Jennifer Posada jenniferposada.com
This is a pre-released chapter from my upcoming book The Return of the Sexual Priestess. If you fall in love with this and would like to read many other stories like these by helping support me finishing the book, click here. You can also hear me read this story here…
(Also, this is the story of a woman and the return of the goddess, but this is a story for all of us, of every gender.)
My name is Innana and I come from the Valley of Nu.
I was born when the spring blossoms flush the trees and the light returns to the sky. I knew my name before my parents did. It was a sound on the wind I recognized. I remember hearing it while looking at clouds as a baby.
My parents didn’t want a girl. They were sorely disappointed that I would not advance the family in the ways a boy might have. But they saw a glimmer of hope when I showed the sign, and earlier than most ever do. They knew that at least that meant I could be a priestess, and might offer some prestige to the family in that way. It would be minor but they felt it was some redemption. They would never understand the power of my being female, but in hopes it would highlight my possible future path, they named me Innana.
It was an apt name for a child who formed the purple mark between my brows while just months old. It stayed for several years. It showed that I was different somehow, and some who regarded the old ways saw it as a special blessing…a mark of great sacredness. Others laughed or made fun of what was the sign of a religion that had been challenged by new ways…a male god was rising, but at the time of my birth the goddess still held the supreme place in many people’s hearts. I would watch her glory crumble in my lifetime, but first I would plant a seed that helped ensure that she would never be forgotten, and that while she might go underground like the life force of nature during the winter, she would stir when the time was right…and return to the hearts of those who wished to heal, who wished to return to an earth of love and peace.
One day she would come back like the blossoms in the season of my birth. She would emerge when we believed no other thing would grow…long, long after my life as Innana the Priestess, on the cusp of a new era…an era of darkness, but a necessary darkness. A darkness that harbored gifts if we could safely shuttle them across the pitch-black sea of forgetting.
I didn’t know of these aspects of my destiny when I was a child, yet. But I learned many things from the plants, the rivers, and the animals. I was given special tutelage to prepare me for priestesshood and the life of the temple, but those teachings felt dry like bone. Nature’s teachings rushed like blood. The blood that feeds the bone. I learned quickly that my teachers knew nothing of this, and wanted to hear nothing about my other learning…my remembering.
They asked me to remember other people’s versions of nature, diluted and weak. For years, when I had finished my chores and tutelage, I went to the river to learn in the reeds. I knew my family in that life was not truly my family, and I went to nature to commune with my people in the dirt and the stones, in the trees and among the birds. They were inside of me too, but the actual physical nature around me was the sparkle in my eye…my wisdom, my power, my body. I learned to keep it a secret.
My parents tried to send me to the temple before my time, but they would not accept me, despite my early marking, until the agreed upon age. 14. The last couple of years at home became hard. My parents were anxious to see me go, and had become aware that I might not be the idealized priestess they hoped for. Even while holding back my inner knowing, I was clearly not going to attempt to follow the rules in the ways the more revered priestesses did. One had come to our town to offer blessings at our local temple, and I excitedly hoped I would finally find someone who understood my inner language. But there was an undeniable emptiness there that no one else could see but me. I went to receive her blessing but it fell like water through a sieve, and she did not know the golden light of the reeds, or the fire of the ancients like a glow in her belly and heart.
Am I alone in this world, but for the reeds and the birds? But for the trees and the rivers and the fruit on the vine? Who else sees what I see and hears what I hear?
I dreamt that one day, when I was sent to the temple in the city of Mu-ru, among the priestesses there I would find others. I would leave the bitter hearts of my parents, shells left empty by tragedies before their time, no fault of their own, and find the others. I felt that they must be out there. The others like me.
The day I left for Mu-ru, my parents packed all the things that belonged to me…three furs, two clay jars, small clay bowls made for my birth, a necklace made by an aunt in honor too of my birth…an aunt I never met, and a necklace that belonged to my grandmother who I also never knew. An older man from our village told me once that she had had the powers…my mother’s mother. But there was some disgrace in that she had left the temple, and my parents never spoke of her. Perhaps they knew I might end up following in her footsteps if I had known there was another path.
