RE:IJSNC, Issue 1, Volume 2, May 2012 - Ocean Seminary College

degree of this synchronistic message, as I was sitting
at the epicenter of the earthquake (Mijares,
2003; in press).
It was obvious that this message about a force
within nature that moves mountains, shifts continental
plates and “opens valleys for oceans to fill”
was extremely relevant. Nature is beautiful, and it is
also powerful. As noted earlier, women more often
choose to portray the feminine as beautiful (kind,
beneficent, serving and so forth), while feminine
power goes unacknowledged. If the feminine is a
force that moves mountains, then we need this
innate power to create significant, much needed,
change. More importantly, this is a power that differs
from masculine power. The earth’s capacity to
shift the ground beneath us comes from a deep
inner core—that is both within and part of its nature.
Inanna’s journey into the underworld also
represents a journey that both accesses and assimilates
needed power from within.
Inanna Discloses the Way
The Sumerian myth 5 of Inanna’s journey into the
underworld provides great guidance in the journey
to healing and wholeness. Inanna is wise and compassionate,
she is passionate and sexual—and, she
also demonstrates the balancing of beauty and
power.
According to Babylonian and Assyrian scriptures
from approximately 2nd millennium BCE, Inanna,
the “Great One,” was summoned forth at the beginning
of creation (Douglas Klotz, 2011). She was
the Mother, wise and compassionate. In this poem
you see that she represents female beauty and
goodness:
“From what is small and fragile
let abundance and power come:
let humanity take on the consciousness
of the whole creation
and be absorbed by this task.”
So spoke the Great Ones,
shining centers of awareness,
the original archetypes of existence,
in the primordial beginning.
From the energizing dark waves
they summoned the Great One (Inanna)
in the form of
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Mijares : Embodying Power and Beauty
the Mother, Wise Mami—
she whose name means
the one who responds to cries:
“You are the Mother-Womb,
radiant source of warmth and life,
the one from whose depths
humanity may arise.
Create this unique form.
as a spiral of life into matter—
one force of its being always leaving,
the other always returning home,
the tension balanced
by the awareness of the void.
“Create humanity as a thin veil
that shrouds the Universal Reality.
Let its purpose spread open and fertile
like a fresh field to be plowed.
Let it embrace the empty core of Being
covered in layers of activity
like an onion’s skin”
(Douglas-Klotz, 2011, pp. 21–22).
Inanna is associated with the act of creation itself.
But other hymns to this Goddess also reveal that
Inanna was deeply sensual and connected with nature.
Hymns such as the following declare the passion
and sensuality between Inanna and her consort
Dumuzi. 6 This translated third millennium, BCE,
Sumerian poem, reveals vivid depictions of nature,
passion and sexuality. Inanna says:
“Wild bull—pulsing, single-eye of the whole land!
I want to fulfill all your needs:
I want to force your master to wage justice
in the royal place inside.
Leave no voice unheard,
leave nothing undone!
I want to make your seed grow
to fullness in my mansion.
Dumuzi says:
Inanna, your breast is an open field,
your wide open spaces gush with greenery
like a freely spreading meadow flowing with grain.
Your deep waters pour down on me
like bread from the source.
Water flowing and flowing,
bread and understanding from on high.
Release the flood for its desired goal,
I will drink it all from you”
(Douglas-Klotz, 2011, p. 183).