Myth Work as a Tantric Path

Something interesting dawned on me the other day while I was on my way to work.

While on the train, reading Journey Without Goal by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, I realized that there was a resonance between the principles of myth work and his tantric teachings. This had me questioning whether the myth of Inanna’s descent could be used as a tantric text.

Several key elements of Tantra—especially teachings involving goddesses, fertility, and ritual union—can be traced to pre-Vedic shamanic practices that were prevalent across the Indian subcontinent. These practices likely preserve echoes of older ritual traditions that were mystical, transformational, and mediatory in nature. While there is no historical or cultural connection between these traditions and the Sumerian myth of Inanna, both Inanna’s descent and tantric teachings share remarkably similar symbolic themes.

These parallels suggest not direct cultural transmission, but rather a shared archetypal framework—one that has been, and continues to be, used across cultures to expand awareness and facilitate profound inner transformation through symbolic engagement with dissolution, rebirth, and the integration of the self.

In many ways, the myth reflects the inner journey described in Tantra—a descent into shadow, ego dissolution, followed by an expansion into liberated awareness. Both understand that transformation is not passive. It’s a deliberate engagement with meaning through embodied practice.

Here are some examples of the ways in which both resonate:

Descent into the Shadow / Inner Realms
- Inanna: Voluntarily descends into the Underworld, leaving the world of power and status behind.
- Tantra: Encourages conscious descent into the self—into the shadow, unconscious, or repressed aspects through practices like charnel ground meditation, ego dissolution, and kundalini awakening.
  - Shared Archetype: Transformation begins by going inward and downward, not up and away. This descent is seen as essential to true spiritual realization.

Stripping Away the Ego / Layers of Identity
- Inanna: Passes through seven gates, removing royal garments, symbols of status, and power at each.
- Tantra: Often uses the metaphor of chakras or energetic layers that are purified or transcended; the practitioner sheds egoic attachments to reach the core self.
  - Shared Archetype: True transformation requires surrender—symbolic death of the constructed self. Liberation lies on the other side of shedding.

Death and Emptiness as Initiation
- Inanna: Is judged, killed, and hung on a hook. She experiences death.
- Tantra: Teaches that ego-death, void states, or experiences of emptiness (śūnyatā) are central initiations. Especially in left-hand path practices, practitioners confront fear, death, and decay.
  - Shared Archetype: Emptiness is not the end, but a gateway. Initiation happens in the confrontation with death—whether literal, symbolic, or psychological.

Witnessing and Empathic Presence
- Inanna: Is ultimately released through empathic witnessing—her companion Ninshubur pleads, and the mourners show Ereshkigal compassion.
- Tantra: Emphasizes presence, non-dual awareness, and the transformative power of compassionate witnessing—especially in Vajrayāna and goddess-centered traditions.
  - Shared Archetype: Healing often happens not through fixing or saving, but through being seen and held in suffering.

Sacred Union / Integration of Opposites
- Inanna: Faces Ereshkigal, her dark double or underworld sister—a mirror of her own hidden self. Later, balance is restored through substitution and exchange (Dumuzi takes her place).
- Tantra: Centers on the union of opposites—Śiva (consciousness) and Śakti (energy), masculine and feminine, light and dark.
  - Shared Archetype: Integration is the key. The split self is made whole not by denial, but by embracing and uniting the fragmented aspects.

Cyclical Time and Regeneration
- Inanna: Returns to the world transformed. Her journey mirrors seasonal cycles, death-rebirth processes, and lunar rhythms.
- Tantra: Is inherently cyclical—honoring cosmic rhythms, lunar cycles, and energetic tides. Practice reflects death and renewal not as one-time events but as continuous spirals.
  - Shared Archetype: Spiritual growth is not linear. It’s cyclical, embodied, and rhythmic—just like the myth, just like life.

Ritual and Embodiment as Vehicles of Transformation
- Inanna: Prepares for her descent with intention and ritual. Every action—her attire, her descent, her silence—is charged with symbolic meaning.
- Tantra: Relies on ritual technologies—mudrā, mantra, mandala, breath, visualization, and sacred rites involving the body and senses.
  - Shared Archetype: Transformation is not theoretical. It happens through embodied, symbolic action—ritual becomes the container for the sacred.

