Inanna & Ereshkigal: The Underworld, the Hook, and the Return with Carly Mountain

Myth, embodiment, and the psychology of transformation are weaved in this conversation with Carly Mountain, psychotherapist and author of Descent and Rising and Untamed Pleasure.

In this episode, we explore the myth of Inanna as a guide to the underworld journey, those moments that dismantle identity and ask us to move through loss, uncertainty, and change. We speak about descent as a necessary process, and what it reveals in a culture that resists it.

This conversation brings a grounded, mythic lens to experiences many women know intimately, offering language, perspective, and a way to stay with what is unfolding.

Read the myth of Inanna: 

https://www.womenandmythology.com/inanna 

Connect with Carly Mountain’s work:

Website: https://carlymountain.com/

Instagram: @‌carly_mountain

✨ Women & Mythology Podcast is a soulful exploration of myth as a living force in our contemporary lives.

Hosted by Maria Souza — Comparative Mythologist, Poet, and Educator.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello myth lover, I'm Maria. Welcome to the Woman and Mythology Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Dissent is pathologized in our Western culture. The anonymous illuminates a completely different paradigm, a completely different understanding of these very human journeys that we go through that take us deep down into landscapes that we previously have not occupied so that we can really learn from our depths the things we need to know to become wiser, to become more embodied, to become more empathic, more humble. And it's very countercultural in that way and desperately needed, I think.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

MythMaker Podcast Network. This episode is an invitation back to the heart of every woman. In the past months, I've been thinking a lot about descent. Not as a concept, but as a lived experience. The moments that dismantle us, that ask us to let go of who we've been, that take us into places we didn't choose and often don't understand. And yet, they are part of the rhythm of a life lived in depth. Today I'm joined by Carly Mountain, psychotherapist, sex therapist, and author of Descent and Rising, and soon to be released, Untamed Pleasure. Carly works at the intersection of myth and embodiment, and her relationship with the story of Inanna opens a powerful way of understanding the inner journeys that shape us. Her book, Descent and Rising, it's one of my favorite books to reflect on the myth of Inanna, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. In this conversation, we explore how the myth of Inanna mirrors the psychological and emotional thresholds women cross, the kind of life events that initiate a descent, and why they rarely arrive alone, what it means to be stripped of roles, identities, and familiar ways of coping, the experience of collapse, and how it differs from true initiation, the importance of being witnessed rather than fixed, the patterns that keep us stuck, and what begins to shift when we're ready to rise, the role of anger, grief, and the body in this process, and how creativity and vitality return as signs of renewal. If you're not familiar with the myth of Inanna, I left a link on the description of the episode with Carly's version of the story. You'll see pictures of the book to send in writing with my own notes on it. I highly recommend giving a read before you begin. This is a conversation about moving through, not bypassing, about learning to stay with what is difficult and discovering that something essential is being shaped in the process. Whether you are in your own cycle, whether things are falling apart or slowly coming back together, I hope this episode and conversation meet you there. Let's begin. Hi Carly, welcome. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thanks for having me. I want to begin by asking you why the myth of Inana? How did you choose this myth or did it choose you?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

I discovered the myth through a woman called Linda Hartley. And I had done some embodied work with Linda. She works so beautifully with myths and somatic movement and inquiry. And I bought her book as part of a Laloba retreat that she had held. And it just I discovered the Inana part, and it was like reading a map of my own life. And I just couldn't believe that this miss was over 4,000 years old. And yet it it was like the map of what I'd been walking, but I didn't have a map for it. So it was a really, a real moment of clarity and nourishment and um just set me on a path of wanting to know absolutely everything about it that I could get my hands on. I was so hungry, you know. It was like, give me more of this. I need to know, you know, I need I need more of this.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

And you did discover quite a lot. And in your book, you bring so much to us. It's such a gift. I'm wondering what do you feel people most misunderstand about the descent? And what does the myth of Inana illuminate then bring to us?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Sure. So a word I use a lot in the book is consecration. I feel like this myth consecrates the journeys that we go through. It makes something sacred of them. It kind of roots them in a cyclical wisdom that I think often gets lost because our culture is so obsessed with ascending, with light, with success, with the linearity of art. And so I think what often gets missed about descent, I think descent is often viewed as something to fear, something to avoid, something that is a bad thing. Descent is pathologized in our Western culture. The anonymous illuminates a completely different paradigm, a completely different understanding of these very human journeys that we go through that take us deep down into landscapes that we previously have not occupied so that we can really learn from our depths the things we need to know to become wiser, to become more embodied, to become more empathic, more humble. And it's very countercultural in that way and desperately needed, I think.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

I agree with you. It is desperately needed. Yet sometimes there is the glamorizing of the descent. It isn't, as you were saying, a problem to be fixed. It is a process to be lived and also not to be pathologized. What are the first signs someone has entered this underworld phase, this descent?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

So I feel, and in my own life, it was a series of very difficult changes that were happening for me relationally, in my work, in my body, in my spirituality. And so I feel like it's usually not just one thing, but there is often one big catalyst. So it could be a loss of a relationship, a bereavement, being displaced from where you lived or moving countries. Those kinds of things. The things that really shake the ground we thought we were standing on and land us somewhere completely unknown and unexpected. Um, and I think that's what's so difficult of each other. The descent, I might describe it as a multi-pronged attack in some ways, because the changes seem to come from many different places, but there's usually this one big catalyst I find that that sends us down into the underworld. So yeah, and it really rocks our sense of identity. I think that is a really strong part of it. You know, the coping strategy strategies that we may have relied on for our lives up to this point, the sense of self that we have built somehow starts to crumble and dissolve. And that makes it feel incredibly difficult because what do we do to cope then? It's a big question that comes up in this process.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

