhibits, readings, plays, symposia, and talk of Inanna was beginning to give me a catholic case of Eurocentric type A goddess envy.
I first met Inanna two years ago, at a Goddess exhibit at the California Museum of Art. I was so impressed by the textile exhibit, entitled Inanna's New Clothes, by McKenzie Birnie, wrote a review of the more interesting pieces.
On Valentine’s Day, a review copy of Diane Wolkstein's First Love Stories, from Harper-Collins arrived at my doorstep. Thinking it was someone's bad love poetry, I glanced at it, and put it in the growing mountain of things-to-be-looked-at-later corner of my house.
Harper-Collins also sent me Dr. Marija Gimbutas' new book, The Civilization of the Goddess: The Old World of Europe, as well as her extraordinarily successful The Language of the Goddess, just released in paperback. In May, Quicksilver Mine Co. in Guerneville organized a show called “In Her Image, The Goddess in Art” including the work of nearly 25 local artists. Currently, the Women's Theatre Company is staging an ambitious production, “The Descent of Inanna,” at Five Corners Theatre in Petaluma.
The very names Sumer, Ur, Nineveh, Babylon, and the Gates of Ishtar, always give me goosebumps, as do the names of rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates—this is the very cradle, the incanabula, the fertile crescent of civilization. This was the culture that also spawned the ancient immortal goddess Inanna. (She was transformed into the more familiar Ishtar; her earthly Gilgamesh is more familiar to the men’s movement.) Recent translation of 5000 year-old cuneiform tablets has given the world a brand-new myth to ponder—a major arcana goddess in her own right—Inanna.
One of the roles of mythology (and/or religion) is to instruct, and to offer parallel or alternative viewpoints. For many, the rediscovery of the Sumerian archetypal goddess Inanna provides an alternate role model (moving away from the male-dominated models). Women in particular, are hungry for relevant images; they’re seeking a metaphor for the pursual of balanced change, and a paradigm shift in religious philosophy from the patriarchally dominated, to a more balanced egalitarian code of ethics. Here was a powerful fully-fledged goddess, not some male god’s consort.
The archetypal love story of Inanna, the first recorded Sumerian goddess (3500 B.C.), the immortal Queen of Heaven and Earth and her earthly consort, the shepherd Dumuzi—and her voluntary descent into the underworld—comes from the cuneiform clay tablets—vestiges of the vast libraries of the ancient city of Uruk in modern-day Iraq.
According to Sumerologist and translator Samuel Noah Kramer, from the 5 - 6000 cuneiform clay tablets and fragments during the past few decades, a vast compendium of literature, some 30,000 lines of poetry—20 myths, nine epic tales, more than 200 hymns, laments, and dirges, and wisdom texts, including essays, proverbs, precepts and fables—“constitutes the oldest written literature of significant quantity and variety uncovered, and in its recovery and restoration represent one of the major contributions of our century to the humanities.”
The crux of the Inanna story is about separation, loss and empowerment. In order to become whole again, Inanna descends through seven gates to the underworld, is stripped of her magical vestments (and power) one-by-one. “Naked and bowed low,” she enters Abzu to confront her dark (side, or) sister Ereshkigal, in order to gain a deeper balance power of knowledge and wisdom. “From the Great Above, she opened her ears to the Great Below. / She abandoned heaven and earth to descend into the underworld.” She is reborn as the great goddess reigning over all aspects of life and death. Unfortunately, her husband, the shepherd Dumuzi, who took over her realm while she was down under, wasn’t too keen on relinquishing his new power—and was corrupted by it. She has to do battle with him as well.
Radio programmer and scholar Joan Marler of Sebastopol recently returned from a European lecture tour on the book, Civilization of the Goddess: the World of Old Europe, by Lithuanian anthro-mythologist and UCLA professor, Dr. Marija Gimbutas,. Marler said she first discovered the Inanna myth five years ago through storyteller Diane Wolkstein's book, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. According to Marler, interest in the Goddess is not just a local phenomenon for the new-age prone in Northern California; it's worldwide.
Marler says Inanna has “a profound meaning for women of our time. The archaeological material is valuable as mythology, not just because of its antiquity, but it's absolutely timely and relevant material for today, like a mirror. A reclaiming of ourselves. In Sumerian, both 'ear' and 'wisdom' are the same word.”
“When I was in Germany, there was a symposium on Inanna sponsored by the Christian Academy.” She describes the participants as liberal, free-thinking women theologians who see no future in Christianity—because the basic underlying text is wrong. “When the church fathers got wind of it, they came unglued, equating 'goddess' with paganism and subversive devil-worship.” When the church patriarchy tried to dissuade the women theologians from continuing, it was a stand-off: the women replied, “You may not silence us. We will resign.”
This need for a valid myth for women to live by goes more than skin-deep There’s a Chinese saying; “women hold up the other half of the sky.” Unfortunately, the emphasis has always been on the other—equality among the sexes has never been a strong point of western civilization—especially when it comes to public exhibition of the arts. Less than 10% of women visual artists and poets are represented in publications and exhibitions. Sometimes figures fall as low as 1%.
Oakland based artist, activist, and professor at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Eleanor Dickinson did some revealing studies on gender discrimination in the art world since 1965. In 1990, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibited art work by nine men, and one woman. Mills College (for women) fared worse: 67 men to 3 women! “Less than 5% of the artists in the modern art section [of the museum] are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” Over 75% of all art reviews are about men artists. Major 20th century poetry anthologies typically feature all male writers with a token female writer or two squeezed in between the sheets.
