Just A Little Something For Anyone Who's Worried About Offerings. You Can Make Fancy Cakes And Hunt Down

Just a little something for anyone who's worried about offerings. You can make fancy cakes and hunt down expensive historically accurate wheat. Or you can make a midnight run to Walmart and whip up some sweet, totally healthy and very appropriate deliciousness. In fact, I might try making some by squishing dates in a Ziploc and shaking that in a bag of chopped pistachios. Who knows. Is this what they call a life hack?

(cue quiet sobbing in the corner) This is absolutely lovely and epic awesome. As for the season stuff, I tend to lean towards "Everything is dying, so Dumuzid is too" as well.

Trick or Treat! And if my calendar is right, happy Duku too.

Treat 🧡

had to go look up Duku because I’m a lazy Sumerian who doesn’t know the calendar

I found it on Temple of Sumer’s calendar, which is based on the Nippur calendar [UR III] calendar http://www.angelfire.com/oz/lessthanlucid/calendar0.html (I wanted to link you another calendar article that compares 3 of them but tumblr won’t let me)

OoOoo that actually sounds cool maybe I’ll look into it more. Though I’ll say “it was probably only practices by a select few. Sumerians of today should always consider themselves part of that select few where they can. It is important for each of us to understand the workings of the inner temples.” …. my first thought was… okay but why? Understanding yes, practice cuz select few ehhhhhh. I ain’t no priestess, whooph would that be a task.

Anyways,

The growing season in Mesopotamia was winter, which means the idea of the fertile season for us is flipped on its head. I wanted to write a post on it— since I legitimately cannot decide if at Enten (Fall Equinox / Sumerian winter) should I follow Sumerian tradition and invite back Dumuzi while everything around me is dying. Or match it up with my own climate and invite Dumuzi back at Emesh (Spring Equinox / Sumerian Summer) when my area is full of new life. Ah the modern polytheist struggles.

I don’t follow the Temple of Sumer’s calendar (Well I don’t follow any of their stuff, preference) So this little line, from the holiday before Duzu, made my eye twitch: “At the Vernal equinox you read from the exploits of Dumuzi and saw that Inanna’s actions led him to his unfortunate fate”

HEAVY SIGHING, there is only one version where it is Inana’s fault ONE. Hnng. The Desent Story now manages to get under my skin cuz apparently people forget all the other literature. is apparently an extremely old grump pretending to be young who doesn’t want kids on my yard.

Since its “close” to Enten (September 22, 2018) and everything around me is dying, I’ll follow my climate and say goodbye to Dumuzi (instead of Sumerian tradition) and share some of the cult versions of his death rather than the stuff that happens in the Decent Story. Following taken from Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jaconsen, bit hard to format so bare with me.

The large reasons behind the god’s death are mostly left vague […] only in one treatment […] is a specfic reason offered. Here the God is delivered up by his young wife, by Inanna, as substitute for herself. [… it] seems best to put this highly complex work to the side and to begin with a more traditional literary account, closer to that of the cult texts.

Turning [away] from the literary treatment in “Dumuzi’s Dream,” to the handling in the cult texts, one notes a similarity of underlying theme and myth in the text we shall call “The Most Bitter Cry.” The latter differs […] in its more forceful style and greater emotional participation. The text begins with compassion for the bereft young widow:

The most bitter cry of commiseration— because of her husband,

the cry of Inanna because of her husband,

to the queen of Eanna, because of her husband,

to the queen of Uruk, because of her husband,

to the queen of Zabalam, because of her husband,

Woe for her husband! Woe for her young man!

Woe for her house! Woe for her city!

For her captive husband, her captive young man,

for her dead husband, her dead young man,

for her husband lost Uruk and Kullab in captivity,

lost for Uruk and Kullab in death…

After further lines of condolence the lament is taken up by Inanna herself:

Inanna weeps bitter tears for her young husband:

“The day the sweet husband, my sweet husband, went away,

the day the sweet young man, my sweet young man, went away,

you went away— O my husband— into the early pastures,

you went— O my husband— into the late pastures.

My husband seeking pasture, was killed in the pastures.

My young man seeking water, was delivered up at the waters.

My young husband nowise departed town like the shrouded corpses,

O you flies of the early pastures!

He nowise departed town

like the shrouded!

To represent the laments that express the sorrow of Dumuzi’s young widow: Inanna, we choose one which may be called, “The Wild Bull Who Has Laid Down.” “Wild bull” […] a term for shepherd and serves as an epithet for Dumuzi. Inanna, going to visit Dumuzi in his fold in the desert has found him dead, his fold raided, the young men, woman, and flocks of his household killed. She asks the mountain for news of him only to be told that “the bison” has led him (that is, his shade) into the mountains which is to say into the realm of the dead […] Kur […] Wild animals now roam where Dumuzi’s camp was. Our rendering omits a long litnay of titles and epithets of Dumuz between the first and second stanzas:

The wild bull who has lain down, lives no more,

the wild bull who had lain down,

lives no more,

Dumuzi, the wild bull; who has lain down,

lives no more,

. . . the chief shepherd lives no more,

the wild bull who has lain down lives no more.