This resonates so much with me because I've experienced not one but several descents. I think we go through as a cycle. And every time it is a little bit different. It's never the same with the same intensity for the same reason or with the same catalyst. My most recent one was through motherhood. Becoming a mother, changing countries is in the middle of it. And it was such a big shift of identity and trying to figure out this new self. You ended by saying it's about also figuring out how to cope with it. For a woman who is experiencing, let's say she is there in the first phases of her descent, she is stripping at the gate. We'll go to the symbols of the gates soon, but how does she cope?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

One of the core things that this myth teaches is the importance of the witness. So before Anana descends, she calls in her witness, Ninsheba, and says to her, if I do not return, bang the drum for me. You know, help me return, seek help. So I think what's really empowering about this is to recognize that we have an internal witness. And if we have not yet strengthened that internal witness, the part of us that can bang the drum for us, now is the time to do it, to start to really look on ourselves as we would a friend or a loved one, and really try to see with compassionate eyes and empathy what we're going through. I think that can be really helpful. But sometimes, and I would say often, frequently, the self-witnessing's not enough in the descent. Actually, we need someone to literally bang the drum for us, an external witness. So in modern-day times, that is often a therapist. It could be a spiritual teacher, a trusted, wise loved one or friend. Somebody who has the capacity to be beside us but not try to fix us. And that's really key. And I think that's why people often do go to therapists because, or a spiritual teacher, because it needs to be someone who is versed in trusting the process. And I think because of our cultural lens, many people are not equipped for that. They really want to rush in to help or silver line it or, you know, help us out of there as quickly as possible, rather than recognizing that this is something that must be lived through. And that by living through it, we will be changed in a way that we could not be, we could not be seasoned in any other way than going through it.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

This is such an important reminder. And uh we know that the soul is healed by being witnessed, not by being rescued. And uh she leaves notice and she begins her descent. She goes through the seven gates. That's stripping. It's also very symbolic. It's, I think it's one of the key moments of the descent in the myth as well. What does it look like in modern day life?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

So in the book, I really do focus on embodiment. And um, Sylvia Brinton Pereira, she is a Jungian analyst and she defines the seven gates as being parts of our body. So the crown being the head and the second gate being the third eyes, third one the voice, and so on the heart, the solar plexus, the womb, and then the root and vulva. In our descent, at each of these gates, something is taken from us. Some sense of our identity, some sense of our way of being, perhaps the way we've been in relationship, the roles that we've carried. So the seven gates are really significant because they are kind of the structure of the descent. And it's really interesting to me that at each gate in the myth, Anana says, What is this? Like she's like, How can you take that from me? You know, she's she's completely like horrified by what's happening. And the gatekeeper replies with the same line every time, Quiet Anana, the ways of the underworld are perfect, they may not be questioned. I struggle this with this word perfection. And yet, when I think of nature, I accept it because I feel like what the gatekeeper to me is saying is you must abide by the natural laws here. And something about looking at it that way really holds me because I think, sp particularly as human beings, we have kind of created this narrative that we should be above the earth, above animal. And I think there's something about remembering down through these seven gates that actually we are animal, that we are earth, and that we too must abide by those natural laws that hold us within this is your capacity, this is how it must be, and you must, you must stay here. So there's something incredibly powerful about that. But also when we can surrender to that wisdom and structure, there's something incredibly holding about it too. And you know, you mentioned motherhood. I feel like motherhood does this to us right from birth. Well, right through pregnancy, right? We're held in a natural process that we cannot dictate to it. It shows and does its wisdom through us. And then the birth does the same. And then the way that we then parent that child is somehow an echo of that birth. In some ways, there's some wisdom there that we have to then walk with the child as they grow. There are some things we must abide by, and the seven gates really do hold us in this.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

I love that in the surrendering of it, in the non-questioning, we question so much. And some things we must trust, in the process of the descent, we must trust. You probably heard the saying, right? It some things are God's business, some things we don't question. And the process of the descent is one of them. Going back to what you were saying before about not fixing it, not rushing it. So just surrendering to the process. A lot of women, when they describe the descent, or when they describe a dark night of their soul, when they describe a time of nigredo or a time of darkness, they might describe it as collapse. I wonder if for you there is a difference between collapse and the descent as initiation. And how can we tell the difference? And in which one are we in?

