Descent to the Underworld

Inanna & Ereshkigal

In the fall of 2008, I ran into a problem—there was only one of me.

I had wished to create a new dance centered around one of my favorite stories--the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s descent through the Seven Gates of the Underworld where she meets her sister, Ereshkigal.  For months, I had been inundated with Seven Veils—someone had written to tell me how much she loved my veil work and that I should do the Dance of the Seven Veils; I had gotten some new veils and really wished to dance with them; a friend had loaned me Tom Robbins’ book Skinny Legs and All [Bantam Books, New York, 1990], a fascinating, quirky book themed around Salome’s dance. 

In my earliest days as a newbie belly dancer, I wasn’t really interested in performing the Dance of the Seven Veils.  It ranked right up there with my aversion to the questions, “Do you wear a jewel in your navel?” and “Can you roll a quarter on your stomach?” and “Do you take your clothes off when you dance?”  The only thing I had ever heard about this infamous dance was that some sleazy gal had shimmied all of her veils off in order to get John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

Many years later, I was introduced to Inanna’s Descent, and I couldn’t help but envision a very different Dance of the Seven Veils.  I am not alone.  There is much conjecture about the ancient correlation between the two.  My research into the Seven Chakras only solidified the image, and it has been brewing ever since, as has my love affair with this tale.  The version I have borrowed and re-borrowed from a dear friend is in Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer [Harper & Row, 1983].  The online version I have referenced many times is at Dan Sewell Ward’s Library of Halexandria:

http://www.halexandria.org/dward384.htm

In summary, the story begins with Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, the beloved goddess of love and war and fertility, among many other things.  She is a mother, a daughter, a priestess, a wife, a warrior and a queen.  She is splendid and fierce, beautiful and revered.  She is the Light.

            In contrast, her sister Ereshkigal has been given the realm of the Underworld to rule.  She is the Queen of the Dead, feared and reviled, dark and hideous.  She drinks dirty water and eats nothing but clay.  Naked and ratty, she is renowned for her insatiable lust and her miserable spirit.  She is as despised as her sister is adored, and she hates Inanna as wholeheartedly as the world despises Ereshkigal.

            One day, Inanna decides that she would like to visit the Underworld and witness the funeral rites for her sister’s husband—one cannot marry the Queen of the Dead and go to live with her in the Underworld without dying, after all, and Inanna has never seen anything like this.  She is curious.  So she dons her finery and the accoutrements of state—seven symbols of her beauty and power.  Thus adorned, she strides down to the Underworld, demanding entry.  Ereshkigal is furious at her sister’s pomposity and orders all the gates to be barred.  She then commands that each gate should only be opened far enough for Inanna to squeeze through and that each time, she should lose one of her adornments.

            At each of the gates, this comes to pass until finally, after squeezing through the seventh gate, Inanna is stripped of all of all her symbols of status and splendor, naked and “bowed low” as Ereshkigal wished.  Still, she is the Queen of Heaven, so without so much as a “Howdy-do, good to see you, Sis,” she marches into the Underworld with the intention of sitting upon her sister’s throne.

            But the Realm of the Dead is Ereshkigal’s domain and Inanna is powerless there.  Ereshkigal smites her, strikes her with the curse of death and hangs her upon the wall to rot. 

            Now, before Inanna had embarked upon this ill-advised journey, she had been given many warnings.  “Are you sure you really want to go there?  I mean, everyone who goes there dies!  You’re really determined?  Well, all right, it’s your funeral.”  Yet Inanna went anyway.  Still, she was smart enough to instruct her handmaiden that if she didn’t return in three days, she should send someone down to get her.

            Three days pass by. 

No Inanna.

            Fraught with worry, her handmaiden rushes to various deities, urging them to go save the lost goddess.  No one is willing to attempt that, but the God of Wisdom has an idea.  He creates two little creatures and sends them to the Underworld.  “The Queen of the Dead is going into labor,” he says, “so when you hear her moan about her head and her belly and her pains, then you will echo her and commiserate with her.  She will be so pleased that she’ll offer you any gift you wish.  Ask for the corpse on the wall.”

            So the little creatures do as the God of Wisdom instructed.  As Ereshkigal cries out, “Ohhh, my belly!” the creatures echo, “Ohhh, your belly!”  As she cries, “Ohhh, my head!” they echo, “Ohhh, your head!” and so on.  And just as predicted, Ereshkigal is so touched that someone has actually shown her compassion for the first time in her life, she grants their request, gives them the body of Inanna, and the Queen of Heaven is restored to her throne, much wiser and now imbued with a deeper sense of power, self, purpose and understanding of life.  There are some additional conditions of her release and some proceeding tales, but this is the part of the story that was important to my dance, for I have been dancing with my Ereshkigal for quite some time now. 

Inanna and Ereshkigal are not superficial symbols of Good vs. Evil or Angel vs. Devil.  They are far more potent than that.  Each of us, each society, each community possesses both shining attributes and bitter darkness…the beautiful side of us that world loves, and the part of us that we banish to the shadows.  This is the depth of the story of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld—those moments when we come face to face with our own dark side, and the dance that ensues, prompting us to—hopefully—heal and grow.

