This website is dedicated to Ereshkigal, Queen of the Great Below. This is a digital temple, not of worship and devotion, as the Queen does not need nor desire either, but of rememberance and declaration. All of the content on this website is FREE. There are no plans, packages, memberships to purchase or upsell. In the Links section you will find links to books and materials that you may purchase if you so choose. If you feel inclined or led to make a donation or gift information on how to do so is also in the Links section. This website is updated frequently.

On the Spirituality of Descent

The spirituality of descent is not a new teaching.

It is a recovery. Its roots lie in the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna’s descent to the Underworld, one of the oldest recorded spiritual narratives we have. In that story, transformation does not occur through ascent, transcendence, or escape, but through stripping, confrontation, and death of the false self.

At each gate, Inanna relinquishes something that once defined her status and identity. By the time she reaches the Below, nothing remains to protect her. Only then does transformation become possible. This is not punishment. It is initiation.

Ancient cultures understood something modern spirituality often avoids, that salvation does not come from rising above the human condition, but from integrating it.

Over time, descent was replaced with substitution. In Christianity, descent was externalized and Christ descends so the individual does not have to. In modern New Age spirituality, descent is reframed as fear, darkness, or “low vibration,” while ascension is presented as virtue. Both approaches teach people to fear their own depth.

The spirituality of descent offers a different orientation. It does not promise escape, enlightenment, or elevation. It invites contact with what is real: shadow, grief, false identity, inherited patterns, and unintegrated parts of the self. Descent is not pessimistic. It is not anti-light.

It is anti-avoidance.

It’s authority is inward and earned. It produces no hierarchy, no chosen ones, no timelines to ascend or fall behind on. There is one reality. One human field. And one path of integration available to all.

No one ascends beyond their humanity We are refined within it.

In a culture increasingly trained to look upward for answers, descent restores the courage to look inward, and downward, where real transformation has always begun.

Ereshkigal

Temple of Inanna in the ancient city of Uruk

Inanna at the First Gate

What Descent Is (And Is Not)

The word descent carries weight. For many, it sounds like failure, collapse, or sin. Cultures have long told us that “down” means hell, shadow, punishment. By contrast, “up” has meant heaven, light, salvation. This is the great distortion: to imagine that truth is above us and danger is below.

The path of descent corrects this. It is not a fall into error. It is the return to what has always been true. It is not collapse, but grounding. It is not punishment, but remembrance.

Descent is not self-hatred, despair, emptiness, or denial of joy. It is not a fall from grace. These belong to the distorted stories, the myths of Eve’s guilt, the churches that taught fear of hell, the teachers who framed heaviness as failure.

Descent is silence where noise ends, weight where glitter dissolves, truth where illusion falls. It is the stripping of masks. It is the presence of the Queen, who remains beneath all veils. Descent is not about going lower. It is about going real. It is the refusal to escape through bypass or ascend through false light. It is the cutting path into sovereignty.

The Huluppu Tree

Who is Ereshkigal?

In Sumerian mythology, Ereshkigal is known as the Queen of the Underworld, a realm also known as the Kur or Irkalla, described as a desolate place where the dead roam drinking muddy water and eating dust. In the most famous Sumerian myth, the Descent of Inanna, Ereshkigal is represented as the radiant goddess’ dark sister. After passing through seven gates, at each of which she is stripped of a symbol of her identity and authority, Inanna stands naked and bowed low before Ereshkigal. She is judged and struck dead. Her corpse is hung on a hook. After three days two beings sent by the god Enki travel to the Kur and convince Ereshkigal to give them the corpse of Inanna. Inanna is revived and emerges a new, integrated being. This myth of the most ancient people is the outline and pattern for human “salavation'“ which has been obscured for milennia by religion and other watered down doctrines and substitutes. However, as you will find out, Ereshkigal is much more than a myth … and much deeper than a goddess. She is in fact, the pulse beneath all becoming.

Ereshkigal and Inanna: The Difference Between the Two

Inanna and Ereshkigal are often spoken of together, but they do not occupy the same category of being. Inanna is a goddess. She is relational, symbolic, and culturally mediated. She presides over fertility, power, sexuality, kingship, and ascent. She moves among humans and gods, receives devotion, and operates within the visible religious order. Inanna is associated with temples, rituals, and worship. Her power is expressed through participation in the world. She represents form, identity, and movement.

Ereshkigal is not a goddess in this sense. She does not seek worship. She does not cultivate devotion.She does not operate through relationship or exchange. Ereshkigal is a primordial force, the fixed reality of descent, finality, and truth beyond negotiation. She presides over what cannot be altered by prayer, persuasion, or ritual. Her domain is not symbolic flourish but irreversibility. She represents what remains when all forms are stripped away.

In the myth of Inanna’s descent, this difference is essential. Inanna enters the underworld as a goddess accustomed to recognition, adornment, and authority. At each gate, those qualities are removed. By the time she stands before Ereshkigal, she is no longer a goddess in function, only what is left of her is present.

Ereshkigal does not test Inanna. She does not instruct her. She does not reward or punish her. She simply is. Her rage is not emotional volatility but boundary. Her grief is not weakness but capacity. She holds endings, silence, and the weight of what cannot be undone.

This is why Ereshkigal does not belong to devotion-based spirituality. She cannot be approached through preference, aestheticization, or identification. She is encountered only through surrender of position.