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Detail of Painting ‘Astarte Syriaca.’

Goddess Ninkharsag—Ancient Powerful Mother who Faded into The Holy Ghost

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The tale of our creation we know from the Bible is only half the story—one which has been heavily edited. But have you ever wondered how god created male and female in his image? There are other sources that give alternate accounts, filling in missing details or answering questions raised by reading Genesis. The Jews wrote their religious texts while in captivity in Babylon, using the Sumerian and Assyrian tales of gods and goddesses as a basis, and then amending them to fit their own mythology and religion. It is in the Sumerian/Babylonian tales we find a different perspective on a well-known story.

The Anunnaki – A Different Version of a Well-Known Story

In ancient myth Enki and Enlil were known as two half-brothers fighting for control over Earth, with their father, Anu, undecided as to who should succeed him. Their half-sister was Sud, and she was held in the highest esteem by the Anunnaki, and had her own base of power on a sacred mountain, Eridu.

The Sumerian Pantheon. (Fredsvenn)

It was said the tradition among the Anunnaki was to secure the bloodlines through mating half-siblings (never full-blooded siblings). So even if a male produced an heir with his concubine or wife, if he then had a son with his half-sister, that child would be the heir presumptive.

This was the base of the disagreement between Enki and Enlil, which we see replicated in the story of Abraham and his sons. Abraham had a child with Hagar, and their son Ishmael was the eldest and should have been the heir, but his wife Sarah was, according to some accounts, Abraham’s half-sister and so their son Isaac had precedence.

Whether it was to keep the family together and bring peace to the warring brothers, or because she had plans for her own descendants, Sud mated with both Enki and Enlil, producing heirs. The result was such that the next generation found themselves continuing the dispute and quite often Sud had to be called in to settle wars.

As a result of her peace efforts and in acknowledgement of her accomplishments as a scientist, including the creation of humans, she was given the honorific ‘Lady of Life’, or Mammu/Mama and became known from then on as Ninkharsag. She is the mother-goddess that we know in many forms, (though not Mother-Earth, which is Tiamat or Gaia), the creator of life whose milk nourishes kings.

Akkadian cylinder seal impression depicting a vegetation goddess, possibly Ninhursag, sitting on a throne surrounded by worshippers (circa 2350-2150 BC). (Public Domain)

Ninkharsag and the Creation of Humanity

As far as we know, legend indicates her motives in creating humans were unselfish. The Anunnaki wanted servants to do the menial tasks for them on Earth and so it fell to Ninkharsag and Enki to create these beings. After some time, Enki was not satisfied with their creation who “ate out of troughs like sheep” and wanted to give them more intelligence. Ninkharsag agreed and their experiments were eventually successful, though Enlil was outraged at what they had done, accusing them of making men “like Gods.”

While Ninkharsag’s motives were said to have been for the best —seeking to better the lives of their servants and give them intelligence with the hope they may have fulfilling lies—Enki was a little more complicated.

He needed soldiers, and in the texts, he and one of his sons outfitted and trained humans to wage war, which implies this is the fundamental reason for mankind’s willingness to war on behalf of ‘God’; it was supposedly ingrained into our ancestors at the moment of their awakening. It is apparent that though Enki may have bred soldiers, he was preferable as Earth’s ruler from humanity’s point of view, than his harsh and tyrannical brother.

As a result of the back and forth between the two brothers, Ninkharsag found herself siding with Enki more and more, and despising Enlil’s treatment of the humans, whom she loved. Every time they suffered, either as a result of war or natural disaster, she would weep as though for her own children.

The Goddess Loses Her Position

So, how did she lose her position? The mythological record states the war of arms became a war of ideology as mankind continued to grow in spite of Enlil’s efforts at population control. As man diversified, most found themselves in two camps: Enki, whose dominion was Magan, or Egypt, and Enlil, who had moved his power base from Sumer to what we know today as Jerusalem. All three were old by that time, and Ninkharsag was mockingly being referred to as “an old cow” behind her back by the other Anunnaki, though she still had power.

Enlil, however, felt himself betrayed—by his brother Enki not accepting his claim to the throne, and by Ninkharsag taking his side. Also he felt deceived by their creation of intelligent humans starting with Eve, and by Innana (often mistaken for Ninkharsag, but a different female), who ransacked his ‘Holy of Hollies’ in her quest to dominate the earth.

