Inanna/Ishtar, Astarte/Astaroth

[Marukai]

What is everyone's thought about Inanna? She was an ancient Sumerian Goddess of the Sky. I haven't been able to find much about the Goddess Astarte. Astarte is related to Astaroth, which is said to be a very powerful Demon. The Ars Goetia and  Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum mention Astaroth as being very seductive and powerful..   Thoughts?

[video=youtube;n_sroZKqliA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sroZKqliA[/video]

[Darkhawk]

What is everyone's thought about Inanna?

Not relevant to any of my religions.

Astarte is related to Astaroth, which is said to be a very powerful Demon.

 
I think that the old Christian habit of making demons out of goddesses is crass.  At least making saints out of goddesses upholds some standard of polite behaviour.

[Snowdrop]

What is everyone's thought about Inanna? She was an ancient Sumerian Goddess of the Sky. I haven't been able to find much about the Goddess Astarte. Astarte is related to Astaroth, which is said to be a very powerful Demon. The Ars Goetia and  Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum mention Astaroth as being very seductive and powerful..   Thoughts?

[video=youtube;n_sroZKqliA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sroZKqliA[/video]

My personal UPG is that Inanna is awfully scary.  Interesting and beautiful, but scary.  

The thing is, in the original meaning of the name at least, Ashtoreth isn't a demon.  (Of course, I suppose there could also be a demon by the same name, but I wouldn't know about that.)  She is a Canaanite goddess (I have seen the proper identity of the goddess in question given alternately as Astarte or as Asherah, and alas, I am sufficiently behind on my research to be unsure which is correct), Who was referred to as a demon in the Bible since pretty much all of the Canaanite gods are called demons in the Bible.  As for Astarte specifically --- as I said, She's a Canaanite goddess.  She was later syncretized with Inanna/Ishtar, but in Her original form She apparently had a different set of responsibilities, mostly relating to the law and justice.

ETA: I forgot to say --- Her name was changed in the Bible to sound more like the Biblical Hebrew word for shame, implying that worshiping Her was a shameful act.  If you were wondering about the origins of the name change

[Jezebel]

My personal UPG is that Inanna is awfully scary.  Interesting and beautiful, but scary.  

The thing is, in the original meaning of the name at least, Ashtoreth isn't a demon.  (Of course, I suppose there could also be a demon by the same name, but I wouldn't know about that.)  She is a Canaanite goddess (I have seen the proper identity of the goddess in question given alternately as Astarte or as Asherah, and alas, I am sufficiently behind on my research to be unsure which is correct), Who was referred to as a demon in the Bible since pretty much all of the Canaanite gods are called demons in the Bible.  As for Astarte specifically --- as I said, She's a Canaanite goddess.  She was later syncretized with Inanna/Ishtar, but in Her original form She apparently had a different set of responsibilities, mostly relating to the law and justice.

ETA: I forgot to say --- Her name was changed in the Bible to sound more like the Biblical Hebrew word for shame, implying that worshiping Her was a shameful act.  If you were wondering about the origins of the name change

 
My UPG of Inanna is that she is every bit the Queen, in the sort of way that means she knows what she wants and she expects to get it. She's wild and powerful and capricious but she's also one hell of a solid pillar when you need some self confidence.

Here is an interesting article on the syncretisation of Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte/Ashtoreth/Aphrodite.

[Marukai]

My UPG of Inanna is that she is every bit the Queen, in the sort of way that means she knows what she wants and she expects to get it. She's wild and powerful and capricious but she's also one hell of a solid pillar when you need some self confidence.

Here is an interesting article on the syncretisation of Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte/Ashtoreth/Aphrodite.

 
Thanks for the article. It was very interesting and enlightening. I'm still confused about Astoreth/Ashtoreth. He/she is portrayed as a very powerful Demon. This seems to be the only Demon associated with poly morphing from a Goddess to a Demon.

[Marukai]

Thanks for the article. It was very interesting and enlightening. I'm still confused about Astoreth/Ashtoreth. He/she is portrayed as a very powerful Demon. This seems to be the only Demon associated with poly morphing from a Goddess to a Demon.

[Nyktelios]

What is everyone's thought about Inanna? She was an ancient Sumerian Goddess of the Sky. I haven't been able to find much about the Goddess Astarte. Astarte is related to Astaroth, which is said to be a very powerful Demon. The Ars Goetia and  Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum mention Astaroth as being very seductive and powerful..   Thoughts?

 
Coincidentally, I have been really interested in her lately.

Even though I don't really honour her on a regular basis, she is one of my favourite deities. There is a really excellent book called "Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth" by Wolkstein and Kramer, which contains a lot of Sumerian texts about her and commentaries about them.

While not a mother goddess in the sense of being a goddess of motherhood, she is definitely a fertility goddess, and poems and hymns to her describe how she gives birth to the grain, and how life springs from her womb. The texts about her and Dumuzi get very sexually explicit, as she says things like "who will plow my vulva, who will plow my wet ground?" and she asks Dumuzi to give her his "thick cream." Dumuzi is told to enter her "holy vulva," which sounds strange to people in modern society, but in a way it's beautiful that sexuality was held so sacred.

She's definitely not that involved with romantic love, as she takes many lovers and has a rather aggressive sex drive. Dumuzi/Tammuz is her husband, but when she finds him partying it up while she had been trapped in the underworld, she angrily makes him take her place there. Their relationship really isn't one of love and devotion like Isis and Osiris, for example, but more about sexuality and the renewal of fertility. Their sacred marriage was celebrated in the spring with very sexual and fertility symbolism, so this ritual was probably a celebration of the renewal of the world's fertility.

She's quite fascinating, and unlike a lot of other goddesses. Even Aphrodite, who is thought to be a Hellenized version of Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte, has a much softer, more romantic personality, which probably reflects the values of the culture she came from and their ideas about women. I don't know about the Sumerians, but the Greeks would have thought it barbaric for a female deity to be so sexually aggressive and unconcerned with romantic affection. Greeks did have some independent, aggressive goddesses, but they were usually asexual, virginal, and borderline androgynous, not fully sexual and female like Inanna.

Although, Ishtar is kind of interesting in that she did absorb a lot of Inanna's functions of being a patroness of the ruling dynasty and goddess who represented the female reproductive power of the universe, she also had a masculine form. In her male form as the planet Venus in the morning, she was a war deity, and as Venus in the evening, she was the feminine goddess of fertility and sexuality. She seemed to embody both sexes and her own gender changed according to her function. The Sumerian Inanna was more connected to the moon as the daughter of the moon god, and her name means "Lady of Heaven." I don't know for sure, but I think her association with the planet Venus came when she merged with Babylonian Ishtar. I always think it's interesting how deities of one culture merge and become identified with the deities of another.

[Abdi-Ilu]

What is everyone's thought about Inanna? She was an ancient Sumerian Goddess of the Sky. I haven't been able to find much about the Goddess Astarte. Astarte is related to Astaroth, which is said to be a very powerful Demon. The Ars Goetia and  Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum mention Astaroth as being very seductive and powerful..   Thoughts?

 
Ashtart/Athiratu/Astarte

Occult texts which demonize Canaanite Entities, I do not subscribe to.