Inanna’s Descent
This is a story of what can happen when we go through hard times in our lives. It’s a journey to meet something that happens to all of us, and to find a way through those moments with wisdom and courage, and the understanding that hard moments aren’t there to destroy us. They can also renew us.
There's a reason this myth is still very alive in our collective consciousness. It describes an experience that still rings true for many of us, even now, thousands of years later.
READY TO LISTEN NOW? Press play here, or scroll down for the story behind it and ways to make it a ritual:
Why this journey, why now?
Some seasons ask more of us than others. Venus is retrograde in Scorpio, the sign of depth, power and endings, and Pluto, named for the god of the underworld, only turned direct on 16 October. Venus is the part of us that knows what we love, what we value and what we are worth. Retrograde in Scorpio, she turns that inward and asks what we are still holding onto that we have outgrown.
Most of us try to think our way through this. We analyse, we decide, we try to let go, and it doesn’t quite move. A myth works differently. It gives you something to walk through, with your body and your imagination, rather than something to work out.
That is what this journey is for. It doesn’t promise an answer. It offers a threshold, a descent and a return, held at the moment Venus herself disappears into the Sun’s light and comes back. If something in you has been loosening, or something won’t loosen, this is a way to meet it.
When to do the journey
On Saturday 24 October, at around 1:44pm Brisbane time, Venus meets the Sun, and I’ll be doing this journey at that exact moment. It’s a potent time for ritual and for working with the transit, and you’re welcome to join me. You can also listen any time that suits you, until 14 November while Venus is still retrograde.
Before you listen…
Make it a ritual, not just a recording. Choose a time when you won’t be interrupted, dim the lights, put on headphones, and have a journal and pen beside you. Before you press play, write a short list of up to seven things you’re ready to set down: roles, stories, certainties, old versions of yourself. You don’t need to know why yet. Then just listen. There’s nothing to do.
This is a guided journey with dark, edgy music. It’s an invitation, and it’s fine to skip it. Please listen somewhere quiet, with headphones, and not while driving. It’s not for you if you’re in acute grief or crisis. You can pause or stop whenever you need to. If it becomes too much, open your eyes, press pause, and feel your feet on the floor. You can come back to it another time.
The journey doesn’t end in the dark. The second half is an ascent, with her power returned, to music that carries you back up.
If the journey stirs up more than you expected, please reach out to someone.
Press play when you’re ready, any time until 14 November.After you listen
Stay a few minutes before you move on. Write what you met in the dark, and what you’re carrying back up. Then do one small thing to return: drink some water, eat something, step outside.
In the weeks after, look for Venus low in the east before sunrise from early November. She returns as the morning star.
The story underneath
This journey follows the descent of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess and Queen of Heaven and Earth, who is associated with Venus. She goes down into the underworld, and at each gate she is stripped of something she carried. She releases layers of identity, pride and the false masks that keep her from being a truly powerful and wise Queen.
She arrives in the underworld with nothing, and she meets her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld, who is often read as her own shadow. There she goes through a profound death and rebirth. Stripped back to her true essence, she begins her ascent and returns a renewed, wiser, more profound Queen.
On Saturday 24 October, at around 1:44pm here in Australia, Venus meets the Sun in the sky. This is called a conjunction, and this journey mirrors it. When Venus is this close to the Sun, we can’t see her from Earth. She disappears from view, and then she returns as the morning star.
Venus will remain retrograde until 14 November, moving back through Libra after the conjunction. This journey may support you if you feel old stories loosening, or if you are meeting fear or a sense of lacking power.
Walk with the Queen of Heaven and Earth through the process this ancient goddess experienced: letting go of pride, fear, arrogance and the masks, to meet what is truly valuable in you. These layers are often part of what keeps us feeling low in self-worth. Face the ego, face the shadow, and loosen its hold on you during this powerful transit.
Venus meets the Sun at the midpoint of her retrograde, in nearly the same part of the sky where she did in October 2018. About every eight years she returns to the same point, so it can be worth asking: what was beginning to end for you then, and what is asking to end now?
I created this journey for a group of women in 2024, and it has stayed with me. I wanted to offer it to you, at the moment it belongs.
If you’d like company
If this stirs something and you'd like company with it,
my one-to-one sessions are open.
My four-week course, Returning - A Four-Week Journey into the power of practice, begins 1 November.
Journey well!
And I’d love to hear how the journey was for you. You’re welcome to email me, or message me on Instagram @soulfulguiding.