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Duties: New Member Induction (and support for those new members who need a sponsor to whom the Istar approves). The Ishtar is responsible for conducting Initiation ceremonies, completing new member paperwork, compiling the membership book and helping to maintain the Coven Book of Shadows. All new moon and waxing moon ceremonies should be given to the Ishtar for approval two weeks prior to the Esbat ritual. The Istar is responsible for helping to start the Coven Garden and watering it when necessary.

 

About Ishtar: The power of the maiden is her youth. Her innocence and the early raw power as she begins to harness her budding knowledge and the start of innocence. Her power as she learns to guard and help those around her. However, she has not yet learned the secrets of creation of life's meanings.

 

This  Akkadian/Babylonian Great Goddess (or Triple Goddess) represents a later and more complex development of the Sumerian Inanna. We honor her in this guise as the maiden, a fickle and fine defender of women. The origin of this Babylonian-Assyrian main goddess was and moon goddess, but when these tribes arrived at the land of the Sumerian kingdom, her cult reached the Sumerian capital Uruk. The Sumerian people identified Ishtar easily with their own goddess Inanna.

 

After some time Ishtar became in the second millennium the highest and widest worshiped goddess of the Babylonians. The myths of Inanna became the myths of Ishtar. Ishtar's reign was not depending on a male consort, she reigned absolute on her own and united in her all the aspects of femininity. For  the Assyrian people she was mainly a war goddess (Lioness of the battle), but also the love and the sexual life belonged to her realm of influence. Moreover she was the Goddess of justice and healing. It is her sacred gate, Ishtar's Gate (built around 604- 562 BC), inscribed with the Unicorns (Re'em) that stand alongside the majestic dragons and mighty bulls that provides the main entrance to Babylon. It is through this symbolic gate that one must traverse to awaken into the world of magic.