Oh, The Places You'll Go!

celysse:

Inanna- is the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare. The temple of Eanna, meaning “house of heaven” or “house of An” in Uruk was the greatest of these, where sacred prostitution was a common practice. In addition, according to Leick (1994) persons of asexual or hermaphroditic bodies and feminine men were particularly involved in the worship and ritual practices of Inanna’s temples. The god of this fourth-millennium city was probably originally An. After its dedication to Inanna the temple seems to have housed priestesses of the goddess. The high priestess would choose for her bed a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year) ceremony, at the spring Equinox. According to Samuel Noah Kramer in The Sacred Marriage Rite, in late Sumerian history (end of the third millennium) kings established their legitimacy by taking the place of Dumuzi in the temple for one night on the tenth day of the New Year festival. Inanna’s symbol is an eight-pointed star or a rosette. She was associated with lions — even then a symbol of power — and was frequently depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses. Her cuneiform ideogram was a hook-shaped twisted knot of reeds, representing the doorpost of the storehouse (and thus fertility and plenty).

Ishtar- is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, war,love, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte. Ishtar was above all associated with sexuality: her cult involved sacred prostitution; her holy city Uruk was called the “town of the sacred courtesans”; and she herself was the “courtesan of the gods”. Ishtar had many lovers. Besides the lions on her gate, her symbol is an eight pointed star. In the Babylonian pantheon, she “was the divine personification of the planet Venus. Like Ishtar, the Greek Aphrodite and Northwestern Semitic Astarte were love goddesses who were “as cruel as they were wayward”. Donald A. Mackenzie, an early popularizer of mythology, draws a parallel between the love goddess Aphrodite and her “dying god” lover Adonis on one hand, and the love goddess Ishtar and her “dying god” lover Tammuz on the other. Some scholars have suggested that

the myth of Adonis was derived in post-Homeric times by the Greeks indirectly from Mesopotamia (Assyria and Babylonia) through the Western Semites, the Semitic title ‘Adon’, meaning ‘lord’, having been mistaken for a proper name. This theory, however, cannot be accepted without qualifications.”

Joseph Campbell, a more recent scholar of comparative mythology, equates Ishtar, Inanna, and Aphrodite, and he draws a parallel between the Egyptian goddessIsis who nurses Horus, and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who nurses the god Tammuz.

Astarte- is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from theBronze Age to Classical times. Originally the deified evening star, she was connected with fertility, sexuality, and war. Her symbols were the lion, the horse, the sphinx, the dove, and a starwithin a circle indicating the planet Venus. Pictorial representations often show her naked. Astarte was accepted by the Greeks under the name of Aphrodite. The island of Cyprus, one of Astarte’s greatest faith centers, supplied the name Cypris as Aphrodite’s most common by-name. 

Isis- is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic. She was the friend of slaves, sinners, artisans, and the downtrodden, and she listened to the prayers of the wealthy, maidens, aristocrats, and rulers.^[1] Isis is often depicted as the mother of Horus, the hawk-headed god of war and protection (although in earlier traditions Horus’s mother was Hathor), and she is depicted suckling him in an attitude similar to that of the Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus. Isis is also known as protectress of the dead and goddess of children.

Aphrodite- is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus’ genitals and threw them into the sea, and from the sea foam (aphros) arose Aphrodite. Thus Aphrodite is of an older generation than Zeus.

Because of her beauty other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her toHephaestus, who was not viewed as a threat. Aphrodite had many lovers, both gods like Ares, and men like Anchises. Aphrodite also became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis’ lover and his surrogate mother. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite.

Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two cult-sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed her birth. Myrtles, doves, sparrows, horses, and swans are sacred to her. The Greeks further identified the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor with Aphrodite. Aphrodite also has many other local names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea and Cerigo, used in specific areas of Greece. Each goddess demanded a slightly different cult but Greeks recognized in their overall similarities the one Aphrodite. Attic philosophers of the fourth century separated a celestial Aphrodite (Aprodite Urania) of transcendent principles with the common Aphrodite of the people (Aphrodite Pandemos).