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah. I really love this question. It's one that I haven't been asked before and I enjoyed reflecting on it. I feel like collapse will be a part of every descent. Laying in a fetal position in a pool of your own mascara, if you wear mascara, is probably going to be part of the descent. However, and there is a point, I think, in the myth where this is also embodied when she's staked by Erish Kagal and hangs on the hook, she collapses on the hook, right? You can't do anything but collapse in that moment. If you think of it as a visual, the body collapses when it's hung because there's no ground underneath its feet anymore. So I feel like that is quite a harsh and visceral collapse, an enforced collapse, if you like. And I really love unshaming. So unshaming our collapses might be a really beautiful part of this journey as well. All that said, I think it's also really true, and I've had many women contact me about this since I wrote the book, who said, I've lived on this hook for years. Or my mother, I was really moved when I interviewed a woman, Tamara Albana, who's actually comes from Iraq, where this miss originates from. And she was saying, you know, I think my mother's lived on that hook her entire life. And I think she's still there. And it really went in when I heard her say that. So I think that that collapse is one that we can and have to actually at some point choose to move through. And what I think is so powerful about mythic maps, and particularly for me, this map, is that it does show that there is something beyond the hook. It does show that the hook is not meant to be lived on. We're not meant to live like a a life where we're half dead all the way through it, right? We're meant to thrive. We're meant to live, we're meant to really come into ourselves and and rise again. So I think going back to the word initiation, when we can call in that witness, or when something becomes the witness, like when I found this myth, and it shows us hold on, you're going through a death process. And beyond that death process is something else that we don't know yet. But it is some something will rise just like spring comes. Spring will come, spring is supposed to come. I think it again, it consecrates the journey, but it gives us a cyclical map to understand that this is not ever. And so that for me is huge. And it's interesting because there's one more thing I kind of want to say about this, is I think the collapse is like the hopelessness. And I think there's a necessary moment of hopelessness in this journey, too. I have a quote, actually, I might just read it from the book by a teacher called Gangaji. And she speaks about hopelessness in such a beautiful way. And so she says, hope itself is some projection of a me into a future in order to avoid the catastrophe that is sensed in the present. Whether it is sensed through a newspaper or the television or just the sensations in one's body. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not a mass teaching, it is not a cult teaching. Mass teachings and cult teachings give you hope. It is a willingness to stand alone where you are and face what you are most afraid of facing. The annihilation of you. Without any hope of survival, the end of your life as you know it. The end of you as you think of yourself. The end of all that you have accumulated or gained or lost, the end of it. Period. So I go on to say after that, giving up hope is an incredibly foreign concept within a culture that it constantly strives for, perpetual use and the avoidance of death at all costs. And I think historically we had a much more intimate relationship with death. And this mess really takes us back into some relationship with death that we really need in order to be fully alive. So initiation for me is a massive teacher about how we die while we're still alive and what that changes in us and the way we relate to the world, and then how we walk that wisdom into the world with us as we rise. Though it's the opposite of bypassing, it really is collapsing into it, almost like the puppet strings have been cut. And then it's like, okay, if I'm not being pulled up from up there, how do I now stand up with my seat in the earth from underneath me and re-erect myself from that place? That was a beautiful passage and a reflection.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Thank you for sharing that. And it really makes me think a lot about the necessary moment of moving forward from that collapse, the sense of hope. It's needed to be lost, but then it needs to be recovered as well. The underworld is a necessary time for women, but we can't overstay, as you said, where we can't spend half of our lives there on a hook, or we will be trapped. If we overstay, we will become trapped in that initiation, in that loop, in that uncompleted initiation. So, how do we know that the time is right for the process of ascent, of rising to begin? And what are some of the signs that we should look for as we begin this ascent?

SPEAKER_00 20:56

So I noticed that a creativity is kind of cultivated in this process for many, many people. And it takes creativity to rise because I feel like what we do as we rise is that we create new structures, both on the inside of ourselves and on the outside of ourselves in our lives. And that process probably starts in the descent, like in the shed what we shed kind of seems to hold clues for what we're gonna rise into and with. But it's really different for every single person. And so what are the clues? I would say uh a creativity, some some creative spark starts to a kind of a green shoot starts to kind of poke up through the image inside of us. And interestingly, I think the thing that keeps women hanging on the hook or anyone hanging on the hook can be victimhood as an identity.

unknown 21:59

And

SPEAKER_00 22:00

They think victimhood, like I really in my psychotherapeutic practice and in the circles I hold, I really love to hold with the people I hold, the parts of us that have been a victim of something, to really grieve that, to hold it, to recognize it, to name it. And there is a defensive strategy that we sometimes employ where the victimhood becomes who we are. And I think that's when we get caught on the hook, like this is how it's always gonna be. I have no other choice, I can't do anything about this, all of those tropes. To shed the victim identity. And I think this is part of what Erish Kagal's rage embodies. It's that upregulation of no, no more. This is not happening anymore. And through that upregulation, that kind of fire of anger rising, that fire of our creativity rising, something starts to shift. So thawing anger can be a sign. Starting to question your the old stories that keep you in stuck in victimhood, like how do we bring the hurt parts with us, but realize that we also have agency and power. And then, yeah. Starting to kind of walk some of the nakedness of ourselves back into the world, protected in a different way. And that's really vulnerable. Rising is a really long process, I think.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

I love what you bring about creativity and the creative life as indicators. As you said, it can be different. It is different for every woman. I would say there are probably as many ways to be creative as there are women in this world. Just that as a reminder and as an indicator, look for where that creative spark is. And also touched me deeply what you said about the survival archetype. To really become that can be another trap that we fall into. And Clarissa Pinkle says you know that I've done a lot of research through her work, and uh, she would say again and again a woman would never come into full relationship with that wild woman archetype, with a thriving archetype, if she is trapped within the survival archetype. They just cannot live in the same body. So thank you for sharing that. Very interesting insight. What do you think is the most important thing that Inana learns in the underworld that she could never learn in the topside world, in the world above?

