Pagan sideblog of Lauxesa2

18, pagan, works with Queen Ishtar and Lady Aphrodite

[90sfantasyanimestuff]

Character from Anearth Fantasy Stories. Source.

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

deity fun fact!

despite being a love goddess, Queen Ishtar has never been documented as a goddess of marriage or motherhood. it “would not match her disposition” which is so funny to me because like 😭 she’s got a whole husband right there that she loves and cares about but that’s not the focus at all.

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

the urge to buy this is overwhelming me. someone help talk me out of it

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

remember to cleanse your shrines and altars! and that includes the representations and statues of your deities (with permission of course)

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

as a wikipedia warrior the wiki page for Inanna is like always open and i am always looking at it, so lmk if we should do like a fun fact of the week or something about my queen (or anything else)

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

all of the things included in Lady Aphrodite’s shrine! she helped me make it <333

it includes:

heart shaped flower box

rocks and stones, including a desert rose and jade my sister gave me

nail file

lipstick

nettle balm from Alaska

bracelet my mom made me

evil eye

dried rose

cute pig <3

mirror

lotus flower picture with significant personal meaning

painting i got of hawaii

and a statue of herself shown below

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

Queen Ishtar’s shrine! i move it sometimes but it mostly lives on the couch 😅 she picked all the decor and i added some crow feathers afterwards

btw she picked the plate as her representation i really have no idea 🤷‍♀️ it looks nice though <3

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

witchy question!

what’s your favorite magic discipline? (divination, shadow work, death work, deity work, etc.)

what’s a kind of magic you haven’t spent much time with?

my favorite is deity work and nature work, and i would like to spend more time with shadow work

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

witchy question!

if you have an altar, what do you use it for? what does it include?

i have two, one for each of my ladies, and there’s a bunch of things they wanted and places for offerings

[lauxesa2]

we gotta normalize wearing amulets and talismans. like yeah i know it looks like a skull it’s literally for protection and confidence??? how will i protect myself without it besides my knife

[lauxesa2]

made this a million years ago on pinterest

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

the best parts of turning 18 (so far) are

1. i can now buy the handcrafted sickle from etsy that is really big and sharp and doubles as a weapon

2. i am planning on getting my septum pierced

3. tea party birthday party (and how fancy i got dressed up)

4. no more screen time limit

5. no one can stop me from buying a sword

[violetmoondaughter]

The star of Ishtar

The Octagram symbol is a star ideogram that commonly appears in ancient Babylonian iconography. The eight-pointed star is usually associated with ancient goddesses such as Ishtar, Innana, Isis and Venus. These goddesses were all seen as protectress of love, fertility, beauty, divine law and power.

The symbol was originally seen as a representation of the seven heavens ruled by the goddess and later became a representation of the planet Venus associated with fertility goddesses. The planet is the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Sun and the Moon and in the past, it was referred to as the morning or evening star. In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven".

In many myths, Inanna’s descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky, setting in the West and then rising again in the East.

The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both to the myth as well as Inanna's dual nature. Other theories recognize the story of Inanna's descent into the underworld as a reference to an astronomical phenomenon associated with retrograde Venus.

The symbol refers to the cosmic power of the goddess as ruler of sky and heavens and connected with the transcendental world. Her power stands in the mystery of magic and creation of the universe itself and for this reason the octagram became a powerful sigil used in antiquity as a devotional iconography connected with the goddess worshippers.

[bi-numi-aliyani]

A little write-up on the queerness of Lady ʿAshtart

"Star of Ghassul" wall painting from Teleilat Ghassul; Ghassulian culture, Late Chalcolithic, c. 4000–3900 BCE. (Drabsch and Bourke, 2019)

In the poorly-understood religion of preliterate Semitic-speaking peoples, the planet Venus appears to have been worshipped as a male Morning Star (ʿAthtar) and a female Evening Star (ʿAthtart) ("The Sumerian goddess Inanna (3400–2200 BC)" (1994), Paul Collins, pp. 110–11). This is reversed in the Northwest Semitic scheme for reasons I can't quite remember (Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (2002), Dennis Pardee, p. 275). This may have even deeper, more mystical roots, with it being supposed based on their art that the people of the Chalcolithic Ghassulian culture conceived of Venus and its motions in relation to the cycles of life and death (The Mysterious Wall Paintings of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan: In Context (2015), Bernadette Drabsch, pp. 32, 57, 154, 162).