I also had a necklace I made from shells I found at the river. They came from a special place in the banks that had layers of silt, and were believed to come from a time when the ancient sea rose to that level. People were superstitious about the stories of that sea, and were visibly upset to see me in the necklace of the shells, which they believed to be bad luck. So I kept this necklace secret, in a folded part I sewed into my robe dress, and I knew that it was indeed more precious than the more beautiful necklaces handed down to me of cherished stones. All of them could tell me stories, but the shells told the oldest stories of all.
The shells told me that where the ocean once flowed, there was a forgotten land of beauty, covered by water and still hidden when the water had finally retreated again. Sometimes I would have dreams of this land, dreams themselves blurred as if beneath waters. There were so many things I didn’t understand yet,
until my body showed me…
I would have arrived more fully at my body sooner if I had stayed with my teachers from nature. But by the age of seven more was expected of me at home, and by the age of 14 I was on a cart with my few possessions, leaving behind all I had known. The day I left I saw, for the first time, my mother struggle to let me go…just a flash in her eyes before her determination hardened again. She directed that resolve into the movement of pressing something from her clasped hand into mine…she pressed the piece of lapis into my palm and told me to follow every rule…to learn every verse and every song and sing them as pleasingly as possible. She told me to be molded by the hands of my mentors and those with authority in the temple. She said they had reached their posts by gaining wisdom, knowledge and power, and I could follow only in their footsteps if I followed their every edict. She told me I did not know the way, and could not trust my own senses…that my only chance in this life to attain “the great wisdom” was to never deviate from the course charted for me by those who knew the righteous way, and that as a woman, attaining or striving to attain the great wisdom was my only hope of redemption, blessing my family in the heavenly realms, as I would not bless them in this life with housework or children. She reminded me that women deemed unfit for the temple were looked down upon and allowed only to perform the most menial of tasks, living the life of the nearly-enslaved and a shame to their family. “Do right by us Innana, or you will do wrong by all living things.”
In her eyes I saw the pain. I knew it was guiding her as it had guided those who hurt her, and those who hurt them before…I saw the line stretching back. But I had no guide yet to shorten my path to my true gifts, except for my time in nature, which had been encroached upon by the expectations of growing older. By the time I was nine I knew all the basic chants, but I repeated them looking through a doorway at the light glinting off the leaves…knowing the leaves knew the real secrets.
I arrived in Mu-ru at night, and the cart driver completed his work by taking me to a side door of the great temple, where we were met by a night attendant, a lesser priest whose duty it was to show me to my sleeping place. The hallways of the temple felt cold as the driver disappeared and with him the last of my former life, and the attendant ushered me down the passage with only the word, “come”. His face seemed hardened like the men who worked too many hours in the fields for such little compensation, and I hoped that all would not be like him. I was taken to an entry room to the treasury, and was asked to give my worldly goods as a first pledge to the temple and my life as a priestess. The jars, the bowls, the necklaces from my aunt and grandmother, the lapis my mother had given me the day before all were placed on the stone altar to be “cleansed” before being added to the bounty of the other temple offerings. In the pocket of my gown remained the shell necklace.
I began to be afraid.
I was shown to a room where I could just make out stone platforms carved into the walls where other priestesses of my rank slept. I was shown mine and told I would be woken at dawn. I woke to the softest shuffle of bodies stirring, though none of the other priestesses who were awake spoke. I learned that we were to speak only at certain times. I learned that every aspect of our behavior was to be controlled, as a sign of our deference to the temple. I was to come to understand that it was believed that the more we could make ourselves look and act just exactly like the others, not standing out in any way, the more we would be rewarded and move up the ranks of the temple hierarchy. Just two generations before women had been the highest authority of the temple…the high priestesses ruled all. But now it had been made temple law that a priest would rule over even the higher-ranking priestesses and have final say over all matters.