The Descent through the Seven Gates was easy enough to create.  There are numerous theories about the origins and meanings of the Dance of the Seven Veils (Google it sometime or see www.shira.net for more details), and this was the motif I chose:  seven veils to represent the seven symbols of Inanna’s original, uninitiated power, placed at the locations of the Seven Chakras in descending order, with relatively corresponding colors.  (These are my own interpretations, not to be confused with the literal adornments and placements in the original texts.)  My favorite chakra book, and one that helped me link these attributes with Inanna’s accoutrements is Anodea Judith’s Eastern Body Western Mind, Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self [Celestial Arts, 1996].

             Even the music—Pharonic Odyssey by Paul Dinletir from Belly Dance Superstars Babelesque—was synchronistic perfection, for it just happened to have seven distinct parts that begged for the type of motions that would correspond to each body part.  I mean—a drum solo in the sixth movement?  I couldn’t have asked for a more ideal song to represent the whisking away of all of Inanna’s adornments! 

             With her symbols of power and station removed, the Queen of Heaven is vulnerable, yet she still has the audacity to push past her sister, intent upon plopping down on the Throne of the Underworld.  But in the blink of an eye, she is put in her place—on a hook in Ereshkigal’s dank hall. 

             And there, she rots.  During this time, two things happen.  Not only does the formerly glittering, ego-confident, Exalted One die and spend some time stewing in her stuff, but the banished, hated Shadowed One goes into labor.  It is herself that Ereshkigal gives birth to—a rebirth of spirit, painful and frightening, especially when one is as alone as the Queen of the Dead.  But for the first time in her life, she finds that she is not alone, not spat upon, not reviled.  In the midst of excruciating metamorphosis, someone shows her compassion—the God of Wisdom’s little creatures.

             For my dance, I chose to have Inanna herself do this, because it was logistically easier, but more importantly because at the root of this story, this is the important part—the true inspiration gleaned from those complex internal workings of a soul in search of its true self.  It represents the moment of stunned, slapped-awake comprehension by that fancied-up, showy self that the world acclaims—the self that presents the best possible face and does the societally correct things; the hollow self that isn’t quite genuine for fear of offending or disappointing; the self that banks upon the pride of worldly accomplishments and titles and rewards and ornaments; the self that despises what is so vehemently locked in the closet and rattles at us from time to time.

             Ereshkigal is untamed.  She is the Destroyer.  She has known a lifetime of rejection and bitterness, and she is full of sorrow and rage.  She wishes more than anything to fill the insatiable emptiness inside of her through sexual exploits.  She is not nice, lady-like or appropriate for the dinner party or the office.  She is definitely not the sort of gal you want to bring home to mama.  She is even told to stay out of sight during times of great loss, great affront and great passion—crying in public, shouting against outrages, expressing unbridled sexual desire.  These are not the activities of a Good Girl.  And death?  That word, in its many incarnations, is as abhorred and banished as Ereshkigal herself.

             So when Inanna comes down and takes a good, hard look at her sister—her dark-side mirror, her shadow-self—she is witnessing things that have long been kept behind the veils.  Staring into the mirror like that can be horrific and wondrous, appalling and fascinating, heartrending and the most joyous relief.  I was twenty-five when I did this for the first time.  My hand shook as I touched my own face and looked into those reflected eyes that I had avoided for so long, even while I had primped and preened to “perfection” each day.  It was a revelation, like looking at someone I had never seen before.

             I have been dancing with my Ereshkigal ever since, peeling away veil after veil to get to the core of who I truly am.  I find, in truth, that I am a combination of both, and that is another point of this story.  Each side has her place and her time, and is necessary and valuable—and yes, beautiful.  When the Inanna of my dance comes to watch this agonizing rebirth, she is at first curious and a little baffled, then fascinated and wishing to hear more, and then finally moved to echo those cries of pain in loving compassion.  She throws her arms around this lonely, tattered, down-trodden figure—a figure she has mistreated worse than anyone else—for aren’t we often the most cruel to ourselves than anyone?  In this act, Inanna comes to understand the depth of love and of life. 

             I have found that the old adage is true:  that until I could learn to love myself, I couldn’t truly love anyone else.  In helping my Shadowed One up off the floor, dancing with her, and full embodying everything she had to teach me, I have started to become whole once more.

             Originally, I had thought to share a more public version of this dance with the world and to perform it as my finale solo at the Northern Lights Festival in Wisconsin.  (Interestingly enough, the first festival had been held about an hour away from where I grew up—I am a Minnesota girl by birth.)  I had contemplated a nekkid-Inanna costume that peeled off into the dark Ereshkigal costume and then thought to maybe don a brilliant, multi-hued veil of culmination.  Or I considered doing the dances in several suites with costume changes. For weeks, I wracked my brains trying to figure out how I could possibly convey the intricacies of such a huge story. 

             But then it hit me.  Just as Inanna couldn’t truly come into her full self without Ereshkigal, I couldn’t do this dance alone.

