Return To Inanna

Christine Irving is ordained in two spiritual traditions . She is a priestess of the Fellowship of Isis, an international spiritual organization devoted to spreading awareness of the Feminine divine, as represented by the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis. Christine has also been ordained into the priesthood of the Gnostic Church of Saint Mary Magdalene. She is a creator and facilitator of ritual, a founding mother of the California Alliance for Women, a Peer Spirit circle guide, and a SoulCollage(R) facilitator. Her passion is storytelling in all its myriad forms and she delights in uncovering the perennial wisdom embedded in the world's myths, folk stories and faerie tales. Poetry is her medium of choice, but stories have their own imperative and sometimes demand a longer telling as in her novel, Magdalene A.D. Return to Inanna is in memory of the Honorable Olivia Robertson fondly known as Lady Olivia, Archpriestess and founding mother of the Fellowship of Isis, who introduced me to Sacred Theater, ordained me as Priestess, and inspired me to study the art of creating ritual.I am honored to follow in your footsteps.

Translation and retelling of the Inanna stories from the Sumerian.

Christine Irving has taken on the archetypal myth of Inanna's descent/dismembering/and ascent through clear, readable poetry that brings the story to contemporary life. And then she guides readers through an intentional ritual designed for modern women to symbolically understand this myth in terms of their own life journeys. What a bold endeavor! If you just read this book, you'll gain tremendous insight. If you practice the ritual, you will be transformed.Christina Baldwin Author of Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives through the Power and Practice of StoryVisionary. Poetic. Fierce. Now this is how a goddess myth should appear. Savor this. It's a masterpiece. Normandi EllisAuthor of Awakening OsirisA return to Inanna is a return to self. This book in three modes spans the past, present and potentially your own future to demonstrate the sacred healing balm of ritual lamentation. I highly recommend this unique work that is both poetry and guidebook to your own journey of renewal. Read it aloud. Share it with others." Mary K. GreerAuthor of Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses

Around 2,300 BC Enheduanna was high priestess to the moon god Nanna at his temple in Ur, a position she held for almost forty years. This volume translates Enheduanna's three devotional poems to the goddess Inanna accompanied by an extensive commentary and discussion which places these highly personal and unique expressions within the context of Sumerian culture and religion. The author highlights the importance of the poems and the princess for our understanding of the place of women in Near Eastern society and religion.

A fresh retelling of the ancient texts about Ishtar, the world's first goddess. Illustrated with visual artifacts of the period. "A great masterpiece of universal literature."--Mircea Eliade

Path-breaking lesbian storyteller & scholar Judy Grahn explores poetry written over four thousand years ago on the life and loves of the great goddess Inanna

In this collaboration, which can be viewed as two visions in dialogue, Shantz and Lilburn each focus on the story of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, who descends from her throne in heaven to the underworld. After being killed there by her sister, Inanna is reborn to return transformed, with her adornments no longer external but "formed by the scars of her healed wounds" (Shantz), a new Inanna who is also "a new physics" (Lilburn). By dramatizing the myth of the female dying-and- rising divinity in Lilburn's poetic sequence and a series of colour photographs of Shantz's room-sized constructions, the book offers us all access to the roots of feminine power in our lives.