That morning I slid my shell necklace into a crack in the stone of my sleeping platform, and it was wise that I did, for that very day while the other girls were taken to their studies, I was taken to my purification rituals. I had not been prepared for these rituals, and felt quickly like a caged animal when they asked me to remove my robe dress, standing naked before the three older priestesses who then told me to lean my head over the sacred stone basin of water, where they sheared off my hair with sharp stones. They placed my dress and some of my hair into a temple fire and told me this was symbolic of leaving behind the person I had been, and everything about my life that had come before.
“In disrobing you pledge yourself to the temple…you leave behind the family you have known, and you allow your personality to burn in the cleansing fire so that you can achieve the great wisdom that only comes from this dissolution of self. While it may seem harsh to leave behind this former life, only in doing so can you achieve the true freedom all seek.”
I knew it was alright to leave behind the family I had known. I knew they had never been my true family to begin with. But I could feel that it was wrong to leave behind the wisdom of the river and the voice of the reeds…the secret stories of the animal creatures that made no words but knew all. I knew there were many things about myself that it was better not to leave behind and that this was not freedom. I also knew, however, that I could not turn and leave the temple at that moment. I would not be received again by my family, and the choices for women with no family were of servitude, and usually unsafe servitude at that. I decided to see if I could live within the restrictions placed before me, and still thrive inside of me. As I thought these things, tears streamed down my face while I hung upside down over the basin and the priestesses tore at my hair. This was a blessing, they told me. Now I could be cleansed of impurities from my path. Now I would take the shining path of the priestess. I watched the tears slip into the ritual water, and I didn’t make a sound. I was cold, and I was hungry, as I watched my hair fall like feathers to the water.
For two years I was in preparation with the other younger priestesses in training. In those years I became very good at appearing to follow every rule, while inside attempting to remember the deeper knowing I had been born with. I discovered when I could have free moments…when I could hold the hands of my priestess sisters in the garden or on festival days. I relished my moments under the sky, or when one of the chants I learned took me to the blessed realms within. But usually I had to perform the chants in a specific way that didn’t allow me to have that access. I had to chant as instructed, as was written in the accepted scriptures, not as I would have been guided to inside of me.
By the time I was 16 I had excelled in my learning, and was taken one day to the highest priestesses. I was told that I would not be moving on to the standard priestess duties with the other girls my age that I had lived with for two years. I was told I would be placed in a special program with somewhat older girls. I was told I had shown the signs of the sexual priestess.
The mysteries of the sexual priestess had become deeply shrouded and there was a tense ambivalence about them among the people. Those who held to the old ways remembered these priestesses as the most powerful beings of all known history…the highest honor of all possible human paths in those times had been that of the sexual priestess. But the shift to a male god perceived as equally powerful and property handed down the male line had begun a groundswell of change. Now sexual priestesses were seen as vital still to the temple and community, but only when carefully trained and kept. In the new ways it was seen as dangerous to work with these sexual energies, and, like fire, as something that must be contained so that it would not consume the land and cause great destruction.
When they had shorn my hair when I arrived at the temple, I had remembered as a child in my village seeing a woman be publically shamed. Her robe was ripped from her and her hair torn at with stones…I saw it only for a moment and in an instant my stomach turned and tears burned my eyes, before my mother grabbed my arm and pulled me much too strongly away. I could still hear the woman’s cries as my mother told me never to look at those woman who had “turned away from the goddess”. After I had been sent to bed I heard my parents talking about it that night. They said the woman had been chosen as a sexual priestess but had decided to marry instead. She had later taken on a lover other than her husband, turning her immediately to an outcast marked by public shaming. Anyone would be allowed to punish her without fault for the rest of her days for this “sin”. All night that night one image stayed in my mind…not the woman bent and her low moan, but the look on her face when I had turned back one last time before my mother swept me around a corner…it was a look of sheer defiance. It was a look of fire I had never seen on any woman’s face, or any person’s face at all. Even though her eyes were full of tears, they also seemed to hold the shine only stars have. I marveled at her face, seeing it over and over again in my mind. I knew she knew something I needed to know, but I also knew there might be a price to learn it. I knew I must use stealth to find my way to the secrets she knew. I knew I must use stealth to become free, somehow…
Could I be free some other way, I wondered. Could it be enough to remain in the temple and simply use the inner teachings in my own way within me?
