14 Nov MOTHER OF THE UNDERWORLD
In the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s Descent (c. 4000 BCE – c. 3100 BCE), the goddess of love and war goes below ground to the Underworld to visit her sister – or shadow aspect – the dark goddess, Ereshkigal. As she descends, she discards the objects and ornaments of her authority. She is then flayed, and her skin is hung from a hook. Inanna’s journey into the Great Below metaphorically illustrates transformation, or death and reincarnation, a process of losing everything to be “reborn” anew.
“When Enki’s messengers arrive in the kur, they find Ereshkigal moaning (and mourning) in labor pains – a vivid symbol of the creative energy of the dark goddess. She mourns over the killing of the young vibrant queen and simultaneously cries out in pain as she bears new life in the form of expanded consciousness.” (p.87)
“Moaning and mourning.” These words capture my own personal transformation from maiden to mother six years ago when I gave birth to my daughter. In the dark depths of a dying year, on the night of 7 November, I descended into wild, rapid, and excruciating labor. The ritual of initiation into the blood mystery of childbirth was so physically intense I felt I was going to die. I survived, partially. When my child was placed in my arms, my body and self-image were in pieces.
Twenty-four hours after my daughter was born, still in postpartum shock, I woke in my hospital bed in the wee hours to discover the results of the 2016 presidential election. A flagrant racist, misogynist, fascist had been elected. As woman, and now, as a mother, his victory felt like my personal defeat. Before my maternity leave, I worked for the U.S. Government leading delegations of international visitors around the U.S. I had taken pride in the work of citizen diplomacy. I loved the work and the role. Now I could not leave my defenseless newborn for long travel assignments and the identity that I had carefully composed was useless in the stale dungeon of homemaking and caregiving.
The third wrecking ball of my initiation into motherhood was losing my mother nine months after the birth of my daughter. In the last two months of my mother’s life, she declined rapidly and I, her only child, had to triage her entire sad life, with the extra challenge of wearing my baby on my body the entire time. When my mother departed, I was not just broken, I was dust.
“We cannot undo the workings of time spent in the Underworld. Instead, as initiates, our task is to find the courage and the willingness to transform our woundedness into an experience of self-discovery and psychic renewal.” (p. 88)
Under the sequential physical and emotional challenges of my initiation into motherhood and journey through the Underworld, I could no longer hold myself in its existing form. I broke. I unraveled. I surrendered and became compost. In the Underworld I found prayer and I found fellowship. I turned to the old stories – myths – and they provided the creative patterns and material for my gradual re-composition. In the Dark an invisible hand began to mend my being. Through my descent, I mothered my daughter, I mothered my dying mother, and I mothered myself. Six years later, I am in awe. I am whole. I did not hold it all together and endure under hardship. I let myself be destroyed and I let myself be reassembled.
“Ereshkigal demanded the death of naïve, splintered states of consciousness. In this way, the death giving goddess paradoxically offered the psychological growth that occurred as my awareness expanded to encompass the fullness of my humanity.” (p.85)
Catherine Brooks, 2022 – Reflections on “Accident or Gift? Summoned to the Underworld” by Betsy Hall
Image: Babylonian cylinder seal