anesthesia and from the operation also took time and was very uncomfortable. Because this surgery coincided with his becoming twenty-one, it made me think of the rites of passage that some indigenous cultures have required before a young man is acknowledged as an adult. Anthropologists describe these initiations as physical, psychological, and spiritual ordeals that are tests of courage and endurance. In such rites of passage, success is usual but not without risk to life, limb, and soul, which was also the case for Andy's surgery. The operation was successful, and the spirit in which my son made the passage was indeed admirable. Inspired by the title of Alice Walker's book of the same name, I thought of his surgical scars as “warrior marks” and told him so.
Difficulties are soul shaping, depending upon how we respond. They can be lessons that lead us to know who we are, and they can stretch us into becoming larger souls and more authentic human beings than we were before. I think of soul journeys as heroic when they begin with unwanted and unchosen circumstances: a crippling accident, the loss of a significant relationship, sexual, emotional, or physical trauma as well as any life-threatening illnesses. That which we all hope to be spared, happens all the time to some-one, somewhere and that person may now be you. Some people become bitter and cynical, which is toxic to the soul. These same circumstances can result in developing soul qualities of compassion, wisdom, and courage. Ordinary people are quietly heroic when they persevere, endure, and do not give up on love or on there being meaning and purpose to their lives.
4
LIKE GREEN MEAT ON A HOOK
When Inanna went down through the seven gates into the Great Below, the proud and powerful goddess entered naked and bowed low, looked into the baleful eyes of death, and was struck down. Her body was hung on a hook to rot. She became a slab of green meat. This is a picture of how it feels to be reduced and humbled, powerless and without illusions, to be vulnerable and rejected, to feel putrid. There are phases of being ill in which people feel like Inanna on the hook, when the infected, dysfunctional, or malignant cellular level of their being permeates the soul, and they feel as if they were dead and rotting. This is what suffering can feel like as well to those who make a psychological descent to uncover sources of chronic depression and anxiety in the depth work I do as a Jungian analyst.
This also powerfully parallels the experience that women and some men have had in abusive relationships that have stripped them of layers of self-esteem and psychological defense. There is physical, emotional, and spiritual battering in abusive relationships, and the most malignant of them can become life-threatening. The need to get away, the difficulty of doing so, and the effort to recover psychological health and not return have many similarities to what it takes to recover from a malignancy.
One who lives with a chronic illness such as diabetes, Crohn's disease, or hypertension when it is out of control and escalates into life-threatening crises and repeated emergency-room admissions, shares similarities—at the soul level—with the person who has repeated, increasingly serious bouts with alcohol. To bottom out, one way or another, is a descent into suffering.
Anyone with a malignancy, a chronic illness, a drug or alcohol addiction, a mental illness, or repeated trauma may identify with Inanna at this low point in the myth. You may have been depressed and anxious before you became ill. You may have been psychologically naked and bowed low before this, and the symptoms of the illness have further reduced your spirit. Sick physically, you may now feel as if the cells of your body are dying and rotting. And the illness may do what psychological distress did not: it may cause you to go down into your own psychological depths, to be with the pain, wounding, and rage that is there—to that place in the psyche where a woman or a man is both suffering Inanna and suffering Ereshkigal.
Seeking to Know What Lies Below
Why did Inanna make this descent, anyway? What made her leave the Great Above where she was Queen of Heaven and Earth to descend into the underworld? When she knocked loudly at the gate to the Great Below and demanded that the door be opened for her, the gatekeeper asked,“Who are you?”and she said,“I am Inanna, Queen of Heaven, on my way to the East.” When he asked, “Why has your heart led you on the road from which no traveler returns?” Inanna replied, “Because of my sister, Ereshkigal.” Once she learned that her sister goddess Ereshkigal was suffering and in mourning, Inanna was compelled to make this descent, to be a witness.
Put in a medical context, Inanna's reason for unknowingly beginning a descent is like learning that something is physically wrong—“Ereshkigal is suffering” may translate into a suspicious finding on a routine physical examination, or noticing something oneself that cannot be ignored—and being compelled to go through the doors into the hospital, clinic, laboratory, or specialist's office to do whatever is required for the diagnosis and treatment.
Inanna's reason for making a descent is also metaphorically the same as why a person enters a psychotherapist's office: a need to know what lies below her usual level of consciousness, to find out what or which aspect of herself is suffering, to delve deeply into the grief and pain that lies in the Great Below. To knock at my office door in order to enter a depth psychological process is to knock at a gate to the underworld. Nightmares; repetitious dreams; unbidden thoughts, images, and impulses; pervasive anxiety; depression; inability to know what one really feels; and deep unhappiness are some of the reasons for making a descent, through which it may be possible to be a witness, to feel, know, remember, and mourn what lies below. However compelling the psychological reasons are for making a descent, people often resist, using addictions to work, relationships, activity, television, alcohol, or other reality-distorting substances to avoid it, as all of these are ways of keeping awareness of pain at bay. Unless psychological symptoms become so disabling that a person cannot function, it is possible to resist. Life-threatening illness, however, takes us out of ordinary life and into the underworld. A descent is then no longer an elective procedure.
Symbolic Death, as in a Chrysalis
Inanna described herself to the gatekeeper as being on her way to the East, which is a strange statement to make when she is seeking entry to the underworld. It makes symbolic sense, however. Dawn comes when the sun rises in the east, and hence the East represents rebirth, new life, vulnerability, innocence, and hope. Descents into the underworld take a person into the realm of death, transformation, and rebirth. In a descent, there are symbolic deaths: death of some part of the old personality or former identity, the end of a particular hope or illusion. In a descent, something that has been buried in the psyche may be unearthed, remembered, and brought to life. There is a possibility of a spiritual or psychological resurrection.
Angry and Rejected Ereshkigal
Women who function well in the world of social and professional life resemble Inanna: they do well in the material world and are well connected to patriarchy, often as wives or daughters of traditional men. Ereshkigal, meanwhile, suffers in the underworld. Ereshkigal— as a contemporary archetype—represents inner or rejected or repressed aspects of an Inanna woman and of women in general. A woman who is more like Ereshkigal than Inanna has qualities and concerns that are introverted and unrelated, devalued and rejected; she is wounded and angry, often is depressed, can be ill, and is not allied with men with power. Ereshkigal is hidden in the underworld: socially invisible and discounted, manifested in public by the crazy or angry woman muttering to herself. Just as we avert our eyes from the street person who is being Ereshkigal, so do “nice women” avert their awareness from the Ereshkigal inside themselves; she is buried in the depressive mood, hidden in the physical symptom, or even camouflaged in their good deeds that have shadowy origins. Nice women try to repress unacceptable hostile feelings, thoughts, and impulses. When they succeed in covering them up, unacceptable emotions and urges become hidden and out of conscious awareness, vague guilt remains, and the women
