Asherah and the Tree of Life

A relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) showing an Asherah Tree with male figures holding anointing oils.  The winged figure over the tree is interesting, suggesting to some the "winged Isis", or a precursor to the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Christian "trinity".

 One of the great things about making art, one discovers, is that it's a way of "writing down" one's inner "iconography".  Most of the time, it's a way of just beginning to see (literally) what that iconography of the inner self actually is.  And then the conversation can begin, because the language is being  translated............

For many years I've made  "tree of life" images.  I'm not sure where I got the image from originally.   In early lithographs there was always a woman within the tree form, or the Tree was a backdrop to everything else in the painting (not unlike the Web motif I also became fascinated by in later "Spider Woman"  pieces).  In my 1993 "Lovers" card from the Tarot, or the 1986 lithograph "Axis Mundi" the "tree" is ubiquitious, and later I started making sculptural  torsos, the Mother within the Tree. 

Recently I had reason to learn about  Asherah, the ancient Mother Goddess associated with the early Hebrews and early (pre-monotheistic) Judaism, with  the neighboring  Canaanites, and even earlier origins.  I have not studied this Goddess much, being only vaguely aware of the name.  Asherah  was often represented as a tree, among them the ubiquitous  "Asherah poles" (ashirim)  associated with Her worship in early (pre-monotheistic) Judaism. *** There is evidence that these wooden icons, and possibly, actual trees intentionally planted as icons or shrines)  were meant to be representations of Asherah.  Asherah is  sometimes  referred to as the wife of Yahweh,  whose name became something that could not be uttered, only represented as "the Lord".  The Asherah poles, and eventually the name of Asherah, were banned from worship as Judaism became monotheistic and established the sole deity as male.

Interestingly, with the early advent of Gnostic Christianity, Asherah is perhaps re-born in the form of Sophia, the feminine face of deity, often called the "mother" or sometimes "wife" of Yaweh.  The emblem for Sophia was often a dove.   

I never would have associated the Tree of Life archetype,  which has been a part of my spiritual vocabulary for more years than I remember,  with  Asherah had I not investigated just recently  because of a visionary experience during a healing session.  

I had some energy work done last week with an alternative  healer. Not unlike Reiki practitioners, although her system had a different name, she worked with me for over an hour, helping me to enter into an altered state of consciousness, kind of like a meditation, while she, in channelling energy to work with me, also entered into an open, meditative  state.   As I closed my eyes, the session began for me with the appearance of a white dove that visually manifested right  before my (closed) eyes.  But not a literal kind of bird, more like a sacred emblem, what one might see in a church.   I immediately thought of the "Dove of Sophia",  which is of course associated with  Peace to this day. And as a Christian icon representing the Holy Spirit, it may very well be that the origins of the Dove go all the way back to Gnosticism and Sophia. 

Who, like Asherah, was removed from patriarchal monotheistic theology, Her symbols often co-opted to support the later mythos of a strictly male deity without a wife, mother, or, for that matter, a daughter either.

The healer, after the session was over, told me that she clearly saw a Goddess form present during the healing.  She said that the Lady put  a kind of crown or headpiece on my head that was "light filled", and she also cast a kind of  "net of stars" over me (which perhaps means protection (?)     The healer, who is not much familiar with Goddess archetypes,  said that the name she got was "Ashara".  She also mentioned that somehow trees or wood were associated.  I couldn't think of what that meant, until I looked it up on the Internet later, and then (of course!) discovered the Hebrew Goddess  "Asherah".   

I've felt  this year is about healing for me,  healing the family karma which means understanding  familial wounds and changing them into (hopefully) wisdom instead of re-action.  I think this year, with so much chaos and divisiveness in the world as well, has been about the  difficult and disturbing rite of passage of becoming a Saga, an old woman.  A hopeful thought is that, perhaps, this is what is also going on a bit collectively.  Rites of passage, in my experience, are never particularly easy or comfortable, cozy or even predictable.  They are thresholds.

And how is it possible to talk of healing the wounds that are "personal" without seeing that they are also interwoven with what is universal?  Familial abuse is about social abuse as well as the long reach of ancestors, going back, going forward.  Roots.  And beyond that....... the Tree of Life, the roots beneath,  the leaves above.   All things woven.  

Visions, like dreams, have multiple layers of meaning, and like dreams, exist outside of time.  In my experience Spirit communicates in visionary, symbolic, mythic ways.  This visioning was a blessing for me, and something I will continue to contemplate and ask to understand.  

"Asherah" (Artist unknown)

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 *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole

Asherah pole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An "Asherah pole" is a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic mother-goddess Asherah, consort of El. The relation of the literary references to an asherah and archaeological finds of Judaean pillar-figurines has engendered a literature of debate.  The asherim were  objects related to the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah, the consort of either Ba'al or, as inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom attest, Yahweh, and thus objects of contention among competing cults. 