O you wild bull, how fast you sleep!

How fast you sleep ewe and lamb!

O you wild bull, how fast you sleep!

How fast you sleep goat and kid!

I will ask the hills and the valleys

I will ask the hills of the Bison:

“Where is the young man my husband?”

I will say;

“he whom I no longer serve food?”

I will say;

“he whom I no longer give drink?”

I will say;

“and my lovely maids?”

I will say;

“and my lovely young men?”

I will say;

“The Bison has taken thy husband away up into the mountains!

The Bison has taken my young man away up into the mountains!”

“Bison of the mountains with the mottled eyes!

Bison of the mountains with the crushing teeth!

Bison! Having taken him up away from me, having taken him up away from me,

having taken him I no longer serve food up away from me,

having taken him who I no longer give drink up away from me,

having taken away my lovely maids up away from me,

having taken my lovely young men up away from me,

the young man who perished from me at the hands of your men,

young Ababa who perished from me at the hands of your men:

May you not make an end to his lovely look!

May you not have him open with quaver of fear his lovely mouth!

On his couch you have made the jackals lie down,

in my husbands fold you have made the raven dwell,

his reed pipe— the wind will have to play it,

my husband’s songs— the north wind will have to sing them.

So there you have some of Inana’s laments shut up I didn’t get emotional or anything writing Inana’s sorrow. The last two lines are brutal.

Excuse me as I make unimpressed noises while cleaning my altar to Nuska.

I wish I knew which campus that was on, too, or at least which group or whoever set it up. I can't make out what it says on the bottom of the sign in the first picture, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it says the group name there. I'd like to let them know there's plenty of people still worshipping these gods.

I was reading the notes and apparently this made the news in 2013. Forget the rise of neo-paganism and polytheist revivalism, it just gets ancient history wrong; not to mention ignoing all the folk customs. Regardless of belief or lack there of— when does a God die; because this clearly states that these Gods were once alive by their definition. Is it when they become venerated as a saint? Feared as a demon? If their worship changes form? or do they need to be 100% forgotten, like those with no literary record?

Edit: Found it. Its a rebuttle against Pascals Wager

https://secularstudents.org/gotg/

——

Enki aka Satan… what? That is literally not even in the Abrahamic traditions.

Krishna…. Hinduism has over a billion adherents. The sheer enormity of ignorance.

“Some of the gods in our graveyard may still have followers. We included them because the number of followers has been declining. And to many people, they are indeed ‘dead’ in a sense.” — Their activity guide. One billion, you are so arrogant.

This figure is not wearing a horned cap, aka not a major God. Its holding a bucket and cone so is, at most, a minor deity but more likely is a GENIE.

Additionally,

“…probably worshipped by a largely Aramaic population, and Nusku is probably the same as the name ‘Nasuh’ found in Neo-Assyrian personal names and as the god written ‘Nsk’ in Old Aramaic inscriptions. These cults appear to have lasted into the early centuries AD and perhaps even longer.” — Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia by Jeremy Black and Antony Green pg 145

That image is identified simply as a “fish-garbed figure” by the dictionary, interprted as possibly a type of exorcist priest. Note the lack of divine horned cap. Also Dagon Dagan, was the God of the Philistines, he is not a fertility God, he invented the plough and is a grain god. Grain god =/= fertility God. He was father of Ba’al to the Canaanites, and a minor God to the Mesopotamians as a attendant of Enlil.

Dear college students , do better research; and no, wikipedia does not count.

2018 Indiana University Kokomo https://iuklife.iuk.edu/event/2869041

2018 University of Iowa https://events.uiowa.edu/14651

(Previous posts https://michi-izkur-ereshkigal.tumblr.com/post/179534309148/adelfotita-paper-mario-wiki-lunar-rayne )

Response to all of the sex bots trying to chat me up: I like big books and I cannot lie. Send me pictures of 19th century enyclopedias and you might get somewhere. Honestly I just assume most poorly worded highly nsfw flirting from strange accounts is going to infect my stuff with something unspeakable, and my digital device is a glorious temple that doesn't need lecherous viruses pawing at it. That said, a bot that tries to sabotage nerds by sending them pictures of 14th century illuminated manuscripts and 15th century block books might have more success. Just a suggestion.

samantha comes home late & she smells like liquor and blood. she’s going to have to scrape her heart off the underpass later and if she ever forgives herself for it, she will have nothing left. she tells me how tired she is of being a mad woman. a madwoman. she says the only kind of ecstasy she feels is manufactured. i can taste the bacchanal on her breath when she sighs, body swaying like she’s still thinking about dancing. the blisters on her feet have burst and the blood leaks onto the couch but i tell her its fine, its fine, we’ll learn how to stop curling ourselves around what isn’t really there, cut out the maenad crowding her mind and she cries, she cannot stop. what is there but the frenzy?