What is your creative work asking of you?
Creative transformation and the myth of Inanna
You hover on the brink of a dark and unfamiliar place.
In the journey to get here, you’ve been forced to surrender everything: luxuries and comforts, your dignity—even your clothes. Standing on the threshold, shivering, naked and alone, you have no idea what comes next.
Perhaps you’ve found yourself (metaphorically speaking) at this threshold?
This crossing of thresholds is at the heart of The Descent of Inanna—a narrative poem first etched onto clay tablets over four thousand years ago. Composed (purportedly) by the Sumerian priestess and leader, Enheduanna, it tells of the descent into the underworld of Inanna, Queen of the Upperworld: a descent that results in Inanna’s death and yet, in the end, provides the conditions for her rebirth.
Stories of underworld journeys are well-known, of course, in western mythology. We recall the story of Orpheus and Eurydice (which I’ve written about before), along with that of Hades and Persephone from Homer’s The Odyssey. Then there is Dante’s Inferno, complete with its Nine Circles of Hell.
But the myth of Inanna—composed by a woman who was alive some fifteen hundred years before Homer—is less known. Certainly (despite my years of literary training) it was unknown to me. My friend Charlotte first alerted me to the story, having discovered it through the work of Carly Mountain, psychotherapist and the author of Descent and Rising: Women’s Stories and the Embodiment of the Inanna Myth.
Lost through time, the story of Inanna was unearthed only in the mid twentieth century during an archaeological dig. It has catalysed—as Elizabeth Winkler outlines in her New Yorker article ‘The Struggle to Unearth the World’s First Author’—debates around female authorship and power. The Descent of Inanna is an ancient story which, Mountain believes, simply ‘has not been acknowledged enough.’ In writing about it here, I acknowledge and am grateful for the excavation work undertaken by Mountain and those before her (Mountain herself came across the story through Linda Hartley’s book Servants of the Sacred Dream).
Reflecting on this chain of knowledge, I find something extraordinary at work: a story, buried for millennia, that has nevertheless been treasured and passed from person to person, woman to woman, as an initiatory gift.
This initiation is a powerful invitation to transform.
Because the power of transformation is fundamental to the Inanna myth.
It offers us the potential of what can happen when we surrender who we think we are, and who we are comfortable being. It suggests what can happen when we give up what keeps us comfortable and safe; when we face into the dark and the unknown and risk being ridiculed for being our naked, vulnerable selves.
Just as in life: when we feel that hunger for something more—more purpose, more joy, more expansion—and recognise ourselves on the brink of a shift that requires (indeed, comes from) deep integrity.
Just as in creativity: when the process of making brings us to the thresholds of our being, shivering and alone, not knowing how our creation will be received or who might judge us (so we believe) for having the audacity to create it.
Before we unpack the nuances of the Inanna myth, though, here’s a brief summary of the story.
Inanna, the Queen of the Upperworld, is a leader of her people, living a luxurious and comfortable life until she receives an invitation from underground—issued by her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld—to descend. Initially ignoring the call, Inanna eventually submits. With the help of her servant, Ninshubar, she prepares to embark on the journey through the ‘seven gates of judgement’, where she has to give up her things (her shield, her prayer beads, her clothes) to reach the depths of the Underworld. When, finally, she arrives—humble, naked, possessing nothing—she comes face to face with Ereshkigal. This is a meeting of two women, two sisters, two separate entities: those of darkness and light.
Consumed with jealous rage, Ereshkigal murders Inanna and hangs her dead body on a meat hook.
After three days, the gods intervene (more on this in the next post). Inanna is reborn and prepares for her return to the Upperworld. But Inanna can never go back to the privileged existence from whence she came. Through this journey, everything has transformed: her relationship with power, her relationship with materiality, her relationship with herself.
The Inanna myth offers us so many rich insights, on which I’ll elaborate in due course. For now, in the rest of this post, I’ll focus on an aspect of the story that I see as fundamental to artistry (and by ‘artistry’ I mean the art of living as much as the artistry that brings a creative artefact into the world).
That fundamental aspect is the power of listening.
The story begins with Inanna engaged in profound, attentive listening—both to Erishkegal’s invitation (the external calling) and to her own inner response. The first lines of the poem attest to this:
From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below
From the Great Above the goddess opened her ear to the Great Below
From the Great Above Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below1
Inanna’s call to the Underworld begins with a whisper from the earth; and with it comes a growing sense of unease that, at the outset, she ignores. She can only proceed when she is ready (and just how we can know we’re ready is a whole other conversation). When Inanna finally accepts the invitation, she has no idea, as she proceeds through the seven gates, what the journey will entail and how much she might lose.
But she intuits that the invitation is, in the end, its own gateway.
Passing through each gate, Inanna loses the resources that are extraneous to who she simply is. In so doing, she crosses the threshold of her own being. She steps into a realm in which she becomes more of herself, in which she has no choice other than to acknowledge those parts of herself previously unconsidered: fear, doubt, shame, alienation.
As creative beings, we too ‘open our ear to the Great Below’ to the messages whispered to us; that only we can interpret, to which only we can respond.
Profound listening is key to our unfolding creativity: we listen for the cadence of what must be, or wants to be, created. We respond, even if we are unsure of the form, content or structure of what we are called to make. We respond, even when we’re unsure how we’ll be perceived, or whether our work will even be understood.
The Inanna myth furnishes us with the emergent shape of a question to guide our creative process—a question that emanates as though deep inside the earth. We tune in to that question, listening intently. We can, of course, ignore it. We’re not always ready to hear what it might say. But if we are ready, we can embark on a quest for an answer, using the question itself as a map or guide.
Place your ear close to the ground. Are you listening?
The question is this: what is your creative work asking of you?
This is the translation provided by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer in Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: her stories and hymns from Sumer.
I came across Innana’s story a few years ago; it’s a powerful story of descent and ascent, with so many rich layers and numerous ways in which we can view and apply it. I’ve generally looked at it through the lens of personal transformation and growth; looking at it through an artistic lens uncovers another rich vein of meaning.