Steve begins the tale of his personal journey through the Lord of the Deep weekend, playing the mighty king, Gilgamesh:
Julius Caesar, speaking after winning an important battle in Asia Minor, is quoted as saying ‘I came, I saw, I conquered…’The same cannot be said for Gilgamesh the King – one of Julius Caesar’s mighty empire-building forebears, who ruled the land of Sumer from the city of Uruk in the southernmost region of Mesopotamia. The story of King Gilgamesh may or may not be based upon fact. Its importance to our lives – and probably survival – is due to it being an unusual kind of story: one that contains the power to initiate inner change in the human mind and heart.
The epic of Gilgamesh was written down in fragments, beginning 2,500 years ago. It is a mysterious tale, and was seen as ideal for adaptation to the Silent Eye’s purposes by the writing team of Stuart France and Sue Vincent (France and Vincent).
Planes, trains and automobiles. Friday, April 26th finally arrives and an excited group assembles at the Nightingale Centre in the tiny village of Great Hucklow – a gem within the Derbyshire hills. Stuart had chosen the epic of Gilgamesh two years prior as the basis for the 2019 Silent Eye workshop. A great deal of work had been put in by he and Sue to bring it to life. Now, we were costumed, breathing deeply, silent and lined up for entry into what would become our emotional and spiritual home for the next two and a half days…. The word ‘intense’ is appropriate, but not sufficient…
Continue reading at Sun in Gemini
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
What I find particularly fascinating about the Gilgamesh story, is the role of women.
Enkidu is brought into civilisation by Shamhat, the temple woman. He lost his life through the fury of Ishtar.
Gilgamesh refused Ishtar’s advances, lost Enkidu, and his mind. He had to seek final admittance to immortality through the woman who kept the tavern at the world’s end (arr, I can’t remember her name!).
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Shiduri. We took certain liberties with that and gave the name to Utnapishtim’s otherwise unnamed wife.
It is interesting that, in what had very obviously become a male-dominated society, when even the majority of the deities are masculine, the women play such a critical role in the story.
We think this probably echoes an earlier state of affairs, falling somewhere between the ‘guilty conscience’ of patriarchal usurpation and a recognition that, beneath the surface, the feminine powers were still to be respected.
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