Thread: This topic should be fleshed out

:lol for sure! many seem to forget the goddes of love AND war.

"In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ishtar tries to make Gilgamesh her husband. Recalling numerous lovers whom Ishtar had killed or mutilated in the past, Gilgamesh refused. Ishtar ran to her father, Anu, who sent the bull of heaven after Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh, though, killed the bull with the help of his friend, Enkidu and sent the headless bull back to Ishtar as an insult. In response, Ishtar gave Enkidu a disease that killed him."

and heres a tranlsation from one of Enheduanna's hymns:

"Queen of all given powers/unveiled clear light/

unfailing woman wearing brilliance/cherished in heaven and earth/

chosen, sanctified in heaven/you/grand in your adornments/

crowned with your beloved goodness/rightfully you are High Priestess/

your hands seize the seven fixed powers/my queen of fundamental forces/

guardian of essential cosmic sources/you lift up the elements/

bind them to your hands/gather in powers/press them to your breast/

vicious dragon you spew/venom poisons the land/like the storm god you howl/

grain wilts on the ground/swollen flood rushing down the mountain/

you are Inanna/supreme in heaven and earth..."

ah thats we love her

Inanna or Ishtar is great goddes. In old Babylon called her the Queen of the Heaven. And her symbol is often in Middle Ages magick books too, by example by Aggrippas Occult philosophy.
http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/op2_49.gif
One of theire symbols was a scepter with a fivepoint or eightpoint star.
So, Fivepoints star - pentagram - is one of symbols of Inanna.

Hello everybody new poster here.

Yes most definitly agree about sumerian gods being different from the "all loving" example- particularly powerhungry part.

And does anybody here has an experience with using ceremonial magic (Middle Pillar ritual and similar), however using sumerian deities names instead of YHVH ones? Been experimenting with it for sometime, would be interesting to compare it with others who tried it.

I haven't done it with Sumerian but have used Celtic Gods and Goddesses.

How did it went?

Personal opinion btw is that while you are summoning the same powers into the construct no matter how do you call them, using different pantheons with different attributes of the powers means, in practical terms, summoning a different aspects of the same basic powers (with possible different practical effect- Inanna for example as she is described is pretty different from say Netzah sphere or parallel YHVH name, so while you might be calling the same power the exact effect that the ritual will have might be different, whatever in result or in how exactly the result is achieved).

However i also suspect that Sumerian version is the closest to the way the powers really are- Sumerian descriptions based more on the knowledge of the powers and less on how did sumers wished to see the powers (while later interpretations were gradually turning the opposite way, the more the more recent the interpretation is).

Also one of main practical purposes of using Cabalistic Cross and Middle Pillar rituals is summoning basically a basic power (energy) of a correct sphere (which then is used for example to make an amulet). Did you (or somebody else that you know that worked along the similar lines) ever tried to use that power as a sort of a primer, used then to evoke (hopefully im using the correct term) the actual god/divine name representing the power in the system that you use, then to direct it (the god/name) to achieve the desired result of the ritual?

I find most pantheons fit into ceremonial magicks quite well I never use any thing to do with YHVH in my magicks as I consider him a usurper and a despot. A tri-god that feeds on the souls of thousands of ignorant followers who die in his name from three major religions. Sumerian stuff works ok but I work better with the ancient ones rather than the elder gods.

I have done a little reading on Sumerian mythology. One interesting point is that the earliest archaeology shows that the Sumers did not make a difference between deities and spirits. There were spirits in general. Then the spirits were divided up into, 'clean spirits,' and, 'unclean spirits.' I think that later Sumerian civilization did have separate classifications.

There are some good resources on the archeology of Sumer, but I'll have to come back and provide links later.