The essential goddess (Inanna) 92?

The essential goddess
A primer for the uninitiated
By Maureen Hurley

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

Food for Though, Joan Marler, KPFA, Marija Gimbutas, The Paper, Oct 4, 1990

JOAN MARLER/FOOD FOR THOUGHT  10/4/90

Hunger is a primary motivator, whether it’s corporeal or intellectual, and if you listen hard enough, you can hear corn grow. Radio personality Joan Marler stumbled into the art of the interview because as a dancer and an artist, she felt isolated. “I was frustrated I couldn’t see what I had accomplished. As I worked on stained glass in my studio and listened to KPFA, I found I was mute.” Eight years ago, she asked herself what the most challenging position she could put herself into “to see if I could think straight.” Food for thought. The answer came in loud and clear on the airwaves. Marler volunteered at KPFA fm in Berkeley, and eventually became a producer of interviews, lectures and documentaries for public radio.

Joan Marler lives with her husband Dan Smith, and daughter Sorrel, in an octagonal handmade house, and several studios tucked under the oaks in the Sebastopol hills. A fifth generation Californian, she grew up in Fort Bragg, Mendocino. “As a child, I was literally starving, until the first artists moved to Mendocino in the ‘60s. I remember the beginning of my life, the invitation into my creative life. There was a storefront window with musical instruments. All I did was see the outside of the door and it was as if I was hit with a thunderbolt.” She was 13. “It’s important for me to work in a variety of fields simultaneously,” said Marler--and she does--in dance, the visual arts, interviewing, writing, and editing.

Her latest food-for-thought weekly edition, program which began in June, “Brainstorm,” a which airs Tuesdays from noon to 1 p.m., covers a broad spectrum of the universe. Marler, who was KPFA’s former poetry editor, described it as a series of lectures, interviews and live pieces that focus on ideas, philosophy, mythology, women’s spirituality, humanities, the arts and sciences.”

Asking: “What are the sources of our hidden impulses,” she delves into repressed material, “uncovering the hidden assumptions that create the blueprint for our individual, and collective lives and attitudes, bringing them into consciousness.” 

She explained, “I drive down to Berkeley to broadcast a show, and my voice comes back to the community via the radio.” Programming on KPFA affects whole communities of listeners, it’s a circulation of ideas. She likens ideas to food. “As a child I was starving for information. I’ve gained tremendous experience through this work. I’m concentrating nutrients and transmitting them to others.” 

Marler has interviewed and produced lectures by many notable luminaries including the late Joseph Campbell, Phil Cousineau, Alan Watts, psychologist Carl Rogers, Riane Eisler, who wrote “The Chalice and the Blade,” and Marija Gimbutas, whose book, “The Language of the Goddess” has challenged the concept of patriarchal belief systems.

A motivating factor in Marler’s work is the exploration of women’s spirituality, and how it relates to the modern world. On Oct. 6th, she will host a special 12 hour women’s spirituality marathon, focusing on the inseparability of politics and spirituality, on KPFA fm. Marler wrote an essay entitled, “Women’s Spirituality” for the KPFA “Folio,” “This listening to the deepest interior voice, past all rigid systems and laws, is at the heart of women’s spirituality. Beyond this, there is no organized theology, no dogma, no centralized system of worship or practice, no governing spiritual body or leader. Instead, there is a multiplicity of traditional and evolving forms of ritual, celebration, and sacred inquiry, practiced alone and in community with others, found in every culture in the world.”

“As the Chinese saying goes, ‘If we do not change the direction in which we are going, we are bound to head up where we are headed.’ The necessity of examining the myths by which we are operating, which gives rise to our attitudes and actions, has never been greater. Women’s spirituality, therefore, is not a form of escapism, but is a practice of clarity and inner alignment by which individual integrity and responsibility for ourselves, our communities, and the planet are being fostered. In this view, the spiritual and the political are profoundly intertwined,” wrote Marler.

She dragged a large box across the floor of her studio, and showed me the results of two year’s worth of hard work, a 500 page book she’d edited: “The Civilization of the Goddess: Neolithic Europe before the Patriarchy.” This manuscript is a companion volume to the groundbreaking book, “The Language of the Goddess” by Lithuanian anthro-mythologist, Dr. Marija Gimbutas. The professor of European archaeology at UCLA is author of 20 books and over 200 articles concerning European prehistory, mythology and the origins of the Indo-Europeans.

In “Women of Power,” Marler wrote: “The significance of Marija’s work on the Goddess cultures of Europe... (and) pioneering scholarship has influenced an entire generation of artists, mythologists, archaeologists, and feminist writers.... Marija contends that old Europe, which was peaceful, art-loving, matrilineal, and egalitarian in social structure, was overrun by patriarchal horsemen from the Eurasian steppes who brought the technologies of war. This was a collision of two entirely different world-views, one which celebrated life in the form of the Goddess, and the other which worshipped power through domination.”

“Doing interviews for KPFA brought me to Maria’s work from that of Campbell’s,” said Marler, who has written for many national magazines including “Yoga Journal,” and “New Age Journal.” Her interview of Joseph Campbell was one of three indepth magazine articles on the great mythologist to be published in his lifetime.

