with an otherworldly figure when they were gravely ill.
Less common and more dramatic are the stories told by people who were near death when they met otherworld figures who told them that it was not their time. Two different women have told me of having an old, apparently Native American woman appear to them when they failed to respond to medical treatment and were dying; her appearance was an intervention that changed the course of the illness. One of the women had a fever of unknown origin that broke as a result of this visitation or vision. The other realized that she had been misdiagnosed, and efforts on her part led to a correct diagnosis of Lyme disease and proper treatment. Both women recovered and in their respective ways, became involved in bringing alternative medicine into more mainstream awareness. Illness brought them close to death and a nonordinary reality, which was both a turning point for the illness and the inspiration to help others after getting well.
At his memorial service, Gary Walsh, a San Francisco therapist turned activist, who organized the first candlelight AIDS march and debated Jesse Helms, was vividly present on film. In a videotaped interview done a few days before his death, he told us about being visited twice by a man whom many in the audience had known, a man who had recently died. While Gary was physically wasted in appearance, he was assertive, clear, and utterly convincing. He asserted that he was not asleep and that he was not hallucinating when this man appeared in his room and told him not to worry, that he would be there when Gary died and crossed over. Gary demanded in a prove-it-to-me tone that he appear to him one more time. A couple of days later, again when he was awake and mentally clear, this man appeared again, very briefly and impatiently, reiterating that he would be there when Gary died and obviously put out at having to make this extra visit, because he “had other things to do.”
Descending in Stages into the Underworld: The Inanna Myth
The descent of the soul into the underworld which illness can precipitate, does not always have the impact of a shocking, sudden, and unexpected abduction or the immediate devastation of being at the center of a major earthquake. Persephone's myth applies when this is so, but there is a second myth that parallels the experience of people whose illness and descent occur in stages through an incremental loss of footing in the ordinary world of good health: either they have an illness with a gradually worsening pattern, or they maintain the illusion of being in control and minimize the emotional impact of having a serious medical problem. The myth that resembles the journey they take goes back at least five thousand years to the Sumerian goddess Inanna.2
Inanna was the Queen of Heaven and Earth. Heeding the news that her sister goddess Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, was suffering and in pain, she decided to pay her a visit. Inanna mistakenly assumed that she could descend with ease. She would find however, that the power and authority she had in the upperworld had no bearing on how she would be treated in the underworld.
Inanna knocked imperiously on the gate to the underworld, demanding that the door be opened. The gatekeeper asked who she was and then told her that in order to pass through, she had to pay a price. She found that there was not just one gate, but seven. At each one, the gatekeeper told her that she must take off something she was wearing to pass through. Each time, Inanna, shocked that this should be so, responded indignantly with the words: “What is this?” Each time, she was told: “Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
Her magnificent headdress, the crown that designated her authority, was removed at the first gate. The lapis necklace was taken from her neck at the second gate, the double strand of rich beads was removed from her breasts at the third gate. She was stripped of her breastplate at the fourth gate, of her gold bracelet at the fifth gate. The lapis measuring rod and line were taken from her at the sixth gate. At the seventh gate, she was stripped of her royal robe. Naked and bowed low, she entered the underworld.
Over and over, at each gate, symbols of power, prestige, wealth, and office were taken from her. Over and over, at each gate, the removal of something else that covered her, was unexpected. Over and over, she would say, “What is this?” and be told, “Quiet, Inanna. The rules of the underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
Whenever a person becomes a patient and enters a hospital, the experience is not unlike Inanna’s. Metaphorically, there are a series of gates to go through and at each one, something is taken away. At the door to the hospital, he or she unwittingly crosses through the first gate. In increments, thereafter, a patient is stripped of dignity, choice, and authority. However important the patient is in the world, however significant he or she is to someone else does not matter here.
The second gate is the admissions desk, where each person signs a number of papers in order to be admitted, receives a hospital number, has a plastic identification band fastened around a wrist, and may be given a receipt in return for surrendering valuables.
The third gate is usually the hospital room. Here each patient takes off street clothes which are reflections of individuality and status and puts on the standard hospital gown that often is ill-fitting, too short, and open up the back.
Then there are the other gates through which a patient is taken on a gurney or in a wheelchair—to radiology for X-rays or more sophisticated tests, to other specialized rooms for blood tests or to have various scopes inserted into orifices or through body walls in order for the doctor to see inside the body.
When surgery is called for, the patient passes through more gates, to the preoperative area, into surgery, then into postoperative or intensive care, and in going through these particular gates loses both consciousness and usually a part of the body.
In coming to terms with having a life-threatening illness, a person often is stripped of emotional defenses as well. Denial, intellectualization, and rationalization may go, exposing a person to the painful realities of their lives as well as of this illness. Addictions that kept feelings at a distance are taken away. People who use work and activity alcohol or drugs to numb their feelings no longer can do this (though television, which may be the most common addiction, is immediately turned on at many hospital bedsides).
When psychological defenses dissolve in the context of life-threatening illnesses, a descent into the underworld of depression and fear can occur. A dissolution of defenses against knowing the truth may reveal an emotionally and spiritually barren life, an empty marriage, or a meaningless job, as well as the reality of the seriousness of the medical condition and accompanying fears.
Metaphorically and actually, illness and hospitalizations strip us of what covered and protected us in many ways. Indignities happen, and a “What is this?” protest may be met by words and attitudes from hospital staff that resemble those that Inanna heard: “Quiet, Patient. The orders of the doctor are perfect. They may not be questioned.” Even when our physicians are healers whom we trust, and they as well as the others communicate what and why whatever is being done is required, and even if we are fully involved in the decision making, the journey is still similar to Inanna’s. There are still gates we go through, which strip us of persona and defense: we become exposed and bare-souled.
This stripping away makes it possible for us to reach depths within ourselves that we otherwise might not reach, where whatever we consigned there or abandoned or forgot about ourselves, suffers the pain of not being remembered or of not being integrated into our conscious personality or allowed expression. In remembering, we find ourselves connecting with soul. What is actively sought in a depth analysis may be inadvertently revealed as a result of having a disabling physical illness or entering a hospital with a condition that will take a patient through a difficult and uncertain course, through making a descent into the underworld. Psychological depth is the realm of Ereshkigal, as is death. When death takes on a reality and becomes close, soul questions arise.
