The spheres Eris rules over are scary. We don’t look forward to having chaos thrown at us, but it is the very thing that sparks changes and teaches us who we really are. Without Eris, we are nothing more than an untested blade. Will we break under pressure or endure? Well, there is only one way to find out.
The emotions Eris rules over are also scary. Jealousy left unchecked, as in the case of the three goddesses competing for the apple, can be destructive. Emotions are messy, and looking at the darker ones is something we don’t like to do. But our darker emotions are not things we should hide from or keep at bay. Once mastered, they can be useful tools and are just as much a part of us as the emotions we deem more pleasant.
Eris reminds us that a healthy dissatisfaction with our circumstances can actually be a driving positive force. It can lead us to better ourselves after seeing what someone else has achieved. We know if we work hard and hone our craft we can achieve what the other person has or exceed that. That Hesiod says that there are two Erises signifies that there are two ways strife can drive us. It’s our choice.
Devotional Work and Offerings for Eris
My first experiences with Eris were through a coven-mate who was dedicated to both Eris and the Morrigan. Eris had arrived in her life during a time of upheaval, and ironically the goddess of strife helped her mend things in a relationship that had turned stormy. When the group worked together, we would often call on the Morrigan, Hekate, and Eris together, each goddess representing the personal dedication of different people in the group. As much as calling those three together sounds like a bad idea, it all worked quite well. The three balanced each other out in different ways, all having some connection to either strife or being a psychopomp. Eris’s energy felt sultry and smoky, perhaps even alluring. She is rather shameless, knowing that her gift can cause a breakthrough or hinder a person. She never felt malicious in my mind. Just because we don’t value strife doesn’t mean it isn’t useful or necessary. She does not cause strife for the sake of chaos—at least not all the time—but rather knows that we need to be shaken up sometimes. We need challenges to overcome lest we remain stagnant.
My own offerings to Eris include rich red wine and apples (preferably yellow ones). When I call on her, I have a small bowl of earth mixed with a few pinches of salt, echoing Hesiod’s description of “set her in the roots of the earth,” as a reminder that strife can be a useful thing. Eris’s nature can inspire either the blood of war to soak into the ground or us to hone our crafts and skills, and that spirit of strife can create a fertile ground for us to grow in. Which direction we take her energy is up to us.
Honoring Eris is a lesson in embracing chaos. The more you try to avoid it the more she will bring it on. Working with Eris demands that we see the good that chaos and strife create in the wake of their upheaval, instead of just seeing them as negative things. Part of Eris’s gift is teaching us that we can’t control everything. This is a very difficult lesson if you are the type of person who likes to be in control. But Eris reminds us it’s a false sense of control. The world is full of chaos, even thrives on it in some cases, and we have to learn to roll with the punches and sudden change if we are to survive. Being adaptable to change and not letting it break us is perhaps the most important thing she can teach us.
As with any deity, be careful what you ask for. Eris’s wisdom can be extremely insightful and helpful, but ask her for her chaos and don’t expect it to be any less than a hailstorm. Sometimes we need our lives to be stirred up, but be clear about what you ask her for.
Invocation to Eris
Lady of Chaos
Harsh Strife
I give you your honored due
Fertile Chaos
Soaking the battlefield
Stirring men’s hearts to strive
Sister and companion of Ares
Teach me that struggle is necessary
Teach me to walk on the knife’s edge
To dance on the ruins of the old
And welcome the uncertainty of change
Ritual to Know Thyself
You Will Need:
Salt
Bowl of water
Incense or other offerings to Eris
Wine (or dark-colored juice)
Apple
Mix a few pinches of the salt in the bowl of water. Use the bowl of water to wash your hands before you begin the ritual and sprinkle some around the area you are working, saying these or similar words:
I wash my hands before seeking the praises of the gods
May all pollution be gone from me
Light the incense and waft the smoke over the altar. Take the glass of wine and hold it over the altar, saying,
Eris, I offer you incense in your honor
I bring you wine and offer it in praise of you
Invoke Eris or simply see her standing before you. Let the image settle firmly in your mind. What does she look like? What color is her hair, her eyes? Does she say anything to you? When you are ready, hold the apple in your hands, saying,
Eris, who tears down the wall
Eris, who is strife
Who challenges us to strive
To know our own passions
May I know the fullness of my worth
May I know the measure of my successes and failures
May I know pain and chaos bring with them wisdom
And understand that can only be felt, not granted
Eris, who holds the apple of discord
May I know
I am the fairest
Cut the apple in half and leave one half as an offering to Eris. Take a bite of the other. Spend some time meditating and speaking with Eris. Ask her to help you see your own worth and know it. Ask her to help you let go of the need for others to see you a certain way or the feeling that their judgment is more important than your own.
Spell to Calm Chaos
Sometimes we find ourselves surrounded by chaos. Everything is coming at us at once, from all directions. It is generally believed that a deity that can cause something can also take it away. The Egyptians believed Sekhmet brought pestilence, yet physicians called on her to ward off disease. Likewise, Eris, who is known for causing chaos, can also be called upon for taking it away.
