The Goddesses Return

On. the spring equinox goddesses around the globe return from the underworld. And this spring there will be hell to pay!

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Imagine disappearing into the underworld last Autumn and waking up to find the world in the state it’s in today.

It feels like everything is broken and the gods of war are on the rampage.

But don’t worry help is close at hand, for thousands of years women cross the world have told stories of a time when goddesses were all powerful.

And there has never been a time when we need that power more than right now.

Luckily a whole host of queens of the underworld are returning from the dark, regenerated and with scores to settle.

When we think of the Goddess who returns in Spring we usually think of dear sweet Persephone, the young and innocent daughter of Demeter, goddess of agriculture and fertility, who lived a sheltered life among the Olympian gods. She was beautiful, delicate, and untouched by the world - the perfect Greek virgin..

One day, while she was gathering flowers in a meadow, the ground suddenly split open, and Hades, the dark and fearsome god of the underworld, burst forth in his chariot, seizing Persephone and dragging her into the depths before she could even scream. The earth closed behind them, leaving no trace of her disappearance.

Demeter, distraught and powerless, searched for her daughter for nine days and nights, refusing to rest. She called upon Zeus for help, but it was he who gave Persephone to Hades, arranging the marriage without consulting either mother or daughter.

Demeter’s grief turned to fury as she withdrew her blessings from the world. Crops withered, animals starved, and humans begged the gods for mercy. With the earth on the brink of destruction, Zeus was finally forced to intervene. He ordered Hades to release Persephone and allow her to return to her mother.

But Hades was cunning. Before letting Persephone go, he tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds. According to the laws of the underworld, anyone who consumed its food was bound to it forever.

With no way to fully undo the marriage, a compromise was made: Persephone would be forced to spend part of each year with Hades as his queen, ruling beside him in the underworld. But for the rest of the year, she could return to her mother, bringing spring and fertility back to the earth.

Persephone—once an innocent maiden—became the reluctant Queen of the Dead, forever trapped in a cycle between her mother’s love and her husband’s claim.

She was a daughter stolen rather than a queen who chooses her fate. Her story places Hades as the conqueror, Zeus as the ultimate decision-maker, and Demeter as the grieving mother, with Persephone herself little more than a prize passed between gods.

However this is just a patriarchal rehash of a far more powerful tale and a far more powerful goddess.

Long before gods of war and law ruled the heavens, Inanna reigned. She was love and rage, creation and destruction, the womb and the sword. The Sumerians called her the Queen of Heaven, but that title barely contained her. She was the goddess of sex, power, war, and sovereignty—and she did not ask permission to hold any of them.

Inanna was not a distant deity, locked in the stars. She was flesh and fire, walking among mortals, taking lovers, demanding devotion, and tearing down kings who failed to honour her. She made empires rise and fall—not from the shadows, but in full, radiant glory.

Inanna’s journey was not just a descent into darkness—it was a test. She sought Ereshkigal, her sister, the Queen of the Underworld, knowing that to face her was to face death itself. 

When she descended into the underworld, she did not just walk a physical path—she shed the layers of her being, one by one, until nothing remained but her bare soul.

Each of the seven gates did not simply take her adornments—they stripped away the illusions, protections, and constructs that shape identity itself.

• Dreams: At the first gate, she let go of the stories she told herself—the dreams that made life bearable but not always real.
• Reason: The second gate took her structured thinking, her strategies. In the underworld, logic had no power.
• Passion: The third gate demanded her fire—the love, the rage, the hunger that propelled her forward. Without it, she stood exposed.
• Bliss: At the fourth gate, even happiness was taken. No comfort remained, only the raw edge of truth.
• Courage:. The fifth gate required her bravery, leaving her vulnerable and trembling in the face of the unknown.
• Compassion: At the sixth gate, she surrendered the part of her that reached for others, the part that softened her power.
• Knowledge: At the final gate, even wisdom was stripped away. What she knew did not matter. She was no longer a queen, a lover, a goddess—just a woman standing before death itself.

And death did not let her go easily.