Khysie Horn, owner of Quicksilver Mine Co. affirmed “Most major museums and galleries still traditionally show men. There’s not a good professional venue for women—art by and for women—on women’s art themes. There is a tremendous need to show women’s art.” Horn said the response to the recent goddess show at Quicksilver was overwhelming. “There’s definitely a strong interest in the goddess theme. The interest among artists who wanted to exhibit goddess-inspired art was echoed by the viewers. It touched a resonant chord.” One common theme most of the artists interviewed share is that of personal grief and descent, followed by transcendence and a release of energy—attributed to the goddess.
Sebastopol artist Victoria Whitehand said her discovery of the goddess, “had to do with my own earthly mother’s death—20 years after the fact. The grieving process liberated all my feminine energy, it began flowing through my work—both the terrible and the supportive—in endless manifestations. Essentially I blocked the energy, and didn’t let it flow.”
McKenzie Birnie, whose piece, Inanna's New Clothes, which got me into this convoluted story, said “At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d been through a descent of my own at the time; a divorce, pain, suffering. I read Diane Wolkstein’s book on Inanna—it was the most powerful stuff. I gulped it down whole. It was real deep therapy and journey—I’m not a goddess person per-se, I don’t have a goddess religion, but I welcome the energy.” Journey’s North and South, Birnie’s next exhibit with Barbara Jacobson at Quicksilver opens June 6 and runs through the 20th. Jacobson’s work is deeply influenced by the goddess, very much an exploration of the feminine—something experienced after the death of her mother.
The New York based storyteller Diane Wolkstein, whose books and stories have profoundly affected so many women, said Inanna was a birthday gift. She was looking for a role model, a complete triple goddess in all her aspects—maid, woman and crone—and after extensive searching through the world’s anthologies for a moon goddess—Mari, Diana, Persephone, Lilith, Ishtar, Hecate, Seine, Brigit, Cybele, Isis. . . and found her at last by the name of Inanna. Wolkstein too suffered her own personal descent and reemerged energized by the Inanna myth.
Though celebration of the goddess may be seen as primarily a woman’s movement, some men are also inspired by the goddess. Visionary painter Paul Nicholson, and sculptor Zac Zakine claim inspiration from the goddess. Inventor, sculptor and TV cameraman Robert LaDonne said “she affects me daily. The working goddess is so alive. Men don’t allow ourselves to truly feel, we tend deny it, to be more mechanically minded. I’m OK with my male figure.” LaDonne invented a speaker system that allows deaf people to feel sound. He discovered his invention also allowed him to feel aspects of the goddess—by listening to the aorta of a pregnant woman. “It opened up a whole new world. We have to go back into the body, our own rebirthing in order to cleanse ourselves.”
Not all artists view their work as specifically Inanna, or goddess inspired, though viewers may see a connection. Whitehand identifies more with Indian mythology, and Kali. “The transformation of aspects of the goddess is the force that drives us on the spiral of evolution.”
“The influence of the goddess is not what my work’s about. I’m a little uneasy with that thought. For me, the spiritual is not gendered. My work has more to do with the spirit of woman ancestors. The female images in my work open up the pathways for transformation,” says Marsha Connell. “It’s a reminder that men didn’t always run the world. Those reminders also empower us as creative women. Where is our muse now? ”
Which brings me back to Gimbutas’s work on the European goddess. Until the 1960s, the traditional view of Western civilization was imported in its entirety from the Middle East; its history rooted in the great waves of Indo-European migration. But the goddess is not limited to just the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization.
Marler also discussed the relevance and timeliness of Dr. Gimbutas's work on European egalitarian, neolithic goddess-centered cultures in pre-patriarchal Europe—the “matristic” cultures, which existed previous to the polarized ecologically destructive and warlike patriarchal/matriarchal cultures that followed.)
In 1967, Gimbutas began excavating in southeastern Europe, where she discovered hundreds of small clay figurines—for which no one had an explanation. (In February 1990, we literally bombed the hell out of the archaeological sites of the world's first cities, Babylon, Ur, Nineveh, Tel Afar, and Uruk (the biblical Erech—modern day Warka, 150 miles south of Baghdad). In the Diane Wolkstein book Inanna, her translator, Samuel Noah Kramer wrote, “Many a text is still lying buried in the tels of southern Iraq, awaiting the lucky spade of the future excavator.” Unfortunately, many archaeological sites were destroyed during the Gulf war.
Little by little, it began to dawn on her a full-fledged alternative civilization, what she coined “Old Europe,” flourished from 7000 to 3500 B.C. The renown archaeologist and pre-historian states that the Indo-Europeans were essentially horse-riding barbarians from the Russian Steppes who destroyed the old culture, replacing the Goddess with their pantheon of plundering warrior gods—who still seem to be in control.
Radio-carbon dating, and Gimbutas's compilation, The Language of the Goddess, where she claims the parallel language and culture of the European form of Goddess—undergirds our previous notions of the rise of entire Western culture. This has turned the concept of the Indo-European progenitor of civilization entirely on its ear, causing an uproar and enormous controversy in the male-dominated anthropological circles. “This material may affect our vision of the past as well as our sense of potential for the present and future.” Marler claims the “necessity for examining the myths by which we are operating, which gives rise to our attitudes and actions, has never been greater.”
no tearsheet
Food for Though, Joan Marler, KPFA, Marija Gimbutas Oct. 1990
Inanna, Searching for the Goddess at CMA Aug 16, 1990