You Will Need:
Red wine
Bowl (optional)
Cast a circle if you wish. Call to Eris and see her standing before you. Pour the red wine as an offering into a bowl or on the ground if you are working in an outdoor space. Say,
You who are the whirlwind and churn the storm
Let the storm quiet to a breeze
Let this chaos return to peace
Eris, I leave you this offering
Turn the tides for me, Eris!
In your mind’s eye see a storm churning over your head calm to a summer breeze. See things calming down in your life, and hold that image in your mind until it is perfectly clear. When you are ready, thank Eris.
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36. Homer, The Iliad of Homer, book 5, lines 440–45.
37. Hesiod, Works & Days; Theogony, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1993), lines 226–32.
38. Evelyn-White, Homeric Hymns and Homerica, lines 11–24.
12
Ereshkigal
You stand at the base of a mountain. Its rises up far into the sky, so high you cannot see its peak. But it is not to see the highs of heaven that you have come to this place. No, you know those heights; you have ruled them, yet what lays below, what dwells in the underworld, is a mystery to you. On your brow is a crown. You touch it for a moment, thinking of what it represents to you. Is it your rank in life? How others see you? Your job? On your wrist is a glistening bracelet, beads and metal entwined with gems. You touch this briefly too and think of the skills it represents to you, the things you are best at and
have created with your own hands. You touch the fine fabric you wear. It is intricate and woven with care. You think of what it represents to you, the things you hold closest to yourself, the things you are the proudest of, your achievements. Last, you touch the breastplate you wear over your garment, beautifully hammered and decorated with spiraling images of animals, crafted to be stronger than any blade. All your finery, your symbols of rank and achievement, makes you feel confident you can complete this journey and win the mysteries of this realm.
Carved into the side of the mountain is an enormous stone doorway. It is the first of many gateways you know that lead to your sister’s realm. It towers at twice your height, but you feel confident and knock loudly. It is only a few moments before the massive stone door opens inward and a cloaked figure welcomes you, gesturing for you to enter through the door. You enter the darkness still unafraid and bold. But before you get more than a few steps into the dark, the gatekeeper’s hand bars your progress.
“What is this?” you ask.
The gatekeeper, without asking, takes the crown from your head. “Quiet. The ways of the underworld are perfect and cannot be questioned.”
You do not protest, but you feel just a twinge of unease at the crown’s loss. Without your status, what are you? But you continue on into the dark. The passages of this place are made of polished black stone, and if there had been windows, you could imagine yourself in a grand castle. Soon you find yourself at another door like the first one. Another gatekeeper stands before it. You tell the gatekeeper you wish to pass, and without a word the gatekeeper steps forward and takes the bracelet from your arm.
Shocked, you ask, “What is this?”
The gatekeeper motions for you to pass through the stone doorway and says only, “Quiet. The ways of the underworld are perfect and cannot be questioned.”
You pass through more rattled now. Without the things you have created, without the things you excel at and your achievements, what are you? But still you go on. You can’t give up now.
Soon, as you make your way deeper into the dark, you come to another doorway and another gatekeeper. This gatekeeper too opens the door for you, and you think you will pass without consequence when the gatekeeper reaches out and easily takes the breastplate from you. The straps undo of their own accord.
“What is this?” you ask angrily.
The gatekeeper motions for you to pass through the stone doorway and says only, “Quiet. The ways of the underworld are perfect and cannot be questioned.”
You look deeper into the dark, uncertain now. What are you without the armor that protects you? But you must go on. There is no choice.
Traveling deeper and deeper, you come to a final gateway. You know the heart of the underworld must lie behind these doors, and there is nothing else you can possibly give up to the gatekeeper. At least, that is what you think at first. The gatekeeper reaches out, and as he touches your fine clothes, the seams open up at his touch and easily flow to his hands.
Sobbing, you ask, “What is this?”
The gatekeeper motions for you to pass through the stone doorway and says only, “Quiet. The ways of the underworld are perfect and cannot be questioned.”
Naked, you walk through the doors. What are you then? you ask yourself. You aren’t really sure. You thought you were all the things the gatekeepers stripped you of. If you are not those things, then what lies beneath all of that? What are you? How is it that you remain, can even exist, without those things? Aren’t those the things that define you? Make you? You are not sure now.
You walk into the heart of the underworld naked, arms wrapped around yourself. And there you find the sister you sought from this journey’s beginning. Ereshkigal, cloaked in dark robes, sits on a throne carved on black stone.
“Do not cower so. Yes, you do not wear your beautiful crown, nor are you protected by your armor or adorned with your fine clothes or gems. But your worth was never weighed by them. The being I see before me is in all its glory unfettered and has more worth naked than hidden and encumbered by all the things you think you are. It is not until we strip away the illusions, the things we tell ourselves that we must be, that we learn what it is that we truly are.” She steps toward you and takes your face in her hands comfortingly. “The ways of the underworld are perfect and cannot be questioned. Their perfection is painful and harsh, but when we have survived their trials, we learn our own worth. Stripped bare, we gain this knowledge, and it is something that cannot be taken away from us.”
