Started to do a sketchy thing of Tanavir, then it turned into Asphodel (Broan finally gave me back my portfolio, so now Seventh Hour is even more on my mind, if that were possible...) and for some reason she's in some sort of strange playboy pinup pose (the concept of perspective will always defeat me- it was just so much easier to move her leg to the side and unbend her arms)...and naturally, when drawing Asphodel, I must draw Ereshkigal somewhere nearby, but since it's Ereshkigal, she's in an even more inappropriate pose...add my tendency to draw figures first, clothes later, and it looks like I'm drawing softcore.
*D'OI*
*sigh* It's that damn duology/symmetry/opposition of extremes obsession that I have, and the Innana/Ereshkigal myths personify that perfectly. Or rather, incredibly imperfectly; Innana was a trickster queen, swindling her father out of all his treasures; she got him drunk and made a toast, and asked for the secrets of metal, and earth; civilization, and sex; creation, and death. Enki, in his inebriation, gave her everything, and she fled back to her city accompanied by her loyal guardian, Ninshubur. Enki sent his flying monkeys after them, but Ninshubur was the original Xena and defeated them all.

Innana later put on all her rainments, all her armor, all the symbols of her power, and went to visit her sister in hell...Ereshkigal's husband had just died, and so Innana claimed to be going to comfort her sister. At the gate, they took her rod and staff, and at each subsequent door they took away more of her power until she met her sister, naked and helpless. She died. Ninshubur begged each of the father-gods to saver Innana, and one by one they turned her down until one finally agreed, and ordered Ereshkigal to give back her sister to the land of the living. Innana had gathered secrets in hell, secrets that none but her sister had known before, and she walked back from hell, retrieving her clothing and armor, crown, staff, and symbols of power. She was Innana, Queen of Heaven, now armed with all the powers of Hell.

See, back in the day, the menfolk all knew where the real power was- in the God-Wives of Egypt, in the Mother Goddesses of Europe, in the women. Innana bore no relation whatsoever to tame Hestia and petty Juno of later years. In some respects she resembles the original Aphrodite, the fertility goddess who made the sun rise with a toss of her hair- but Innana was no ocean born child of a mollusc, sprung from sea foam and Saturn's fallen genitals (they always leave that part out, you know- in the war against the old gods, they cut off his cock and it fell into the sea, and from the blood sprang sea foam, and from the foam, Aphrodite); Innana was the daughter of the King of the gods, and a chief goddess in her own right.

I love this stuff. Going back to the old, old days...primal and true and just as complicated as now. >:D