In the first year of my training as a sexual priestess we were taught very strictly, sometimes in states of severe deprivation without sleep or food. We were meant to be able to withstand extreme states and still be able to move the great energy from the base of the spine up into the crown of the skull. We were meant to be able to illuminate the centers of the body involved, the points of most intense energy, but without succumbing to allowing the energy to be erotic. We were meant to use our will, derived and honed by struggling with the deprivation we experienced, to “clean” the energy so it could be used in a myriad of ways to support the work of the temple. No sexual priestess could use these energies outside of her very difficult and repetitive practices until she had passed a series of tests, usually years after beginning her training. I became very quickly skilled at moving the energies, but I felt that the deprivations simply slowed me down and weakened me on every level. I wondered what I could achieve if I were nourished. My spirit withered under these conditions, but I used the energy I cultivated to sustain me. I began to slowly shut down the parts of me that couldn’t thrive. It hurt too much to feel them. As I did this I received praise for my work, which I found troubling. But I felt too weak at times to know what else to do.
And then something incredible happened. Those of us that completed the first cycle and moved into the second year were told we had shown the fortitude to move into the next level. We would be prepared to do the work, but first we must prove that we could attend to the “cleansing” of the sexual life force energy in locations outside the temple, and not be distracted by our outer environment. We were told to go out for two separate days of every moon cycle and find a discreet place to practice, then to return to the temple at night for the nightly chants and ritual duties. When I heard this a light opened in my heart…a spark of something old was finally stirred and I felt hope filter deep into the place I was living in the cold underworld inside of me.
The first day as we were led by temple guard/priests to the outer gateways of the temple, tears wanted to well up in my eyes, but I kept them back. I didn’t want anyone to know what I felt inside about leaving the temple grounds to have free hours. I didn’t pick up my pace as the guard priests stopped and gestured us onward. I kept my gait steady as I observed in my periphery each of we seven priestesses head in different directions. I wanted to run, but instead I moved slowly and simply let the tears finally move down my face, glimmering as they were met by the sun.
I headed for the river. I could just make out its faint line like a vein just under the skin of the earth in the distance. As I walked I felt my state begin to alter. I could already feel the birds, and the reeds, and the water…even though it was not the same spot on the river from my childhood…but I also felt something else. It was like the presence of someone I had known long ago, and deeply loved. There was no one in my life like that, so I marveled at that feeling, as slowly a tree took more distinct form along the river bank and for a moment my breath caught in my throat and I could no longer move.
I know that tree.
That is my tree. That is my huluppu tree.
I did not know the word huluppu, or why I would call this tree that name. But I knew that tree better than the inside of my hand, or the curves of my body. I knew it better than my name or my stories, better than the chants or the part of the river I was born near.
I felt it when I walked into her energy field…an ecstasy filled me and when I reached the v at her trunk I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around her. How had I lived so long without her? How had I survived without my soul’s very earthly sustenance?
As I looked around under her sweeping canopy it was as if another life were laid over this one…as if I could see the glint of a serpent writhing in the roots, the lithe body of a woman arching her back in the trunk, the sweep of wings in the branches from some magical time before my own. But I felt the magic as alive now as then…most of all, in my body.
