I can see beer, beer exists, I can believe in beer. Beer is a holy spirit, that we put inside our temples. Christians, Muslims, Jews, you’re welcome to join my religion, I think you’d find it a lot more fun and fulfilling than yours, not to mention it goes back further in history so it’s more true than yours… *drink*
It is you who pour the filtered beer out of the collector vat; it is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Ninkasi, it is you who pour out the filtered beer out of the collector vat; it is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Beer goddess Nin-kasi was a venerable and long-lasting deity, for she appears in god lists and other texts from the Early Dynastic period (2900-2350 B.C.E.). She was “the personification of beer and presided over its manufacture” (Civil 2002a: 3). Her name possibly means “Lady Who Fills the Mouth (with Beer).” In a mythic poem, Nin-khursag declared that the beer goddess would be named “She who sates the desires” (Kramer in Pritchard 1969: 41). One tradition saw Nin-kasi as daughter of En-lil and the great birth goddess Nin-khursag. In another, her parents were the birth goddess Nin-ti and the great god En-ki. In either case the rank of her mother and father marked her as an important deity. In texts she usually appeared with her spouse (or brother) Siris or Sirash, a minor deity of alcoholic beverages. She had five (or nine) children.
Well-known and worshipped by ordinary people, Nin-kasi was also venerated officially, not only at Nippur but also at the great city of Ur and other cities (George 1993: 24, 158 #1214, 168 #1391). Libations of beer, her sacred substance and herself, were poured out to the gods, and jars of beer were placed before their altars for them to drink. Beer was certainly used by prophets at the northern Mesopotamian city of Mari, now in Syria, to trigger states of ecstasy in which they would prophesy (Homan 2004: 84). Further, quite common clay plaques show a woman (goddess?) bending over to drink beer through a straw, while taking part in almost always rear-entry sexual intercourse.[2] The scene might have had a connection with the “Sacred Marriage” rite[3]. It is noteworthy that Inanna’s happiness is announced at the end of the second “Hymn to Ninkasi” (Civil 2002b: 4: “The [innards] of Inanna [are] happy again” (Civil 2002 b: 4).
Nin-kasi was chief brewer and possibly wine-maker[4] of the great god En-lil and thus of all the gods. It was Nin-kasi’s particular responsibility to provide alcoholic beverages, above all, beer, for the temples of the Mesopotamian sacred city Nippur. Many other temples maintained brewers to make the beer to be used in rituals (Homan 2004: 85). The “Hymn to Nin-kasi” is one of two extant “Sumerian drinking songs” dating from the eighteenth century B.C.E. (Civil 2002b (1991): 2). It is primarily concerned with the beer-making process. The second hymn extols the goddess for producing in drinkers “a blissful mood … with joy in the [innards] [and] happy liver”[5] (Civil 2002a: 3).
http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM06/spotlight.htm
