Guest Author - Elizabeth Bissette

In her new book, "Inanna: Lady of the Largest Heart", author, teacher and Jungian analyst Betty Du Shong Meador brings ancient concepts of war, religion and sexuality to life. She does this by translating the earliest written literature we know of. This was written by Enheduanna, a woman who was the most powerful religious leader in the most powerful empire in the world at the time. In Meadors' translation, her words are clear, sharp and direct, unlike what we might expect to find in something 4,000 old.

In Enheduannas' poems, she emerges and seems to speak directly to us across time. "I", she announces, "I am Enheduanna. High Priestess of Nanna...I who am I in the place which holds up lifes' key elements." Through Meadors' translation, not only the mythology of ancient Sumer and the cult of Inanna, but the emotions and experiences of Enheduanna emerge. They almost shout at us from the past in joy and sorrow. We find that she, and Inanna, are more like than unlike us; conflicted, striving to unify our contradictions, searching for answers and finding more questions.

We actually may, as women, discover more about ourselves by reading this book than we will in more contemporary books about and for women. Aspects of womens' nature that are frowned upon, repressed in our society were exalted in Enheduannas' Sumer. We find destruction, madness, war and death personified in the Inanna poems. Female sexuality at it's most unbridled, most primal is praised, glorified. Lust is celebrated, sex and female sexual gratification are presented as central to marraige. All are expressed boldly, unabashedly, unapologeticaly.

For example, we read here of Inanna/woman as a warrior, the supreme warrior: "She speaks, cities tumble...her overturned fury, Holy Woman's rage is a rampaging flood hands cannot dam."

Of herself, Inanna says: "I attack the mountain at it's heart...I ignite battle, arrows quivver ready...my hands like falcon claws slash heads...like the first snake I come out of the mountains. Fast as snakes slip through earth cracks I smash heads."

We find equally intense expressions in her poetry of our limitless sexuality, which we have most often been taught is wrong, something to surpress or feel bad about expressed freely. We also discover pure, frank expressions of the limitlessness of womens' loving and nurturing side. This is a far cry from the way women are viewed in most societies today, though I don't think far from how we feel or what we are capable of.

It's a shame we need to look to the ancient past to find affirmation of the full range of female experience, potential. It is, however, wonderful that Ms. Meador has presented it to us. Even contemporary Goddess literature, womens' literature, is colored by patriarchal conventions. This literature, preceeding their full entrenchment in humanitys' worldview, (although Enheduanna's father, Sargon, was one of the first to bring this shift in perception about), is not.