23 January 2004: Inanna and Erishkigal

On Monday evening Sherpa and Syrinx hosted a potluck end-of-lab dinner gathering for the Initiations labsters. It was fun and interesting to interact with all of them socially, with, like, spoken conversations and stuff, after two months of working with them in an asocial context. Some of us had met each other before the lab, some hadn’t. Some of the people who’ve been most important to me for the past two months, I had my first spoken conversation with on Monday.

It was a great pleasure to be at a social event at which everyone present was a warrior (no one makes it all the way to the end of a lab like this one unless he or she is a warrior). I hate small talk, and dislike most social routines and conventions, especially the verbal ones. I hate talk-for-talk’s sake. I see all that shit as just fear of Silence, which is fear of Truth, fear of the Real, fear of God. Compulsive chatter is an act of direct service to Evil. It’s on par with chain-smoking gigantic foul-smelling cigars laced with extra nicotene, and intentionally blowing the smoke into the faces of everyone around one. And at this gathering, no one did it (while this was a rare and pleasant experience, it was not, thank God, unique for me, because I do have many excellent friends).

Hey, here’s a tip – a super-quick test to find out whether someone is not a warrior (in the Castaneda/Richard Heckler sense of the term). Just sneeze. If the person says “Gesundheit,” or “Bless you,” or anything like that, he or she is almost certainly not yet a warrior. A warrior can silently let a sneeze be – and almost always chooses to do so, unless actively engaged in infiltrating a warrior-unfriendly social event (e.g., tea with the Queen of England). Note that this doesn’t guarantee that someone who doesn’t say “Bless you” is a warrior, it just uncovers a majority of those who aren’t, at least among adults in the Western Hemisphere. Note also that it doesn’t apply to children or teenagers, because to be a child or teenager in the company of adults is almost always to be actively engaged in infiltrating a warrior-unfriendly social event.

But I digress. Where I was going with this was that one of the great pleasures of doing this work is having the opportunity to connect with people asocially first, without having to go through all the awkward, annoying, qliphotic social games that, if you’re both warriors, neither of you is really interested anyway. At one point, when we were all sitting together and talking about what we’d gotten out of the lab, this was a major topic of conversation that everyone seemed to agree on – how rare and strange asocial interaction is in the pervading culture, and what a wonderful and surprising pleasure and privilege it was to engage in it, and how, for those encountering it for the first time, it was bewildering and alien at first but soon became not only comfortable and natural, but obviously right – something important that had been missing from life.

I find a similar quality in aikido, where one sometimes throws and gets thrown by someone several hundred times before even learning his or her name, much less making small talk.

It was wonderful to hear everyone’s stories about what brought them to the lab and what they got out of it. I’ll be writing more about what I got out of it in the days (and perhaps weeks, months, and years) to come.

For now, though, there’s still Tuesday’s lab session, the sixteenth and final one, to tell of...

I showed up cold – that is, with my body not warmed up at all (by my crazy standards, anyway – I mean, I’d just done a brisk two-mile walk to the studio, as I’d done before every other session of this lab). Schoolwork had kept me busy enough that I’d been sedentary since the previous lab session on Sunday; hadn’t made it to a yoga class or anything. And the whole session had a peculiar feel for me, starting right from when I set out for the studio, because the previous session had been so climactic. I felt like, “Okay, that big climax this lab was building toward, it’s happened. And we’ve got this one extra session here at the end. So I guess anything goes. This is a bonus round. Something big could happen. Or the whole session could be a quiet wrap-up, even a dud, and that would be okay, too.”

Well, not quite. There was one more thing that had to happen: the Personal Polarity of Inanna/Erishkigal, which I’d been saving for last, waiting for for weeks. Knowing that this was coming, and that I wanted to be at my most primed for it, I didn’t use the “anything goes, bonus round” feeling, and the attendant sense of freedom, as an excuse to slack off or succumb to my resistances. Instead, I went all-out on the warmup, focusing on total commitment, especially during the Heat phase.

Then it was Personal Polarity time. I gave myself a good, long no-form, and then stepped into Inanna. And I do mean that I stepped into Inanna – not into her realm, but all the way into her mind and body. Heh. Talk about initiation. Talk about ego-surrender. For my conscious mind, my sense of self, it was like when DMT or some other massively powerful, sudden-onset entheogen hits. I had about one second in which to think, “I’m in way over my head here...,” and then it was lights out, identity swept away by a much bigger, archetypal consciousness. Time to move over and let the god drive. Suddenly I was Inanna, the naked goddess kneeling before the throne of the Underworld, kneeling before Erishkigal.

