balance

I’d already planned to write about this, but noticing an article from the May issue of The Atlantic, “The Eighth Deadly Sin” (or: “The Medieval Roots of Modern Self-Help”), has spurred me to write this very quickly.In an excruciatingly roundabout way1 I was already familiar with the “Descent of Inanna.” In that ancient myth she ventures into the Underworld where, at each gate or checkpoint, a demonic guardian—a judge, a Watcher—commands her to remove one item of clothing. She must comply. At last she is fully disrobed, unguarded and vulnerable and, at her destination, she is struck down dead. Then, in parallel with certain versions of Bluebeard’s six other doomed exes, Inanna’s lifeless body is hung from a hook. She does return to Life, an ancient Babylonian or Sumerian sort of Persephone, but the endpoints of the myth diverge depending on who’s writing. Unlike Persephone, Inanna is not rescued by a grieving mother. What I did not know until much later, however, is that Joseph…