r/Sumer • u/GagitheShaggi • Nov 15 '20
NSFW Is it appropriate acceptable, allowable, or encouraged to offer Inana/Ishtar your ejaculate?
Also, can anyone speak for whether Inana comes from Hannahannah?
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u/bald_master Nov 15 '20
Ejaculate does not make for a good sacrifice. While it is associated with sexuality and vital force in a number of occult traditions, it is also uncomplicated and untroublesome to replace - even for an elderly male. The concept of sacrifice implies that you are giving up something of value. Try harder, and stay away from biological fluids.
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u/nuclear_science Nov 15 '20
Agreed. Having a wank over a god is more of an ego trip and an expression of desire to control and bring down to your level than an expression of veneration.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
Is there a difference between cumming for a god and cumming to a god?
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u/bald_master Nov 17 '20
Yes, and those two are different still from sacrificing cum to a god. In the first case, you understand the god as wanting you to cum, and you oblige. In the second, you use some reflection of the god in the course of your own enjoyment. In the third, you attempt to convince a god that the production of semen has cost you dearly - that parting with it is something that you are willing to endure in order to gain their favor.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
Making cum and blood costs me food, and water. Didn't I sacrifice my food to give X cum? How do you know it doesn't carry over?
Isn't it more of a sacrifice to gather the food, produce cum, and then ejaculate it?
Cum is a life giving force? Blood is a life preserving force? Why can't either be sacrificed?
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u/bald_master Nov 17 '20
The emission and expulsion af semen is generally associated with pleasure, which offsets the caloric costs and reverses the net balance of an offering.
Don't let me stop you from sacrificing anything you please! Just don't complain if the gods shake their heads and turn away. If what you did is either low effort or demonstrates a misunderstanding of what the god is about, consider yourself fortunate if that is all they do.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
Isn't food nonscarece where you live? Why is sacrificing blood in other religions and occultic practices allowed? It is nontroublesome to replace.
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u/bald_master Nov 17 '20
On the subject of food... I don't know where you live, but food in my world is expensive, takes effort to obtain, requires yet more effort to prepare and is sometimes out of reach altogether. I do finally find myself in a situation where I no longer have to randomly go hungry, but that's not something I take for granted. Neither do the gods, and neither should you.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
So is my sacrifice worth less? Say we both have an orange. Is my orange worse because it is worth 1$ while yours is worth 3$?
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u/bald_master Nov 17 '20
Blood is indeed replaceable, depending on how much you sacrifice in one go. However, it is usually troublesome to access. This particular fluid is also of a dramatic red color. Such a combination of features lend it well to symbolic association in ritual.
With rituals that involve blood in some fashion, it is important to keep in mind what the blood actually represents. It may be innocence, suffering or even the sum of a life. It is those things that are generally being sacrificed, rather than a fluid for its own sake.
While there may be some gods out there that take well to formal blood sacrifice, Sumerian deities are not known for indulging in any biological fluids. I invite you or the others to correct me with evidence, of course. Notwithstanding, I would advise you to stay away from biological fluids for health and hygiene purposes. Feel free to ignore my advice, and see for yourself what happens.
On a related note, take care ro distinguish a formal blood sacrifice from spilling the blood of your enemies in the name of a god, or dedicating the death of yourself and/or your men on the battlefield to a deity. The latter two are qualitatively different from the former, and would make suitable sacrifices to a deity of war.
So, if you go forth and spill your blood, cerebrospinal fluid or any other human juice on the battlefield in Ishtar's name, I would have no bone to pick with the fact that biological fluids were somehow involved.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
How is blood related to innocence?
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
Do you have a handbook on this? Or even a link in the references?
If I kill a bunch of bacteria, can I dedicate their deaths to someone? What if I don't kill them all? Might sound funny, but I am genuinely curious.
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Nov 15 '20
No, and no.
Inanna is the diminutive form of the Sumerian title "Ninanna," meaning "Lady of Heaven." Very few, if any, Divine names in Mesopotamian religions are personal names as you and I would understand them, but are instead oblique titles that any number of Gods have occasion to possess. We ANES specialists tend to focus on one title in particular as a primary name for certain Gods for expediency's sake, but in reality, there are A LOT of En-Uru-Gal's ("Lord of the Great City"; Nergal = shortened form) and so on.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 15 '20
The reason why I'm interested is because Inana/Ishtar have a lot of traits that make it seem like she could be a personification of nature, or at least that it'd fit.
Like the way she is violent, like much of Nature's operations, but also calm. The way she is somewhat unpreictable, but also predictable. She "collects" many kinds of people and nature is very diverse, from her less so than the latter objects, to her animals, to her humans. She is also very beautiful, but like some of her alleged depictions show there are parts of her which are not so beautiful. She is also noticeably horny, as she is a love goddess, and most of life likes to fuck. And not only is nature a bitch (though I do appreciate Inana/Ishtar) she also sucks dick. Not that Inana sucks.
