Prior to the rise of the solar or lightning deity and the subsequent fracturing of the Goddess in many parts of the world (where monotheistic religions eventually took root), spirituality was an immanent experience.

God and Goddess were internal. Indwelling. Inherent and intrinsic.

This means that each person, animal, plant, stone, and stream was recognized as inherently holy. Every seed and kernel contained the essence of the divine. Every bit of the planet and cosmos was a result of Goddess and God knowing and evolving themselves anew through all of creation.

Within this experience was an innate expression of holiness. 

Living in this manner imbues everything with deep, spiritual significance and it highlights the interconnectedness of all things.

Through this lens, people would understand themselves as an intrinsic part of the natural world. They would align with the cyclicity of life and notice how just as all life dies off at certain times…it also returns.

Monotheism headed by an angry and vengeful God who seeks retribution, sends sinners to hell and can only be reached through transcendence naturally leads one to believe that the world is hostile and that they are unworthy of divine love. It leads to neuroses, anxiety, punishment and competition.

It also relies on outsourcing one’s connection to God. If you can only hear God through another or be absolved of “sin” through an intermediary, then you are living in fear of judgment. There is an innate sense of not-enoughness and the need to strive to achieve or gain that external validation of worthiness.

The vision of what it means to be a human becomes incredibly distorted under these circumstances. It sets all of humanity up to live in fear, which was likely its intent. Fear of damnation governed by a variety of rules, sometimes incredibly arbitrary, will keep people feeling powerless.

This is ultimately why I love Goddess so much. She’s loving, compassionate, nurturing. And her experience is internal.

Through the Goddess, you can know the truth of yourself: That you are holy.

That you are Her. That you innately have worth and value because as Goddess – how could you not?

But, I do believe that this is enhanced by reclaiming a healthy version of the divine masculine, as we hold both of those energies within us. Source is both feminine and masculine. Both magnetic and electric. Receptive and active. 

Source is the All and when we can understand the ways in which we have succumbed to the programming that emphasizes and values the distorted masculine over the healthy masculine and feminine, we can begin the process of healing. In this, it is also important to recognize that as women, it can be easy to respond to the distorted masculine through the distorted feminine. This is yet another entry point of healing for us.

Inanna’s been on my mind a lot lately, especially now that in this moment we have six planets in retrograde and I’m really feeling the pull of the past and all of the patterning that is making itself known to me.

Inanna, a Sumerian goddess, like so many other deities prior to Jesus, was a Goddess who died and resurrected. Reincarnation was a commonly held belief in her region of the world and beyond, and resurrection was a part of the mechanism of soul evolution.

In her mythology, she descended into the Underworld, traveling through seven gates. At each gate, she stripped off an article of clothing until she arrived in the Underworld completely naked. This is symbolic of the journey to pull back the ego, to shed and free oneself of the constraints of the egoic mind.

She arrives naked – no mask, no pretense, no hiding. There, she meets with her sister, Ereshkigal, who represents her shadow self. Ereshkigal hangs Inanna up on a meat hook, where she dies. This represents the complete surrender and release of the part of humanity that disconnects us from our divinity.

After three days (sound familiar?), she resurrects and ascends with Ereshkigal/her shadow integrated within her to become the Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Inanna and her consort Damuzi also engaged in the practice of hieros gamos, or divine union. This was sacred love making and a reenactment of the divine marriage. 

As a fertility ritual, it was also practiced by Inanna’s priestesses. The point of it was the internal and integrated union of opposites: masculine and feminine, light and shadow, heaven and earth, life and death…

Inanna’s story is a beautiful example of the honoring of the cyclicity of life and how it evolves us as well as a reminder that polarity is necessary in order to understand that there actually is no polarity. All things, even opposites, are the One.

When you allow yourself to have an imminent experience of the divine, you are able to incorporate polarity and cyclicity. 

Either/or becomes both/and. Life is always a precursor to death, and death is always a harbinger of life.

Then, you can let go of the hustle. The drive to prove yourself because of the belief that the Divine can only be reached by chasing after it.

When I remember that I am Goddess, that I am God…I am able to surrender to my wholeness and my goodness. I’m able to accept my all-ness – the mistakes and failures along with the celebrations.

I love this excerpt from The Thunder: Perfect Mind, one of the Nag Hammadi (author unknown) texts. It celebrates this very essence of spiritual immanence and Oneness through polarity that is also captured in Inanna’s story:

“I am the first and the last

I am she who is honored and she who is mocked

I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin

I am the mother and the daughter I am the limbs of my mother

I am a sterile woman and she has many children…

I am both awareness and obliviousness

I am humiliation and pride

I am without shame

I am ashamed…

Do not be arrogant to me when I am thrown to the ground…

Do not laugh at me in the lowest places

Do not throw me down among those slaughtered viciously…

I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness

I am she who is timid

And I am safe in a comfortable place

I am witless, I am wise.”

What a beautiful way to live, knowing that you are All and that all of you is an incredibly worthy expression of that. It is all your innate holiness. 

You are sacred. You are Goddess and you are God.

How does this resonate with you? What does it bring up? Let me know in the comments below.

xo,

Janet