Inanna: The Goddess in My Blood

I’ve never been much for tame muses. The ones who whisper politely from the corners of libraries or blush at a double entendre. No, the force that has always pulled at my threads as an artist, as a writer, and as a woman building a life out of ink and desire is far more volcanic.

Her name is Inanna.

The Sumerians called her the Lady of the Largest Heart. To them, she wasn't just a goddess. She was a force of terrifying, glorious totality. Goddess of love, yes—but not the placid kind. Of war, yes—but not merely the strategic kind. She ruled fertility, the storehouse of civilization, justice, political power, the raw, the sacred, creative, and sometimes dangerous pulse of sexual allure.

What I love most is her unapologetic appetite. Her hymns don't hide it. They glorify it. She delights in her own beauty, adorns herself in lapis lazuli and carnelian—stones of deep knowledge, courage, and vital blood. She seeks out pleasure and power with equal, ruthless curiosity. When the god of wisdom, Enki, gets drunk and gives away the sacred divine decrees of civilization, it is Inanna who, with cleverness and daring, gets him drunk, loads them onto her Boat of Heaven, and sails away with them to her city of Uruk. She doesn't ask for power; she claims it with style.

This is what calls to me. This is the mirror.

Since childhood, I've always been drawn to lapis lazuli. It's a deep blue crystal, veined with gold pyrite, and dripping with quiet majesty. It represents the night's sky, divine power, wisdom, and truth. It was her stone—a symbol of sovereignty, of cosmic connection, and of a value so profound it was traded across continents. When I wear it, it’s not an accessory, but an alignment. A reminder to carry that celestial sovereignty in my bones and to see the gold in the dark.

In my work—the art, the words—I’m not just drawing curves or writing about sex. I’m charting a territory of allure, which is Inanna’s magnetism. Of eroticism, which is her sacred, creative energy. And sexuality, which is her root language of vitality and will.

But her greatest lesson is the Descent. It's the story that shakes me every time. When she chooses to enter the underworld, the realm of her fierce sister Ereshkigal, she does so not as a victim, but as a challenger. At each of the seven gates, she is stripped of her crown, her lapis beads, her royal robe, until she stands naked, bowed low, and is finally hung on a hook as a piece of rotting meat.

This isn't a punishment for her power. It is the price of it. The necessary undoing. It's the price of power and integration. Sometimes you have to go through hell, strip yourself of everything you once knew, to be forged into something better.

And that's when it happened—her ascent. Her will, her cunning, and her allies (she was never too proud for allies) demanded it. She returns, not sanitized, but transformed. Having known the depth, she now carries it within her. I know that fragmentation, that stripping. The old, tired Freudian trope: the Madonna or the Whore. The respectable artist or the "erotic" one. The woman who keeps it nice and neat, and the woman who discusses desire. Inanna’s myth says: you must pass through that stripping to become whole. You must be willing to be hung on the hook of your own depths to know what you’re truly made of. And then you must rise with the me you’ve claimed, and wear your lapis lazuli again, brighter than before. So when I sit down to create, I don’t ask for gentle inspiration. I whisper a different invocation, one she would understand:

Let me be unafraid of my own descent.
Let me have the courage to be stripped bare, to name each part of my own altar.
Let me claim my me—my decrees of allure, creativity, and truth—and sail them boldly home.
Let me own my throne, and rise, again and again, with the kind of knowledge that can only be earned in the dark.

That is the work. That is the line on the page. That is the curve in the drawing. It is an offering on the altar of a goddess who never died, because she is the very template of every human who refuses to be split in two. She is not just a story. She is the blueprint for a life lived in full, terrifying, glorious flux. And I am forever drawn to the woman in the mirror, wearing the night’s deepest blue.