In translations that render the Hebrew asherim into English as "Asherah poles," the insertion of "pole" begs the question by setting up unwarranted expectations for such a wooden object: "we are never told exactly what it was", observes John Day.[4] 

Though there was certainly a movement against goddess-worship at the Jerusalem Temple in the time of King Josiah, (2 Chronicles 34:3) it did not long survive his reign, as the following four kings "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19)[citation needed]. Further exhortations came from Jeremiah. The traditional interpretation of the Biblical text is that the Israelites imported pagan elements such as the Asherah poles from the surrounding Canaanites. In light of archeological finds, however, modern scholars now theorize that the Israelite folk religion was Canaanite in its inception and always polytheistic, and it was the prophets and priests who denounced the Asherah poles who were the innovators (of monotheism with an exclusive male god).

Asherim are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings, the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely אשרה, (Asherah) referred to as "groves" in the King James Version, which follows the Septuagint rendering as ἄλσος, pl. ἄλση, and the Vulgate lucus, and "poles" in the New Revised Standard Version; no word that may be translated as "poles" appears in the text. Scholars have indicated, however, that the plural use of the term (English "Asherahs", translating Hebrew Asherim or Asherot) provides ample evidence that reference is being made to objects of worship rather than a transcendent figure.

The Hebrew Bible suggests that the poles were made of wood. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, God is recorded as instructing the Israelite judge Gideon to cut down an Asherah pole that was next to an altar to Baal. The wood was to be used for a burnt offering.

Deuteronomy 16:21 states that YHWH (rendered as "the Lord") hated Asherim whether rendered as poles: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pole] beside the altar you build to the Lord your God" or as living trees: "You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make". That Asherahs were not always living trees is shown in 1 Kings 14:23: "their asherim, beside every luxuriant tree".  However, the record indicates that the Jewish people often departed from this ideal. For example, King Manasseh placed an Asherah pole in the Holy Temple (2 Kings 21:7). King Josiah's reforms in the late 7th century BC included the destruction of many Asherah poles (2 Kings 23:14).

Exodus 34:13 states: "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherim [Asherah poles]."  Some biblical archaeologists have suggested that until the 6th century BC the Israelite peoples had household shrines, or at least figurines, of Asherah, which are strikingly common in the archaeological remains.

Asherah, detail from an ivory box from Mīna al-Bayḍā near Ras Shamra
 (Ugarit), Syria, c. 1300 BCE; in the Louvre, Paris

.

Raphael Patai identified the pillar figurines with Asherah in his book (forward by Merlin Stone)  The Hebrew Goddess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole

Re-visiting the Bosnian Pyramid Mystery

In 2011 when I went to the Glastonbury Symposium, I was blown away by learning about the work of  Sam Semir Osmanagic, the visionary amateur archeologist who is attempting to excavate what he believes is a pyramid complex in Bosnia with the help of volunteers and not much help from the established archeological community.   I very greatly admire Dr. Osmanagic's dedication and vision, and have been rather disgusted by the way, as so often happens, he has been pooh-poohed and called a fraud by many.   I love Wikipedia, but their dismissal of his work is very disappointing and I think reflects a prejudice, if not, as in the case of crop circles and UFO's, a systematic dis-information agenda.  

Why?  Why not take  serious look at some of the extraordinary things he has found, the ideas he proposes?   The fact is, if he's right,  this is the highest pyramid in the world, and the complex is 10,000 + years old.  Such a discovery would re-write what we think we know about the ancient world, and what we think we  know about ancient Europe.  It would also suggest that, just as has been so often proposed by researchers exploring the pyramids of Egypt,  that the ancients knew a lot about how to work with the inherant energies of our planet than we do.  It might even demonstrate that we know virtually nothing about how to work with the energies of our planet any longer, a knowledge that, if re-discovered, just might  change our entire understanding of life on Earth and how to live on our beautiful Mother Earth.

One of the developments I found fascinating was the discovery of a  concrete/cement building  material that was used to construct the (as yet unproven) pyramids.  This could mean that not only were the ancients creating intentional geomantic environments that were sacred landscapes***, but they had building technologies some 10,000  years ago or longer that included making cement, and apparently, very good cement.


