Standing atop a ziggurat, astronomical priests of ancient Mesopotamia observed the movements of the planets from the heights of civilization. These court appointed timekeepers meticulously collected data on planetary cycles and preserved their findings on clay cuneiform tablets.These earthen relics of human consciousness demonstrate a time when humanity reconnected with the expanse of the sky from the earth. Eons before astronomical priesthood, the first depiction of divinity honored the great mother goddess who initiated the world’s first universal religion. Through her being and connection with the cycles of earth like agriculture, lunation / menstrual cycles, and birth she reinforced the primacy of the archetypal feminine in early human consciousness. Her erotic, sexual power perpetuated the mysteries of birth, death, and rebirth putting her in a position to oversee the journey of individuation, which always leads back to her.

Caves were a crucial setting where reconnection with the goddess occurred. Ritual cave paintings of theromorphs, or hybrid human / animal figures, date back to 13,000 BCE and represent a literal and figurative return to and rebirth through the great mother. Journeying through the darkness of the cave and falling back into animal form signifies humanity’s first religious ritual of returning to the womb space to be twice born. The sexual impulse of this action complicates psychological reality because a return to the cave is seen as penetrating the womb and having sex with the mother.

The symbolic nature of this incestuous act displays in the archaic cave painting “Shaft of a Dead Man” which shows a massive bull with a spear wounding its vulva, representing the goddess, head-to-head against a man with an erection tilted back. In this state of awe, he is going through a transformation. He may be in a visionary state of seeing life after death and / or experiencing a magical trance in a state of ecstasy where he is one with all of life. This is one of the earliest depictions of a shaman mediating sexual and spiritual reality, where his erection simultaneously connects him to both life and death. He sacrifices and therefore takes on the power of divine feminine transcending transgressions of incest by engaging with a ritual state of consciousness.

Sickness motivates the Shaman to the cave or underworld to retrieve his lost soul. Once he finds his soul through the dismembered dissolution of his personal identity, he guides others in reconnecting with this active, invisible, irrational, repressed and erotic dimension known as the unconscious. In the Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirit, Jung recalls that “in spiritualism we have a spontaneous attempt of the unconscious to become conscious in a collective form” and it is the work of the shaman to embody this collective dimension as the intermediary between the conscious, personal wounds of the human realm and the unconscious, impersonal suffering of the spiritual realm. The shaman develops his authority to heal from the great goddess herself. He navigates the darkness of the physical and metaphorical cave by returning order to an erotic dimension of the psycho-spiritual world through rebirth.

Over the course of history, a pivot from operating in the all-encompassing cyclical reality of the great mother goddess moves toward engineering natural cycles by masculine forces, thus fracturing and challenging the goddesses’ position. Hunter-gatherer consciousness oriented towards farming and agriculture. The goddess herself undergoes a significant rebrand from the voluptuous, obese mother who rules over life and death to the slim, busty lover who oversees love and war. Inanna, Sumer’s resident fertility goddess of love and war, embodies this cultural shift and plays a significant role in the creation of civilizations.

Innana’s marriage to a mortal shepherd named Dumuzi bridges heaven and earth establishing divine authority for cities. Dumuzi’s kingship is legitimized through his marriage to the “Queen of Heaven”; the king, like the shaman, mediates mundane rule through divine connection.The pastoral setting of their courtship holds special cultural significance; Inanna as the goddess of the storehouse symbolizes the abundance of grain from the land while Dumuzi is the force behind the harvest. The word for water in Sumerian translates to “semen” so it is understood as a man's responsibility to fertilize the land and thus claim his paternal right.

The consummation of their marriage occurs in a grain storage house where the unification of nature and culture transpires in this sacred container. The rebirth chamber that was once a cave in the natural world takes place in a civilized storehouse. This sexual exchange with the goddess differs from before because it transpires with the lover. Man believes he has freed himself from the great mother and exhibits a seismic psycho-spiritual shift of ego agency.

Dumuzi's unabashed ego-consciousness does not bode well for him. In the poem “Inanna’s Descent into the Nether World” the goddess undergoes an intense death and rebirth process. Inanna finds offense when Dumuzi did not mourn her absence. He forgot he owes all of his power and prosperity to Inanna and that his authority came through her divine by appointment. Inspired by rage, Inanna strips Dumuzi of his kingship, taking back her power as the great mother and sending him to the sheepfold. Dumuzi has fallen. In Sumerian, the word sheepfold translates to “vulva” so in his fall he is returned to his humble origins to die and be reborn.

Inanna’s underworld journey inspires esoteric significance of cyclical resurrection to raise/raze civilization. Inanna represents the planet Venus and the oldest surviving planetary tablet from Mesopotamia called the “Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa” (1601 - 1700 BCE) tracked the heliacal rise and set of Venus over 21 years. Astronomer priests were interested in the rise and set because it marks significant phase changes and peak times when she gains visibility. When Venus, the bright, shining, life-giving planet was not visible, cities and their people suffered. The priests advised the king on her cycle to anticipate chaos so he could maintain divine order through her movements.

According to astrology scholar Demetra George in her book Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice Vol 1, Venus’ Cycle unfolds as follows: Venus begins with retrograde motion in the heart of the Sun, rises as a morning star, sets in the morning, disappears, reemerges as an evening star, stations retrograde, sets in the evening, and finally returns back where she started in the Sun’s chamber for rebirth. A planet’s retrograde motion was associated with rebellion and departure from the normal course of action. Venus’ time retrograde in the heart of the Sun corresponds to Inanna’s underworld journey dismantling her power, removing her clothes, and walking towards a certain death to be reborn while chaos in her kingdom ensued. The interwoven narrative of how Inanna/Venus maintained order of civilization from her position as Queen of Heaven establishes evidence of how societies reconnected with the sky from the earth through the movement of the planetary goddess herself.

This narrative concludes where it started with our astronomical priests on the ziggurat. Their clay tablets recall how earth is the basis upon which re-connection to higher power is possible. However, far below the heights of the ziggurat, a labyrinth sets the foundations of the structure. Labyrinths remind us of the caves of the past, a place where connection with the divine feminine through death and rebirth derived. The image of the monstrous, devouring bull at the center of the labyrinth drives awe and terror at the resurrection / individuation capacity of the great mother goddess. The ziggurat's labyrinth holds the memory of the grounds from which the fallen human psyche sprang up to reach the skies.

Note from the author: This essay was written in 2024 for a midterm exam at Teachers College, Columbia University in Dr. Mark Kuras class Analytical Psychology from C.G. Jung to the present

Resources:

George, Demetra. Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice: A Manual of Traditional Techniques, Volume I: Assessing Planetary Condition. Rubedo Press, 2019.

Jung, C. G., and R. F.C. Hull. Psychology and the Occult: (From Vols. 1, 8, 18 Collected Works). Princeton University Press, 2020.

Thompson, William Irwin. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture. St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996.

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