The Return of the Goddess

(Excerpts from DESCENT OF THE GODDESS by Sylvia Brinton Perera)

"Everything ends and begins somewhere else."

The descent "...opens a woman to the paradoxes involved in living with the self."

"Suffering is a major part of the underworld feminine.  It may be unconscious until the advent of the goddess of light awakens it to awareness, stirs the silent numbness to pain.  On the magic level of consciousness, it is numbly endured.  There is no awareness of suffering."

"Wounding for a woman is not necessarily pathology."

"Ereshkigal's stake continues a process that permits the birth of the capacity to be separate and whole unto herself in service to the dark goddess; the capacity to negate and to assert, to endure firmly grounded, to destroy and to create."

"Inanna marches into the underworld with determination, going actively and consciously towards her own sacrifice....It is a sacrifice of what is above -- to and for what is below."

"We make descents or introversions in the service of life, to scoop up more of what has been held unconsciously by the Self in the underworld until we are strong enough for the journey and willing to sacrifice libido for its release."

The little creatures sent to soften Ereshkigal honor the goddess by echoing and suffering 'with' her.
"Their echoing makes a litany, transforms the pain into poetry and prayer.  It makes out of life's dark misery a song of the goddess.  It establishes art as a reverent and creative and sympathetic response to the passions and pains of life."

"Inner and outer tend to merge and flow on the magic level of consciousness and with the symbiotic bond.  Indeed I and Thou are so fluid within the field of participation mystique that there is often no clear sense of objectivity and difference between the psychic boundaries of two persons.  Rather there is a sense of union and intimacy that can be tuned into with subtle intuitive and kinesthetic perception."

"Healing occurs...when the process of life is given attention and empathetic presence and a mirroring that touches it wherever it is."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2kfD5ZKls&feature=share&list=PLD678BDD58E20126A