You think of how you can define yourself without the things that the gatekeepers have taken away from you. You let the shape of that being fill your senses. Without all the things you think you needed, you still exist. Stripped bare of everything, you still exist.
“Remember who you truly are,” Ereshkigal whispers, and you promise yourself you will.
The Mesopotamian goddess Ereshkigal (Great Lady under Earth) was a goddess of Irkalla, the underworld and land of the dead. Her main temple was located in Kutha, an ancient city whose location would have been in modern-day Iraq. Our earliest record of her stories comes from an offering list dating to the twenty-first century BCE. In the Sumerian creation myth, Ereshkigal was created with her twin brother Enki from the tears of the god An. Although the remains of the story are fragmented, we know that the primordial dragon Kur stole Ereshkigal away to the underworld. What happened next is unclear, only that Enki returned from the underworld with seeds that would produce the Tree of Knowledge and that Ereshkigal retains the underworld as her own realm.
Ereshkigal is best known for her interactions with her sister Inanna (in Babylonian mythology her sister is named Ishtar). In The Descent of Inanna the goddess Inanna descends to the underworld, telling her advisors to come retrieve her if she does not return. She told them Enki knew the secrets of the herbs that restored life and that he could return her to life if she died. As she descends through the seven gates of the underworld, Inanna is forced to remove the symbols of her status, until finally she must remove her clothes and stand before her sister naked.
Inanna’s reasons for entering the underworld are not always clear. When she meets the first of Ereshkigal’s gatekeepers, she tells him she wishes to observe the funeral rites of Ereshkigal’s husband, who had just been killed. The details of Gugalanna’s death can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and while it is not mentioned in The Descent of Inanna, it is Inanna’s own actions that cause the death of her sister’s husband. Yet when she finally reaches the depth of the underworld, she tells Ereshkigal to rise from her throne that Inanna may sit upon it, perceivably wishing to take ownership of both the realm above and the realm below. For her arrogance she is judged and hung from a hook where her corpse begins to rot. When Enki learns of this he laments, “My daughter craved the great heaven and she craved the great below as well. … The divine powers of the Underworld are divine powers which should not be craved, for whoever gets them must remain in the underworld. Who, having got to that place, could then expect to come up again?” 39
As Inanna had guessed, Enki eventually sends servants into the underworld to find his daughter and give her a concoction that would restore her to life. But Ereshkigal decrees that no one who has died has ever left the underworld and that if Inanna is to return to the world above, she must send someone in her place.
Returning to the world of the living, Inanna passes three of her servants, properly mourning their mistress. Yet when she finds her husband, he is not in mourning at all but instead feasting. She then chooses him to be her replacement in the underworld.
The Descent of Inanna has many layers. Like many myths, there are several lessons you can take from it. On one level Ereshkigal and Inanna are just different sides of the same goddess. Ereshkigal dwells in the underworld, both the shadow and the true self devoid of ego. Inanna is the conscious self, journeying down to the depths to confront her shadow and know her inner s
elf. And when she finally confronts her shadow, she demands her throne, not quite accepting the truth the shadow offers. To reach the throne in the first place, she must shed her illusions by leaving items of status and her clothes at the gates, representing the shedding of the ego. When Inanna is revived and leaves the underworld, she is reminded that part of her still belongs to that realm. Ereshkigal tells her no one ever escapes the underworld, just as no one ever escapes their shadow. Thus, she must send someone in her place, reminding her she will always be tied to that realm in some way even when she leaves it. The illusions she carried with her before her journey are also stripped away when she returns to the world of the living and sees her husband’s behavior with new eyes. This interpretation is perhaps the most acknowledged one, but there are other layers of meaning to the story of Ereshkigal and her sister.
The second layer to Ereshkigal’s story is that we are all responsible for our actions, and that our actions have consequences. When the hero Gilgamesh rejects the sexual advance of Inanna, in retribution she sends her sister’s husband, Gugalanna, to punish the hero. Gugalanna, better known as the Bull of Heaven, could make the earth shake with his feet and drink up entire rivers. But Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu manage to kill the bull. Enkidu goes as far as to wave a piece of the dismembered bull at Inanna, telling her he would do the same to her if he caught her. Gugalanna’s death and subsequent funeral rites are the reason Inanna gives for entering the underworld. It should not be surprising that her sister insists she take responsibility for her actions. In The Descent of Inanna we are told Inanna is judged by her sister along with the judges of the underworld and that she let out a cry of guilt. Being judged and hung on the hook then can be seen as paying the price for the death she caused. Her father of course restores her to life and she returns to the world above, but not without the price of sending someone in her place. Justice is served, and as Inanna travels to the underworld willingly, this may show that she planned to be judged by her sister and pay the price in order to make peace. Ereshkigal does not drag her sister to the underworld, although she is powerful enough to do so. In one story when the god of disease insults Ereshkigal by being rude to one of her servants, she has him dragged down to the underworld to explain himself. She does not do so with her sister. Instead she allows Inanna to be the one who chooses to make amends.
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