Dance with the Devas

Inanna

Long before the gods of Greece had names, in the ancient lands of Sumer there was Inanna, Goddess of love, sexuality, fertility and war.

She’s in the heat of a lover’s breath against your neck, the blood rushing through your body when desire takes hold and the rose blooming in the garden. Inanna is pleasure and destruction, tenderness and ferocity, the fertile earth and the burning sun. She belonged to no one and she was never only one thing.

Inanna knew the sweetness of being alive. She wore lapis lazuli against her skin, adorned herself in jewels and walked among the living with the confidence of a woman who understood her own power. She knew how to love, how to rule and how to wage war. Yet even a Goddess as magnificent as Inanna could not escape the call of the underworld.

One day, she decided to descend into the Great Below, the realm ruled by her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead.

Before leaving, Inanna instructed her faithful servant to seek help if she failed to return. Then she approached the seven gates of the underworld, where at each threshold she was forced to surrender one of her divine garments or jewels. Her crown, necklace, breastplate. One by one, everything that marked her as powerful was stripped away.

Naked and powerless, Inanna stood before her sister. Ereshkigal looked upon her with the eyes of death, and Inanna was killed. Her body was hung upon a hook, and for three days and three nights, the Goddess of life remained in the land of the dead.

But Inanna had prepared for this possibility. With the help of the divine beings sent to rescue her, she was restored to life and began her ascent. Yet the underworld demanded a price. No one who entered could simply leave without another taking their place.

Inanna returned to the living world, but her husband, Dumuzi, failed to mourn her absence as she expected. In her fury, she chose him to descend in her stead. Eventually, a compromise was reached. Dumuzi would spend part of the year in the underworld, while his sister Geshtinanna would take his place for the remainder.

And so the seasons turned…

Inanna’s descent became a story of death and return, of power stripped bare and the eternal exchange between life and death.

Sometimes becoming who we are requires us to descend. To surrender the things that once made us powerful and to die to an old way of being, even when we have no guarantee of who we will become.

Inanna reminds us that the descent is part of the story too. Will you dance with her?

The Evening

We’ll begin the night with a guided meditation, connecting with the mythology and energy of Inanna before allowing the meditation to naturally move into the body through dance.

From there, we’ll enter an hour and a half of embodied dance with no choreography or right or wrong way to move. This is an invitation to let the body speak and to move with the wildness and power that lives within you.

After our dance, we will gather in circle to honour the story of Inanna and each other. We’ll sit together, chat, laugh, connect and come back to earth after moving through the energy of the underworld.

The Details

13th November

7-10pm

Institute Hall, Crafers

What to bring:

A drink bottle

Layered clothing that channels your inner Inanna