There are two reasons why Neo-Paganism is such a cool movement for Gay people to be participating in, that I wonder why anyone would bother with anything else: (1) Pagans as a whole are definitely the most positive and supportive, welcoming and friendly, group of folks towards Gay people that I have ever encountered (2) Only in Paganism will you come across Gay Creation myths.
I guess it’s partly the heavy emphasis on multiple Deities, various Pathways, numerous Traditions- variations upon the various Pathways of the numerous Traditions- that inclines Pagans towards a respectfulness of All Others. I suppose too that a large number of Pagans tend to be political liberals- or that’s my impression at any rate- and so I guess are inclined in principle towards acceptance and equality.
For whatever reason, I have always found Pagans to be exceptionally welcoming of their Gay associates, which is of course a nice thing to encounter.
I was re-reading Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth the other night (you know you’re a Pagan when you say things like, I was re-reading Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth the other night) and I noticed something new- something that seems very pertinent at this time of awareness and alarm over Gay Teen suicides, Gay Teens who kill themselves out of a hostile, socially reinforced idea that their Queer lives are worthless.
As I am sure most Juggler readers recognize, Inanna is the study of “Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer,” by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer (Harper and Row, 1983), wherein they examine the ancient writings of the Sumerians (some of which date back to 2000 BCE) detailing the Great Goddess Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, made manifest in the morning and evening star.
Inanna is also significant for being (possibly) the first recorded Deity to undertake the Underworld Descent, in the story titled “From the Great Above to the Great Below” (p. 52-67), in which Inanna visits her sister Ereshkigal, the Goddess of the Dead.
“Inanna entered the throne room.
Ereshkigal rose from her throne.
Inanna started toward the throne.
Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.
She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.
Inanna was turned into a corpse and was hung from a hook on the wall.”
Talk about your intense sibling rivalry. After a while, the Father-God Enki (God of Wisdom; God of the Waters) notices that Inanna (Queen of All the Lands; Holy Priestess of Heaven) has not returned from the Underworld and guesses what has happened.
“From under his fingernail Father Enki brought forth dirt.
He fashioned the dirt into a kurgarra, a creature neither male nor female.
From under the fingernail of his other hand he brought forth dirt.
He fashioned the dirt into a galatur, a creature neither male nor female.
He gave the food of life to the kurgarra.
He gave the water of life to the galatur.” (p. 64)
So basically Father Enki (God of Wisdom) hatches a plan with the kurgarra (which is one creature neither male or female) and the galatur (which is another creature neither male nor female, but a being different from the kurgarra; fashioned from the dirt under the other hand than that which made the kurgarra, in fact).
The kurgarra and the galatur are to transform themselves into flies (so they can shape-shift) and travel down to the Underworld (so, like only a very, very Select Few, such as Inanna Herself, the kurgarra and the galatur possess the power to travel Between the World and the Underworld). There they will find Ereshkigal in the agony of childbirth.
They are to show themselves as sympathetic to Her, moaning in heartfelt empathy and praising her exceptional courage. Then, after the birth is over, Ereshkigal will make them an offering of anything, anything at all, that they want.
The kurgarra and the galatur are to ask for the corpse of Inanna.
“One of you will sprinkle the food of life on it.
The other will sprinkle the water of life.
Inanna will arise.”
And so the kurgarra and the galatur do as Father Enki has instructed; turn themselves into flies; and travel to the Underworld; where Ereshkigal is all sorts of out-of-sorts in pain.
So they commiserate, and they’re all, Oh poor Ereshkigal, how Thou doth suffer! and so on. Then later, when Ereshkigal is feeling better, she’s like, what can I give you to show my thanks?
And the kurgarra and the galatur are like, We’d love to have that corpse hanging there on your wall.
And Ereshkigal is like, You’re kidding, right? Cause that’s a CORPSE!!
But the kurgarra and the galatur are like, No, no, we want the corpse.
So Ereshkigal is like, Alriiiiight…and gives them Inanna’s corpse.
“The kurgarra sprinkled the food of life on the corpse.
The galatur sprinkled the water of life on the corpse.
Inanna arose.” (p. 67)
What an exceptional myth, right? Incidentally, as well, perhaps the first (ahem, the FIRST) recorded instance of a Deity rising from the dead.
The miraculous resurrection is brought about through the intervention of the mysterious kurgarra (a creature neither male nor female) and the galatur (also a creature neither male nor female- but apparently a different “neither male nor female” creature from the kurgarra). Shaman-like, the kurgarra and the galatur shape-shift, and- shaman-like- they can descend to the Underworld and return. (Cause it’s nothing to descend to the Underworld; anyone can descend to the Underworld. It’s, can you come back once you’ve descended that’s the trick.)
Apparently the kurgarra and the galatur can, and apparently were fashioned by Father Enki specifically to do so- the kurgarra and the galatur, who are different, but alike in that both are neither male nor female.
Does it take much imagination to read the kurgarra and the galatur as Gays- as a woman who is neither female nor male (a Lesbian) and a man who is neither male nor female (a Gay Guy).
Would we not then have a Creation Myth, about how Father Enki made Gay people, to travel between the worlds and to revive the Goddess Inanna?
In her Interpretations, Wolkstein calls the kurgarra and galatur “instinctual, asexual creatures who will not disturb the necessary infertility rules of the kur ['the Great Unknown,' the Realm of Death].” (p. 160)
I assume that Ms. Wolkstein interprets “a creature neither male nor female” as asexual, and therefore not “disturbing” to the “necessary infertility rules” of the Sumerian Underworld, the Land of Death.
