The Underworld Journey with Venus and Inanna, and an invitation to join the writing studio

In Saturday’s free Studio session, we found wisdom and perspective in our writing through an ancient myth of an Underworld journey. That myth, as several others have done throughout the ages, uses the planet Venus as the guide for a universal, archetypal story of healing. The resources from which I drew to tell the story were primarily these two books:
The Light of Venus, by Adam Gainsburg
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her stories and hymns from Sumer, by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer
And this astrology resource from 2017 by Melanie Reinhart: 
https://www.melaniereinhart.com/melanie/Venus-Aries-Pisces-2017.htm

The drawing above shows Venus’ path as she comes up in the Eastern sky as the morning star, descends below the horizon and into the Underworld, then ascends once again as an evening star.

Our first prompts today were these:

• Think of a turning point in your life in which you found strength you did not know you had.
• Take one of the symbols of power that Inanna removes on her descent, and write about its symbolism (i.e. crown, lapis beads, gold wristband, etc.).
• List 2-3 experiences or people who brought you greater wisdom through challenge.

Our longer writing period began with these prompts:

• Begin with this line: “For the ways of the Underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
• Write a story of a heroine who enters a dark place to take on a monster. When she returns, what has she gained?
• Write about someone or something you thought was a monster, but found later was simply struggling with grief and pain.

Here is the video recording link for today’s Studio session: https://youtu.be/S9PHcVNEAxY

And the audio recording if you’d like to download it: https://kristinebackes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/March-preview.mp3

I would love to have you join me in our weekly writing studio. You can read more and/or register on my website. You may also sign up here on Patreon where you have the option of joining the weekly Studio sessions at the $75 or $145 levels, or simply receiving the prompts by becoming a patron for $2 or more.