Inanna’s Sisters, by Molly M. Remer

Sometimes I feel like my own Ninshubur. 
I set up a lamentation in the street. 
I call my own name,
beat the drum 
to lead myself back home,
prepare the temple
for my own arrival. 
I will not give up on myself,
will not abandon my own wholeness,
I refuse to sacrifice my Self. 
I will not stay in the underworld forever. 
We all need people in our lives who will say:
No, this will not do. 
I’m coming after you. 
I will help you to crawl back up, 
back out, back through. 
I will reach out to you. 
I will boost you up.
I will rise with you into becoming. 
You will not stay behind defeated 
and alone so long as I,
your Ninshubur,
draw breath.
I will beat the drum for you. 
I will call your name. 
You are not alone. 
Come back to me.
I see your power 
and your strength. 
I hear your longing. 
Return, 
return,
return.

I first met Inanna in the firelit darkness of a midwifery retreat in central Missouri. Toddler son at my breast, I watched, spellbound, as the charismatic, dark-haired midwife recounted the tale of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, through the seven gates we traveled, to the seat of our own wounding and our own medicine.

This was more than fifteen years ago and I have since drawn upon the story of Inanna over and over again in my own ordinary human life, even writing here at FAR in 2016 about being an “Everyday Inanna.”

I drew on her story as a metaphor for pregnancy, for labor, for birth, for parenting, for life itself. It has shaped and storied my experience of my adult life. I have been through many journeys of descent and renewal, everyday and ordinary, pain-soaked and powerful. I have walked through grief, through the brave reclaiming of my power and into the strength of trying again. I have journeyed in ritual and alone, through gates made of paper and stone, of myth and metaphor, of root and thorn. I have crawled into the depths, both into myself and on the ground with my knees pressed into the mud, hand extending into the darkness, reaching for her until my fingertips make contact. I have called upon her in circles and ceremony and in personal small moments of soft sheroism and dedicated persistence. When I feel like giving up, she has called me to rise. When I have felt too small and weak for the task, she has strengthened me. When I have quaked in the shadows, cast myself down naked and afraid, she has held me and encouraged me. I have heard her voice in the darkness. I have followed her through the underworld. I have fallen and risen, descended and ascended. I have emerged, restored.

Inanna was a Mesopotamian goddess, the great queen of heaven and earth. Her tale was told more than 4000 years ago, etched into clay tablets by her priestess in Sumer, Enheduanna. It is still teaching us today.

This year, I led an Inanna study circle with a very small group of friends using the book Inanna’s Ascent published by Girl God Books. As we reached the halfway point of our circle, for the first time, we start to truly consider the other women present in this ancient story, penned by the first named woman author, a priestess, perhaps the very first person in the world to think, “I should claim this story. I will put my name on it. Me. I wrote this and people should know that,” as she pressed her stylus into wet clay to form the symbols of her name. We start to think about Ninshubur, Inanna’s faithful handmaiden, the one who did not give up her, who beat the drum in the streets, who tore out her hair, who persisted until she had reclaimed Inanna from the depths into which she had wandered. We think about Ereshkigal, the shadowy sister of the Great Below, the one who kills Inanna and hangs her on the meat hook, the one who longs to be heard in her own suffering and lamentation. 

In Inanna’s Ascent in the essay “Adapting The Descent of Inanna,” author K. A. Laity asks:

“Who is your Ninshubur? Who will plead on your behalf, make public lamentations, go to the temples and yes, beat the drum to give you hope? Women are constantly erased—missing, discounted, disparaged, dismissed. We are punished for our ambitions, for wanting more, wanting to know more, daring to have power. But we are strong when we stick together.”

In our small study group we explored these questions and I now offer them to you as well:

• Who is your Ninshubur? Who has beaten the drum for you? Who have you beaten the drum for? What do you need witnessed/heard?
• What decisions have led you into a time of darkness? What has germinated/is germinating? What will rise/has risen?

We then turn our attention to Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Dead, she of the Great Below. In Inanna’s Ascent, in the essay “Inanna: Pregnant with Soul Voice,” author Iyana Rashil queries: “Ereshkigal is the reflection Inanna needed to find the middle where the keys are hidden. Women are denied this story in favor of how Ereshkigal is less than—unconscious, demonic, repulsed and unacknowledged—telling us we are damaged goods rather than royal queens on a mission. Ereshkigal remains culturally repressed when in actuality she is a tremendous source of vital power. Is she not a QUEEN doing her task of revealing the middle to daring sisters who would venture into her realm of ‘under-standing’ seeking their new birth?”

In our small study group, we explored these questions and I offer them to you now as well

• What is repulsed, unacknowledged in our own lives?
• What if we looked at Ereshkigal and ourselves as Queens of our own underworld, not as the “enemy” to vanquish, but as a vital source of power?
• Where have you labored, like Ereshkigal and Inanna both, for a new life?
• What is deep within you crying out to be heard, to be empathized with?
• Who is under-standing? Who is already down there waiting, not the one who descends asking questions, but the one who already there, holding answers?

As I write new poems during the course of our study group, I draw inspiration from Inanna, Ninshubur, and Ereshkigal, while I also start to think about the Great Between. In the famous opening lines of the original poem, from the Great Above, Inanna puts her ear to the Great Below. What, I think, of the Great Between, the place where journeys begin and calls are heard and questions beckon and feet are set to the spiral. 

Now, here, there are the three of us on a porch in Missouri, the summer air thick with humidity, the trees a cocoon of green, hummingbirds darting through the air above us and vultures coasting in wide languid circles above the sky. We are sisters of the Great Between, the place in the middle where earth and sky meet. We carry all of these women within us: powerful queen, loyal handmaiden, fierce sister. We lift our voices to sing, hand in hand. 

Sources for further exploration:

• Inanna’s Descent: a sumerian tale of injustice (includes photos of the clay tablets with the original story inscribed on them)
• The first epic poem
• Text from the original poem
• Book of translated hymns to Inanna: Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer
• Video performance of Inanna’s descent by Diane Wolkstein (author of book above).
• Pdf of the translated hymn to Inanna
• Inanna’s Ascent anthology (Girl God Books)
• Carly Mountain’s book, Descent and Rising (Womancraft Publishing)