{"id":3408,"date":"2010-03-01T01:10:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T06:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=3467"},"modified":"2010-03-01T12:58:07","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T17:58:07","slug":"gems-of-the-goddess-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2010\/03\/01\/gems-of-the-goddess-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Gems of the Goddess"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ishtar – Goddess of Love and Sex<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"ishtar_2\"<\/a>
\nToday we are going to discuss Ishtar, the Babylonian Goddess of Fertility, Love, War and Sex. She was likened to Venus, Aphrodite and Inanna. \u00a0 Ishtar and her cult are associated with sexuality including sacred sex and prostitution.\u00a0 Her symbol is the eight pointed star. Ishtar was known to have many lovers, however, she treated them cruelly.\u00a0 Her love was known to tame wild animals and could be trouble for even the gods she consorted with in her travels.\u00a0 \u00a0Ishtar is known to be cruel and a punisher, not caring who she destroyed in her path to get what she wanted. One of the more popular myths regarding Ishtar is her decent into the underworld to get her lover Tammuz.\u00a0 \u00a0She was made to travel through seven gates to reach the Underworld.\u00a0 At each entrance, she was made to remove a piece of clothing or jewelry.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0When she finally reached Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, she was bare of everything but herself to ask for his return.\u00a0 \u00a0Ishtar did get Tammuz out and as she traveled back up through the seven gates, she retrieved her clothing and jewelry.\u00a0 (Note:\u00a0 This particular myth has many different endings \u2013 Ishtar traveling back alone, Tammuz not grieving her and sitting on a throne promising not to return and Ishtar having to chose someone to take Tammuz\u2019s place in order to get him back.\u00a0 The one I chose to highlight is the one that is the most positive.) In the story of Gilgamesh, Ishtar also tried to seduce Gilgamesh and make him her husband.\u00a0 He rejected her and reminded her of her cruel and punishing behavior to those that got close to her.\u00a0 She then told her father, Anu (the God of Air), who gave her the mystical bull of heaven to exact her revenge.\u00a0 However, Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, were able to kill the bull and brought his head to her.\u00a0 Ishtar was so infuriated she sent illness to Enkidu, which killed him.\u00a0 There are two important lessons from Ishtar.\u00a0 The first is to find our true selves – being stripped down and tearing our self down and rebuilding it through strength and perseverance.\u00a0 It reminds us not to quit, not matter what the challenge ahead. The second lesson is to understand the consequences of your own actions.\u00a0 Acting cruel and heartless can cause the same actions to be performed back at you.\u00a0 It may also result in you being alone or losing people in your life you want to keep.\u00a0 Remind yourself Ishtar is teaching you how to treat others in order to build relationships and keep people with you, not tear them down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ishtar – Goddess of Love and Sex Today we are going to discuss Ishtar, the Babylonian Goddess of Fertility, Love, War and Sex. She was likened to Venus, Aphrodite and Inanna. \u00a0 Ishtar and her cult are associated with sexuality including sacred sex and prostitution.\u00a0 Her symbol is the eight pointed star. Ishtar was known to have many lovers, however, she treated them cruelly.\u00a0 Her love was known to tame wild animals and could be trouble for even the gods she consorted with in her travels.\u00a0 \u00a0Ishtar is known to be cruel and a punisher, not caring who she destroyed in her path to get what she wanted. One of the more popular myths regarding Ishtar is her decent into the underworld to get her lover Tammuz.\u00a0 \u00a0She was made to travel through seven gates to reach the Underworld.\u00a0 At each entrance, she was made to remove a piece of clothing or jewelry.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0When she finally reached Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, she was bare of everything but herself to ask for his return.\u00a0 \u00a0Ishtar did get Tammuz out and as she traveled back up through the seven gates, she retrieved her clothing and jewelry.\u00a0 (Note:\u00a0 This particular myth has many different endings \u2013 Ishtar traveling back alone, Tammuz not grieving her and sitting on a throne promising not to return and Ishtar having to chose someone to take Tammuz\u2019s place in order to get him back.\u00a0 The one I chose to highlight is the one that is the most positive.) In the story of Gilgamesh, Ishtar also tried to seduce Gilgamesh and make him her husband.\u00a0 He rejected her and reminded her of her cruel and punishing behavior to those that got close to her.\u00a0 She then told her father, Anu (the God of Air), who gave her the mystical bull of heaven to exact her revenge.\u00a0 However, Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, were able to kill the bull and brought his head to her.\u00a0 Ishtar was so infuriated she sent illness to Enkidu, which killed him.\u00a0 There are two important lessons from Ishtar.\u00a0 The first is to find our true selves – being stripped down and tearing our self down and rebuilding it through strength and perseverance.\u00a0 It reminds us not to quit, not matter what the challenge ahead. The second lesson is to understand the consequences of your own actions.\u00a0 Acting cruel and heartless can cause the same actions to be performed back at you.\u00a0 It may also result in you being alone or losing people in your life you want to keep.\u00a0 Remind yourself Ishtar is teaching you how to treat others in order to build relationships and keep people with you, not tear them down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3350,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions\/3350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}