Rilke, and "the Church Somewhere In The East"

 

Sometimes a man stands up during supper 

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking

because of a church 

that stands somewhere in the East. 

And his children say blessings on him 

as if he were dead. 

And another man, 

who remains inside his own house, 

dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children

have to go far out into the world

toward that same church

which he forgot.

 Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)

Sometime in the 1980's, someone gave me a collection of Rilke translated by Robert Bly, and I have carried it with me for all these years.  I find Bly is still my favorite translator of the German mystical poet. In graduate school I did a performance with synthesizer based on this beautiful poem, and a series I called "Landscapes from Rilke". 

Yesterday the poem popped into my head.   I had been thinking, while driving around on seemingly endless errands, that I have become too resigned, I have perhaps traded too much "mature realism" for the spiritual quest that used to animate my art and life.  In my previous post I have been thinking about Pilgrimage,  which can be a metaphor a well as a physical movement.  

Rilke's poem is about the call that can come to seek a deeper life.  To become a "source - eror". Not all people are called, but for some of those who do hear the sound of distant bells, the "church that lies somewhere in the east" may be a monastery, for others, a studio, or an orphanage, or a university, a ticket to a distant land, or a trail that leads into the silent cathedral of a canyon or a forest.   Sometimes the seemingly unmarked trail to that church can feel like delusion,  or great loss........there are not always "road signs" or certainties along the way.  Usually there are not, and always the unexpected occurs when we enter that liminal zone of Pilgrimage.  

What I love about this poem is the profound connectivity Rilke implies.  The man or woman  who "keeps on walking" is one who heeds the call of that spiritual calling because he feels he no longer has any other choice. He realizes that nothing else will matter if he remains. 

He is willing to abandon the life he has been leading, but not himself. Such was the legendary  beginning of Siddartha's quest to become the Buddha, leaving behind his responsibilities as a prince, father and husband, the quest that led to the birth of Buddhism.  Was it wrong to leave behind those responsibilities and the loved ones who depended upon him?  Yes.  Was it right to leave those responsibilities and the loved ones who depended upon him to pursue what became the birth of Buddhism?  Yes.  Morality is layered, and sometimes the answer in both cases is yes, and yes. 

The one who remains in Rilke's poem, "in the dishes and the glasses", who does not leave when called, is neither right or wrong. He has chosen to remain, to find meaning in the love and duties of family and social responsibility.  His labors (and domestic pleasures) have resulted in the lives and sustenance of his children.     But his choice to not take the spiritual journey to that "church somewhere in the east" at some point in his life, to forget, to close the door, leaves a residue that ghosts within the house of his life.   Thus, his children, or perhaps his grand children,  are left with a hidden destiny, which is  to fulfill the quest that  he did not.

"At the River" in Late October: Estes, Jung, and Pilgrimage

 

"Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul, and memories,  and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. "

Norman MacLean, "A River Runs Through It"

A quote that stays with me,  from the beautiful book by Norman MacLean that became an equally beautiful movie in the 90's.  I often think of it, increasingly with age, and perhaps especially, as Samhain and the Veils thin away.  What an exquisite and elegant metaphor for the depthless and unfathomable River we have our brief dwellings in.

Perhaps he speaks of what storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes *  called "Rio Abajo Rio, the "river beneath the river of the world". 

That stays with me as well, and arises especially when I feel the dryness of my life overtaking me.  She  speaks of the River of Story, its universal waters flowing beneath the surfaces of all things.   In her book Women Who Run With the Wolves *** she writes,

"Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayer making, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts. And even with these well-crafted practices, much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them."*

Whether tapping, if only briefly, the wellsprings of El Rio in grief, creativity, meditation, or through the sudden psychic upwelling that can happen when the so-called ego cracks and splinters, I think it is ultimately a blessing, an opportunity given,  when the waters are revealed, for they re-member the greater life.  I didn't say that was always easy, or comfortable. 

 And sometimes the river of story has a voice that sounds like a roar, sometimes it sounds like a whisper.  

Estes, who is a Jungian psychologist, believes that to simply experience this "great river of being" is not enough: one must also instinctively participate in some way, find some way to open a pathway, a well spring, for others to follow.  She writes:

"...[W]hat Jung called 'the moral obligation' to live out and to express what one has learned in the descent or ascent to the wild Self. This moral obligation he speaks of means to live what we perceive, be it found in the psychic Elysian fields, the isles of the dead, the bone deserts of the psyche, the face of the mountain, the rock of the sea, the lush underworld - anyplace where La Que Sabe breathes upon us, changing us. Our work is to show we have been breathed upon - to show it, give it out, sing it out, to live out in the topside world what we have received through our sudden knowings, from body, from dreams and journeys of all sorts."

