Ancient Psychedelia: Alien Gods & Mushroom Goddesses
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| Nusku (Sumerian Nuska) was a god of fire, the son of Enlil and promoter of all goodness. He was equated with Gibil, the name Gibil-Nusku appearing on occasion. He was invoked to destroy the demons of disease with fire and in like manner symbolically destroys the practitioners of black magic. (36) In the Babylonian city of Harran (now in northern Syria), Nusku was the son of the moon god, Sin. (37) Mamu, a dream and oracular goddess of Babylonia had a small temple at Balawat. One of the prayers for oracular healing and visions is quoted as saying, “Reveal thyself unto thee and let me see a favorable dream. May the dream that I dream be favorable, may the dream that I dream be true, may Mamu the goddess of dreams stand at my head; Let me enter E-Sagila, the temple of the gods, the house of life.” (38) Nanna(r) (Sumerian) or Su'en / Sin (Akkadian) was the son of Bel (Enlil of Nippur) and a patron of Ur and one of his epithets was “Furnisher of Light” and his famous temple, E-gishshirgal means “House of Light.” (39) His wife was Ningal (“Great Lady”). His son was Utu-Shamash, who is understood to be a solar deity, making it difficult for me to believe Sin was ever a “moon-god” of any sort. He also went by the name En-zu, which means “lord of wisdom.” Sin had a beard made of lapis lazuli and rode on a winged bull, his father being the “bull of heaven.” There is an original Sumerian version of the Descent of Inanna called the “Enlil and Ninlil” which describes their descent into the underworld while pregnant with Nanna (Sin). (40) Sin was intimately connected with cowherds and was said to bestow fertility upon the herds and prosperity among the people. (41) He was also an oracle god like his father, and a divine physician, his name being found in many incantation texts in support of other gods in the exorcism of demons of disease. (42) I have previously mentioned how I believe Sin came to be a moon god by virtue of the bull emblem above his head, but this emblem does not mean he was ever a moon god. The bull’s horns are pointed up, and the moon is never pointed up, the moon points are always on the right, or the left, depending on the waxing or waning being shown (15a, b). The emblem of Islam and the deity called Sin have points above, depicting the bull. This is also why I do not believe Shamash/Assur was a sun deity, initially. Shamash/Assur and Sin were both mushroom deities, in their relation to cattle through the dung. The limestone stela with Sin from Tell Ahmar, Syria c. 700-800 BC, shows pillars which support the bull horns and appear to have mushroom cap symbolism just below the horns. In the Sumerian pantheon, An and Ki bore Gibil, the god of fire and the forge, possibly metallurgy as well, comparing his mythos to those of Odin and Zeus. He later evolved into the Akkadian god Gerra (Girra). (43) Where some scholars see things changing from the fertility worship over to the solar worship as Joseph Campbell does, I see things in a slightly different manner. The following quote summarizes Campbell’s line of |
thought: “The new age of the Sun God has dawned, and there is to follow an extremely interesting, mythologically confusing development (known as solarization), whereby the entire symbolic system of the earlier age is to be reversed, with the moon and the lunar bull assigned to the mythic sphere of the female, and the lion, the solar principle, to the male.”  R: (15b) Sin. Stele of Ur-Nammu of Ur c. 2112-2095 BC While there is truth in this, it could go further into the mysteries. I don’t see the moon being linked with the bull, other than the aspects of dew already mentioned. Adding to this, we see the early use of a round orb in the middle of this “moon,” which later appeared above the heads on Egyptian deities but were shown far more clearly as bull’s horns (14d, 15d).   R: (14d) Baal-Adad, From Syria, in Damascus Museum c. 1300 BC (36) Healing Gods, p. 126; Jastrow, Civilization pp 226-228, 411; id., Religion, pp. 220-221; Zimmern, in ERE ii, 313 (37)http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/nuska/index.html (38) American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol. 35, Oct. 1918-July 1919, p. 146 (39) Jastrow, Religion, pp. 75, 76, 78 (40) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_(mythology) (41) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sin-Mesopotamian-god (42) Healing Gods, p. 128; Neuberger und Pagel, loc cit. (43) Michael Jordan, Encyclopedia of Gods, Kyle Cathie Limited, 2002 |
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