             It is at this time that I have to say a few words about Ariellah.  I have admired her work for many years and was excited to find out that we would be on the same DVD together—Fantasy Belly Dance: Magic.  She was perfectly cast as Kali, another dark, powerful figure of death and rebirth, and when I finally came to the realization that I needed a literal representation of Ereshkigal to dance with, I could think of no one better to play this role—and Ariellah just happened to be one of the other instructors at Northern Lights.

             So I wrote to her three weeks before the show and, even though she had a billion things going on and was about to head out of town, she graciously agreed to do this duet with me.  I was overjoyed!  When she returned, I sent her the details of her character and the basic outline according to the music—Break Me by Beats Antique (I got a kick out of the fitting title).  I had hoped that she would be familiar with the music, but it turned out that this was the one song on the album that she had never danced to.  I guess it was just waiting for this piece.

             So we corresponded a bit about costuming choices and how we wanted to represent it.  Neither of us are terribly flesh-showing dancers, but yet Inanna is supposed to be naked and Ereshkigal is barely clothed in tatters.  We finally decided on white and black, not only for the eternal symbolism, but also because the white provided a better contrast with my skin so that the movements of the dance could be seen, rather than flesh-tone.  I also did not want to use the nekkid body-line because I wanted my audience to be focused on the story, rather than my intimate outlines.  So dark, gothy-wear and white sparkles it was.  I chose a glittering, encrusted cabaret costume very intentionally, to represent the ultimate richness and beauty when one has been stripped down to one’s barest, essential nature.  Ariellah chose leather and heavy metal, and for all her dark-fusion-liciousness, she also sparkled—ever synchronistic, as everything about this piece was.

             As the images solidified, we had to smile at the unintentional layer of storytelling we were also touching upon—that of the struggle between cabaret and tribal, for there seems to be a lot of familial squabble even though we are all sisters.  Personally, I love it all and was overjoyed to be able to do this collaboration between such different styles.

             Ariellah and I met each other for the first time on Friday night at the instructors’ condos and mapped out our final plan for an hour before the hafla.  The piece was an improvisation between two virtual strangers, outlined by some musical cues and the story.  We truly are like night and day—I am a bouncy, babbling spaz, while she is calm and fluid.  Yet we came together so naturally.  I couldn’t have asked for a more professional, inspiring, capable partner!  The duet was to be mainly led by Ereshkigal, with an unsure Inanna gradually gaining momentum until the end when they part ways and return to their domains, more whole than before they met. 

             On Saturday, we ran the piece twice between workshops and then didn’t see each other again until the show.  We each had solos earlier in the evening, and exchanged some grins and crossed fingers before going to our respective entryways.  I began with the Descent through the Seven Gates and as I neared the end, I began to see expressions of surprise and intrigue in the audience.  Without looking, I knew that Ereshkigal was slinking her way toward the stage.  I was Inanna in the climax of my drum solo, while my dark sister gradually siphoned the audience’s attention away, drawing the power unto herself, claiming her domain.  I danced on, oblivious and over-confident as all of my veils fell to the floor, leaving me nekkid and clueless as I faced her. 

             Now I can tell you, doing a cocky, posturing, stalky dance opposite Ariellah is quite the experience!  She is not tall but her presence is immense and she had no trouble laying me out on the floor, fixing the curse of death upon me and flinging me up to rot on the back wall. 

             And then she did her thing.

             I didn’t have to pretend to be mesmerized and fascinated, thinking, “Wow…that raqs!  I wanna try that!”  I was actually so engaged with what she was doing that I totally blew one of my cues.  That’s all right.  The dance had gained a life of its own and we were fully enraptured in the tale we were telling.  We weren’t just telling it to the audience anymore—we were experiencing it, feeling all the emotions of this ageless, human story.  As the dance progressed and we began to move in unison, I discovered a different place of initiation in my muscles, a new way of executing these moves I’d been doing for years, and a totally different side of myself that I have rarely expressed.  I could see something happening in her eyes too, and when we made the final pass, all I could think of this amazing, truly powerful figure of inspiration was, “Thank you.  From the depths of my heart and soul, thank you for all you have shared with me, all you have taught me, all you have given to me!”

             I saw it all mirrored in her smile.

             We broke apart and I launched into celebration—whirling in ecstasy as I repossessed all my brilliant colors, all those powers now polished and refined, imbued with genuine depth and everything I had learned on my journey.  We finished on our respective sides, queenly in our own rights.  The final “brrrring” of the music sounded and we shared a look of which only we comprehended the full meaning.  When the standing ovation came, it nearly caused my heart to burst because my dream had come true.  There had been barely any credit notes in the program, nothing at all about the story, but the audience had Gotten It.  People were bawling, clapping, cheering, hugging.  Ariellah and I hugged too and, true to Ereshkigal, she hesitated taking a big bow with me.  But Inanna had been to the Underworld and back, and would not stand for her sister—equally beautiful and amazing in all her dark, untamed glory—to stand in the shadows. 

             After all, I couldn’t have done it without her.

See the dance as filmed by Candlelight Productions:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXxJwAbUCA&fmt=18

More about Ariellah:  http://www.ariellah.com/