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[cccxliii] jack kerouac, on the road new york: penguin, 1957 ; , 1.
Ereshkigal must have a sacrifice of some sort, and inanna is pursued by the galla, demons of the underworld. in her place, therefore, inanna first gives ereshkigal her husband, dumuzi, and then, on the lamentations of his sister, geshtinanna, agrees that for half the year, dumuzi will dwell in the underworld, and that for the other half of the year, geshtinanna will take his place. 27 ; the secular explanation for the myth is that it reflects the universal concern with the cycle of the moon --which goes into darkness each month for three days, as inanna lies dead in the underworld--and the cycle of the seasons, with the earth lying fallow during autumn and winter. its analogues with orthodox christian belief are obvious--the three days spent in hell by christ, the theme of resurrection--and indeed, the same preoccupations with new life, death and resurrection form a central motif in western theologies from inanna onwards, with some of the same language: inanna, like the virgin mary, was queen of heaven and star of the morning, and dumuzi, like christ, was the shepherd. the buffy series, too, echoes the same themes. buffy must visit her "dark sister, " not once but time and again. ereshkigal is represented most obviously by faith, the slayer-gone-bad, who figuratively kills buffy by taking her body from her "this year's girl, " 4015 ; , but that darkness is also represented by the first slayer "restless, " 4022 ; who haunts buffy's dreams; by her negative reaction to willow coming out as a lesbian, so that her `sister" becomes sexually threatening "new moon rising, " 4019 and by glory, whose giant snake sobek stands in place of the galla, pursuing buffy's sister, dawn "shadow, " 5008 and most explicitly by the "death-wish" which, spike tells buffy, led to the death of previous slayers "fool for love, " 5007 ; . a similar journey towards understanding the hidden aspects of the self, as part of a necessary movement towards spiritual growth and wholeness, affects other key characters in the series: willow first becomes aware of her lesbian identity when her "dark-side" enters the world as vampire willow "doppelgangland, " 3016 ; , while in his past, giles was known as "ripper" and was a member of the dark cult of eyghon "the dark age, " 2008 ; . angel perpetually holds in balance his dual identity as vampire and human, literally lives in hell for an unspecified period of time, and on his return, finds it necessary to leave sunnydale for los angeles, where he is joined by buffy's sister-slayer, faith, for whom he provides a release from her darkness, as dumuzi does for geshtinanna. 28 ; to move to a more generally familiar mythology, buffy is like that greek aspect of the moon-goddess which was personified as artemis. like artemis, buffy is a hunter, with the "scoobies"--named for the cartoon great dane--acting as the dogs which traditionally accompany artemis. like artemis, too, she is for much of the series ; chaste--her primary relationship, with angel, precludes sexual intercourse. as artemis's slaying of animals represents the natural apotheosis of life, so buffy's slaying of vampires restores them to the natural order of life and death. artemis has other aspects, as goddess of childbirth and as hecate, death-hag of the crossroads, because she is a moon-goddess, representing, like inanna, the transformation of the moon from new, to full, to waning, darkness and re-birth. it is this transformative potential, this cycling through dark and light--enacted literally by buffy's daytime school and college, and her night-time slaying--that is the theologically and philosophically important aspect of buffy. spiritually, it is what keeps her alive, where other slayers die, since she is "tied in" to the world of loving relationality, as spike tells her: "the only reason you've lasted as long as you have is you've got ties to the world. your mum, your brat kid sister, the scoobies. they all tie you here but you're just putting off the inevitable" "fool for love" ; . philosophically, it keeps her alive since it represents education, rather than training, the potential for transformation by shared inquiry and personal reflection, rather than instruction in skills to be performed under direction. kendra has neither relationality nor education: she was taken from her parents and trained according to the handbook. where buffy has subjectivity and is encouraged to develop autonomy by giles, kendra is only an object, a token in the "exchange of women" [32] which forms the patriarchy of the council and her watcher, and her willing acceptance of this abjection means that, in every political sense, she is dead already. archetypes 29 ; it is not that there are exact correspondences between the spiritual universe of buffy the vampire slayer and either gnostic christianity or goddess theologies. rather, it is that the sensibilities of buffy. Fortune sample, is ambiguous, containing both competitive and playful elements. its latter aspect is incorporated in the more general metaphor marketing is playing a game.136 although the.