From  The Invisible but Vital Life Energies of the Bosnian Pyramid Valley:

 "Results released by the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy of chemical and diffractometry laboratory analysis done on sandstone and conglomerate blocks taken from the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun show that the samples are an inert material with a binding, similar to that found in ancient Roman concrete. These results were confirmed by analysis on the samples done at the University of Zenica,Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In a separate independent test, Professor Joseph Davidovits,  member of the International Association of Egyptologists and author confirms this claim. “I performed electron microscopic analysis of the sample and I propose the geopolymer chemistry that was used to make this is ancient concrete,”  http://www.davidovits.info/34/the-pyramids-in-bosnia-europe-perhaps-in-roman-concrete

He further adds that the sample is composed of “a calcium/potassium-based geopolymer cement and that although he cannot date the sample, he can discern that it is not modern concrete, but more like the technique used by the Egyptians 3500 years ago.” In his book "The Pyramids: an Enigma Solved" ,Davidovits proposes that Egyptian pyramids were constructed using agglomerated stone (limestone cast like concrete)."

Outside walls of the Bosnian "Pyramid of the Sun" made of the concrete conglomerate blocks, Northern side, July 2008

Christopher Dunn, author of The Giza Power Plant (1996) writes that the pyramids were "ancient energy machines" or power sources that channelled geo-magnetic energy, which is currently a popular theory among researchers. The pyramids of Bosnia have the same elements that define the structure of an ancient "power generator system."

http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/04/30000-year-old-bosnian-pyramids-built-with-man-made-cement-2441772.html 

What do we really know?  What knowledge might we have lost?  Fascinating to speculate.  Atlantis rising.......... 

http://youtu.be/f1BOT928Jn4



***A great Blog that follows the Bosnian Pyramids excavation, as well as discussion on related themes is Old Europe   (http://bpblognews.blogspot.com/).  Here I've copied from an article:

"In ancient times architecture was considered not only a creation of form to limit or define space, but also inherently a sacred form that concentrated beneficial earth and cosmic energies and dispersed harmful earth and cosmic energies. The subtle energies of earth and cosmos were taken very seriously in the spiritually advanced societies of the past. The ancients were conscious that certain architectural features transformed invisible energetic fields that exercise subtle but predictable influences on the human body and on the environment.

In spite of our scientific progress in the modern day, we still know very little, in comparison to the ancients, about the relation of forms both natural and artificial to subtle and invisible but potent energies from earth and sky. Since 2006, researchers from many different disciplines have visited the Bosnian Pyramid Valley. These researchers have made pioneering discoveries that have allowed us to dramatically expand our modern understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bosnian pyramids and pyramid structures across the planet. A two-year study performed by biologist Dr. Sulejman Redžić from the Faculty for Natural Sciences at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, has shown that the soil temperature on the Bosnian pyramids and nearby areas is 5 degrees Celsius warmer than elsewhere in Bosnia.

Astonishingly, Dr. Redžić was able to identify several plant species on the pyramids that are typical of warmer Mediterranean climate zones. This means that these ancient pyramid structures create an artificial microclimate in the Visoko Valley. U.K. scientist Dr. Harry Oldfield developed a photographic method similar to Kirlian photography that captures the "shapes" of electromagnetic energy in a two-dimensional photograph.

Images: rising energy fields of the Bosnian pyramids

Dr. Oldfield's photos of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun showed that the electromagnetic fields above the pyramids are oriented toward the vertical rather than the horizontal. This is unusual because the electromagnetic patterns above natural features such as hills and mountains are normally vertically oriented. Vertically oriented electromagnetic fields are characteristic of artificial (manmade) structures. In addition, Dr. Oldfield recorded more activity than expected, with strong electromagnetic fields above the Bosnian Pyramid of The Sun.

Corroborating Dr. Oldfield's findings, Dr. Slobodan Mizdrak, a physicist from Zagreb, Croatia, led a team of experts who measured both electromagnetic radiation in the Bosnian pyramid complex in 2010 and 2012. The team also measured an unusual 28 kHz ultrasound phenomenon exiting the top of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun. A two-day experiment in April 2012 demonstrated that the source of the ultrasound "energy beam" is beneath the pyramid at a depth of 2440 metres (1.86 miles). Analysis of collected data has shown that a metallic plate located deep under the pyramid in combination with underground water flows and unexpectedly high concentrations of negative ions generates electric power of more than 10 kilowatts. 

Image: artistic reconstruction of the Central Fire

The presence of high concentrations of negative ions has also been detected also in other locations of the valley, namely inside Ravne tunnel labyrinth. Different measurements performed during the past six years have shown a tremendous increase in negative ions inside the tunnel system, reaching levels of up to 40,000 ions per cubic centimeter 200 meters inside the tunnel system. Negative ions are atoms or molecules that have more electrons than protons in their nuclei. Series of analyses in the last 120 years have proven that negative ions clean the air of dust, spores, mold and pollen and provide numerous health benefits to human beings. Thousands of people who have visited the underground tunnel labyrinth during the past six years have been able to experience the healing power of this negative ion-rich location.  