If that is the case, though, why does Father Enki make both a kurgarra AND a galatur? Why two versions- one from the dirt under the fingernail of his left hand, the other from the dirt under that of his right- of a creature neither male nor female?
Assuming that the point is not to “disturb” the Underworld with “fertility”- rather than being asexual creatures, doesn’t it make sense to interpret the kurgarra and the galatur as homosexual creatures?
Doesn’t the story appear to suggest Gay people as Sacred beings- as fashioned by Father-God Enki specifically to travel between the worlds, a canny combination of both male and female, but neither one outright.
See how wonderful Paganism is? Whereas other religious traditions disdain Gays as sinners and outlaws against righteousness- Pagan traditions can conceive Gays as being formed especially by the Gods, to journey between the realms. How sacred.
I think it’s interesting that as I was preparing this, Scott was putting up his piece on the Babylonian scholars interpreting ancient Akkadian texts- including Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld; cause Ishtar is basically the Babylonian version of Sumerian Inanna, right?
It seemed to me like it was more intended to mean intersexed people. I suppose it could mean homosexual, but then again, being intersexed or genderqueer does not prohibit someone from being homosexual, and the thing is, most gay people ARE male or female. Showing a sexual preference toward the same gender does not alter THEIR gender identity.
What a fascinating take on this myth! Thanks for sharing.
(Sorry I don’t have any more coherent thoughts to share, but I still wanted to stop by and show my appreciation!)
Aren’t cross-dressing and gender fluidity common themes among most Northern European/Asiatic shamanic traditions? I swear I read a great article on that in Encyclopedia Britannica online about a year ago, but now I can’t find it (of course). IIRC, there were several cultures in which it was generally considered an outward manifestation of their spirit-touched “otherness” as mediums between life and death, men and women, etc. I remember there being a comment that a shaman could take a wife or husband regardless of their own sex. I’ll have to see if I can find the original article…
I’d have to agree with Sonneillion here: I’m pretty sure that this interpretation is eisegesis rather than exegesis. But I’m also fairly certain that in Paganism eisegesis is a feature rather than a bug.
Which leaves the question of whether there are any creation myths which unambiguously involve gays.
There is, of course, Plato’s thoroughly sexist passage from The Symposium in which male homosexuals are, of course, the natural leaders of any civilized society: “But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. Some indeed assert that they are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance, and they embrace that which is like them. And these when they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof of the truth of what I am saving.” Howver, this myth is more concerned with how soulmates came to be rather than the creation of the universe.
The Feri Creation Myth has the material universe beginning with The White Goddess making love to Miriel, the image of HerSelf that emerged from the mirror at the beginning of time. Starhawk has a version of this myth in Spiral Dance, IIRC. I reversed the myth for a poem since the orignal tale struck me as one of psychological disintegration, and reversing made it into one of integration. The question with the Feri Creation Myth is whether it antedated Victor. I’m guessing not, but Victor was a genius at digging up obscure sources and passing them on as part of the tradition. (We know, for instance, that some phrases in common Feri rituals came from a specific pulp fiction novel, and that his Huna lore probably came at least in part from the writings of Max Freedom Long.)
See- here’s the thing for me: (1) Gay people get taunted so much in our society for being “not really” of their gender- Gay boys get taunted as “sissy-boys”; Gay men as “girly-men”; Lesbians (rather young or old) as “She-males”; yes, Gay men are [Male] and Lesbians (Gay women) are [Female]: but not so’s you know to hear Straight folk talking. The stereotypical image of a Gay Man is a femmy-male and that of a Lesbian Woman a butch- a masculine- woman; a Dyke.
In its brutal clarity- this recognizes an obvious truth: Gay people are different from Straight people- they’re both male and female at once; and they’re neither male nor female: they’re GAY.
Out of politeness, we today recognize “Bisexual,” “Transgendered,” “Gender-Queer” as separate and distinct things- but isn’t “Gay”- “Homosexual”- the Door that leads to such categorizing?
It seems to me that the Sumerians- being the first civilization to rise out of the Neolithic Era (or advanced Stone Age) is basically going to recognize two things: Men and Women who like to get it on together and (2) Men and Women who are going to want to be exclusive with each other.
These people are going to be both male and female at the same time- all the while, in the mysterious ways of the Gay people- they are going to be neither male nor female-
These will be the Kurgarra and the Galatur-
I agree with your analysis of the current social definitions and constraints placed on gays and lesbians (as usual, zan). I’m just skeptical that we can extrapolate those same paradigms back to Babylon in general and this passage in particular. It’s not an entirely implausible hypothesis, but I’d like to see support from elsewhere in the available corpus or parallel anthropology. I think it’s easier to see a strong romantic/sexual relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, for instance, than a reading of the Kurgarra and the Galatur as intentionally representative of gays and lesbians.
Both of these readings could be true, of course, but I think a more direct reading of the Kurgarra and the Galatur is more plausible. The two beings are simply neuter which puts them outside of the round of sex and death, and, thus, they can travel to the netherworld freely (Inanna has to give up every shred of her adornment and attractiveness and me – including her life – to get there) and aid Ereshkigal in the next part of the cycle of sex and death: childbrith. Campbell cites one example after another of death being a mythological consequnce of sex in his Masks of God, and the Kurgarra and Galtur’s being neuter fits that universal.