I did the last Descent ritual from Rod and Ring in July, right after returning home from an amazing cruise vacation. I’ll try to remember to make a separate blog post about that! It was a month ago, and I still haven’t even gone through all of my photos and videos yet! I did spend a lot of time on my vacation reflecting on my spiritual journey and my relationship with the gods in preparation for the ritual. As always, I set up a travel shrine on my nightstand in the cabin.
But this post is about my ritual work.
In House of Dust, the supplicant comes face to face with the deities of the underworld after having already crossed the river Hubur and descended past the seven gates. It begins with reflecting upon the seven gifts from the gods that you received in Foundation and have given up in the previous Descent rituals.
I spent some time in meditation reflecting on how these gifts relate to experiences in my own life and what it means to give them up. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about that here, as it is a personal experience for everyone.
Then I had to vow to return to the underworld at my appointed time when the gods decree. I took this to mean that I am vowing to accept my mortality when it is time. I shouldn’t try to fight the inevitable. I will return to the underworld to stand before Ereshkigal and the other underworld powers, and not try to hold onto the world of the living as a ghost or whatever.
After completing the ritual and taking my leave from the underworld, I still had to send a replacement to take my place in the underworld. For this, I had to make a clay effigy, which I ritually brought to life with the Bringing Clay to Life ritual. This was based on the mythology that the gods created humans from clay mixed with their own blood. I used air dry clay made from natural ingredients so that it wouldn’t harm the environment and I buried it in the critter grave yard area of my garden. It had to be buried in a cemetery if possible. I consider this to technically be a cemetery, and it is a location that I can tend to every day to add more incense and flowers. I did my whole funerary ritual for this effigy and continued burning incense there for a week, and occasionally after.
In preparation of the temple dedication ceremony I’ll be doing as part of the Ascent portion of my initiation in September, I am rebuilding my shrines to honor all of the deities I have encountered on this journey. I already had a shrine to Ereshkigal, but I added a tablet with the names of all seven of the powers of the underworld. I also made a special icon for Gula since I do find myself praying to Her a lot. For Gula, who is a goddess of medicine and healing, and is associated with dogs, I made a clay dog with her name inscribed and a spot to hold this old-timey medicine bottle I found while digging in my garden a few years ago. (I also made similar icons for all of the deities of the Earth using items that represent Them. I’ll show them in a future post and/or video).
