a jungian approach to feminist theology: lilith, Innana and the joining of sacred opposites.
March 29, 2008
Excerpts from Behold Women: a Jungian approach to feminist theology. By carrin dunne.The mythology of the anzu-birdIn ancient Egypt, its correspondence is the vulture. One question that carrin asks is ” what modern nation would choose as its emblem the vulture or the snake”. She links the repulsion of the modern stigma of the vulture, of that which devours dead flesh and it’s overall association with death in the same manner to which the goddess, in the story of Gilgamesh, turned in horror from her own huluppu-tree. Carrin articulates the tree in its tangled root, the snake that cannot be charmed, the strong trunk, the body of Lilith, to its far-reaching branches to the anzu-bird and her offspring. One central point here is in the far reaching distinction in the attitudes towards death today from that of ancient times. And from this carrin presents the question, “how is it that we admire the devourer of living flesh but turn shuddering from the devourer of the dead? Is it that we are more horrified by decomposition and decay than by killing?” The inference here and as in chapter 1 regarding the unmasking of intention, it would imply that death suggests the end of ambition or rather, the disincorporation of intention. And so revealed is a juxtaposition between the ancient Egyptian mind wrapped in a motherly archetype verses that of a patriarchal one today. Or it is as carrin referring mother as “filth eater” or in mother Mary, as the “refuge of sinners”. For the modern mind, all the inventions of the patriarchal mind, the linear intention of the day, there seems to be something about the creation relationship within uncreation that it is horrified by. The dearth of the day is the stain of our encounter, the very thing that the patriarchy has sought to possess since its divergence from the goddess, fear as an instrument married from control. The mythology of Lilith, spoke in Isaiah 34:14, “Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose,and find a place to rest”.There shall the owl nestand lay and hatch and brood in its shadow. A note regarding the translation debate- “The difference between this translation and the one you are using reflects a fundamental difference in translation philosophy. Your version represents an approach to translating the Bible (esp. the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) that seeks to naturalize any references to mythological or supernatural creatures (except angels) into known animals” humm. According to the myth, God makes three attempts to present a companion for Adam. Lilith was his first attempt and, rather than forming her out of the pure dust like Adam, nor out of Adam’s rib, but rather, from the slimy viscous decomposition of the earth. 
After Lilith deserts Adam, god tries again by allowing Adam to fashion a women out of his own blood, bone, muscle, tissue and organs. According to the myth, Adam was so horrified in seeing the insides of his material nature that god took her away and put him in a deep sleep, and alas, eve was formed. Carrin links Lilith and the huluppu-tree in the untamable “uncarved block” in them. Just as Lilith left Adam when he insisted that she take the “subordinate position in love making”, Gilgamesh carved a throne and a bed for Inanna from the wood of the huluppu-tree. it kind of mimic’s the New Testament passage, when Jesus was equated with the “stone the builder’s rejected”, nature being that of a reflection of tamable that is untamable, carved is uncarved, that which comes from the innocence of a child is a lover, the untouched mother and the Magdalene. Another very interesting parallel between the old Jewish myth’s and New Testament is in the way Jesus would associate himself with them. Carrin mentions the comment Jesus makes of the women weeping for Jesus when he quotes the proverb: “if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luke 23:31) and so here Jesus identifies himself with the green tree, where the snake that cannot be charmed dwells, the “Anzu-bird and Lilith, rather than the hewn tree, Inanna’s throne and bed”. Lilith wants to remain the things we cannot control for, the wild and pure things, untainted by domestication, whereas Inanna prefers to become civilized, tamed and desired by men. Jesus more than not, associated himself with the things outside the law. He ate with the prostitutes and pagans; the religious authorities constantly called him on on his “breaking of the Sabbath”. These parallels could easily paint an image of Jesus as light bearer of the sacred opposites principle, or as carrin states it, “Jesus operates a turnabout on Inanna’s perspective. He is the green tree nailed to the hewn tree (or the new wine in old wine skins), which is his throne or bed”. A key point worth repeating is this, Jesus “joins” the two trees, and he does not do away with either. However, his mission in his preference to the untamed, to Lilith is depicted in his decent to the underground, like where Persephone was regained by her mother from the overbearing patriarchal nature, Jesus too, wrestled for three days. And when he ascended, greeted the Magdalene first, the daughter principle to reunite the mother principle, with the earth…”In the garden of Eden, there were two trees planted in the middle, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Oddly, no one takes notice of the tree of life until after the fall. Then god says, “behold, the man is become like one of us, to know good and evil, and eat, and live forever…” (Gen. 3:22). It is as though partaking of the tree of life does not emerge as a genuine possibility until after sin with the kind of complex awareness and disrelationship it entails. It casts some light on why the serpent apparently turns against itself in prompting the women to seek knowledge. Nature turns against nature for the sake of civilization, but finally, with the view of a greater life, a recovery of nature at a higher level, where the green tree and the hewn tree are joined. (proverbs 3:18).
