The Seduction of the Goddess Inana

This is just as I imagine Her.

Innocent and yet, fiercely wanton.

My beloved soul-sister, the artist known as She Who Is (Art)

Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman describes Inanna, in part:

She was into fertility, order, war, love, heavens, healing, emotions, and song; always wandering, searching for her home, her power.  Ultimately, she was the embodied, playful, passionately erotic, feminine; the powerful, independent, self-willed, feminine; the ambitious, regal, many-sided feminine.  

In this representation, I chose to portray her coming of age, naked from having let go of the primitive, grasping human aspects; and her unacknowledged, unexpressed fears and desires in order to be deserving of the gifts of throne and bed. She comes forth in erotic innocence, ready to ascend to her rightful position as the Queen and Consort of Heaven that she is.

   Peter Pringle writes of The Seduction of the Goddess Inana:

Although we do not know what this song sounded like when it was sung in ancient Sumer, we do have the words to the song, written in cuneiform on clay tablets nearly 5000 years ago, and I have used instruments (a three stringed Mesopotamian lute, and two reed flutes) that we know the Sumerians possessed. ....There are many songs which the Sumerians called 'tigi', that have been translated by Sumerologist, and this is one of my favorites. It is sung by the god Dumuzid (Tammuz) to the young goddess Inana (aka Ishtar) in an effort to seduce her.

 

Be prepared: Listening to this song has the power to transport one back through the corridors of time... On a soul level, I remember it just as Peter plays and sings it. Unexplainably, it is so achingly familiar. I replay it over and over like a sacred chant so as to inscribe it upon my memory, incase it's another 5000 years before I hear it again.

The Seduction of the Goddess Inana 

Inana

Inana

Let me teach you

Let me teach you.

Inana

About the lies of women

let me teach you. 

To your own mother, offer this lie.

Tell her: "My girlfriend and I were dancing

together in the square.

She ran around with me for fun

playing on the drum.

She sang sweet songs for me.

I passed the day there with her

in pleasure and delight."

Offer this lie to your own mother.

As for us - let me make love with you

in the moonlight.

Let me loosen your combs

as we lie on our soft and holy bed.

May we spend a sweet day there together

In the pleasures of love.

May we spend a sweet day there together

In the pleasures of love.

namaste

In honor of Inanna.