SPEAKER_00 24:41

The whole story is about her going down to meet her dark sister who she's been estranged from. So I think reclaiming relationship with the dark sonic feminine energies is a fundament of this myth. And we can't learn that above ground. We have to go down into the body, into the energies of that dark, fertile ground. And I think also the dark feminine is often portrayed as only the victim or only this kind of like exiled one, and that is part of her, but she is also that inherent creativity. She is the void out of which everything is birthed. So she is certainly not, yeah, to reclaim to be initiated by those energies is something we can only experience through descending in and down.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

I absolutely agree with you that the journey of Inanna is about Ereshkigal. Now it's a longing for her, and at the same time, it's a void that she needs to fill through the process of coming into relationship with Ereshkegal and all that she symbolizes. That just led me to a thought here is do you think that every woman's descent is about meeting some sort of Ereshkegal, some sort of dark feminine, or there might be descents for women that are not related to that.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

I see Ereshkegal as part of the underworld of the body. So I have not met anyone who has been through a descent without meeting Ereshkegal. And this is what the map seems to show us. Like, you know, you can think of Inanna and Erishkegal as two sides of the same coin if you like. And so if you've been Inanna in the upper world, if you've been, particularly for women who've been very successful, very because you know, Inanna is an empowered woman. She is a queen. So she holds that energy and and that sovereignty and that kind of empowerment already. And yet there's something she needs to go down to be initiated by. So I uh the myth seems to teach that all initiations take us to Erish Kagal, that Erish Kagal is an inherent part of all of us and the earth herself. So yeah, I feel like that's the teaching. I'd be very curious to hear if someone has experienced something different than that.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Thank you for sharing that. It's just a thought that came to me. So I'll also be mapping as I work with different myths to see if something else appears, and I'll send if it does. Yeah, please. But I love what you talked about the body. It's a descent into the body, and your work points to embodiment. And where do you see women trying to descend from the neck up, you know, in a rationalized way?

SPEAKER_00 27:41

I am a psychotherapist and a sex therapist, and I do work in an embodied way. But sometimes I find that though people know that about me, they might still show up mainly in their mind when they come to me. So trying to do the descent and kind of understand it and process it only with our minds. So the the tendency to kind of really, yeah, use the mind as the way of being with this journey. Yes, we need our mind. Yes, we need the witness, but it isn't the one that does the to-do list, it isn't the rational, it isn't that left brain kind of place that is really going to help us to walk with this in a real way. So it's really fascinating to me when when I see people really work trying to work it from that rational place. And what I find repeatedly is this myth calls us down below that. Um that can be really uncomfortable. And it's a big, it's a it's a huge defensive strategy that's very praised in our culture, right? To be very heady, to be very rational, to be very intellectual about it. And and myth sometimes really encourages and really attracts those kinds of people as well, because there's a lot for our brain to get hold of in this realm. So it's really attractive to our minds. But ultimately, we can only get so far with talking on just our heads. We live in a body, we are a body, we are connected to the earth, and we, if we want to descend, we are gonna have to go there eventually. So it's just working with that defensive strategy long enough that trust is built in the relationship, and then something starts to shift, the body starts to be included more and more, is what I find.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

And uh a woman who does experience the descent, let's say, from the neck up, what would you tell her to do if there is a woman listening who feels that she has approached the descent, reflected on her descent, experienced her descent in this rational form?

SPEAKER_00 29:54

I think it's quite unlikely in a way that you would experience this only in your head. I stink there's always going to be an embodied experience going on, even if she has not yet been able to acknowledge that to herself. She so I guess for me that would be about calling in the witness and getting really curious. Like, what other what am I experiencing my body? Am I over-exercising, for example, and calling that a positive thing? So sometimes when we're very stuck in our heads and we are trying to deal with dissent with the coping strategies that culture praises, we'll do things like over-exercise, overwork, be very successful. Those things can be a way of avoiding the dissent that is happening inside of us. And because they're praised, often we think we're doing a good job, not really realizing that actually the thing we're doing is leading ourselves to burnout. And it's often when burnout comes for those people that they haven't enforced these are the laws of the underworld that may not be questioned moment. So I would encourage anyone who identifies with what we've just said to start to really get curious about the coping strategies you are employing and whether they are really nourishing you. And yeah, I mean, that's why I think I've I created a course to go with the book that's on demand on my website because I really wanted to provide something for people to work with. And I've had a couple of people say to me, gosh, that book is like kind of having like a workshop in a book. So there's loads of exercises inside of the book as well that really are aimed to support you to inquire about your body, to journal, to feel in. And it can be really simple things because I know for some people going back down into the body is really scary. Getting on all fours and rocking backwards and forwards, really simple. Um putting your hands on your body and feeling your breath. Journaling, because it slows us down, it's different than typing, right? It and it's one of the first somatic things we learn as children. So it takes us back to a really formative pattern of movement. All these things can be really simple and quite unthreatening ways of starting to just go, oh, what is my body doing in this? Yeah, bringing our curiosity there is really key.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

These are great practices, so simple, but so needed, I feel. Sometimes we assume that everyone has a very nourishing and slow and gentle life. But it's what you said, our success practices are applauded, and that makes it very hard to let go of them. Let's talk a little bit more about the myth. And how do you work with Ereshkigal in your lens? I know you've talked a little bit about her already, but if you can elaborate a little bit more on who is Ereshkigal as an archetypal figure, this mythic figure, and which are the parts that we must come into relationship with.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

