Tirza Schaefer: Romance Author & Goddess Facilitator
Inanna
I love to explore the Divine Feminine and write about Goddesses. For a list of those, click on the link: Goddesses. In order to become more balanced within ourselves and, through that, to bring greater balance and harmony to the world around us, we must find greater balance between the masculine and feminine energies within ourselves that each one of us possesses, regardless of physical gender or any other ways of self-identification.
​
Queen of Heaven
​
Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, combat, and political power, equivalent to the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian goddess Ishtar and Astarte in West Semitic language, who is thought to have evolved from her. Inanna is one of the oldest goddesses in known recorded human history. She appears in more myths than any other deity, although they have only been written down much later than her initial first appearance.
According to some of the many stories, her courageous nature and taking over certain things or places made her the most powerful goddess in the Ancient Sumerian pantheon and earned her the name Queen of Heaven who was worshipped from before 4000 BC until at last the rise of Christianity superseded her cult.
Inanna represents the power of sexual attraction and the carnal pleasure that precedes from it. This aspect of her explains why she seemed to be the queen of whores to the monotheistic biblical tribes who were sexually repressed and held their women as possessions and slaves who had to enter marriage as virgins.
Inanna’s sexual appetite was inexhaustible and she only had short-term relationships. Her lovers often didn’t experience a blissful fate at the end of the relationship, one was even assigned to hell by her, and thus, her determination and fierceness in taking what she wanted at whatever cost, also made her the Goddess of aggression and war, as well as the patroness of the ruling dynasties.
Descent Into the Underworld
Inanna is often represented as a lion and her other symbol is the star, referring to Venus which is assigned to her. In her temples and places of worship, her priestesses served her as sacred prostitutes. The original Dance of the Seven Veils was Inanna’s descent into the Underworld, her sister Ereshkigal’s realm, where she was gradually stripped naked as she passed through the seven gates. First went her crown, next earrings, then necklace, breast pins, belt of birthstones, then bracelets and finally her gown. No acts of procreation took place on earth while Inanna was in the Underworld.
​
In my romance novel Chopped Encounter, the female MC Kayla challenges her love interest, Captain Wayne Turner, from the US Marines on the first date about his outdated chauvinist attitude regarding the expression of sensuality and sexuality of men and women are concerned. She confronts him with his own double standards and tells him openly that she feels very attracted to him and would like to get physically intimate.
She also asserts that this doesn’t make her a cheap whore or whatever other terms men have created to degrade women who are comfortable with and open about their own sexuality. Kayla tells Wayne that she doesn’t allow herself to be used as a “piece of meat,” either, but is very much in control of her choice of sexual partners or not allowing anyone close, as the case may be. She challenges his thinking and explains her own point of view. In this, Kayla claims her sexual power and Wayne comes to appreciate it as well.
After a stint of sending Wayne to hell and visiting her own personal Underworld, Kayla eventually emerges from the dark spaces and embraces her womanhood once again to make some empowered and conscious choices, in which her courage is exemplary and pays off in the end.
​
Sexual Liberation & the Creative Force
Inanna is a Goddess who is not prone to compromise or submission. She is confident, demanding and unashamed in attaining her desires. She is an empowered woman who is in tune with her own sexuality. Thus, she is a great role model for women in the sense that it is good to lay down and let go of our shame and embrace our often much suppressed sexuality and being in tune with our bodies.
Inanna teaches us to go for what we want and put ourselves first. It doesn’t mean you have to (but can if you want to) change your lovers frequently or send them straight to hell after they’ve served their purpose, but it means, you do have a choice and you should choose freely how and when you wish to live your sexuality and your creative powers, whichever form that may take.
Inanna is a goddess who liberates women and shows them their procreative powers, both in the physical sense of conceiving children, but also that we have the power to create our own reality the way we want it to be (and in fact do, albeit mostly on a subconscious level). Inanna is your inner creative force that can be both used for new creations and the destruction of all that no longer serves you without regard to what others think or expect of us.
Inanna teaches us to liberate ourselves from any constraints put upon us by family, society or, especially, our own limiting beliefs, feelings of guilt and shame. You can work with the energy she represents when wanting to explore your sexuality, conceive a child or go boldly out into the world and claim your place in it. She is your inner fierce lioness, your inner wild lover and your unbridled, primeval divine creative power.
Tarot Card
Crystals
Lapis Lazuli, Orange Calcite, Moonstone, Moon Quartz, Flame of Ishtar, Imperial Topaz, Black Pearl, Hematite, Carnelian, Ruby, Emerald, Black Obsidian, Andalusite