Holy Ereshkrigal? Holy moly...

When I read the myths of Inanna and Dumuzi I was surprised by the praise song to Ereshkrigal at the end. So are the people to whom I've told this story. By the time Inanna tells Dumuzi that he can split his underworld time with his sister Geshtinanna, we've forgotten all about the moaning and groaning Ereshkrigal with her eye of death. But experience of the underworld and the mystery of death is the thread that runs through the exploits and sufferings, the escapes, the dreams, and the grief, of all the players in this drama.

Myths and stories can be read as metaphors for psychological development and experience. But myths often describe the outer world as well as the inner realms; they speak about the human in the world, as well as the world within the human. Actual trees and rocks and storms and walls and chairs and traffic jams are the raw material of our perception and the inspiration for our thoughts. We have metaphors for psychological death because we do in fact die a physical death. Joseph Campbell said the primary task of any mythology was reconciling people to death, and the fact that life and death are inextricably bound up together. Life feeds on life.

We don't always know with certainty how ancient myths were used by the people who told them, what they believed, what they took as fact or metaphor. Modern science makes it difficult if not impossible for many of us to literally believe in parts of this story, the part where Dumuzi was turned into a snake for example, or a gazelle. There we look for what the images suggest to us, the idea that a snake symbolizes rebirth through the shedding of its skin, or the speed of the galla, who could even outrun a gazelle. But one truth in this old myth that science and technology cannot change, that unites us with the Sumerians who lived 5,000 years ago or more, is the truth of Ereshkrigal. What is underneath supports and nourishes what is above, life depends upon death.