When Inanna returns to the land of Sumer, she is trailing demons who want someone to take her place in the Underworld. This woodcut depicts whom she chose. Here’s the story. The first person Inanna meets upon surfacing is Ninshubur,…
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Never before has anyone left the realm of the dead. After the River God’s little creatures have brought Inanna’s corpse back to life, the judges of the underworld make up a new rule. As Inanna starts to leave, they seize her…
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The Sumerian Underworld is ruled by Inanna’s older sister Ereshkegal whose husband, Gugalanna (aka the Bull of Heaven) has died. When, at the start of the poem, Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below, I imagined her hearing her…
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In this second woodcut, I imagine Inanna on the edge of a downward spiral to the Underworld. It is a journey from which no one has ever returned and as she hesitates on the first steps, she sets up a…
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A dozen years ago, when I was struggling with a fog of depression and Fibromyalgia, at the insistence of a worried friend, I dutifully started seeing his therapist. She is a wonderfully wise and caring woman and in the course…
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