Beautiful.  Here's something I myself wrote about that quote, some  12 years ago:

"I respectfully submit that this is so for any creative person, this work of the SEER, residing within each of us. The River beneath the River of the World."

True.  Reading that, at this time when I am questioning everything and especially myself,  it pleases me that I wrote that.  It shows me a bit of who I was then.  And also, things change, we change, the rivers of the world move us along. Sometimes it's time to retire, to just be.  I think this is a hard time for Seers, as virtual reality seems to be replacing them.   It's a hard time to know what is real any more.  Recently a young, educated woman told me that gender, and indeed everything, is just "narrative".  That left me speechless.  And I realized that this isn't my world any more. I don't know where my world went, but it is apparently gone.  I need to explore that more in the next post.  

There is a scene from the 2021 award winning movie NOMADLAND where the heroine, Fern, having become a nomad,  meets a fellow traveler living in an old motorhome.  The elderly woman tells the newly nomadic heroine about a place she visited where she saw the swallows return, thousands of them.  She confides that she has stage 4 cancer, and she's not willing to spend her final years in clinics and chemo labs.  Shortly after that she drives off, lightening her load with a "give away" of items from her motorhome.  Later in the movie Fern receives a text from her:  a video of swallows flying over a river.  

 

That little story, those swallows flying over a fast running river, that stuck with me, it (appropriately for the season, again) haunts me.  A river runs through it.  And the swallows are the hearts desire.   

I wish, like the aged often used to do in India, I wish sometimes I could divest myself of all the very real responsibilities and meaningless work-for-money I still wake each morning to do.  Like the woman in the old motorhome, I wish I could just lighten the load, give it away, and go.  On Pilgrimage.  Maybe, like her quest to see the swallows again,  the road itself might tell me where my Pilgrimage will lead me.  

"Rio Abajo Rio", the River Beneath the River of the World calls to me these days, and I need to jump into its waters. As we approach Samhain, the sweet Dark calls as well.   Pilgrimage, the intention to travel within the liminality of Pilgrimage,  is actually what I think the aged are called to do.  I would give myself the advice I would give a friend, who made the shocking comment to me recently that "This isn't my world any more".  That comment haunts me most of all.  It won't leave me.

The advice I would give her, and myself, as we both realize this isn't our world anymore, is to go.  On Pilgrimage.         Go to the Ganges.  Climb slowly the Sacred Mountain of Kilamajaro, or Babaquiviri.  Go to where the Swallows return.  Walk the Camino to Compostella, where souls are composted, or travel on, to Finisterre, to Lands End, where the Ocean waits.  Or some where else as yet unknown, maybe, the Pilgrimage is more within than without.  .  Just let it be the Pilgrimage.

"The Hidden Sea" (2010)

* (p.30, below)

** (p.96, below)

*** Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Hardcover, 560 pages, Random House Publishing Group, 1992

Mabon Blessings!

I am a lover of the steady Earth
and of Her waters

"Let the light be brilliant" She says,  
"for those who will cherish color."

From "Verses at Powis" by Robin Williamson

Mabon is traditionally the 2nd Harvest Festival of three (Lammas in August, and Samhain in October being the other two) and falls on the day  of the autumnal Equinox.   A time to give thanks for the bounty of the harvest,  to give thanks and celebrate all that nourishes us. The Day of Balance,  a time to consider what we have harvested this year, to give thanks for all of that harvest, the bright Blessings and the dark Blessings from which we learned wisdom, patience, or compassion. On this auspicious day of Balance, when day and night are the same duration, may we experience the grace of Balance within our lives, and in the greater life of our common humanity.  

Apple trees in Avalon, the "Isle of Apples" (the Chalice Well garden) 2011

When I lived in the country in New York, I remember a Mabon with hot cider and new apples, and honey mead that was opened for the occasion.  

I also remember an Equinox when I lived in New York City in the late 80's, and was invited to be part of  a performance organized at a small theatre in the East Village.   She asked me to do some kind of ritual for the  occasion. I couldn't think of anything,  and felt quite intimidated with the prospect of creating a ritual for an audience of New York sophisticates. 

I was visiting a friend upstate at the time, and I  happened to be standing near an apple tree by the road.  I can still see the green grass under the tree, and a brilliant  circle of ripe, freshly fallen red apples,  lying in the grass around the tree.  I picked up all the good ones, and took them back to the City with me.  

When I gave my short performance, I took out that basket of apples, and said something to the effect that "This is Gaia, ever generous, ever giving us what we need."  And then I invited those present to come and take the apples.  I was amazed to see that the audience took every one of them and ate them right there!

