The Red Shephard

Anathema press 

Hardcover collectors edition

Myth would inform us that Dumuzid was merely the effete, hapless shepherd god who invoked the anger of his wife, Inanna, and became little more than a footnote in myth.

Erotic poetry; liturgical texts and hymns; magical formulae, however, indicate something greater. In such texts, we find that Dumuzid is more than a mere pastoral deity standing guard over the sheepfold. He appears as a king; high priest; warrior; captain of the host and commander of chariots; a god who stands at the gates of Heaven, possesses a throne upon the Earth, and is seated beside Ereškigal, the great queen of the Underworld.

Wholly informed by academic sources and personally applied praxis, The Red Shepherd: Towards a New Image of Dumuzid includes relevant myths and mythopoetic lacunae texts; transliterated liturgical compositions written by the author; ritual texts inspired by historical source material.

Through this book, Samuel David invites you to enter into the presence of the god of both the living and the dead whose name and power are the breath of life which quickens the child in the womb; the eroticism of the virile lover; the psychopomp who leads ghosts in his train; the intercessor who takes the burden sickness and disease from his supplicants.