Though Sumerian myth and Tantric systems come from entirely different times and places, they share a psychic architecture. Both paths map the journey of: descent, dissolution, confrontation, compassion, and ultimate integration. They offer us not just stories or teachings, but experiential blueprints for how humans heal, awaken, and return to wholeness.

How Trungpa Rinpoche’s Teachings Support Myth Work

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on crazy wisdom, ego dismantling, and spiritual warriorship offer deep insight that can be used to support myth work. Though rooted in the Vajrayana Buddhist (Tibetan Tantric) tradition, his work resonates strongly with the core themes of descent, surrender, and transformation found in Inanna’s journey. These parallels make his perspective a valuable resource.

Here’s how:

Ego Death as Necessary for Transformation
- Inanna: Stripped at the seven gates and ultimately killed in the underworld—her ego and persona dismantled.
- Trungpa: Emphasizes the importance of cutting through spiritual materialism—the tendency to cling to ego even on the spiritual path. In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, he teaches that true awakening requires surrendering our roles, identities, and masks.
- Support for Myth Work: Trungpa’s fierce insistence on ego death aligns directly with the initiatory stripping in Inanna’s descent. His work validates that spiritual transformation begins where identity is undone.

Crazy Wisdom and Embracing Paradox
- Inanna: Embodies both eroticism and rage, love and war, life and death. Her story is nonlinear, paradoxical, and deeply felt.
- Trungpa: Speaks of crazy wisdom—wisdom that transcends conventional dualities and cuts through illusion. In Crazy Wisdom, he aligns with Tantric principles that see the sacred in the chaotic, the dark, and the unexpected.
- Support for Myth Work: Trungpa’s willingness to dwell in contradiction helps us hold the ambivalence and nonlinearity of descent work. His embrace of paradox mirrors the wild wholeness Inanna represents.

Spiritual Warriorship and the Open Heart
- Inanna: Chooses to descend knowing the risk. She enters the underworld with intention and courage.
- Trungpa: Teaches the Shambhala warrior path—rooted in fearlessness, gentleness, and compassion. The warrior opens to their pain rather than defending against it. In Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Trungpa writes:
- “The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.”
- Support for Myth Work: Trungpa’s vision of the warrior perfectly aligns with the descent myth as a call to courageous vulnerability. Like Inanna, we become warriors when we enter our own underworlds with openness.

Sacred World and the Body as Vessel
- Inanna: A goddess deeply tied to fertility, the body, and sacred ritual.
- Trungpa: Teaches the principle of sacred outlook—the world and the body within it is inherently sacred when seen clearly. Vajrayana tantra does not reject the senses but uses them as gateways to wakefulness.
- Support for Myth Work: Trungpa affirms that descent is not away from the sacred but into it—through the earth, the flesh, and the pain. Like Inanna, we discover divinity not by transcending life but by inhabiting it more fully.

Direct Experience Over Concept
- Inanna: Her transformation is visceral, emotional, and embodied—not conceptual.
- Trungpa: Critiques the reliance on intellectual understanding and insists on direct experience. His path is one of deep presence and raw honesty.
- Support for Myth Work: Myth work, like Tantra, is experiential. Trungpa’s teachings ground the journey of descent in felt life—not theory, but lived truth.

The spirit of Chögyam Trungpa’s teachings — radical honesty, surrender, paradox, presence—deeply align with the symbolic journey Inanna undertakes. His vision of awakening supports a mythic, seasonal, and embodied spiritual path that values darkness as initiation, ego death as doorway, and sacredness as ever-present.

I had always felt strangely at home in Trungpa’s teachings when I was studying Buddhism. Years later, as I began shaping my practice rooted in myth and symbolic work I assumed I was walking a path that was unlike any other out in the open. But I see now that I was wrong.

The principles I’ve been working with—surrender, ego dissolution, transformation through paradox—aren’t new. They echo the same truths I once encountered in Trungpa’s Tantric teachings, just through a different symbolic lens. Realizing that myth work and tantra resonate so deeply has been a quiet but powerful revelation. Trungpa’s texts and teachings I once turned to can still support me now, even as I follow a practice that’s uniquely my own.