Marler’s most consistent interest is that of mythology, and of “matristic” cultures. “Matristic” is a word coined by Marija Gimbutas. Marler explains that the word matriarchal implies the opposite of patriarchal, which is another division. Marler noted that Gimbutas’s work profoundly influenced mythologist Joseph Campbell’s later work. She said “Marija’s work updated his work and brought it into focus. 

In an interview, Marler asked Gimbutas; I know that Joseph Campbell drew a great deal from your work; in fact he spoke of you often in your public lectures. Gimbutas replied: I heard indirectly that he was mentioning my name, and this was such a pleasant surprise. When he received the manuscript of my last work, called the “Language of the Goddess,” he responded with such warmth and enthusiasm... He wrote a foreword to my book which I appreciate very much. Joseph Campbell made mythology alive.” 

Marler recounted the manuscript for Gimbutas’s latest book was carried to Lithuania, chapter by chapter, and translated into Lithuanian, though it’s not yet published in the states. Gimbutas’s family is considered to be the keeper of information on Lithuanian culture supressed under Soviet rule. Marler’s next project is to write a biography of Marija Gimbutas.

(And now for some missing text—damned ASCII code. I guess I should be grateful I've salvaged this much, but what a mess!!!)

...and editing.


The multi-talented Marler has been teaching folk and ethnic dance for 15 years through SRJC, using the aesthetics gleaned from Marija’s work. She described the ancient dances as formulas for the evocation of certain states of communal and individual experiences. I first met Marler as she led a spiral dance at the memorial ceremony for her father-in-law, and poet-activist, the late Ralph Smith. As the spiral wove in and out of the garden, we were transported beyond the framework of late afternoon, fall verging on winter, to something more ancient and primal. We dropped the isolated barriers of our 20th century trappings, and, for a few moments, we came together as a tribe.

“I love dancing with my students, making the ancient formulas together so a field of vitality is set up, we’re connected with the earth and communicating. Dance is primary, transcendent; it’s the physical embodiment. The ancient formulaes are exacting; dance cuts across time and space.” Marler commented that when her daughter Sorrel was learning to walk, she fell down and got up again. “It’s not one but two movements.” How we are living inside our bodies is important as well. She added, communal experience is so alien to our culture. “Through music and dance we have to learn how to move together to a rhythm beyond the cerebral. To get students to blend with each other, it’s important to learn to move in communal manner. In my dance classes it all converges: the study of myth, sociology and literature--all these things are combined in the process of teaching and performance.” Her dance teacher Don Frye focused on how to receive the impulse from the earth and transform it--spiritual food manifested physically. Marler also studied with a Balkan dance teacher, Dick Crum, and with Jana Nierenberger.

Marler received her degree in modern dance at Mills College in Oakland, and traveled to Japan. In New York, she read “Hero with a Thousand Faces,” gave everything away, bought a tent, and taught dance in Mendocino. A self-professed student of Campbells for 20 years, Marler explained, “I use Campbell’s text as a basis for my classes. What I’m about is finding the sacred ground. What is the path to the sacred, the ground of your own being?” She said students must find it within themselves. Again, Marler left Mendocino to study ballet, and ended up marrying her former sweetheart, Dan, in Sonoma County, and began teaching folk dance and modern dance instead.

She discussed the importance of the natural beauty of the physical world and the balance between intense work and environment. “I feel bonded to northern California. This is my garden of choice. The primary connections with nature are my first teachers. Our human expression is to give voice to our connection with nature, to celebrate being alive is a part of nature,” this, in contrast to the concept of exile in the West.

A self-proscribed member of the global community, Marler has traveled to most of the continents, and after a visit to China in January, she noted, “It’s a privilege the access we have to the media. We need to have continued access to knowledge. As a radio programmer, I’m in charge to do this. I don’t think I can take anything for granted, especially after waht happened in China,” said Marler, referring to the role of the media--especially the crucial role of the fax machine during the Tiannenmen Square massacre. Marler said she honors the privileges afforded by this culture, and of living on the western edge of the continent “where Oriental cultures and the pioneer spirit merge. There is always a new, internal frontier before us,” she explained. “The job of the artist is to continually rediscover the moment. We’re all part of the interconnected mystery. That’s what the dance, visual arts and intellectual arts are all about. You can only find balance by letting go of the paradox.”

We sat in the garden under a great oak tree, where the cat patiently waited on the path for someone to pet him. “Creativity is the essence of it all, and that means being courageous, discovering uncharted territories. Creative, not imitative,” she mused. “It means seeing through your own eyes, being as fully present in the moment as possible, and challenging old assumptions.” She pointed to her abundent garden by way of example: “This process of turning over the ground, what we know to be true; what is alive, worth keeping, is a vital composting. There’s noting we can hold onto anyway.” And with that, she handed me a yellow squash, as gleaming as the sun. The scent of apples perfumed the air with promise. I recalled some lines from one of her poems, “Women’s Spirituality”: “Breathing/ Taking the slow inward trek/ past the inevitable shattering/ where the listening can begin// Listening/ inside the incessant howl/ (so quiet and still)// What is Born and what is Dying/ circles in this place.”