Inanna, the most prominent female deity in ancient Mesopotamia on the Ishtar Vase.

Inanna, the most prominent female deity in ancient Mesopotamia on the Ishtar Vase. (Public Domain)

We get the sense that Enlil becomes embittered by these setbacks and that this anger passes to his sons and grandsons, and the ideas spread, even to some of Enki’s sons. It was this, through an amalgamation of the different Sumerian Gods, that the figure of Yahweh is said to have come into being—one whose followers proclaimed that he wanted supremacy over all, declaring that man should have no other gods but him, and decreeing the others to be “demons”.

Though ancient texts say Enki was figuratively cast out of the Pantheon as the serpent, and Eve and Lillith demonized for their demonstration of will, it was still difficult for the priesthood to supplant Ninkharsag, who had become the middle-eastern Asherah (Astarte), the partner of El.

Called ‘Lady of Galera.’ Phoenician figure representing an ancient Mideastern deity, probably the goddess Astarte. (Luis Garcia/ CC BY 3.0)

In many places in the Old Testament, there were prophets begging the people to forget Asherah, and threatening god’s wrath and punishment for disobedience. Yet worship of the Mother was ingrained in them.

For example, the book of Jasher (who was the personal staff-bearer to Moses) which tells us the story of the Exodus, but from a different perspective, says that it was not Moses, but Miriam who was the spiritual leader of the tribes. At that point the Jews did not worship Jehovah, but Asherah, who was symbolized as a golden cow.

It was a struggle for Moses to wean his people away from the worship of Asherah and he had to resort to imprisoning Miriam, yet it still took hundreds of years during which time Yahweh and Asherah were worshipped together, before the priests were able to stop the worship of the goddess.

The Adoration of the Golden Calf.

The Adoration of the Golden Calf. (1633) (Public Domain)

It was not until their captivity in Babylon that the followers of Yahweh, who despised the influence of Asherah, took advantage of the vast libraries and texts to create their own religious texts—rewriting their history in the process. ‘God’ became a single being, creating man and woman in ‘his’ image.

What happened to Ninkharsag/Asherah? She could not be completely erased, so they rendered her ethereal, inconsequential. She was acknowledged as holy, yet held no personality, no voice, no force of will, or identity. In the end she became, literally, a ghost.

Top Image: Detail of Painting ‘Astarte Syriaca.’ (1881) Source: Public Domain

By Katrina Sisowath

Updated on May 13, 2021.

References

Stichin. The Wars of Gods and Men, HarperTorch; Reprint edition (1 April 2007)

Gardner.  Genesis of the Grail Kings, Fair Winds Press (January 1, 2002)

SpiritBride.org [Online] http://www.spiritbride.org/A/_ngel/1-00f/new_page_1aaa.htm

Proof Female HOLY SPIRIT, a SHE in Bible - Hebrew feminine more than grammatical gender [Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEhRXACPaf4

HaCohen. Dr., Dancing Erotically with the Golden Calf  [Online]  http://thetorah.com/dancing-erotically-with-the-golden-calf/

 

Comments

Just think on this: Earth age is approximately 4.6 BILLION years old.

Continents have shifted up down, melted and reborn over and over, and here ‘we’ are reading and retelling the story of Creation and actually believing the original names of ‘our’ creators, seriously.

Here is a story, millions of years ago the Earth was used as a “meat factory” by extraterrestrials, they bred the dinosaurs that fed their galactic empire. Their empire fell and the earth being volcanic extinguished all records of that. We are their remnants, of course that may be where our myth's/religions came from. In India they have their Vedas with their gods in Vilma's raining down destruction from the heavens. 
 

Is the Moon a spaceship?

How many civilizations have risen and fallen or actually left this Earth.

But the MAIN question is how can something be created out of NOTHING.

Who created the ‘big bang’ better yet who created the creator?
 