So Ereshkigal for me is that dark sonic feminine. She's instinctual. And in the myth, she has been in exile. And I think that that can happen and has been encouraged to happen in the culture that we live in in the West, because often we are encouraged to use our heads, dissociate from our body, keep going, be constantly on. And, you know, for women, because we are naturally cyclical with our menstrual cycle in our bleeding years, we're constantly going through a process of descent and rising month after month. But we're often taught to suppress even that. You know, young girls put on the pill at the drop of a hat. It's very common in our culture. And then, you know, we might get to perimenopause, and then often HRT is prescribed straight away at the moment, a little bit of chaos comes in. So I'm not saying that those things are always wrong, but I think in our culture they have become too much the norm. The suppression of the feminine and our wild bodies is more normal in many ways than being in an untamed Erish Kagal nature. And so I think Erish Kagal is exiled in the culture and she therefore becomes exiled on some to some greater or lesser degrees inside of us. One thing that I love zooming in on in the book is the sacred rage aspect of Erish Kegal, because when Inanna goes down to meet with her, she's not happy about it. She's like, how dare she? And when she meets with Inanna, as we said earlier, she stakes her and hangs her on a meat hook to rot. You know, this is not this is not a loving, sisterly model, this is quite violent. And so I think she really invites us to those energies in our humanity that are much more taboo. And yet, if we can meet that part of us, whether it's acting in or acting out, whether we are and again, it can be things that seem to be benign, like over-exercising can be a form of violence towards ourselves because we are pushing the body to a place that it doesn't want to go. So in everyday life, these energies will be present in us, but often we don't see them for what they are. I think she also, I think also women are really encouraged to be benign in our culture, you know, they're pleasing and polite and accommodating. And so for women who have disowned their anger, I think Erish Gagar has huge medicine. Because, you know, and we're seeing it right now in the culture so much, many, many women starting to say, no, no longer can we live like this. We're not putting up with this, things have to change. So we need her medicine. We need her medicine always, but we need her medicine in this time because she is that sacred no. She is the boundary, she is that passionate uprising of truth, unfiltered truth, as it is in that moment. Yeah, she's hugely medicinal.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

She is. And I'm very attracted to the use of the word sacred rage. I find them so powerful, so empowering, and as a way of putting boundaries. And then what you said as well about saying nos and how important that is for a woman, because when we say a no, we say a yes. It brings, it might for a woman who's starting to say her no's, it might bring a sense of guilt. But then shortly after, I think she already experienced a sense of freedom, a sense of joy, even, you know, some kind of relaxation that comes from that. Could you speak a little bit about the role of grief? I feel when we were talking about the descent, and you were saying it's about shedding an identity and embracing another or being in that liminal space until another one is formed, that new self is formed. So there is that grieving of an old self, grieving of what was not given, of what experiences came. There is a lot of grieving in the experience of the descent. And I'm wondering your thoughts on grieving and uh how can we experience grieving without that feeling of self-improvement and just as a process for the body, for the soul, a process of healing, of honoring.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah. So for me, grief is like the connective tissue of life in many ways. And I think it improves us as human beings because it puts us into contact with the preciousness of the things that we loved so dearly. You know, I remember when my grandma died, like I feel like I learned so much about her and myself and my relationship with her in her absence that I couldn't have known when she was alive. And that was part of the grief. There was an intimacy that grew between us in her absence. And I wouldn't want to be without that, even though I miss her dearly. So grief is really quite feral territory. I think it takes us if we allow it. And if we allow it to take us, it really is a place where we can make love to life at a much deeper, more treasured, stripped back place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

I'm sorry about your grandmother.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

No, it was quite a long time ago now, but yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

I lost my grandmother last month, actually, in January. And um, I I resonate with what you say about grief. There are things that I am learning and I am seeing about myself, about her, about my mother, about our family and this maternal lineage. She's the mother of my mother, about our entire maternal lineage. It's almost like it's been poured with grief, and it's only possible when it's soaking in that. And with that as the fertilizer for what needs to be seen, be seen.

unknown 39:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

I wonder, and that this is a personal question, but maybe there's someone listening who might resonate and might feel this is useful to them. But my mother lost her mother. I lost my grandmother. It's different. It's the connection is not the same. My mother lost her mother, and she's coming to visit me, and I'm going to be here with her. And I wonder what a woman who is grieving needs from another woman.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Well, again, I feel like there's something about this embodied in the myth because it's only when Erish Kagal has staked in Anna that she starts to feel her pain. And she's in the underworld and she's going, Oh my belly, oh my heart, oh my back. And these little creatures, the cougar and the galata, they've been sent by Enki, the sky, one of the sky gods, and they come down to her and they repeat back to her, oh your belly, oh your heart, oh your back. And that's all they do. They just reflect back her pain. And I think that's such a profound teaching about how just having someone sit with us and say, gosh, that must be just so hard for you right now, or my heart is breaking with yours right now. And again, not not trying to fix, but simply the willingness to be with inside of your grief. I don't think grief was meant to be done alone. I mean, we do grieve a lot alone. But you know, I when I see in other cultures people going out on the streets and grieving together and really expressing grief in that way, mourning, keening, it's something that we've lost in Western culture. And I think that actually grief needs company. So yeah, that moment of empathy with Erish Gagal, I think, though, and that is what allows her to give Inanna the food of life and the water of life to be rebirthed. So it evokes Inanna's compassion and empathy. So empathy and compassion are such key parts of this and and desperately needed when we're in grief.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