There was no one in view. I turned my body over and opened my legs, as if I had done this a thousand times before. My vulva was wet and liquid dripped onto the earth. The tree breathed. I felt it and put my fingers there, a gasp the size of which astonished me came out of my mouth and I fell under a spell of beauty and bliss I had never known.
As my body began to writhe of its own accord, I had fleeting thoughts of the lessons I had had drilled into my mind over and over again…don’t let the sexual energy run through you unimpeded…don’t let it loose or it will destroy you, and others around you. Only the hell of the lost ones will come of allowing such energy to run of its own accord. You must control it, or you will lose all wisdom and insight…you will lose all you hold dear and be cast out from the temple and society. No one will have you, for you will be damned. But if you control this energy, the highest of blessings await you. The freedom of the wise ones will be yours, and you will be awarded the highest honors. Your life will be one of esteem and you will be blessed all the way into the heavenly realms when your life on earth is done. Never deviate from the path, the others who have gone before down that dark path have never returned. Your entire making will come of controlling and directing this energy as you have been taught.
The words flowed through me while waves of pleasure seemed to usher them along out of me, as if into the river and away forever. As my fingers slipped inside of me I thought to myself, in the clearest message I had ever felt,
“nothing but good can come from this.”
And all the ancient spells of darkness I had been given in the temple were gone from me, their roots lifted by the storm of meeting my body’s pleasure and knowing. By the power of my vulva. As I cried out in pleasure, the bark of the tree against my back, the dirt under my bare feet, my robe opened around my thighs, I felt my vagina release more wetness into the earth and I finally erupted like an unleashed river into the most incredible orgasm of my life.
And the earth was cleansed. Restored to its nature. The things that once marked it with pain were washed away by the power of my body, and my vulva, and all of the secrets of the universe were revealed to me. I knew then that there was nothing I couldn’t do, or feel, and I knew why this had been hidden. I knew the temple wished to control these energies, and that they would not control me. I felt the earth meet me, I felt my huluppu tree embrace me, and I lay there with my legs open, vulva just barely touching the earth for a very long time. Even after I wasn’t touching myself anymore, I felt waves of pleasure rock me through my very core over and over again.
I marveled at my wondrous vulva.
When twilight came I placed my hand against the tree, sharing wordlessly the understanding that I would be back…that we would be together again always now, no matter where I was.
On the walk back to the temple I realized many things, for my vision had been cleared and would remain that way, I knew, forever forward. I knew that these outings allowed to the priestesses who had reached that point in the training were a test, to see who would be loyal to the temple even without restraints. I was aware that when we returned we would be evaluated by temple priests and priestesses of higher rank who knew how to look for certain signs. I knew I was radiating like a newly born flame, and I made a plan to disguise myself. I walked through the city of Mu-ru, taking in the energies of repression and fear. While there were also people experiencing joy or peace, I focused on how far the people were from their true nature, and began to feel myself dumb down slowly…my vibrations lowering to match them with my intention. It was painful to do this, so I doggedly reminded myself of the greater plan that was growing in my heart like a wildfire since finding my huluppu tree. I also found a town basin of rainwater that was less pure than the waters of the river or the temple, and I wet my hands and pressed them over my face and arms. Soon I felt the light lessening in me, and I knew the roses in my cheeks were gone. The rest of the way back to the temple I recited the chants over and over again, with no feeling, and imagined moving the energy without any erotic feeling. This too hurt with a searing pain, like going back on all that is good. But when I met the temple guards outside the great gateway, along with the other priestesses at the exact appointed time, I knew what I had experienced was undetectable. And this is how I would make it possible to explore every glory of my body twice every moon, and never be discovered.
For one great moon, (year) I lived this way, and I was taught…reminded…by my body, my vulva, my huluppu tree, the river, the earth and the animals, how to truly move the sexual energies of life force in a way led from within. I followed my body as the only doctrine I would ever need. It knew everything.