Janez Pelko, a Slovenia researcher who studied the effects on the human aura of a short stay in Ravne tunnel labyrinth, demonstrated that the human aura increases and reconstitutes itself significantly in almost 80% of cases among people after a one-hour stay inside the tunnel labyrinth. Janez Pelko's research is mainly inspired by the work of Prof. Konstantin G. Korotkov, a renown Russian scientist who invented the Gas Discharge Visualization technique (GDV), which represents a breakthrough beyond Kirlian photography, allowing direct, real-time viewing of human energy fields.

Thus we come to the conclusion that ancient cultures had developed an understanding of the subtle effects of various invisible life energies and created structures to both generate and magnify them."

February 21, 2013, The Invisible but Vital Life Energies of the Bosnian Pyramid Valley

A Blessing by John O'Donohue (on the Occasion of a Friend's Birthday)

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day.

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath.

The tent of thought where I shelter.

Waves of desire I am shore to,

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love.

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for.

And waste my heart on fear no more.

….John O'Donohue


"Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness, like. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty, in that sense, is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life."  John O'Donohue

 interview with John O'Donohue 
on the Landscape of Inner Beauty with Krista Tippett of On Being:  

Ursula Leguin on Painting and Silence

"Sierra Divide" by Edgar Payne (1917)

California Landscape Paintings
 at the Portland Art Museum

This big one is called "Mountain Silence",
but it's the one beyond it, "The Sierra
Divide", that hold silence
the way a grey stone bowl holds water.

Looking into the painting
I think how it is itself
silent.  Howe we move in silence
among these painted skies and mountains.

How the charity of a painting,
its gift I will carry out of the museum,
may be its silence,
full and quiet as a bowl of water,

that I can hold later in my soul's hands
and look into and see how light falls on granite.


Ursula K.  Leguin, 
from "Late in the Day" Collection (2014)

I love this poem by Leguin, and the painting by the American Impressionist Edgar Payne that inspired it.  I keep trying to write, to find words that can "add" to what the poet, or the painter, have to say, but that is foolish.  To be with the painting is to pass through a window into a moment, in the year of 1917, when the artist climbed a mountain with an easel on his back, or stood beneath the desert sun, to fill that "bowl of silence".

"Canyon de Chelly", Edgar Payne (1916)

The Ice Hotel (Revisited)!

In Jukkasjärvi, Sweden,  a tiny little town 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, the  ICE HOTEL  art project-come-hotel is more than two decades old. It's an incredible work of art that is recreated each season, and, embodying impermanance, literally melts away in the spring.  If you lived in Tucson, Arizona, in August, you'd be dreaming of a lovely, restful night at the Ice Hotel too.  Since it's a normal day of about 105 outside right now, I figure it's time to revisit this beautiful, and enduring, work of continually changing art!  Visit the WEBSITE  for an in-depth look at this extraordinary place.............

Chapel for weddings

Garden Goddesses

I noticed that my garden seems to be filling up with garden Goddesses, most recently, an ambitious Quon Yin, which my roomate Queeny kindly posed for.  Took  quite a while to do the mosaic part, and now I'm thinking She needs a little pool at the base. 

Here's one I did in 2013 which also adorns the garden, thanks to my friend Annie posing for it - "Our Lady of the Waters".  And I always seem to feel the need to include the beautiful pressings from antique Afghani fabric presses I have (they were used to put designs on fabric, before they had access to machines that did it, so each is hand carved).  

My longtime Collaborator Mana sat for "Our Lady of the Shards", the Lady who bears witness to the past, the nameless lives and hands that have brought us, their descendants, here.

Here's a little "Flower Deva" that turned up this year, the face thanks to Elise, who has been providing a beautiful face to my art for many a long year.  My garden evolves, and is the first place I go to commune with the rising sun in the morning.  I guess all of these Personae protect and bless it.

Another Flower Deva, or perhaps a Quon Yin.  This I gave to my friend the composer  Joanna Brouk, who passed away this year.  It was her, dreaming beauty and color and hope into the world.  

A box, with my favorite Afghani fabric press, a gorgeous Zinnia with a cascade of  water, or blessings, or both.  An artist with great skill whose name none of us will ever know, but I like to know that his or her gift remains, travelling forward to other lives..........

Oziama, from Nigeria, who lived by the River Oshun provided the face for this Butterfly Goddess in the garden.  Reminding me, as always, that we are pollinators, that we are always transforming.

And of course, I have Spider Woman all over the place, this a  young artist from the Tohono Odum people here in Southern  Arizona who so kindly sat for me.  Spider Woman's Hands weave all around us,  the Web contains us all, strongly felt in the Southwest.

Eclipse