These were so important for me to listen and they they really touched me. Thank you so much for sharing that.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Yeah, it's such a poignant time, and really glad that you and your mom are gonna have that time together. Thank you. Me too.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

We talked a bit about grief, but then returning to that sacred rage and other qualities that Ereshkigal holds that feel very wild. What does not being tamed, being in that wild state, look like when it's mature, when it's not reactive, but it's a mature way of being with Ereshkegal, being in rage and holding those qualities. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

So for me, when we are truly untamed, we are not being reactive to anything, we are just being. And that's for me the nature of being untamed is the ability to be as we are in the moment, whatever that is, whatever it looks like. And I think so often we are we don't live from that place. And there are good reasons why, you know, we we need to be able to live in it together with each other, so we can't always be just doing whatever we want whenever we want it. I get that. So my new book is called Untamed Pleasure, and so I've spent a lot of time over the last three, three years exploring what is untamed, what's the nature of it, and the place that I've really arrived at is it's the ability to be where we are in the moment in presence. And if we are there, yeah, what will unfold in that? It's it's a real unknown, but it it the presence part kind of holds the human consciousness with it so that we're not going theral, we're not being animal, we're not unconscious. I don't think untamed means unconscious. I think it means bringing together our consciousness with the untamed presence, and that is being for me. And it's really beautiful, and I feel like that's the wisdom that we can forage for as we rise and keep practicing as we rise.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Such an interesting perspective. I really love that you brought the word present, because for me, present in some ways, it also feels like integrated. And uh so you're not reacting, but we are in that moment, not with all those puppet lines coming from the past, from traumas, from other things.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

And even if those do get activated as a part of it, to kind of I think the descent really helps us to learn about those parts and start to, like you say, integrate them so that we can take responsibility for them. So that even if they are there, perhaps we can say to the other if we're interacting with another, you know, gosh, I'm really feeling that part of me. And I'm really, you know, we can name it so that it's included. And then we are being really present. So yeah, I I love the word integration that you bring in there. I think it's so key.

unknown 44:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Thank you for sharing that, Carly. So Inana doesn't rise alone, right? There are helpers. You just talked about them as well, the Kugura and the Gulatur. And uh there is the role of community. In the beginning, you talked about Nujibur as well. And there's a moment in the myth where she realizes she is looking for all the wrong gods. She is searching for the wrong gods, she is asking for help for the wrong gods. And I wonder, and that that sentence resonated with me so much. I feel it's so true to us today. We are searching for solutions, help, guidance sometimes by the wrong gods. How do you see this in our world today, in women's life? And then if you can add a few words also in the right gods, enki and what that looks like in our life.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Yeah, so knocking on the door of the wrong gods, I think it touches into what we were speaking about earlier a little bit around the old coping strategies and also the ones that we've been socialized to go towards, the ones that are praised. You know, we don't often want to go towards the coping strategies that are taboo or not allowed or shamed by the culture. The culture and the community around us, I think, really shapes us to deal with descent and rising in a very specific way. And I think the anonymous and the the shedding of that is part of it. So the the cougar and the galatur, they empathize with where she's at just regardless. They don't have any judgment about it. It's like the the the you know, the the right God, if you like, is the loving witness, the one who will not judge you for where you are and what you're going through, but will simply be with you in it. And so a good way to spot us knocking on the door of the wrong gods is when that God is either punishing or does not believe us or shames us in some way. And I think, really sadly, at the moment, this is really up in our culture with what's happening with the Epstein survivors, and the way that the people who are actually in power, who are meant to protect these people, are actually denying everything. And this is like what the sky gods do. They deny, they obfuscate, they deflect, they will do anything to stay on their thrones. And so I think that's being revealed in our culture in a whole new way at this time. And powerfully, there are also on the counter of that many cougaras, galaturs, and enkies who are coming in and saying, We see you, we hear you, we are with you. And it's really, I've got goosebumps actually talking about it because it's just it just moves me so deeply to see the witnessing that is beginning to happen in the culture and the the meta-culture that we're living in. But God, have we got a long way to so um the final piece in the myth is compassion, and that's embodied by a character called Geshdinana. So if we're knocking on the door of the wrong gods externally, I guess the question that comes in for me and the thing I really had to cultivate inside myself was the compassion for self, particularly when I stumbled, got it wrong. We're very imperfect when we're going through descent rising. And so even if the external gods, whoever or whatever they might be, are in denial about this, how do we cultivate that internal compassion? How do we suffer with ourselves enough to support us, learn to support ourselves to rise, learn to create different structures on the inner and outer that support us? And I find that we had seemed to attract, it's certainly been the case for me, I've attracted a community that will support me through the process of descent and rising. And that's been one of the biggest gifts about the process. I have people now who really can stand by me in this territory, and it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

The role of community, it's such a healing role. No, and we have lost it, but then at the same time, I think at least women are recovering it. I do see women in the process and just putting great effort in building community around them, however, that looks like for them. Sometimes, you know, it's just two, three best friends, and then sometimes there are larger groups that go around something, a theme or something that they connect. You mentioned now the role of self-compassion, right? The sister of Demusi. But how about Demusi? His refusal, the the husband of Inana, his refusal to dissent, his refusal to surrender. Can you share a few words about him and uh what does he look like for us women?

