In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth by Tikva Frymer-Kensky

Here’s some more baubles from the Goddess horde I found at the Kiwanis, though in the end Frymer-Kensky, coming from a Jewish perspective, argues for a "radical Monotheism," i.e., no supernatural entities of any kind except for old Jee Hova, meaning no Sophia, angels, Santa Claus, or, presumably, Jesus. Being a Michigan grad her scholarship is, naturally, pristine and she can actually speak all that ancient lingo, enabling her to be more accurate than the New Agey Goddess testifiers. One of my customers knew her, and said she was a great and brilliant, if somewhat ill starred, gal, who is no longer with us. Here’s to you Tikva, your words live on:

Inanna represents the nondomesticated woman, and exemplifies all the fear and attraction that such a woman elicits. She is the exception to the rule, the woman who does not believe in societally approved ways, the goddess who models the crossing of gender lines and the danger it presents.

Even in their divinity, goddesses were never far from their femininity.

For females, their power in nature is defined by sex.

Inanna was the very embodiment of sexual attraction and lust, the one on whose presence all sexual desire and copulation depends.

Inanna/Ishtar represents the attraction necessary for all sexual copulation, regardless of its social purpose or value.

But at the core of the ritual was an act of sexual congress between king and goddess-figure. To the "holy lap" of Inanna, the king went "with lifted head" as a desired, awaited partner rather than as a supplicant. He came to the great fertile bed, which had been set up for the ritual, strewn with grasses and covered for Inanna. There, in bed, Inanna gazed at him with shining countenance, caressed him and embraced him. Their sexual union was intended to promote the fertility of the land.

The sexual conjoining of king and goddess demonstrated the metaphysical connection between human sexuality and the survival and regeneration of the world.

The sacred marriage is a multi leveled metaphor with powerful and poetic dimensions of meaning. The ritual involves sexual union with the goddess who represents that lust which allows for sexual union.

Human sexuality, familiar in its domestic import, is seen in this ritual as the known, visible component of the world’s regenerative process; it is the anatomical analogue of an aspect of cosmic renewal.

Sexuality is such an important force for renewal because sex unites. The sacred marriage is about union, about the coming together of the many elements that together make a fertile world.

Male and female appear as the interlocking pieces which combine to open the riches of the universe, The union of the two principals in the sacred marriage signifies, expresses and effects the meeting of the male-female axis of the world.

Inanna was the liminal deity, who transcended all boundaries and could bond with the king.

This marginality is, paradoxically, a source of her ongoing significance.

Amorous and available, she brings the king into the world of the gods, shrinking the distance between the divine and the human, providing a bridge through which blessings flow.

The later kings took part in a ritual that celebrated stability rather than fertility, order rather than union, monarchy rather than renewal.

Human sexuality has lost its power to express the congress of the gods except as a vague idea, and the interchange between divine and human is completely lost.

Pagan religions saw sexuality as part of the natural order, part of the same generative force that ultimately resulted in fertility. Erotic attraction had an integral place in the working of the cosmos. Sexuality could be sacred, part of the continuation of the cosmos. Sexual behavior did not make people less like the gods; on the contrary it reinforced their resemblance to the upper orders of being. Sexuality was part of the divine realm, most specifically of the female divine.

All of this religious dimension of sexuality disappears in biblical monotheism. God is not imagined below the waist.