Close to the Bone. Jean Shinoda Bolen
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door in order to enter a depth psychological process is to knock at a gate to the underworld. Nightmares; repetitious dreams; unbidden thoughts, images, and impulses; pervasive anxiety; depression; inability to know what one really feels; and deep unhappiness are some of the reasons for making a descent, through which it may be possible to be a witness, to feel, know, remember, and mourn what lies below. However compelling the psychological reasons are for making a descent, people often resist, using addictions to work, relationships, activity, television, alcohol, or other reality-distorting substances to avoid it, as all of these are ways of keeping awareness of pain at bay. Unless psychological symptoms become so disabling that a person cannot function, it is possible to resist. Life-threatening illness, however, takes us out of ordinary life and into the underworld. A descent is then no longer an elective procedure.
Symbolic Death, as in a Chrysalis
Inanna described herself to the gatekeeper as being on her way to the East, which is a strange statement to make when she is seeking entry to the underworld. It makes symbolic sense, however. Dawn comes when the sun rises in the east, and hence the East represents rebirth, new life, vulnerability, innocence, and hope. Descents into the underworld take a person into the realm of death, transformation, and rebirth. In a descent, there are symbolic deaths: death of some part of the old personality or former identity, the end of a particular hope or illusion. In a descent, something that has been buried in the psyche may be unearthed, remembered, and brought to life. There is a possibility of a spiritual or psychological resurrection.
Angry and Rejected Ereshkigal
Women who function well in the world of social and professional life resemble Inanna: they do well in the material world and are well connected to patriarchy, often as wives or daughters of traditional men. Ereshkigal, meanwhile, suffers in the underworld. Ereshkigal— as a contemporary archetype—represents inner or rejected or repressed aspects of an Inanna woman and of women in general. A woman who is more like Ereshkigal than Inanna has qualities and concerns that are introverted and unrelated, devalued and rejected; she is wounded and angry, often is depressed, can be ill, and is not allied with men with power. Ereshkigal is hidden in the underworld: socially invisible and discounted, manifested in public by the crazy or angry woman muttering to herself. Just as we avert our eyes from the street person who is being Ereshkigal, so do “nice women” avert their awareness from the Ereshkigal inside themselves; she is buried in the depressive mood, hidden in the physical symptom, or even camouflaged in their good deeds that have shadowy origins. Nice women try to repress unacceptable hostile feelings, thoughts, and impulses. When they succeed in covering them up, unacceptable emotions and urges become hidden and out of conscious awareness, vague guilt remains, and the women often end up being extra nice to the very people toward whom they feel hostile.
“Nice women” learn to repress anger, especially on behalf of themselves, from an early age, when they are rejected and made to feel shame for having such feelings. As an aftermath, they wear mental blinders that keep them from noticing the demeaning of women in general or themselves in particular. Instead they themselves adopt these same negative attitudes. Thus nice women do not think well of women and do not consider them as worthy as men. For all the status they may have, such women suffer from low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. This prejudicial attitude toward women and thus toward themselves comes as much from their mothers as from fathers and society. A mother with an inner sense of worthlessness passes it on to her daughters; the devaluation is passed down from one generation to the next.
The pain and rage of not being loved and valued for herself is excluded from consciousness, along with the feelings, talents, ambitions, and dreams that were not acceptable for her to have. Whatever was rejected and repressed in the psyche remains alive in the Great Below, in the symbolic figure of Ereshkigal, who suffers.
Ereshkigal harbors hatred toward Inanna, a metaphor for the self-hatred that lies below the surface of Inanna women who have been shaped by the need to do well in order to be acceptable. We all come into the world wanting to be loved, and when we are not, we settle for less: men usually for power and control over others; women for approval from others.
The Inanna-Ereshkigal configuration grows out of childhoods where performance, appearance, and social approval counted and were possible to achieve. Such women find ways to get approval— by the way they look, dress, are socially accepted and marry well, or through work, from good grades to professional success: approval comes from being Inanna. But their experiences of being unloved, of being the recipient of parental neglect or abuse, of not being cherished for themselves, can be condensed into the symbolic figure of Ereshkigal. They look as good as Inanna on the surface, and keep their misery as Ereshkigal hidden in the underworld. Until they make a descent, Ereshkigal may be as hidden from themselves as from the world. (This is true for men as well.)
Illness makes it impossible to go on as Inanna. Going through the gates, stripped of all the accoutrements of Inanna, there is no longer any way to maintain the persona and the illusion and protection that position and accomplishments offered; naked, bowed low, feeling like a slab of green meat on a hook, a woman who can no longer be Inanna finds herself becoming Ereshkigal and discovers the self-hatred, worthlessness, hostility, pain, and rage that she had avoided feeling and knowing, until now. Ereshkigal's fury lashes out at the situation. Rage, terror, and grief rise like waves and go through her. Rage moves from “I don't deserve this!” to “I brought it on myself!” There is rage at the unfairness, rage at oneself, and rage at others who go about their usual lives. There is terror about dying, fear of being in pain or potentially disfigured, and grief that their lives are irrevocably altered. Ereshkigal moans in pain. Once “nice women” feel their gorge rising, blinders drop away—they see how unconcerned or self-concerned others are, and they are angry. But anger and rage are uncomfortable feelings for them to have or express; these feelings are incompatible with being “nice.” They also fear alienating people they are dependent upon, especially now that they are ill and afraid. Consequently, newfound anger is unpredictably expressed or suppressed: one moment a woman is furious, the next occasion she stuffs it, or directs the anger against herself and becomes depressed and feels worthless. In the meantime, there are doctor's appointments, procedures, demands for decisions, life that has to go on, and the aftermath of coping with diagnosis and treatment. No longer able to be Inanna and being an angry, in-pain Ereshkigal, is the low pointin the lives of women with life-threatening illnesses as it is in the myth.
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