SPEAKER_00 50:20

So internally, he is probably the part of us that likes our success, that likes the throne that we've been sitting on, even if that throne has come with a lot of sacrifice. He's the rational part, the one that wants to figure it out through that rational, more left-brain kind of way of being. And he doesn't want to be in chaos. He doesn't want to be in the mess. On the outside, for many women, and I hear this repeatedly, he is often a male, sadly, but can also be females who are very much in their kind of patriarchal masculine conditioning. The one who would rather not look, not empathize with, cannot see and acknowledge what we are going through, just cannot be with it because it threatens their own sense of self. So the one that would rather stay above ground, let's say.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

I resonate very much with what you said. And how about that moment in the myth in which he's running around like a coward? I find it quite comical. No, it's a bit comical that part. Because you have this king being so scared of something that there's a woman there offering herself, right? His sister is offering herself. Inana just went and returned and returned more powerful, more knowing. And there's so much fear in him and uh so much distrust, I think, as well.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Yeah, and I think we really see this in men in the immaturity of many men who have not. I think one of the things that men exile is their emotions. They are really socialized to be the man inadvertent. So when they're faced with women who are in their emotions, in the descent, in the mess of it, who are and who are willing to go there, I think it can be really threatening for men. And I think I kind of see Demusie, like you say, it's quite comical, but it's also quite childish, right? It's like, I'm gonna run and hide. It's like hide and see almost. And I think it really personifies that part of men that that is really immature and really wants to run for cover, cannot bear to feel what he feels because it's been so exiled. The beauty of Enki is that he's gone there. He is the mature masculine, he is what's possible when a man really allows his heart to be a part of who he is and allows chaos to school him. And I think we really desperately need this, which is why I think this myth holds so much for men as well as women. Because actually, men do also descend and need to descend. So, yeah, I think there are a lot of women doing this work, and there are a lot of men avoiding it, sadly. All that said, I have a beautiful husband who's doing the work, and I know many men who are doing the work. I had a beautiful elder male therapist who held me in my descent. And, you know, I just hope more men dare to go there because actually the pleasure and the aliveness that comes from it, both in the the relationships for men who are in relationship with women, but also for men just in themselves, is huge, actually.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

I hope so too. And you know, I have a daughter and a son, and um I thought uh that I would be so worried about her. But the truth is I am very worried about him.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Because we are given tools, we are given permission, let's say, to explore different areas of ourselves. At least that's what I found among women. And I feel that it is, as you're saying, it is harder for men to find those groups to allow themselves to go there. Um, patriarchy is hard on them too. Yes. So it's very interesting to notice this. And I hope for more men to do the journey. But after the descent, a woman who has gone through the descent and the rising, what changes in a woman's way of life, in a woman's livelihood, and her the way that she approaches herself and life, work, relationships, creativity, motherhood. What are some of the common threads that you've seen with women who have completed that initiation?

SPEAKER_00 55:12

So I feel like women that have been through this start to really live their own lives. You know, if we think of those puppet strings of like the things that we, the ways that we were taught to be, I feel like once that's been cut, there's this sense of who am I and how do I want to be. So the way that I I interviewed a few women for the for Descent and Rising, and the way I picked them out and approached them was because of the creative work that they were doing in the world. And the way they were doing that creative work. I could spot, I was like, oh, I bet she's been through the descent. Oh, we think she's been through the descent. And I approached them and they all were like, oh yeah, let's do a living that. And they were shared it with me because the things that we produce, we we really come back with a very deep, soulful sense of our own creative energy, I think, as we emerge from this. And that affects the work that we do in the world, the way the kinds of people we're attracted to work with, the kinds of relationships we want to have. And as you said earlier so beautifully, when we have our no, we also can have our yes. So in my new book, Untamed Pleasure, which really kind of looks a lot at the rising energy of our sexuality and our creativity, I think we we start to, it's almost like the shedding, it unclogs the system. And the composting of everything that we have shed provides this really fertile ground for all this newness to come up through us. So I find often women that have done this work also reclaim their sexuality and their pleasure and start to really embody that, really abide by the laws of their own bodies in a new way. A lot of women seem to follow their cyclical wisdom and their womb a lot more. So a lot of women I've worked with also reconnect with menstrual cycle tracking, for example. And I've also been contacted by so many women who've been going through their menopause initiation who have really listened to their body and really traversed that initiation with the Ananna myth as a guide. So I think, yeah, in summary, listening to the body, a real authentic, depthful expression of creativity, and a new embodied sense of a sexual pleasure or perhaps a sensual, certainly a sensual pleasure, that it's very much alive and tactile to the world around us.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

That's beautiful. And for our listeners, I feel it's like so encouraging. If you are resisting a descent, if you're there in the descent, if you've experienced it and you're now witnessing yourself in that state. It's such a a wonderful thing to listen to and uh either recognize as your present life or as that spring that will come, that knowing the that the alchemical process will be complete as well, and that will come, those feelings. Let's talk a little bit about your upcoming work, if you'd like. Yes. So your work with psychotherapy, what does that perspective reveal about how culture shapes female desire and permission to feel, to be? And what are some of the things that you bring in your new book that might answer that?

