As I mentioned in a previous post, this month I did the Rod and Ring ritual for Ningal. I did have a brief experience with this goddess during the previous full moon before this new moon ritual.
The previous full moon, I also felt a connection to Ningal during ritual work. This was kind of strange to me, since I didn’t intend to connect with her. I was expecting to feel a connection to Nanna as I gazed at the moon, and maybe Marduk, as Jupiter was visible as well. (He keeps kind of showing up, but I don’t quite know how to work with him or if I even want to tbh.) I wasn’t doing a ritual for any specific purpose, just some light trance work to see what came through.
At this point, while gazing upon the full moon, I got the impression of Ningal kind of introducing herself, and that she wanted to be acknowledged as a deity of the moon in her own right, not just as the consort of Nanna. Understandable. Women are too often cast aside in the shadows of their male counterparts. Deities are apparently not immune to this. While Ningal is a loving mother and wife, she is also much more than that, and I think she wants her worshipers/Mesopotamian polytheists in general to acknowledge that. At least that’s the impression I got. And perhaps that the full moon is when she should be acknowledged (while Nanna, at least in this section of Rod and Ring, is acknowledged at the dark moon. Not sure if the later sections are the same, I haven’t read ahead).
At this point, I had forgotten that my next step in the Rod and Ring journey was with Ningal. I had it in my mind that Geshtinanna was next for some reason. But during this full moon experience, I got the impression that no, Ningal would be seeing me at the new moon. I double checked the book the next day, and sure enough, Ningal was, in fact, next.
During her ritual for Rod and Ring, I got similar impressions of her, and I think I felt a deeper connection to her than I did to some of the other deities that I’ve encountered in this initiatory journey thus far. I also got the impression that I should be honoring her in some way as part of my regular practice, particularly at the full moon as a moon goddess. Though she is the consort of the moon god Nanna, I don’t recall actually reading anything from scholarly sources that she was actually regarded as an astral deity the way Nanna, Inanna, and Utu are. I think I recall seeing random neopagan type sources refer to her as a moon goddess however, so maybe other people have had similar personal gnosis experiences as well, though you have to be careful with that sort of thing since a lot of neopagan websites/books just straight up make things up, especially the ones that just list a bunch of deities from completely different pantheons as simple random correspondences. So disrespectful, both to the deities and to the entire cultures to which they originally belonged.
I also got a sort of mental image of doing some kind of ritual honoring her over the ocean, perhaps on a boat or near the coast, with a particular focus on the tides. If we regard her as a moon goddess, this makes sense. Ningal is also the daughter of Enki, who is associated with water. The natural forces of water combined with the influence of the moon results in the tides, so I think it would be apt to regard her as a metaphysical embodiment of tides. The gods are essentially personifications of natural phenomenon and aspects of human experiences anyway. Traditionally, she is associated with reed marshes, a type of environment joining water and earth, not the ocean, however.
After making that connection, I did, however, find one small bit of evidence linking Ningal to the full moon and to tides. Last week, I read the book Evil Speech Stand Aside: Ancient Mesopotamian Ishib Magic for the Modern Magician by Vanessa Kindell (I haven’t tried all the rituals from that book yet). At the end of the book, the author listed some of the Mesopotamian deities along with some of their qualities. Ningal was described as a goddess of the reeds, the tides, and the full moon. The book didn’t cite where this information came from (historical source, vs unverified personal gnosis, vs random non-scholarly source, etc), but it is evidence that at least one other person who worships the Mesopotamian gods has made a similar connection.
A side note on unverified personal gnosis: I think the gods give different people different information because they just think its funny to watch humans argue over trivial shit. And it kind of is. At least that’s how I interpret it. Aside from cases of people just making things up.
I wasn’t really able to connect with Ningal this past full moon. I don’t know if it was some kind of personal block, or the fact that it was also a lunar eclipse that day. I don’t know enough about the effects of astrological phenomena on such things to know for sure, but it felt like it was blocking a connection from being made or something, even though the eclipse was earlier in the day. Or it may have been I was just too distracted/focused on other things at the time. It happens. There will be plenty more full moons to experiment with.
Lately I’ve also kind of been associating her with the Queen of Cups tarot card whenever that card comes up in a reading. I know Mesopotamian mythology doesn’t completely lend itself to the symbolism of tarot, but certain deities tend to show up regularly in my readings lately. I haven’t even been using my Babylonian deck much lately, but they still show up!