The sense of embodiment was complete: I really felt like I was in a female body, with breasts and everything, and the entirely convincing sensation of long hair falling forward in front of my face. And I was crying, in a whole new way, a particular sort of sobbing that had a different feeling, a different timbre, from any crying I’d done before. A femininity, I suppose. Meanwhile, the other sounds in the room around me became the sounds of the Underworld, crying shades and mocking servitors of Erishkigal echoing in the vast subterranean throne room.

I knelt there for a time, and then I felt myself drawn up and over to the other side, into Erishkigal. Again, yes, into Erishkigal. Complete embodiment.

All through this lab, as I’d come to identify with the Inanna myth, I’d been thinking about it the way the myth is always told – from Inanna’s point of view. Which makes sense, since the whole point was that Inanna’s experience in the myth said something about the experience of initiation, which is what I was exploring. But what about Erishkigal? She was a complete mystery to me. As she was to Inanna, of course – Inanna gets in over her head, in the myth, because she understands neither how the Underworld works, nor how Erishkigal’s mind works.

And now I was Erishkigal, the Dark Goddess of the Underworld, rising from my throne, tall and terrible, seething with power and joy and cruelty. I was Kali. I was Death. The sounds around me were the sounds of my domain, the cries of my creatures. Everything in this realm belonged to me. None entered except on my terms, and my terms were simple and absolute: I took everything.

I stood over the naked, cowering form of Inanna and threw back my head and laughed in triumph. A long, long, deep laugh that, like the sobs of Inanna, was like no sound I’d ever produced before.

Then I went back into Inanna. This time, the experience was even more extreme, more intense – both in how deeply I was embodying Inanna, and in what I was going through as Inanna. The sense of vulnerability was overwhelming, and this time I could vividly sense the gloating Erishkigal standing over me. I knew that, having taken everything from me, she was about to kill me.

This time, also, the erotic aspect of Inanna and Erishkigal’s dominance/submission drama was overwhelmingly strong. I was powerfully aroused – but not in any way I’d ever experienced before. I was aroused... as a woman? I guess that’s the only way to describe it. I mean, if I were that aroused, normally, I’d have a raging erection. Not only did I not have a raging erection, I didn’t even have any awareness of having male genitalia anymore. Instead, I had an entirely convincing sensation of having female genitalia. I was breathing like I was having sex – but, again, not like I actually breathe when I’m having sex, but instead in a way that I’ve often heard women breathe during sex.

And then I had an orgasm. A female orgasm. When I say that it was a female orgasm, rather than a male one, I don’t just mean that I didn’t ejaculate (though I’m sure glad I didn’t). I’m an experienced tantra practitioner; I’ve had plenty of non-genital-centered, non-ejaculatory orgasms. This was different. My breathing, the sounds I was making, the contractions that I could clearly feel in muscles that my male physical body doesn’t actually have... I mean, I know orgasms, male and female. I’ve seen/heard/caused many, many female orgasms. They’re infinitely diverse, the way snowflakes are, but I know how to recognize them, and how they differ from male orgasms. This one was female. A really good, strong one, too.

I suppose that that was my death. It was certainly my end, as Inanna – the final initiation, the final submission. There was no Inanna after that.

When I had begun to exist a little bit again, I somehow got myself back over into Erishkigal. Erishkigal was pretty happy, in her dark and terrible way. This time, having finished with the Inanna business, I was a less manically charged Erishkigal – not so much seething and crackling as smoldering. Instead of laughing, this time, I found myself whispering, “Die... Die... Die...”

Then I went back into no-form. The rest of the session was, needless to say, somewhat anti-climactic for me. I was done; I was full; I needed to digest. I had a hard time staying present, and kept having to go back into no-form during the group rituals. Which was fine. I’d done enough. The group rituals, fortunately, focused on the dream-body, which is pretty familiar, relaxing, and comfortable space for me.

Reaction #1: The Inanna/Erishkigal Personal Polarity was, indeed, the perfect crowning ritual for the work I’d done in this lab. It was, ultimately, a polarity of Initate/Initiator.

Reaction #2: Well, heck, what did I think was going to happen? I mean, where does one go, on an initiatic journey, after Chesed? Duh. To Binah. Which means what? Come on, Nicky, this is Kabbalah 101, here. It means complete surrender of the self to the Goddess. Duh.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that it happened.

I’m just embarassed to have been surprised by it.

Oh, and by the way... in Orphans of Delerium, I’ll be in drag.