After her descent to the underworld, Innana returned with knowledge of its power. Hearing the call (of her suffering twin Erishkegal – our psyche’s dark suffering side) and consciously choosing to meet her demon sister, Queen of the Underworld, she encountered madness. Erishkegal who is suffering labor pains, symbolically gives birth to the renewed Innana who now knows humiliation – the deep wounds of (our unconscious).. underworld and the chaotic raging created by rejection and knowledge of mortality. With the knowledge of both realms, she is reborn : the redeemed “madwoman” sends her husband who has forgotten her and basks in his role as highest judge of all, to journey also to meet the Madwoman – whose realm of creative chaos can help energise and integrate the light and the dark.
But this meeting did not merely happen….She prepared for it and opened the way for her retrurn. Innana’s journey into the realm of the dark goddess shows a possiblity for a woman or a man who is an addict to transform the inner Madwoman into the goddess who knows both realms.
Everyone who has been in the grips of addiction has felt the death of Innana in themselves. Through alcohol, drugs, overeating, promiscuity, or through hunger for power or love (often denied), both soul and body become like “rotting meat” (Innana is hung on a meat hook to rot for some days after descending to Erishkegal’s realm) hung on the peg of humiliation. The addict becomes mad, judged severely, stripped bare of refinement (and false masks) and a proper persona. Both body and soul have been devouring and devoured. But the challenge is consciously to accept the journey, which can unite the mysteries of light and dark, to transform humiliation into humility, and to return with the creative knowledge and energy to transform not only the Madwoman of the matriarchy but the Judge of the patriarchy.
The Madwoman and The Judge are archetypal energies in a time and culture dangerously out of balance. On the surface the patriarchal judge values linear rationality and calculative thinking, which can lead to addictions to power and perfection. While the discriminating awareness of judgement is essential to creativity, it becomes static, rigid, and inflexible when it relegates the dynamic energy of the dark feminine to the shadows. In compensation, this rejected Madwoman energy the rises up from the depths, threatening to throw the world into chaos. (Nazism can be seen from this perspective as such a distortion, born of the destructive collusion of the unintegrated Madwoman and Judge.)
The discriminating awareness of judgement, wedded to the dark chaotic vision of the Madwoman, is required for creative expression. When these two archetypal energies are out of balance, addiction – whether to love or to power, to substances or to activities – fills the gaps and obscures the danger. This way of denying the feared energy leads further to dangerous polarities Only by facing what we fear and letting it arise can we find a balance. Only by consciously confronting and transforming these inner addictive figures – The Madwoman and The Judge – can we unite their energies to create a whole and healthy world.
The Judge refuses to let us face our own (or another’s) humanity, and hence our creativity (born of chaos).
Linda Schierse Leonard : Witness to the Fire : Creativity and the Veil of Addiction
Emerging From The Dark Night 