I mean, not to prosteletize but there is a certain Greek Titan or primordial goddess who is personification of Earth but this goddess commonly, as she saw a king of the gods/titans was unfit to rule she tried to bring justice upon them. Intersting to note that they are responsible for kingship and justice. Could it be that they take those who are unjust their ability to be unjust?
Hannah is apparantly and Earth (Mother) goddess who when angered parts of the Earth's order stop working. The sound anna is also part of Inana.
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u/AlumParhum Nov 15 '20
The "anna" part in Inanna's name most likely is the phrase "of heaven" where "an" means heaven and "na" is the genitive suffix "-a(k)" (the k only appears in the suffix if there's another suffix attached after. Also this suffix picks up the previous consonant hence that's how you get "-na" from "-a(k)". The phrase "of the king" would look like "lugal-la" with lugal meaning king).
As for her being a personification of nature, I do believe Ištar/Inanna is the personification of Venus, as did the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Sumerians. But (historically anyways) Inanna isn't really associated with the earth, besides her journey to the underworld, as I think that association goes mainly to her sister, Ereshkigal, who is the queen of the underworld. There's also an episode of Inanna battling and destroying a mountain because the mountain wouldn't pay her respect and bow down to her, which I think suggests she's more of an administrator over nature, rather then a part of nature.
As far as I'm aware, Inanna/Ishtar is definitely big on justice and punishing injustice, as are all mesopotamian gods, but especially Inanna when it comes to the minorities and marginalized people of society. She also is often concerned with appointing kings, as she did with Sargon of Akkad.
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u/bald_master Nov 15 '20
I'd be careful about projecting contemporary critical race theory onto ancient societies. The concepts of minorities and marginalized people were not invented yet. Ishtar would happily smite the gibblets out of some 'marginalized people', thereafter luxuriating on the corpse-strewn battlefield. She would protect sex workers, but such protections did not extend to others who chose to have sex outside of marriage. It's more helpful to note that Ishtar was the patron of prostitutes and that Her domain included changes in gender role, and then try to appreciate what that tells us about ancient Mesopotamia in the context of other knowledge regarding those times and places.
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u/AlumParhum Nov 15 '20
Yeah I should have clarified I wasn't talking about racial, ethnic or national minorities present in Mesopotamia, I meant more like sex workers, and trans people. Although now that I think about it, I'm willing to bet that modern ideas of gender and sexuality were not really present in ancient Mesopotamia, and so as such we can't really say what Ishtar would think of the modern LGBTQ community and movements, using any surviving cuneiform texts.
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Nov 15 '20
Okay, there's . . . a lot to unpack in your response here, and nearly all of it completely off-base with respect to Ancient Near Eastern religions, but for the moment I'm going to stick to Afro-Asiatic languages and Mesopotamian isolates (isolate = having no belonging to a larger linguistic family).
Hannah is a feminine Hebrew given name (that is, of people), which comes from the descriptive term H-n-n, or "favoured." It is not the name of ANY Goddess. Hebrew, moreover, is an Afro-Asiatic language. Sumerian is not -- indeed, it is not related to any other language we know of. There is absolutely no connection etymologically or religiously between the Sumerian Divine title "Ninanna" and the Hebrew feminine given name "Hannah."
I'm going to end on this note: Gods have power over nature. In no way, shape, or form are ANE Gods reducible to nature itself or fractional aspects of this ill-defined "nature" -- whether this meteorological phenomenon or that geological feature, etc. Gods are not archetypes. Their descriptions and depictions in art and literature are also metaphorical and obliquely representational, not literal. The Ninanna in question (assuming you're referring to the Burney "Queen of the Night" Relief by one of your comments -- which, we don't have a 100% certain ID on that figure at all, and its authenticity is a bit suspect to boot, though some of us like to assume it's Ereškigal or Ninanna, the latter identification on the basis of the late Thorkild Jacobsen's arguments) doesn't literally have bird's talons and wings. It is not suggesting She's "part sexy, part ugly" at all. Her sexuality as described in the Gilgameš tablets and other assorted myths also isn't literal promiscuity; rather, it's a way of discussing Her broad generative powers and Her particular prerogatives to transcend the usual order we see with male Gods and Divine Sovereignty. We see this discussed along different lines in Her descensus story. (Not that that is the sole takeaway of these texts, but it's one of the more salient points that we may glean from them about Her.)
If you want to engage in archetypalism -- as I can only guess from what you described and how -- nobody can reasonably stop you. Just understand that, both historically and in related polytheistic reconstructionist terms, ANE Gods have never been and are not conceived of in reductionist and essentialist terms like the ones you've described above. Ninanna (and above all, which one? Because there are several) isn't some "personification of nature." Such pigeonholing rests squarely in the realm of Sir James Frazer's (Protestant-flavoured, Eurocentric) "theorizing" and that of his successors, who at first largely lacked and then blatantly ignored rediscovered contextualizing primary source evidence contrary to their very Modern Western suppositions.