She was struck down and left to rot on a hook. The Queen of Heaven, reduced to a slab of meat

But the world could not survive without her. With Inanna trapped in the underworld, the land above began to wither. Crops failed, rivers dried, and the people called out in despair. Without her presence, the cycle of life, fertility, and abundance ground to a halt. The gods could not ignore the unraveling world, but the laws of the underworld were unyielding—no one could return once they had passed through its gates.

Desperate to restore balance, the gods devised a plan. They sent two small, wailing spirits—beings of neither male nor female form, born of trickery and divine wisdom—to infiltrate Ereshkigal’s court. These spirits did not beg, demand, or challenge the queen of the dead. Instead, they listened.

Ereshkigal, wracked with grief and exhaustion, poured out her sorrows to them, lamenting her endless duty, her loneliness, her pain. The spirits did not try to soothe her; they simply mirrored her suffering, whispering her own anguish back to her. Moved by their understanding, Ereshkigal, in a moment of rare mercy, agreed to release Inanna.

But there was a price. The underworld could not be cheated—someone had to take Inanna’s place. 

And so, the goddess ascended, knowing that a great sacrifice awaited.

Turned out to be  an easy choice.

She found Dumuzi, her lover—the man who should have grieved her, should have fought for her, should have called out her name in mourning sitting on her throne, draped in luxury, unbothered by her death.

Her rage was swift. If he could live so easily without her, then he could take her place in the underworld.

Dumuzi was dragged below, bound to the same fate she had escaped. 

And so, the rhythm of the earth was written: the dance of life and death, love and loss, the turning of the wheel.

Inanna was broken down to nothing, because only by losing everything could she understand what truly mattered.

And when she returned, reclaiming each piece of herself, she did so with clarity. She no longer carried illusions, only truth.

Her descent was never about loss. It was about knowing what was real.

To the people of the world at the time Inanna was not merely an object of devotion—she was a sovereign ruler in her own right. Her sacred marriage rites legitimised kingship, and her mythologies reflected a matrilineal world where power could be passed through women.

When Sumer fell to Sargon of Akkad, somewhere around 2154 BCE Inanna remained central to the new empire. Under Sargon’s daughter, Enheduanna—the world’s first named author—hymns reinforced her power. 

"Inanna, the Lady of the Morning, is radiant. I sing your praises, holy Inanna. The Lady of the Morning is radiant on the horizon." 

But her mythology and name began to shift,  a slow redefinition was taking place. She was increasingly tied to empire and conquest rather than matrilineal rule.

"To run, to race, to desire and to succeed are yours, Inanna. To interchange the brute and the strong and the weak and the powerless is yours, Inanna."

She was still a force, but the world around her was changing. The shift from city-states to empires meant that male rulers needed to consolidate power, and the concept of a goddess who legitimised kings was easier to control than one who ruled on her own terms.

"May the goddess Ištar, supreme lady, look upon this work with pleasure and may a good word for me be set upon her lips! May she make my weapons prevail over all my enemies!"

With the rise of Babylon in c. 2000 BCE, Inanna became known solely as Ishtar, and her independence was gradually constrained. Ishtar remained a goddess of love and war, but her mythology now contained warnings:

• Her sexuality, once sacred, was now framed as dangerous.
• Her lovers, once equals, were portrayed as victims of her wrath.
• Her descent into the underworld was no longer an act of transformation but a punishment—she was trapped and required male intervention to return.

The transition from Inanna to Ishtar was not just a religious shift—it was a reflection of wider societal changes. The Code of Hammurabi, c. 1754 BCE one of the earliest legal codes that institutionalised patriarchal control over women. It dictated that:

• Women were subordinate to their husbands and fathers.
• A wife could be drowned for adultery, while a husband could take multiple wives.
• Rape was considered a property crime against a woman's father or husband rather than an act of violence against the woman herself.

These laws marked a clear departure from earlier societies where women had more autonomy. Ishtar, once a goddess who ruled in her own right, was now seen as dangerous, unpredictable, and in need of male control.