Ancient depictions of ʿAshtart in gender-ambiguous form (Sugimoto, 2015)

Although ʿAshtart and ʿAshtar (the "th" sound shifting to a "sh" in most of the relevant Semitic languages) developed with their own distinct identities in the various places they were worshipped, the gender-fluid aspect never quite faded away. Some ancient depictions of ʿAshtart give her a beard and even a penis combined with feminine characteristics such as breasts ("The Judean Pillar Figurines and the 'Queen of Heaven'", David T. Sugimoto, in Transformation of a Goddess: Ishtar ­– Astarte ­– Aphrodite (2014), Sugimoto (ed.), pp. 158–164; see also the case of a peculiar mask from Carthage). An association with gender-variant priests is also quite ancient and consistent, as seen with the gala of Inanna-Ishtar and the eunuch priesthood of ʿAttarʿatta (a combination of ʿAshtart and ʿAnat; Atargatis in Greek). This fascinatingly found its way as far as the Eurasian steppe, as after incursions by the Scythians reached ʿAshtart's cult center in Ashkelon they began maintaining a transfeminine priesthood, whose members were called Anarya ("un-man", Greek: Enaree), who served the androgynous goddess Artimpasa (Herodotus gives pejorative accounts in Histories 1.105 and 4.76).

Terracotta mask of the bearded ʿAshtart; Carthage necropolis, c. mid-7th – early 6th century BCE. (The Louvre)

As a Canaanite Pagan and a trans woman, it means something very special that even the Queen of Heaven could look like me.

[whencyclopedia]

Mesopotamian Religion: Daily Life as a Form of Worship

Mesopotamian religion was central to the people’s lives. Humans were created as co-laborers with their gods to hold off the forces of chaos and to keep the world running smoothly. As in ancient Egypt, the gods were honored daily for providing humanity with life and sustenance, and people were expected to give back through works that honored the gods.

It was understood that, in the beginning, the world was undifferentiated chaos and that order was established by the gods. The gods had separated the sky from the earth, the land from the water, saltwater from freshwater, plants from animals, and this order needed to be maintained. As the gods had many different responsibilities, humans were created to help them in the operation of the world. The meaning of life, therefore, was to live in accordance with this understanding, and so one’s daily life would be a form of worship.

Every city had a temple complex clearly visible from afar for its ziggurat, the monumental architecture most closely associated with Mesopotamia, which was usually topped by a temple or shrine, elevating the officiant closer to the gods. The gods were understood as inhabiting their own realm but also living in the temple, in the statues created in their images in every city. This belief was already firmly in place by the time of the Uruk period (circa 4100-3100 BCE) and developed fully during the Early Dynastic period (circa 2900-2350/2334 BCE).

Although Mesopotamian religion changed in focus and the names of the deities over the centuries, the central understanding of the relation between humanity and the gods did not. As late as circa 650, the people of Mesopotamia still adhered to the belief that they were the gods’ co-workers who assisted in the maintenance of order. This paradigm only changed after 651 with the invasion of the Muslim Arabs and the new monotheistic religious model of Islam.

Mesopotamian Creation Myth

According to the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish (meaning “When on High”), life began after an epic struggle between the elder gods and the younger. In the beginning, there was only water swirling in chaos and undifferentiated between fresh and bitter. These waters separated into two distinct principles: the male principle, Apsu, which was freshwater, and the female principle, Tiamat, saltwater. From the union of these two principles, all the other gods came into being.

These younger gods were so loud in their daily concourse with each other that they came to annoy the elders, especially Apsu, and, on the advice of his vizier, he decided to kill them. Tiamat, however, was shocked at Apsu’s plot and warned one of her sons, Ea, the god of wisdom and intelligence. With the help of his brothers and sisters, Ea put Apsu to sleep and then killed him. Out of the corpse of Apsu, Ea created the earth and built his home; though, in later myths, “the Apsu” came to mean the watery home of the gods or the realm of the god Enki.

Tiamat, upset now over Apsu’s death, raised the forces of chaos to destroy her children herself. Ea and his siblings fought against Tiamat and her allies, her champion, Quingu, the forces of chaos, and Tiamat’s creatures, without success until, from among them, rose the great storm god Marduk. Marduk swore he would defeat Tiamat if the gods would proclaim him their king. This agreed to, he entered into battle with Tiamat, killed her, and from her body, he created the sky. He then continued on with the act of creation to make human beings from the remains of Quingu as helpmates to the gods.

According to scholar D. Brendan Nagle:

Despite the gods’ apparent victory, there was no guarantee that the forces of chaos might not recover their strength and overturn the orderly creation of the gods. Gods and humans alike were involved in the perpetual struggle to restrain the powers of chaos, and they each had their own role to play in this dramatic battle. The responsibility of the dwellers of Mesopotamian cities was to provide the gods with everything they needed to run the world.

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⇒ Mesopotamian Religion: Daily Life as a Form of Worship

[warmedbylight]

choose your venus

[ishtar-and-aphrodite]

funny bc i literally interact with two very similar deities that may be simply two parts of a whole i love being a venus fan <3

[alexandriaellisart]

lady of the lions