SPEAKER_00 58:54

So I think the thing that often leads us into a circle or into therapy is the moan from within that calls Inana to the underworld. You know, it's a moan, it's a call. I think that is a form of desire. For me, it felt like a hunger to reconnect with something that I could feel I was trying to remember that I'd lost contact with. And so I think even though that takes us to painful places, it also leads us back to pleasure. So what I've aimed to do in the new book is kind of so many women contacted me and said, Oh, I love the book and I love that you talk about rising, but I want to know more about rising. Tell me more, kind of thing. And so, in the in untamed pleasure, what I am trying to do is kind of bring together the places where we are caged and restricted and the keys that we can discover that unlock that and allow us to move beyond it. And so I think oftentimes what I find quite difficult is that there's often a splitting in the culture of either or. I'm either going to talk about pleasure and it's all going to be pleasurable and amazing, or I'm only going to talk about descent and it's going to be terrible and death. And I really love it, I feel like they that's the split, one of the ways we split Inana and Erishkagal. So in the book, one of the things I talk about at the beginning is what I call the pleasure paradox. And that is that the road to pleasure is not going to be all pleasurable. I find that time and time again in working with people and in my own life. But that that's not a bad thing. That only by going to the things that block us to pleasure, which is ultimately love and experience of love and presence with life, only by working with meeting, integrating the things that block us to that can we reveal it and flow into it. Because while ever we're using our life force to hold us away from that thing that we're so terrified of looking at, all the life force is going there. So this book is the new book, is it has 12 cages and 12 keys to help us basically meet and integrate those cages and move beyond and through them. And I, with Descent and Rising, I interviewed it kind of focuses around like seven women's stories, whether, whereas in this book I interviewed over 60 people. So it's got lots of shorter examples of how people are living this, the kinds of things that we bump into. So we move through choice, we move through the wild body, we move through unshaming and alchemizing shame and trauma, and we move into knowing the body and the pleasure anatomy of the body, really finding self-pleasure, finding sensuality, finding ways to creatively transgress the cages that hold us back from the fullness of our aliveness and rising. So it's a really joyous thing to be in, and I'm really excited to share it with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

Sounds very transformative. And it must have been an incredible experience to talk to all these different women and learn from their stories. I find it through my work and in my classes. One of the greatest joys, not just working with the myth, is also listening to women's stories. I'm sure it was a very beautiful, moving, inspiring experience. When is the book coming out?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:31

So the book is out for pre-order now. And if you pre-order it, um you also get two free gifts. One is an untamed pleasantation, which is basically like a 10-minute audio meditation that I've created to really invite us into our pleasure body. And then the second one is a um sensual yoga practice, which again is really aimed to bring us into our body, into feeling and kind of support us in our untamed pleasure. And it will be officially out in June. So yeah, when the summer around that rising energy of summer.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

That's fantastic. So I'll make sure the link for the pre-ordering is in our the description of the show notes. And uh, what are some other offerings and how can our listeners connect with your work? Where should they go? Is there anything you would like to share with them?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

Yeah, sure. So um you can find everything about me on my website, carlymountain.com. On there is lots of free resources. With the release of Descent and Rising, I did a whole conversation series, and that's still available. And you were a guest for that as well, Maria, at one point. And so that's still there as a free resource. It's got the first yeah. So you can, if you sign up to my mailing list, you get direct access to that. There's also an Inana Yoga Nidra there. And I have various courses and different things coming up in the summer that will be launched soon. So, yes, go to CarlyMountain.com or you can get me on Instagram as well. Lots of things to explore and lots of resources to support, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:10

Beautiful. I'll make sure the links are on the description of the episode. And before we close, Carly, I'm so grateful for everything that you shared here. I want to ask you one last question. If someone is at the beginning of a descent right now, what would you tell her? And uh if someone, another one, is in her ascent, what would you tell her?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:36

So with the descent, I would tell her to trust the process, to trust that something bigger is at work, and this feeling will not last ever. So to reach for the support and trust that internal voice that is gradually being uncovered in you, trust that, follow it. It will not let you down. It's really revealing that inner voice, that inner compass, and following that, even if it doesn't seem to make sense. And the ascent is very similar, actually. You know, how do we keep following and strengthening that instinctive knowing that has been muzzled or exiled in the past? The things that we were told to ignore or tidy up. How do we keep following that instinctive knowing, trusting it, walking it into the world? And conversely, it's hard work at times. So when we need to rest, to let ourselves rest, both in the descent and the rising, right? We don't have to get it all right. It cannot all be done in a day. So trusting our instinct to follow and be, but also to just take a moment to just allow yourself the spaciousness to integrate what's going on. it's it's a big journey and it's not straightforward. So yeah, we need to take our time. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

This feels so nourishing. Thank you for those words as well. And for your entire wisdom, everything you shared here. Thank you. It's been a great pleasure. I'm sure our listeners are also delighted and just feel so full right now. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:25

Oh thank you so much for having me, Maria, and thank you so much for such thoughtful, depthful questions. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

And to our dear myth lovers, see you in our next episode. Until then, remember your life is a story only you can tell. Stay close to what feels true and sovereign within you