By the time we reach Ancient Greece in around 700 BCE, the goddess of transformation had undergone her final rewriting. Persephone, was no longer a queen choosing to descend—she was a victim.

This was no longer a story of transformation but of submission. Persephone was no longer an independent force—she was a bargaining chip in a world ruled by male gods.

This is the codification of the patriarchy in mythological form.

And yet, Persephone, like Inanna and Ishtar before her, never disappeared completely. Even in her rewritten form, she remained a symbol of cycles, death and rebirth, and the inevitability of change.

But what about the unwritten form? 

The story of Innana and Ishtar didn’t need words to carry its meaning.

The seven steps down to the underworld have been danced through all time and space.

The Dance of the Seven Veils is an ancient allegory echoing Ishtar’s profound act of voluntary descent, sacrifice, and triumphant return—a symbolic death and rebirth ritual that unveils the eternal resilience and transformative power of the feminine.

And someone has to take her place in the underworld - including John the Baptist.

For centuries, the story of Salome has been twisted into a morality tale, a warning against female desire, vanity, and power. A young girl, seduced by her own sensuality, dances before King Herod, and for her reward, she demands the head of John the Baptist—a gruesome request whispered into her ear by her scheming mother, Herodias. That is how the patriarchs tell it.

But what if this was never about seduction at all?

What if Salome was not a pawn, but an avenger?

By the time of her birth (c. 14 CE), the world of the goddess had already been dismantled. The sacred feminine had been exiled from temples, its memory crushed beneath centuries of patriarchal rewriting. Yahweh’s monotheism had erased Asherah. Rome’s empire had swallowed Egypt’s Isis. The Oracle of Delphi spoke only what men allowed her to say.

And yet, in the shadows, the goddess still whispered. Women still honoured her in secret, in homes and at wells, keeping her alive in hushed prayers and inherited rituals. Her presence was no longer carved into temple walls, but she remained, hidden in bread, in fire, in dance.

John the Baptist’s movement was the final blow to what remained of the goddess’s worship in Judea. Unlike his Lord, Jesus Christ who actively included, taught, and defended women, John The Baptist preached against women’s power, against feminine ritual, against the remnants of the old ways as per strict Jewish patriarchal law. He called for purification, for repentance, for the complete submission of women to the will of men and their god. He named Herodias—the queen, the mother, the last of the goddess-worshipping women in court—a sinner.

So she struck back.

Salome danced the Dance of Ishtar’s descent, the layered unveiling of divine feminine power, the goddess stripping herself bare until she stands in full sovereignty. This is not a dance for men. It is a ritual, an invocation, an act of reclamation.

Salome did not dance the seven veils to arouse. She danced to invoke. She danced as priestesses before her had danced, peeling back the veils between worlds, calling upon something older than Rome, older than the prophets, older than the god who sought to erase her.

And when she finished, she did not ask for wealth or jewels. She asked for the death of the man who would see her erased.

Salome’s name became synonymous with sin. Herodias was cast as the wicked queen, a new Jezebel, a reminder that women who act against men’s dominion will be vilified for eternity. John the Baptist was sanctified, his death recast as martyrdom, his mission victorious even in execution. The goddess did not rise in their world.

But Salome's dance was not forgotten.

And the goddesses from the cradle of civilisation were never alone. Their stories echo throughout the whole world.

In the frozen north, the Inuit goddess Sedna was cast into the sea by her own father, her fingers severed as she clung to his kayak. As she sank, her fingers transformed into the whales, seals, and fish that sustain life in the Arctic. In her suffering, she became something greater: the goddess of the deep, the source of all oceanic life. Unlike many underworld deities, she never truly returns—her power remains beneath the waves, absolute and commanding. Shamans must descend to her domain through trance and ritual, combing her hair and appeasing her fury to ensure the bounty of the sea. Sedna’s tale reminds us that immense power is often forged through suffering, and that those who survive betrayal and loss may become the most formidable forces of all.