Barry Sears's picture

I believe the physical relationship has been lost. When you make the simple connection of the Holy Spirit to Mother Earth text becomes logical and meaningful. When you understand the Father image relates to our surrounding Celestial energy system, referred to biblically as a heavenly surrounding as a macrocosmic projection of the Earthly connections, messages take on new meanings. 
God is only confused with the Father figure. Traditionally God is the Universal figure a oneness hard to imagine. The Father who art in Heaven is a microcosmic structure of a God figure. These figures have become confusingly merged but they are totally different, they can be read separately and they reside in differently defined realms. 
This connection was detailed and defined by the Egyptians and broken down into the twelve anatomical parts for each structure. Here is a simple diagram showing the simple relationship.
http://www.alkhemi.co.uk/Nut-and-Geb-Chart(2872486).htm  (You may need to paste this into a search to see it)
This shows how the Earth represented as the body of Geb, connects to the Celestial cycle, represented by the body of Nut. It also indicates how this cycle connects to the human body. From here you can then connect the twelve zones around the equator to the twelve zones of the zodiac belt. The best place to start is Leo of Egypt to the constellation of Leo and Israel the land of Virgo to the constellation of Virgo. It was by studying the Earth that our ancient ones could interpret the creative energies of our surrounding Celestial structure.   
 

Barry Sears's picture

The zodiac signs are absolutely representations of each of the anatomical parts. They always have been. What is not esoteric but lost is the designation to the World zones. It is rather obvious however that each of the signs are Earthly observations and characteristics. The lost aspect is that each of the signs are from each of the twelve regions around the equatorial belt. This is why each region of the World has magnificent monuments that fit the signs and form the complete body. This site has a gallery above and has some pictures of zodiacs indicating the body connections. Here is a very modern site expressing some ideas, but the concept is recorded in some of the early Vedas as I am sure you are aware. 

http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/zodiacman.htm

 What I have been shown is that these regions recorded by our history actually directly match the picture of the World as a complete body as you can see in my profile picture. For example the heads of Easter Island if you raise the location is where the actual head of the World is. Here is a modern photo recorded as "the face of the World" by a very well established scientific organisation.   http://jules.unavco.org/VoyagerJr/EarthScope?

 

Obviously some of the other regions of the World match perfectly like the sphinx at the Leo zone and next Israel known as the land of Virgo, then the scales of Buddha....

Quote Jesus says, "Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit”

Once you see the structures of life with this connection many stories and messages become quite clear. As I mentioned I have studied for years the relationship between our animal forms and the connection to the Earth form, the results are enlightening.

Native's picture

Barry.
“Traditionally the zodiac signs refer to anatomical parts. Each sign is from a different region of the World and has a feature corresponding to that point of the anatomy”.

Is this view from a traditional astrological point of view or somewhat esoteric?

Barry Sears's picture

 

The relationship our ancient teachers have passed on is that the Celestial energy system is a complete figure broken down into parts of the body and each part of the Celestial body corresponds to the parts of the World body and so to our bodies. This connection was heavily observed by studying the World. The Celestial constellations are observations of the World projected back to the connecting region considered the source of energy. Traditionally the zodiac signs refer to anatomical parts. Each sign is from a different region of the World and has a feature corresponding to that point of the anatomy. For example Aries is the head and the animal characteristic is the horns from this point, Taurus is the neck of the bull....

Each sign has been recorded around the World. Leo the lungs is the sphinx region of Egypt. Virgo is next, the womb and is Israel, recorded in history through Mr Christ and the Virgin Mary. Sites all around the World correspond from the heads of Easter Island to the Merlion of Singapore. These also directly match the World picture of my profile as a complete body. I have studied over the past 25 years our Worlds animals and they also have features that match each part of the World. For example the big neck of the Buffalo comes from the neck region of the World. The springy thighs of the kangaroo comes from the thigh region of the World body.

Very interestingly there is also a physical correlation to the Celestial energy system, physically spiralling from the Northern Polaris to the Southern Polaris. 

With regards to gender I always refer to these structures as the World and Celestial bodies. From the region of India if you look at my picture you will be familiar with the special connection to the holy cow. The distinguishing feature of a cow is the udder which has a special connection to this region of the Worlds anatomy. This was realised thousands of years ago.

If you are considering ancient Celestial charts, it is known now that many of these are now considered ancient World charts and observations of Earth. The Earth charts rotate in the opposite direction to Celestial charts and were largely focused on the unique anatomical observations of life on Earth. 

Thank you for your references I shall explore them.

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Katrina Sisowath's picture

Katrina Sisowath

Katrina Sisowath, née Little, (1979--) was born in Frankfurt, Germany to an English father and American mother. Her formative years were spent in South-East Asia before returning to England to finish her studies. Deciding to follow in her father's footsteps,... Read More

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