“From the great heaven she set her mind on the great below… My mistress abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, and descended to the underworld.”
“Be silent, Inana… a divine power of the underworld has been fulfilled. You must not open your mouth against the rites of the underworld” (lines 129–163).
“To the house whose entrants are bereft of light… dust is their sustenance.” - Akkadian “Ištar’s Descent Sumerian “Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld.” Preserved on Old Babylonian copies (c. 1900–1600 BCE).
Inanna arms herself with the seven divine powers (adornments), descends, and at each gate an item is taken—stripping her of authority. Before Ereshkigal she is judged, killed, and hung on a hook. Enki fashions two androgynous beings (kurgarra and galatur), gives them the water and plant of life, and they win the queen’s favor by mirroring her pain. Inanna is revived, but a substitute must take her place; her lover Dumuzi is seized, leading to the seasonal alternation with his sister.
“He removed some dirt from the tip of his fingernail and created the kur-ĝara… and the gala-tura… To one he gave the life-giving plant, to the other the life-giving water… ‘Give us the corpse hanging on the hook… Thus let Inana arise.’”
The descent strips the goddess of crown, jewels, scepter, robe, measuring rod and line
Inanna/Ištar is Venus. Scholars have long noticed that the disappearance of Venus at conjunction and her alternating morning/evening phases mirror the descent, invisibility, and return; the seven gates map well to Mesopotamia’s seven planetary gods and to the planet’s waning radiance.
Venus’ diminishing mêlammu (radiance) is dramatized by removing the adornments at the gates; the return reverses the order, restoring her “station as the morning star.”
Near Eastern diffusion → Greco-Roman. Inanna → Ištar → Astarte/Aphrodite/Venus. The eight-pointed star and the planetary goddess carry forward; the descent–ascent archetype reappears across Mediterranean katabasis myths (Persephone, Orpheus).
• many contemporary Hermeticists explicitly read the Descent through Venus’ synodic cycle
“From the Great Above she set her mind on the Great Below…”
“They will offer you a riverful of water—do not accept it… Give us the corpse hanging on the hook.”
Return requires exchange. Every ascent has its price: what part of the self must be let go and die so that the soul may ascend?
“Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld” is a Sumerian myth preserved in Old Babylonian copies (c. 1900–1600 BCE) that presents the goddess’s deliberate journey from “the great heaven” to “the great below,” her stripping at seven gates, her death and hanging “on a hook,” her revival through Enki’s cunning, and the demand that a substitute descend in her place.
The canonical English translation in the Oxford Electronic Text Corpus (ETCSL 1.4.1) begins, “From the great heaven she set her mind on the great below… My mistress abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, and descended to the underworld” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 1–5).
The Akkadian counterpart, “Ištar’s Descent,” opens with a stark underworld vista: “To the house whose entrants are bereft of light… where dust is their sustenance, clay their food” (B. R. Foster, Before the Muses, trans. excerpted at SOAS; cf. public-domain transl. at Sacred Texts).
Before descending, Inanna arms herself with the “seven divine powers” and adorns her body with regalia of office: crown, beads, pectoral, ring, robe, cosmetics, and, notably, “the lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 14–25).
She instructs her minister Ninšubur to raise lamentation and seek aid from Enlil, Nanna, and finally Enki if she does not return (lines 32–67). At the gate of the palace Ganzer she demands entry. Ereshkigal commands her doorkeeper Neti to bolt the seven gates and open them one by one so that, as Inanna crouches and enters, her garments are removed and carried away (lines 114–128).
The text then narrates the sequence of the seven removals (“Be silent, Inana, a divine power of the underworld has been fulfilled… You must not open your mouth against the rites of the underworld”), ending with her complete despoiling and the judgment of the seven Anuna: “They looked at her — it was the look of death… The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook” (lines 129–172).
After “three days and three nights” Ninšubur secures Enki’s help. Enki fashions two beings from the dirt of his fingernails — the kur-ĝara and gala-tura — and equips them with “the life-giving plant” and “the life-giving water,” instructing them to pass the doors “like flies,” mirror Ereshkigal’s cries, refuse all gifts, and demand “the corpse hanging on the hook,” upon which they are to sprinkle the revivifying substances: “Thus let Inana arise” (lines 217–262, 246–253).
When Inanna ascends, the denizens of the underworld demand a substitute; she refuses to give up faithful attendants but yields Dumuzi, who is seized “clothed in a magnificent garment” and apportioned to the underworld for part of the year, with his sister Geštinanna sharing the alternation (lines 348–367; 404–412).
The myth is an initiatory drama of kenosis and return: sevenfold divestiture, death, compassionate theurgy, and an economy of exchange that maintains cosmic balance. An influential astral reading sees the myth as encoding the synodic cycle of Venus: the goddess’s disappearance, dimming of mêlammu (radiance), and return, with the seven gates dramatizing a staged loss and restoration of power (F. J. Bidmead & R. Love, “Ištar’s Journey: Above and Below,” Culture and Cosmos 22.1).
The tale also encodes a ritual grammar: one cannot carry power through the gates; silence before the “rites of the underworld” is mandated; and the password is not argument but resonance, as the liminal emissaries echo the queen’s pain until the way opens (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 236–281).
The seven gates and their initiatory reading
The text lists the items removed in a fixed order; a variant manuscript notes an initial removal of the measuring rod at the first gate, but the standard sequence proceeds from head to hand to robe.
First gate. The turban, “headgear for the open country,” is taken from her head (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 129–133). This is the removal of sovereign identity and public office. The crown-like headpiece marks rank and domain; its loss signifies the relinquishment of outer authority as the price of entry into the hidden world.