As I sit writing, the sun rises over the Catalina mountains that surround Tucson, where I live now.  Many years and miles away from that theatre in Manhattan.  I look up to  orange, magenta, violet, mauve, and a continually changing pale, cerulean sky, the canvas for this magnificent painting the sky makes, created anew twice daily.  I'm grateful indeed for this moment of Beauty, and grateful for the stories of my life.  Especially, today, those that are about Mabons.  

This is one of my favorite songs, Robin Williamson's love song to Mother Earth.  Seems a good time to share it again............  

https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs

Asherah - a New Sculpture

Another in my "Our Lady of the Shards" series of ceramic mosaics.  Thanks to Lauren Losue for the cast of her beautiful hands!  

Litany of the Real by Patricia Ballentine

I wanted to share this beautiful Meditation/Praise Video by my friend Patricia.  And a few of her words from her Blog as well.  The questions she poses are important questions as the worldmind increasingly seems submerged in cyberspace, internet fantasy, cellphone addiction, AI, and a touchless  pace that scrolls our lives by with very little contact with what really matters. 

 

 https://www.patriciaballentine.com/post/litany-of-the-real

How do we retain the capacity to recognize what is real? 

As an artist, I have first-hand experience regarding the evolution of creative tools over the last 20 or 30 years. I have experienced the challenging conversations when being told that any art I created on the computer wasn't real art. In some ways, my ability to incorporate some technology into the creative process makes me uniquely qualified to recognize and speak to the difference between artists who utilize technology as an aspect of their creative work and people who are using AI (artificial intelligence) to tell a computer program to make something they will then describe and promote as art. 

There is an increasingly problematic trend toward being satisfied with what is on the surface and not caring about a deeper connection to, and understanding of, the human essence that goes into the act of creating. And although it should be obvious that this goes far beyond what is described as art, apparently it is not. 

At what cost have we surrendered to what is easy and entertaining?  

We are becoming technologically advanced beyond our capacity to see the inherent dangers on the path ahead. The technology is not the danger. In some cases it is our desire for a simpler existence without the willingness to release the grip of materialism. In some cases it is the result of the weight of pressures in our daily lives that leave us with little energy or imagination to seek something beyond what is simply in front of us. And, in some cases it is the result of diminished caring for the hands, hearts, and minds of others.

Through our aspirations of greatness and power have we begun to lose that which makes us human?

Technology and scientific advancements are vital in ways that cannot be measured. But to move beyond the potential for good and look to what serves the greater good requires our individual and collective capacity and willingness to see and understand what is all around us. It isn't just about AI and artists. And it isn't just about fake news and politics. It is about seeing, caring about, and holding onto what is real for ourselves and for others.

And so, in these many days and weeks the questions churned in my mind and heart. They stirred my imagination and fueled my belief that we can each play a part in holding onto the beauty and power of what is real...and what must not be lost. 

This is my offering released at the August full moon. 

The Litany of the Real.

It is my personal next first step toward making Sacred what is real.

https://youtu.be/jEuJKK7BDMU

The Five Dakinis

 

Masks for The Five Wisdom Dakinis (2016)

The Dakinis are the most important elements of the enlightened feminine in Tibetan Buddhism. They are the luminous, subtle, spiritual energy, the key, the gatekeeper, the guardian of the unconditioned state. When you want to accomplish something, you always invoke the presence of the Dakinis.”

— Lama Tsultrim Allione

I  made this Collection of Masks for a sacred dancer back in 2014, and they came to mind today, so I felt like sharing this post again.  Mekare*** is a  the Tantric dancer and teacher who has worked extensively with Prema Dasara and her beautiful 21 Praises of Tara dance ritual.   This collection I made for Mekare represent the Fierce Aspects of the Dakinis,  which she felt it was important for women to call upon in our world.  Here is something she wrote about the Dakinis: 

"The Dakini is a primordial female wisdom energy found particularly in Tibetan Buddhism.  They are called "Skydancers" for they are completely free, able to travel between worlds and dimensions, free of the entanglements of the mind, and intimate with impermanence. They dance in limitless luminous space. Embodiments of the Dakini are said to do their practices in graveyards,  adorned with skulls and bone ornaments representing their intimacy with impermanence and their freedom from all fear.  They are ferocious and wise, primal and magical. Fierce allies and agents of change.  Their compassion is immense.

They can be tricksters of the most sublime order, terrifying and demanding of truth, and also the most kind of guides, playful and nurturing.  They break through barriers, invoke strength and power, guide us across the thresholds of awareness and change. 

