Author: Laura Shannon

This autumn I am once again in southern Morocco, bringing friends and students to experience traditional Berber women’s dance and culture. 

The Berbers or Imazighen* are the indigenous people of North Africa, who have lived for at least 12,000 years in the Maghreb region (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara). Within this vast area, different Berber tribes follow various forms of social organisation, yet remain linked by language, culture, and a shared sense of identity. 

Among the Berbers, 

The ‘religion’ of women is expressed in the cult of the family, in religious practices performed close to their environment and in the management of clairvoyance and healing within the domain of the traditionally sacred… [The] domain of the sacred is found in the family community as it extends to the village, according to social relations determined by a spirit of collective responsibility. This is found between the living but also with the Ancestors. – Makilam

Even though the Souss Valley and Anti-Atlas mountains of Morocco where we are travelling is far from the Kabylia region of northern Algeria Makilam describes, her comments also apply here.

The Great Goddess of North Africa and the Near East had many different names. In Canaan, she was Asherah, Mother of Creation, Queen of Heaven, and consort of the male god El/Yahweh. Countless archaeological discoveries of ‘images of the Goddess, some dating back as far as 7000 BC, offer silent testimony to the most ancient worship of the Queen of Heaven’. (Kosnick 2017, Stone 1978)

In Canaan, Asherah’s sacred places included high hills and mountaintops, ‘under every spreading tree and every leafy oak’. Identified with the Tree of Life, Asherah was represented by wooden poles or pillars known as asherim. These were ‘cut and shaped from a tree’, ‘adorned with silver and gold’, and ‘had to be carried’. Her rites were chiefly in the hands of the women, who honoured her with incense and liquid offerings, and baked sweet cakes for the Queen of Heaven.. Women also wove elaborate veils to dress the asherim. (Ezekiel 6:3; Jeremiah 10:3-5, 44:17-18; 7:18-19; 2 Kings 23:7)

For over forty years I have been researching women’s dance and folk arts. This quest has been inspired by Merlin Stone, Max Dashu, Vicki Noble, Mary Kelly, Marija Gimbutas and others, including my close friend Carol P. Christ, who encouraged scholars to examine ‘nontextual artifacts’ and ‘expand our notion of history to include records that are not written’. ¹

Through extensive travels in southeastern Europe, North Africa and the Near East, I’ve learned to recognise the symbols and significance encoded in dance patterns, textile motifs, jewellery designs, healing practices, and other forms of women’s ritual arts.² This experience has trained me to discern patterns and meaning beyond superficial interpretations – to look ‘with eyes to see’.

In this article I would like to offer a closer look at the ‘nontextual artifacts’ in the Christian Nativity story: the gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the Magi. My lifelong interest in North African bridal jewellery leads me to suggest that the gifts of the Magi were meant for the mother, not the child. Not only that, this closer look reveals that  the Magi were probably not three, almost certainly not kings, and very likely included both men and women.