Asherah – Feminism and Religion

A CALL TO CELEBRATE TREES by Janet M Rudolph

Olive Tree from the studio of Judith Shaw. Judith has a special offer to purchase this artwork as a giclee print through August 24th. Details below.

With the trees burning around the world, in Canada and the US as well as in Europe and Africa, Asia, South America and more, it seems to be an especially important time to be with the trees, to recognize our kinship, and to celebrate them.

To see just how bad the fires are around the world, below are the links to two maps that are kept in real time.
NASA Greenpeace

I don’t know when and where the initial hatred of trees began, but I would tag the Bible as an early and influential proponent of destroying trees.

The viciousness against trees appears to have grown out of a desire to erase Goddess worship in Biblical lands. The terms for Goddess groves were Asherot and Ashereem named after the Goddess Ashera. An individual tree was called an Ashera. The charge given to the people was to cut down everyone.

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves (Ashereem) with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
Deuteronomy 12:3 KJV

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
Exodus 34:13 KJV

From the Archives: I Sing Asherah Exalted! by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This was originally posted Dec. 16th, 2021

With this season of the festivals of light upon us (Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, Kwanzaa), I wanted to focus on the more joyful aspects of our lives. For that, I have been diving into passages about joy and singing in the bible.

Sometimes when I write these posts, they take me in directions I never thought to go. This post is one of them. The surprise direction I found is in the Psalm below:

Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works.
Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD.
Psalm 105:2-3 KJV

By Song, All Was Created by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This blogpost is part of an on-going collaborative project between myself and my dear friend Ecuadorian elder and medicine woman, Susana Tapia Leon. The purpose of the project is to illuminate in word and images the underlying pagan meanings of biblical verses. There are many rich verses that got hidden within translations. This has had the effect of erasing their original meanings or at least making them very difficult to uncover. I have come to call these hidden gems because they were not erased completely. In this post, I am offering alternative translations of 3 verses that focus on song.

Susana Tapia Léon, Cantadora 1
“She came alive after a month of work
She was always inside waiting to be revealed.”

Sh’mini: An Egalitarian Argument for Women and Girls

The parshah for April 6, 2024 is Sh’mini (Shemini), Leviticus 9:1-11:47 and since it is also Shabbat Hachodesh, we read Exodus 12:1-20 in addition to Sh’mini. Sh’mini contains commandments regarding animal sacrifice, the death of two of Aaron’s sons, lists of which animals are kosher and which are not, and distinctions between clean/unclean and holy/profane. The excerpt from Exodus, read as the maftir, describes the last plague before the Jews were freed from slavery in Egypt, the establishment of Pesach, and the eating of unleavened bread or cakes. In today’s commentary, I’m focusing on the only mention of femaleness in Sh’mini and by doing so I hope to find more room for women and girls within contemporary Judaism.

The Queen of Heaven Cakes: Asherah and Ishtar by Michelle Cameron

When one nation conquered another in antiquity, vanquished peoples typically switched allegiances to that country’s gods, since those deities were clearly stronger than their own. In my novel, Babylon: A Novel of Jewish Captivity, the prophet Daniel warns against this tendency, so the Judean exiles would remain faithful despite their captivity:

“You may be tempted to slip away from your Hebrew roots. Many of us struggle to remain steadfast to our faith. We are seduced by the lure of the gods of Ishtar and Marduk, Sin, Damkina, and Ea. Their temples overflow with riches and their ways are strange and compelling.

From the Archives: Where Did the Gods Come From? by Barbara Ardinger

This was originally posted on June 10, 2012

A man in the group leaned forward and asked, “But how did the Goddess get overcome?” So I told him. Young “warrior heroes” came galloping out of the Russian steppes and the Caucasus Mountains, including Afghanistan, which no one (not even Alexander the so-called Great) has ever conquered. The boys were carrying their thunder-solar-sky gods with them.

Biblical Poetry – Trees by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Image from an Egyptian tomb ca. 1314-1200 BCE. Isis is giving nourishment in the form of fruit and drink,

In many cultures of the world, including our own, trees are considered the ancestors of humanity – own our ancestors.

Trees are connected with great goddesses throughout antiquity. We see this in the bible where, as I’ve noted before, the Tree of Life is Eve’s tree for the word Eve means life. It is, in essence, the Tree of Eve. Goddesses in trees feeding humans were common themes in ancient Middle Eastern art. The tree was Hers to give freely of as she wished.

Anthropologist and religious scholar, Mircea Eliade writes extensively about the associations of trees ancestral connection to humans. He calls them both mystical and mythical.[1] His examples include the Miao groups of Southern China and Southeast Asia who “worship the bamboo as their ancestor.” He also notes Australian tribes who view the mimosa as their progenitor. And there is a tribe from Madagascar, called Antaivandrika which means “people of the tree,” who considered themselves descended from the banana tree.

Yes, there are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 5 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

As I wrote my last blog post, the Great Goddess of the Canaanites, Ashera was honored and worshipped (according to the bible) within and through groves of trees. Ashera and El, the “great bull god” were deeply connected. In fact, in Canaanite mythology, El and Ashera were married.

But before delving into their relationship, I would like to start in a different (but connected) direction – the lovely archetype of the morning star and the evening star. The planet Venus, named for her namesake Goddess (or vice versa), is both the planetary vision of the morning star and the evening star. Whether She be Goddess, planet or evening/morning star, when She appears in one form, She embodies them all. Continue reading “Yes, there are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 5 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph”

Yes, there are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 4 by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph

This is the 4^th in a series of blog posts about finding goddesses in the bible who had been hidden away through translation or denigration or other means. In my last blog post I discussed Lilith as a Great Goddess symbolized by both tree and bird. You can see it here.

Today I continue with the topic of trees along with an examination of reversals and how many of beautiful, female pagan symbols were changed or removed from the texts. Perhaps the most obvious and pernicious has been that Eve “caused the fall” of humankind through a sinful act. Thus, the logic goes, it was Her action that has created the “grand curse” that we have labored under ever since. As I wrote in my last blog post, Lilith is another example, being portrayed as a demon in order to denigrate her Great Goddess roots. Lilith originally embodied both bird and tree energies. In my last blog post I showed one image of the Goddess in the tree which was a common theme in ancient Levantine cultures. The image today shows the goddess breast in the tree, which is identified as Isis suckling the future pharaoh Tutmose III. These images show the “Goddess in the Tree” as freely bestowing Her gifts and nurturing (not cursing) humankind. Continue reading “Yes, there are Goddesses in the Bible, Part 4 by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph”

What We Lost When We Became Monotheists by Ivy Helman

The Tanakh, Jewish scriptures, predominately call the deity king and lord and use the masculine pronoun. These images evoke a certain level of power. Just how powerful the deity is in then multiplied when “he” is addressed as “G-d of Gods,” “Lord of Lords,” judge, almighty, all-powerful, and warrior-like with vengeance, fury and flaring nostrils. Events like war, army invasion, disease, drought, and famine are often described as divine punishments for wrongs done throughout the Tanakh.

All of these images bring forth a certain mindset regarding who the divine is and what “he” does. Indeed, such images may well have been crucial in those ancient days when famine, drought, war, and disease were ever present and, day-to-day survival was often extremely difficult. People sought understanding as to why they were suffering, and the workings of divine beings offered such explanations. Continue reading “What We Lost When We Became Monotheists by Ivy Helman”