Sarai

I stood in a dark space, but I was not alone. I saw, as if across a veil, the form of my husband and a very tall man speaking to him of Abzu and Tiamat, the first lovers, the primordial ones. The man I had been speaking with stood in front of me. He too seemed taller somehow, and he moved more easily as if more readily inhabiting, here, his own skin.

He gestured and shapes moved from his hand. “It is something, is it not? In this Greek story I have told you of the great iron god comes to steal the maiden to his underground realm. But in the story you know…”

I nodded, and spoke. “Inanna goes of her own accord to the underworld, or, sometimes, she goes and only escapes by forcing her husband Dumuzi to take her place. In your story, she is stolen, but in ours, she steals him.”

He smiled, and I think he was surprised that I understood. “Yes. So which is it? Who harmed who first, the male or the female?”

I said nothing. Indeed his story did strike a chord with me as, I now knew, it was supposed to. I blamed the unborn child for my mother’s death, yes, but as I grew older I blamed my father. Our myths said that women entrap men, drag them into that darkness, but I certainly did not know that my mother had a choice with whom she wed—and whether to have children. I did know that what my father did to my mother did kill her—did kidnap her to that dark realm. I knew that.

“There is,” he said, “an older story. Long before your people lived in the land of the two rivers, there was another people, the Sumerians.” I nodded, this too I knew. “And they too worshiped Inanna, and Enki, Enlil and Ninlil. But in those days Ereshkigal was not the queen of hell. She, too, was a maiden. A spring princess, like Inanna and Persephone. In those days, Nergal was king of the underworld.”

“But a great monster came. Your people know him too, and call him Leviathan. The Sumerians called him Kur. And this monster came, and he took Ereshkigal away to banish her, to force her onto the throne of darkness. So she became the Queen of the underworld.

It was Enki, who made mankind, who came after her. Neither to banish her nor be banished by her, but to rescue her. And as he came on his boat, skimming over the waves, the primordial waters themselves rose against him. The primordial waters which existed before ever the Universe---these made her capture sure.

Do you see? In the beginning, before these things could be ruined by time, there was neither blame nor help. Neither destroyed either. But the Universe itself wished this state of affairs to be, and fought to keep it that way against even the will of Ereshkigal.”

His voice was light but steady as his eyes pierced me through.

“God it was who made woman to be a part of both realms and a dweller in neither. Only in this way can she bring forth life. And only in the shadow of death can life, and the power which brings forth life, remain eternal and full of strength.

God it was who chose this dark path for women—a curse, and a blessing.

Because, my dear, Ereshkigal, Persephone, and Inanna, Ishtar as she is sometimes known, are not different goddesses. They are the same. And they are every woman. You are all of them, at all times. You must accept each to be them all—you must be all, to be what you were born to be. Do you understand?”

I looked at him for a very long time, something deep in my soul opening and crying out. At last I sighed. “Father, I do.”