One day at the huluppu tree I heard a whisper I thought came on the wind, but I soon realized it was the woman from the vision I had seen who lived in the trunk of the huluppu tree…I am the wild woman, she said. I am you. I found that the wild woman was who I really was in the deepest places, and who I would become in all ways over time. She began to tell me that there was a place meant for me, when the time was right. I waited to be ready. I waited for the signs.
It was two years into my training as a sexual priestess that I learned, through happenstance, that I was being prepared for the high priest. I learned that I would be the offering for the spring festival. I would not perform the great rites, because this would be performed by one of the high priestesses, but I would begin the rituals (ritual/ceremonial festivities) by using my skills to have ritual sex with the high priest. A priestess made mention of something, letting it slip enough for me to realize what was to happen for me. Most priestesses considered this an honor…something they groomed themselves for and hoped for for years…the entry into almost assured high priestesshood. But for me it was the sign I needed…it was the night I realized I finally had to escape.
For I knew there was darkness in the high priest, and I knew my body would never allow me to share with him something so precious. It would be indeed a “sin” to me to take part in this ritual considered most sacred and esteemed. A sin against my body. A sin I would never commit.
I suppose I had known all along. Since I arrived in Mu-ru. Since the cold-faced temple attendant took me down that hall. Since I placed my shell necklace in the crevice of that rock. Since the elder priestesses disrobed me and cut away my hair. I knew one day I would have to break free. I kept the thought at bay so I could survive the years it might take for me to figure out how to do it without ending up at the mercy of those who had forgotten their souls…the vacant-eyed ones who expected women to be obedient or enslaved. I wanted real freedom. I wanted to go back to the river.
I had been gathering signs and clues for years, and I had heard the wild woman speak of the “wise women who lived in the mountains”. I knew they were my hope, and I had been asking for the inner knowing to emerge about the timing of my flight. Now I knew the time had surely come. It was the full moon, and the festival of the wheat harvest in which all of the priestesses were expected to participate to ensure the coming year’s yeild and the ongoing wealth of the city. We were each to enter the ritual area to dance in small groups, and then move back into the trees alongside the ceremonial theatre. When it was my turn to step back into the grove I simply slid behind a tree, waiting there with my heart pounding for more of the girls to gather so I could be lost in the shuffle and then, when no one was looking, I fled so swiftly by foot that none could even hear me sweep across the moonlit ground…white like ash. Since we were in a ceremonial area outside the temple gates, there were no guards at gateways to pass through. I was below the great mound within minutes, and on my way to the huluppu tree.
This time I didn’t have to walk carefully. This time I flew like the great bird who lives in the branches of my huluppu tree. This time my robe billowed behind me and I looked like a flash of moonglow moving across the land…this time my hair became loosed and flickered like the new reeds in the wind…this time I was at my huluppu tree in minutes and the night was inside of my lungs with every breath…I met the huluppu tree like my old lover, like my old place of power, like the friend beyond lifetimes…this time when the wild woman took my hand, she and I were the same…
I don’t remember which way the wild woman led me, or what the journey was like…it was a blur of moonlit sand and stars, and I was at one with my body…I was the animal fully. The serpent moved through me unimpeded, and when I arrived at the place in the mountains I knew it, as if it were already my home. And the wild woman was gone, because she and I had become one. I was the wild woman now, completely.
When I approached the cave dwellings I could make out five women standing in firelight, waiting for me…arms outstretched. Innana they called me, as the woman in the center pulled me to her. We have waited for you for so long. Tears flowed from my eyes and from theirs…I had found my home, my family, the others like me. I would be able to live my life as I lived it under my huluppu tree…with it within me forever. This, I knew, was the place my grandmother had come. I knew it was the place I had always belonged, and that now my real journey could finally begin…
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Author’s note: various translations of ancient myths of the goddess Inanna mention her being in some way moved by her “wondrous vulva”, a phrase I have similarly shared here, and she also had a huluppu tree, but I differ greatly in my telling of that story as well, my version of which will also be in the book.
