Ostara and Inanna

A Special Vernal Equinox Edition

Mar 19, 2024

Happy Ostara, Northern Hemisphere! It kind of snuck up on me this year, so I had to do a special Tuesday edition to honor the day.

First, the logistics.

Ostara is the old Celtic name for the holiday associated with the Vernal ( or Spring) Equinox.
This is one of the two days of the year when day and night are of equal length.
Astrological spring begins when the sun enters the sign of Aries, which happens at 11:06 pm eastern standard time.
After this day, every day will be a little bit longer, every night a little bit shorter, until the longest day of the year at the Summer Solstice, AKA Litha, which falls on June 20th at 4:51 pm this year when the sun enters Cancer.
Its traditional symbolism is rebirth. This is why the Christian “Easter’ was placed near the equinox, and why they borrowed a version of it’s Celtic name, Ostara.

The word Ostara

The word itself is a version of “Eostre,” the name of a teutonic goddess. The Biblical Esther got her name from this goddess.

Eostre herself was a version of the earlier Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who was called Astarte by the Cannaanites.

Ishtar, was of course, the Assyro-Babylonian version of the even older Sumerian goddess Inanna. I am very big into Inanna. Inanna, it appears, is the source material then, for today’s holiday known as Easter.

And that makes perfect sense, because Inanna was the star of the first resurrection story to have been recorded in writing.

The First Resurrection Story

Inanna set her eyes to the “Great Below.” She journeyed to the underworld, surrendering one of her royal garments at each of the 7 gates.
At the first gate, “The shugurra,” her “crown of the plain,”

At the second gate, “her measuring line and rod of lapis lazuli” was taken.

At the third gate, the lapis necklace was taken away.

At the fourth gate, “the twin nunuz stones of her breast were removed.”

At the fifth gate, the gold ring was taken from her hand.

At the sixth gate, “the beastplate ‘come, man, come’ of her breast was removed.”

At the seventh gate, “the pala garment of ladyship of her body” was removed.

Inanna enters the underworld naked, and kneeling. Her sister, Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Underworld, fastened the eye of death upon her, spoke the word of wrath against her, and cried the cry of guilt upon her. And Inanna became a corpse and was hung on the wall for three days and three nights.

In Sumerian, the word translated as “Underworld” is kur, which technically means “mountain.” In Sumer, the border countries were separated by mountains, and the people beyond were forever causing problems. The mountains, then, were seen as an in-between place. The souls of the dead were believed to go there. Modern western translators call that “hell” or “the underworld,” but they’re clearly letting their own cultural beliefs influence how they interpret it. The dead are buried. It would be a natural thing to believe there to be a world underneath the mountains where they then reside. So I will use the original word here instead of “hell” or “netherworld” which bring their own connotations. It’s undergound. That’s all we know.

In most translations, it’s said that Inanna, already queen of “the great above” wanted to be queen of “the great below” where her sister Ereshkigal ruled, and that was her purpose in traveling there. But the text does not suggest that.

“Inanna from the Great Above, she set her mind to the Great Below.”

“My lady abandoned heaven, abandoned earth…” “abandoned ladyship, abandoned lordship, to [Kur] she descended.”

To prepare for her journey, Inanna gathers up all the divine laws, fixes up her hair, puts on her most meaningful jewelry and clothing, and anoints her eyelids with “the ointment, ‘let him come, let him come.’”

Before she descends, she gives detailed instructions to her most trusted advisor, Ninshubar, to set up a lament for her, to beat the drum for her death, and to go to the other gods, one by one, begging each of them not to allow Inanna to remain in the land of the dead. If one refuses to help, he must go to the next.

So she went down there knowing it meant death, but her plan was that the other gods would get her out of it. She dressed in her finest and took her prized possessions with her. She was surprised and unsettled when those items were taken from her at the gates. But clearly we take nothing with us into death, other than ourselves.

When asked at the gates why she has come, she says it’s to attend the funeral rites of her sister Ereshkigal’s husband Gulgalanna, who had been killed.

When Inanna doesn’t return, Ninshubar follows her instructions, asking each of the gods in turn to help get her out. The God Enki is the last one Ninshubar asks, and Enki helps. “He brought forth dirt from his fingernail and formed '“the kugurru and the kalaturru. To the kugurru he gave the food of life. To the kalaturru he gave the water of life.” He then instructs these creatures he’s created, but a large part of the text has been lost. (For now. There are hundreds of tablet fragments in the basements of universities, still awaiting translation.) The last bit tells the beings not to accept food or water from the gods of the Kur, and to ask instead for Inanna’s corpse. They are then to sprinkle the food and the water of life onto her, and then, it says, “Inanna will rise.”

She does rise. There’s more to the tale, but Inanna was first goddess to die and be resurrected after three days.

Easter and Ostara

Easter and Ostara, then, celebrate the very same thing. The lesson is that death is temporary, that it is not the strongest force in the universe, that the power of life is stronger.

That is mirrored by nature in spring. Apparent death has overtaken the northern lands of the earth during the winter months, and Ostara is the day when the earth re-awakens from her deathlike slumber.

The sun is warming her. This is a mirror of “the food of life” being sprinkled over the apparently dead goddess, because plants make food from sunlight.

The snow is melting, all the frozen ground is thawing, and the rains are falling. This is a mirror of “the water of life” being sprinkled over Inanna.

And when she rises, we see the mirror of that in nature, too, in the earliest flowers of spring, the crocuses, the snowdrops, the daffodils. Inanna rises just as they do.

The Energy of Renewal

The symbolism of death and rebirth, of life always triumphing, is universal and is reflected in both stories. I wish I had more context for Inanna’s tale. I’d love to know what her reasons really were for going to the underworld. Could we take her at her word that she wanted to attend her brother-in-law’s funeral, to be there for her sister? Why did she take the laws and all her prized possessions with her? Why did she go at all, when she clearly new she might not make it back? Why was her sister so vexed when told of her impending arrival?

I’ll find these answers one of these days. But since as above, so below, as within so without, it shouldn’t be hard to ascertain the symbolism of the tale. Life ends, and then it begins.

The darkest moment is the moment before the dawn. There’s a reason why that’s an axiom.

In springtime, life is renewed in nature, and we are parts of nature. So life is renewed in us, as well.

Ostara night at 11:06

I will open the back door to allow the energy of winter to flow out. I will open the front door to allow the energy of spring to come in.

As I await that moment, I will make a thoughtful list of the “seeds” I want to plant in my life this season, all the things I hope to grow over the summer, and the fruits I hope to harvest in the fall.

Tomorrow, the first full day of spring

I’ll walk around the property. I’ll leave offerings in the form of carrots and celery for the wild bunnies, seeds for the wild birds. I’ll pour some moon water into the pond and cast a little renewal magic over it. I’ll talk to nature.