Culture
Navratri Notes: Asherah, The Hebrew Goddess And The Tree Of Life
- Seen through a broader mythological lens, the suppressed Goddess tradition in Christian myth becomes visible.
Asherah, 13th century BCE. Israel Museum. (Wikimedia Commons)
She was the indwelling Light. She was the Cosmic Tree and the Tree of Life. She was the Serpent of Wisdom. She was the Goddess of the right path; Amidst the tumultuous waves of the dark, She was the Goddess of the ocean. She was the divine sanctuary and the sacred groove.
She was also cursed as an abomination and a corruption. Her worship would be specially shamed and condemned.
This is the story of Her greatness, exile and return.
For many non-Jews, the study of Judaism has often been filtered through a Christian lens and is the Judaic tradition is perceived as a strict, text-defined, dogmatic monotheism.
In reality, Judaism is not a monolithic, text-bound tradition. It has long been a composite mingling of mythology, mysticism, and folk traditions from diverse streams. Although sacred texts form the core of Jewish religious life, they do not encapsulate all its dimensions.
Ancient Israelite religion, like many cultures transitioning from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, was complex, and archaeological evidence suggests the influence of Goddess traditions, particularly that of Asherah.
Mentioned 40 times in Bible, depending on the context Asherah could refer to a cult object – mostly a wood, wooden pole or even a tree and also the Goddess. According to Bible, She was a Canaanite corruption that entered the Israelite religion.
The truth is more complex.
When the Israelites entered Canaan, the Bible describes their encounters with the Canaanites as violent and conquest-driven. However, archaeology paints a slightly different picture. Rather than a sharp division marked by large-scale battles, it suggests a gradual, syncretic interaction between the Canaanites and the Israelites.
This archaeological record blurs the lines between these two groups, complicating the notion of distinct, opposing peoples.
The Israelites adapted El, originally the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, to represent Yahweh as their singular, supreme deity. Naturally Asherah, who was already the Goddess consort of El, became the consort of Yahweh in popular worship.
At the same time the Goddess cult influences from the Mosaic tradition also merged into this Goddess worship.
According to archaeologist-historian William Dewar, the etymology of the Hebrew word Asherah while ‘unclear... may derive from a verb meaning ‘to tread, go straight.’’ Early Canaanite or Ugarit texts also call Her the 'Lady of the sea' and the 'One who subdues the sea.'
In the Bible, one reads that the king Hezekiah (8th century BCE) removed a bronze serpent image, Nehushtan, from the temple of Jerusalem.
But what was the status of Asherah outside the textual religion and in the more realistic folk religion of Israelites? It was the same relation that She had with Canaanite El. She was the wife.
In 1969 in an excavation site of what could be identified with biblical Makkedah, from one of the excavated tombs William Dewar discovered a four-line Hebrew inscription which read that the person who was a governor was blessed by Yahweh and saved from his enemies by ‘his Asherah.’
The inscription also shows a hand which Dewar tentatively links to the later ‘Hand of Hamsa’ symbol - a divine feminine symbol common to Judaism and Islam.
One of them named Pithos A contains a curious depiction – a stylized tree with a lotus like flower at its top, flanked on either side by an ibex each. There is a lion at the bottom. It seems to integrate many symbols – the Goddess, the tree of life and perhaps a stylised proto-menorah.
Then there is also another depiction – the cow licking a calf drinking its milk. Yahweh was the bull and Asherah the cow.
Later, suffering various invasions, imperial persecutions and national tragedies, Israelites were becoming a nation under siege.
The archaeological discovery of the Goddess is only half of the story. There is also the more important archetypal presence.
Asherah is also the Tree. She was the serpent. The images coalesce and resurface in later Kabbalistic mysticism. She becomes Shekinah. The Jewish mythological layer identifies Her as the consort of Yahweh and She is always in the Temple of Jerusalem.
All the important symbols associated with the later monotheistic religions have emerged from the Goddess cults.
Consider the cross, Christianity's most revered symbol—it might have come from the ancient Asherah pole. Even the synoptic Jesus myths compare Jesus on the cross to the serpent on a pole, both symbols of Asherah.
Adding to the mystery is the folk belief that the cross was made from Moses' staff, which came from the Tree of Life in Eden. Seen through a broader mythological lens, the suppressed Goddess tradition in Christian myth becomes visible.
Had the Divine Feminine, instead of getting suppressed in this family of religions, been allowed to flourish, perhaps we would not be witnessing the destructive wars that we are witnessing today.
As Asherah gets rehabilitated after more than two thousand years, it reveals a unique feature of Hinduism. It is the harmonious integration of folk and book-based traditions through constant organic interaction.
Practices like the sthala puranas blend local folk traditions into scriptural ones, and customs, such as the kolu incorporate deities from diverse streams. We take for granted this great civilisational merit. But this is a blessing that the warring world religions urgently need.
