The Practice of Letting Go

There's a journey I take in time with the fading light. It's mythic, epic and oh-so ordinary.

Remember Persephone?

Her myth is said to explain the changing seasons. The short version:

Persephone (goddess of springtime) is abducted by Hades (god of the underworld) who desires her as his wife. Her mother asks Zeus, chief amongst the gods, to intervene. Zeus arranges for Persephone to spend half the year in the underworld and half on the mortal plain. Persephone appears with the vernal equinox, bringing back life and growth. And descends on the autumnal equinox, heralding the end of the growing season.

This is one of the first stories I learned of a goddess descending into the underworld, falling with the autumn leaves. Earlier in my life, I milked it for meaning. I was smitten with the idea of the seasonal changes mirroring our humanity back to us. Persephone’s story always felt a bit thin, like something vital had been worn away in century upon century of retelling.

So I was primed for something more when I discovered the story of Inanna.

Inanna was the ancient Sumerian Goddess of Heaven and Earth. Her story (like Persephone’s) is used to explain the coming of the winter months. But, unlike Persephone’s tale—which has been told and retold through the ages—Inanna’s journey was lost to us until clay tablets with a cuneiform poem describing her descent were discovered by archeologists in the 1920s.  Because the story has only been recently returned to our consciousness, we have it in a form perhaps closer to the original. Some believe that it was a teaching tale: instructions for the ancient priestesses on how to visit the Dark Goddess, the primal self that lives deep in the center of each of us. 

Inanna’s story goes like this:

Inanna was the Sumerian Queen of Heaven who ruled ancient Sumer as its Queen. She decided to visit her sister, Ereshkigal— who also happens to be the Queen of the Underworld— after the death of Ereshkigal’s husband. The funerary trip required Inanna to pass through seven gates. In order to cross each threshold, she must leave behind a part of her regalia, each piece representing a part of her identity.

Recreating this descent in my journal is a (somewhat harrowing) part of my usual winter’s ritual. Sometimes I take the descent alone, sometimes I lead a group through the process. The journey is a way to symbolically strip myself of my earthly trappings so I can remember who I am at my core. Like a tree, I drop my leaves till all that remains is a stark silhouette of a trunk and branches. It is an emptiness, a fallowness, a night stroll through the starlit streets of self. Ultimately it is an invitation to grow in a new direction and start fresh, an opportunity we rarely allow ourselves.

For the next seven weeks as we approach the winter solstice, we’ll explore Inanna’s journey and how it relates to our modern search to connect with our sacred self.

For paid subscribers, there will be writing prompts for those who want to journey and journal along with me. Today, there is also a handout to help you turn this process into a ritual, to create a sliver of sacred space for yourself as the year winds down.

photo by my husband Andrew Celwyn (who always takes the best photos)

And so we begin at the first gate….

At the first gate, Innana is asked for her crown, the symbol of her role in the world, her calling and vocation.

At each of these gates, before she makes her sacrifice, Inanna asks: What is this thing you ask of me?

The answer is always the same: Hush Inanna. Do not question the ways of the Underworld.

The image of a queen removing her crown reminds me of watching my dad take off his jacket and tie when he got home from work. The jacket, the tie, the crown— these are the accessories, not of who we are as a human, but of the work we do in the world, the way we support both ourselves and our community.

In modern America, our work can become central and all encompassing. It’s easy to forget we have an identity beyond what we do. I’ve noticed that, on introduction to someone new, the person performing the introduction often includes a job title: This is Susan. She’s in P.R.!

Who is Susan when she’s not doing public relations? Does she even know?

There is also something in Inanna’s divestment that makes me think of summer holidays back when I was teaching. Coming into the summer break, I would always have long lists of plans. But I would find, year over year, that it took a surprisingly long time to transition from working to not working. I would put down the work of teaching, but it would still haunt me, and it was hard to settle into painting the kitchen or road-tripping to Boston. That transition time ate into my summer schedule. It took time to escape the mental orbit of being a teacher.

I wonder if Inanna was haunted by her crown. If, at the first gate, she didn’t yet believe that everything was about to change.