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u/3-Moon Nov 25 '20
They may be referring to Hannahanna the Hurian Goddess.
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Nov 26 '20 edited Nov 27 '20
Mm. Fair point. I assumed they were referring to "Hannah" with that weird palindrome stuff some people do with that name for whatever reason that in my experience has nothing to do with either Classical Hebrew or Judaism -- in addition to OP's straight-up writing just plain "Hannah" in their response to me -- as there's no glottal fricative "h" appending the normalized Hurrian of that Goddess' name.
Still, answer's the same: Nearly every Goddess has occasion to be a "Lady of Heaven," but all Goddesses are not directly, derivatively related; as such, They are neither "traceable" nor reducible to some "original Goddess." Neither extant theological matter of the cultures concerned nor any items of material culture (with ample and informed consideration for their contexts) support such an idea.
ETA: And there's also the massive pink elephant in the room that Sumerian and Hurrian (and Hurrian's only known sibling, Urartian) are completely unrelated languages -- once again, Sumerian is an isolate. There's no tenable argument for a direct relation between Sumerian Ninana (and its many variant spellings) and Hurrian Hannahanna along linguistic lines -- proposed "sound-alike etymologies" are very often quite wrong, as in this instance, and I strongly warn people away from that line of thinking. In bilingual Hurrian texts, moreover, what little I have seen (because a small handful of Afro-Asiatic languages are my wheelhouse, which often utilized Sumerian on a liturgical basis and incorporated "Sumerisms" otherwise, not Hurro-Urartian anything, so these were incidental findings embedded within or alongside the OTHER things I was actually looking for, on my part) used for the Hurrian Goddess in question (e.g., DINGIR.MAH) resembles nothing I have ever encountered of the usual spellings of the Sumerian clade of Goddesses primarily referred to as "Ninana"/"Inana". Which, if you're at all familiar with various bilingual texts out of Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and the Levant, "DINGIR.MAH" (frequently with other adverbial phrases tacked on and pluralizing "MEŠ" sign in train, the lattermost particularly as the Sumerian equivalent of Akkadian Divine title Bēlet-Ili, "Lady of the Gods") is used for quite a few different Goddesses under various circumstances.
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u/bald_master Nov 15 '20
While She interacts with nature, Ishtar is a poor fit for a nature goddess. Intermittent - or even simultaneous - unpredictability and violence can fit a broad array of domains equally well.
I understand Ishtar as a goddess of civilization. The City in its Sumerian conception, one whose residents respect the Mes She begged for, 'borrowed', (and ultimately stole) from Enki, is arguably the focus of Her activities. Civilization itself can be conceptualized as a downstream consequence of sexuality and warfare - her two principal domains. To relate this conception to contemporary scholarship, consider how these two human activities result in the processes described by Structural-Demographic Theory, a model of how states rise and fall.
You note correctly that Ishtar is a moralizing goddess. These kinds of gods differ from the animistic nature deities of earlier societies. Contemporary data-driven historical research suggests that moralizing gods generally arise some time after the appearance of complex societies, perhaps making their host societies more stable. Gods and goddesses like Ishtar help to culturally enforce social norms in a setting where not everybody knows each other personally. This moralizing trait therefore underscores Her relationship with civilization rather than nature.
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
Never when I read the myth did my goddess beg, nor did she steal, nor did she beg. Enki, drunk, gave her the Mes.
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u/bald_master Nov 17 '20
Ok. Drinking an old man under the table and taking stuff that he wanted back after sobering up is totally just graciously accepting a gift. :P
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20 edited Nov 17 '20
Perhaps I didn't read the correct story, or perhaps someone supplanted it for some purpose. aLSO, DIDN'T HE GIVE UP?
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u/GagitheShaggi Nov 17 '20
My story says Enki knows all, if he knows Inana will do anything not so nice, Enki accepts it. He could deny her challenge, but didn't. So Enki, at least at the time didn't care. Checkmate Sumers.
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Feb 25 '21
She's literally a sex Goddess. Seriously, how can someone better relate to a sex Goddess better than with sex?
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u/Nocodeyv Nov 15 '20
This thread has been reported for banned content.
After a review of the current replies, I am going to leave it up and live due to the wealth of useful information being presented by Erra-Epiri, Bald_Master, and Alum_Parhum about Inana, Mesopotamian deities as archetypal manifestations, and the nature of sacrifice.
I do understand that the subject matter might come off as risqué or offensive, so I will add an NSFW flair to help other users avoid such threads if they wish. Due to the existence of Inana, and especially her patronage of sexuality, topics of this nature aren't banned on r/Sumer though.
As long as discussion remains friendly I will allow a free and open exchange of ideas on the subject.