Second gate. The small lapis-lazuli beads are removed from her neck (lines 134–138). Lapis is the stone of royal luminosity; a necklace girds the throat, the channel of utterance. The stripping here signals the surrender of prestige and of the word as command, tempering speech into silence before underworld law.
Third gate. The twin egg-shaped beads are removed from her breast (lines 139–143). The breast is the seat of affect and breath. The initiatory reading sees a loosening of emotional defenses and personal charisma — the heart unadorned.
Fourth gate. The pectoral “Come, man, come” is removed from her breast (lines 144–148). This emblem of erotic allure and relational magnetism is set aside; generative power is not a passport below. Desire must be disenchanted to cross the threshold.
Fifth gate. The golden ring is removed from her hand (lines 149–153). A ring seals bonds, contracts, and authority to act. The adept relinquishes claims, oaths of power, and signatures of office; agency is reduced to bare being.
Sixth gate. The lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line are removed (lines 154–158). The rod-and-ring motif across Mesopotamian art signifies divine sanction to measure, allot, decree order; its removal strips Inanna of cosmic jurisdiction — the power to define and apportion. In occult terms, this is the surrender of the architect’s compass and rule, the abdication of demiurgic control (see M. Abram, “A New Look at the Mesopotamian Rod and Ring,” Studia Antiqua 9.1, discussing ETCSL 1.4.1 line 156).
Seventh gate. The pala dress, “the garment of ladyship,” is removed from her body (lines 159–163). This final disrobing leaves the goddess without social persona or sanctified status. It is the nakedness of essence, the necessary condition for judgment and transformation.
At each gate the refrain is the same: “Be silent, Inana… a divine power of the underworld has been fulfilled. You must not open your mouth against the rites of the underworld” (lines 129–163). The underworld is a lawful realm; protest and privilege avail nothing. Only after complete kenosis can the encounter with Ereshkigal occur, issuing in death.
Death, revival, and substitution
The scene of hanging “on a hook” fixes the ordeal at a single, inarguable point (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 164–172).
The restoration comes through Enki’s techne: creating two liminal beings from the dirt under his fingernails, arming them with the “life-giving plant” and “life-giving water,” and instructing them to mirror the queen’s cries and refuse all gifts until the “corpse hanging on the hook” is released: “Thus let Inana arise” (lines 217–253).
The text emphasizes the method: identification with suffering opens the gate; refusal of substitute satisfactions preserves the aim; revival is effected by life-substances applied to the body.
The ascent requires payment: “Who has ever ascended from the underworld… unscathed? If Inana is to ascend… let her provide a substitute” (lines 282–289). Dumuzi’s seizure “clothed in a magnificent garment” and the decree that he and his sister alternate days below establish the mythic ground for seasonal alternation and the cosmic reciprocity of descent and return (lines 348–367; 404–412).
Meaning in later esoteric tradition
As an initiatory pattern, the Descent supplies a grammar that recurs across the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world: staged disempowerment, lawful silence, death, compassion as the key, revival by sacred substances, and substitution as cosmic equilibrium. The Akkadian version accentuates the bleakness of the underworld in lines often quoted in modern occult literature: “To the house… where dust is their sustenance, clay their food… light they see not, in darkness they dwell” (Foster, Before the Muses; cf. Sacred Texts). In astral esotericism the tale encodes the Venus cycle: disappearance in the beams, invisibility around conjunction, and the return as morning star, with the seven gates interpreted as staged losses of mêlammu, the divine radiance, and their reversal on ascent (Bidmead & Love, Culture and Cosmos 22.1). In gender-sacral readings, Enki’s emissaries are liminal (“kur-ĝara,” “gala-tura”), passing “like flies… like phantoms,” and their empathetic speech rather than force compels the release; their creation from nail-dirt underscores their status as crafted ritual instruments rather than ordinary gods (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 226–281). In Western occult reception, the seven gates are readily mapped onto seven planetary ordeals and the alchemical triad of negation, whitening, and reddening; the Descent’s structure — not its proper names — becomes a rite-pattern: relinquish power, keep silence, die to the self, answer pain with resonance, receive the vivifying substance, and pay the price of return.
Relevant quotes
“From the great heaven she set her mind on the great below… My mistress abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, and descended to the underworld” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 1–5).
“She took the seven divine powers… She held the lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line in her hand” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 14–25).
“When she entered the seventh gate, the pala dress… was removed from her body… ‘Be silent, Inana… a divine power of the underworld has been fulfilled’” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 159–163).
“The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 169–172).
“He removed some dirt from the tip of his fingernail and created the kur-ĝara… to the kur-ĝara he gave the life-giving plant; to the gala-tura he gave the life-giving water… ‘Give us the corpse hanging on the hook… Thus let Inana arise’” (ETCSL 1.4.1, lines 217–253).
“To the house whose entrants are bereft of light… where dust is their sustenance, clay their food” (B. R. Foster, Before the Muses, trans. excerpt, SOAS recording page; cf. “Descent of the Goddess Ishtar,” Sacred Texts).
“For the astral reading of seven gates as staged loss and restoration of mêlammu (radiance) in the Venus cycle, see F. J. Bidmead and R. Love, ‘Ištar’s Journey: Above and Below,’ Culture and Cosmos 22.1” (PDF).
“For the symbolic import of the ‘measuring rod and line,’ see M. Abram, ‘A New Look at the Mesopotamian Rod and Ring,’ Studia Antiqua 9.1.”