Far across the world, the Māori goddess Hine-nui-te-pō once lived in the light as Hine-tītama the goddess of dawn. Upon discovering that her husband was also her father, she fled to the underworld, choosing to become its ruler rather than remain in a world built on deception. She now stands at the gateway of death, guiding souls into the next realm, ensuring that mortality remains the great equaliser. 

Her legend is echoed in the defiant act of Allat, the pre-Islamic Arabian goddess of war and fate, who walked between the realms of life and death. She was worshipped as one of the three great goddesses of Mecca, representing a balance that existed before monotheism reshaped the world.

Even in the harshest climates, the return of life after darkness is embodied in deities like Čhulħanāy the Siberian goddess of thaw. She does not battle for dominance—she simply returns, melting winter’s grip and bringing the world back to life. Hers is the quiet certainty of survival, the inevitability of renewal.

In Celtic tradition, Modron is the silent, unseen force that ensures balance in the world, yet her presence is felt most in her absence. She is a mother goddess, but her son, Mabon ap Modron, was stolen from her at three days old, vanishing into the Otherworld. With his disappearance, the cycle of life was thrown into disorder, and only his return could restore the natural order. His rescue became a test of ancient wisdom—only the oldest creatures of the world, the Stag, the Owl, the Eagle, and the Salmon, held the knowledge of where he was kept. When Mabon was finally freed, he was no longer a child but a warrior, reborn through his time in darkness. Modron, though often silent in the tale, is the force behind it all—the hidden architect of fate. She reminds us that some disappearances are not losses but preparations for transformation.

Among the Aztecs, Quetzalpetlatl defied death itself, venturing into the underworld in search of her beloved. Like Ishtar before her, she represents a love that does not yield to mortality, a force that reaches beyond death to reclaim what has been lost. Her journey mirrors that of the many goddesses who have walked into the shadows, not as victims, but as seekers, warriors, and rulers of the unseen.

Each of these myths carries the same truth: no force, not even death, can extinguish the power of those who dare to descend. Whether they return transformed, remain as guardians of the liminal space, or emerge only through those who remember them, these goddesses stand as reminders that darkness is never the final chapter—it is merely the threshold to something greater.

So the big question is, how low will you go for something greater?

Because the patriarchy is currently at rock bottom and they’re playing dirty.

The Tate brothers are preaching misogyny and inspiring femicide, Russell Brand is using born again Christianity as a getup of jail free card, Elon Musk is practising his own form of eugenics with his tribe of male offspring and the president of the free world is a convicted rapist.

It’s time to reach deep inside and find the fury of Innana and cast it across the world.

Even if you do’t believe in this shit - they do, and it will scare the pants of them!

The Curse of Inanna: 

A Reckoning for Those Who Prey Upon Women

Inanna, Queen of Heaven, Lady of Love and War, She Who Walks Between Worlds—hear us.

Once, you ruled without shame. Once, your body was your own, your power unmatched, your voice unchallenged. You took lovers as you pleased, commanded armies, and demanded reverence. 

But the world feared you. They rewrote you. They caged you. They cast you down.

And now, they do the same to us.

Men who believe they are kings, who build empires from stolen freedom, who silence, cage, and trade women as though they are coin—these men call themselves untouchable. They build fortresses of lies and cruelty. They sneer at justice, thinking no god, no goddess, no force will bring them low.

But you have seen their kind before. And you have cast them down before.

Inanna, send them to the underworld.

Let them know the descent. Let them lose all they cling to—
 Let their wealth crumble, as the first veil falls.
 Let their power wither, as the second veil falls.
 Let their arrogance rot, as the third veil falls.
 Let their name turn to dust, as the fourth veil falls.
 Let their voices choke on their own deceit, as the fifth veil falls.
 Let their shadows consume them, as the sixth veil falls.
 And when the seventh veil drops, let them stand before their own emptiness.

Strip them as you were stripped. Humble them as they sought to humble us.

No fortress will hold against the weight of justice. No empire will last when built upon stolen bodies. No man will remain untouchable when the Queen of Heaven and Earth reclaims what was hers.

Inanna, so it is spoken. So it shall be done.