“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).
The Myth
In the days when the world was young and the great powers moved freely between heaven, earth, and the deep below, Inanna, Queen of Heaven, set her thoughts on the land no one returns from. She “set her mind on the Great Below,” and once she resolved this, nothing could turn her aside.
She prepared herself with care. She gathered the seven divine powers, the ornaments that marked her as sovereign. On her head she placed the shimmering crown. Around her neck she clasped lapis beads. Across her breast she fastened her pectoral. Around her waist she wrapped her royal robe. In her hand she took the lapis-lazuli rod and line, symbols of her authority to measure and decree. She adorned herself fully, for she went as a goddess and did not intend to descend in secret.
Before she departed she spoke to her faithful minister Ninshubur. “If I do not return,” she said, “raise a lamentation for me. Go to the great gods—Enlil, Nanna, Enki. Plead for me. Do not let my name be lost in the dust of the underworld.” Ninshubur swore loyalty and waited at the upper gates.
Then Inanna set out for the underworld.
She came to the first gate of Ganzir, the palace of Ereshkigal. The gatekeeper Neti halted her. “Who are you, and why do you come to the land from which none return?” “I am Inanna of Heaven,” she said. “I come for the funeral rites of Ereshkigal’s husband.”
Neti carried word to Ereshkigal, who heard and trembled. “She comes here? Bolt the seven gates. Let each be opened only a crack. At each gate, remove one of her powers. Let her enter stripped.”
Neti obeyed.
At the first gate, he took the crown from her head. She protested, but Neti answered only, “Be silent, princess. The rites of the underworld must be fulfilled.” At the second gate he removed her lapis beads. At the third gate, the twin beads on her breast. At the fourth, the pectoral. At the fifth, the golden ring from her hand. At the sixth, the measuring rod and line. At the seventh, her royal robe.
Gate after gate, Inanna stooped and entered, until she stood naked and powerless before the throne of Ereshkigal. The seven judges of the underworld, the Anuna, looked on her with the “look of death.” They pronounced judgment. They fixed the eye of death on her, spoke the word of wrath, and Inanna died. They hung her corpse on a hook.
Three days and three nights passed. Ninshubur kept watch, and when Inanna did not return, she ascended to the great gods as commanded. She went first to Enlil, but he refused: “Inanna chose the underworld. Let her reap what she has sown.” She went to Nanna, but he too refused. At last she came to Enki, the god of wisdom and deep waters. Enki understood. He took dirt from beneath his fingernails and shaped it into two tiny beings, the kurgarra and the galatur. He gave one the food of life and the other the water of life.
“You must enter the underworld,” he told them. “Pass through the gates like shadows. You will see Ereshkigal in pain. When she cries out, echo her cries. When she groans, groan with her. She will offer you water, grain, gifts—refuse them all. Ask only for the corpse hanging on the hook. When she gives it, sprinkle the life-giving food and water. Thus let Inanna arise.”
The two beings slipped into the underworld unseen. They found Ereshkigal groaning in her labor of grief. They echoed her sounds exactly. For the first time, someone matched her pain, and she was moved. “You understand my sorrow,” she said. “Let me give you a gift.” But the beings refused. “Then take this,” she said, and offered a second gift. Still they refused. “Then tell me what you want.” “Give us the corpse hanging on the hook.”
Ereshkigal had no choice. She handed over the body. They sprinkled the food and water of life upon it. Inanna stirred. Inanna rose.
But none may ascend from the underworld without replacement. The law of the Great Below bound her. As she climbed the gates, a host of underworld spirits—the galla—followed her, determined to seize someone else to take her place.
They approached Ninshubur first, but Inanna refused to surrender her faithful servant. They turned to Shara and Lulal, her loyal attendants; she refused them also.
Then they came upon Dumuzi, Inanna’s husband, seated comfortably on his throne, dressed in fine garments, not mourning her. Seeing his ease, Inanna fixed the eye of death upon him. She decreed that the galla should take him.
Dumuzi fled, but the spirits pursued him. At last he was seized and carried to the underworld. His sister Geshtinanna offered herself in part. It was decreed that the year would be divided: Dumuzi would remain in the underworld part of the cycle, and Geshtinanna would take his place the rest, ensuring the turning of the seasons.
Thus Inanna ascended fully, her powers restored, but at a cost woven into the very rhythm of the world.
From this descent and return the ancient singers said the life of the land was patterned: the barren months and the fruitful months, the sorrowing and the rejoicing, the going down and the rising again.
Inanna, Queen of Heaven, who once hung lifeless on a hook, rose again from the Great Below, because wisdom remembered her, compassion echoed pain, and the laws of balance were honored even by the gods.
….
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.”