Depictions of the Dakini show her with a crown of skulls, in a wreath of flame, teeth bared in ferocious  display like a tiger -  eyes piercing and somewhat terrifying but with a rare beauty.  The beauty of understainding, compassion, and hilarity shines forth.  In Tibetan Buddhist Tantra there are 5 Wisdom Dakinis, each having a specific gift of mind transformation - the transformation or transmutation  of the poisons of the mind into wisdom."...............Mekare

I immediately related to the Dakinis being associated with the Five Elemental forces.  My sense is that they are like the Devas, primal beings, builders and creators.  Their concerns and origin are not necessarily human.  In this sense, they are elemental beings, associated with the 5 Directions.  Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Center or Aether.  Perhaps, like Kali dancing with Her skull necklace,  the skulls and bones that adorn them represent a ferocious hilarity at the fears that beset us, and the reality of impermanence.  Mekare went on to say:

"Dakini is a source of refuge. Besides taking refuge in the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha), we also take refuge in the Three Roots (Guru, Yidam and Dakini): Guru as the root of blessings because he or she will guide us to attain enlightenment; Yidam as the root of accomplishment because through the skilful method of practicing on an Yidam or tutelary deity, one will realise the nature of his or her own mind; Dakini as the root of all enlightened activities since Dakini represents primordial wisdom.

Dakini is associated with spaciousness, therefore has the ability to give birth to limitless prospects of enlightened activities: pacifying, enriching, magnetising and destroying. Dakini also embodies the union of emptiness and wisdom. There is nothing more than this.  A Dakini has the ability to move freely in  space which is beyond thoughts and beyond fabrications. This is the state of awareness which is under control, stable and yet free. Everyone has the ability and the potentials to realise the Wisdom Dakini principles or nature within oneself."

The Green Karma Dakini,  Element of Air

 The transmutation of overwork, struggle, and competition  into  

all-accomplishing wisdom and enlightened activity.

Associated with Karma Dakini:  Fulfillment. Aware choice. 

Grace. Ease. The Tao. The Martial Artist aware in every direction. 

 Compassionate and capable action in the world.

The Red Padma Dakini, Element of Fire

 The transmutation of desire, lust, and grasping into discerning awareness.

Associated with Padma Dakini:  Compassion. Radiance. Magnetism 

in order  to bring benefit. Warmth. Comfort. Delight. Joy.

The Gold Ratna Dakini, Element of Earth

 The transmutation of arrogance and greed into equanimity and generosity.
Associated with Ratna Dakini:  Abundance. Stability.
The richness inherent in every moment and everything. 
Golden. Generosity. Enrichment.

The Blue Vajra Dakini, Element of Water

 The transmutation of confusion and anger into mirror-like wisdom.

Associated with Vajra Dakini:  Clarity.  Precision. Intelligence. Intuition. 

Reflection.  Clear seeing wisdom.

The White Buddha Dakini, Element of Space

 The transmutation of despair, depression, apathy, 
and disconnect into  illuminated spacious mind.  
Associated with Buddha Dakini:  Calm. Peace. Spacious. Soothing.
 Realization  of connection and the web of all. 
The restful state of enlightened mind.

Dakinis by Penny Slinger
http://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com

***

MEKARE is a Sacred Dancer, Artist, Storyteller, Shamanic Bodywork Therapist, and Visionary Creatrix who is passionate about embodiment, evolution, sacred dance, and healing.  She has traveled extensively, studying with indigenous healers and dancing ecstatically around the world, including performing for His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara with Prema Dasara.

Asherah Rising

 

A relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) showing an Asherah Tree with male figures holding anointing oils.  

 For many years I've made  "tree of life" images.  I'm not sure where I got the image from originally, but the Tree, and images of women with roots and branches, have been an inner iconography for as long as I can remember.   In early lithographs I made often a  woman within the Tree, or the Tree was a backdrop to everything else in the painting (not unlike the Web motif I also became fascinated by in my later "Spider Woman"  Project).  In my 1993 "Lovers" card from my Rainbow Bridge Oracle, or the 1986 lithograph below I called  "Axis Mundi".  The "Tree" is ubiquitious for me, and it's taken me a while to notice that.

The large painting I called "Gaia" (1986) for my MFA program (it was 9 feet long) showed the Goddess as a Trinity, and the barren Tree behind them.  I only was able to show that painting once, and it was destroyed eventually.  Large paintings don't last very long I'm afraid, especially when they come off the frame. That painting is still important to me, especially the confrontational gaze of the Trinity:   I wanted them to confront the viewer with the loss, destruction and disrespect our civilization has wrought on the Tree of Life.

Which was also Asherah, the Great Mother.  The Great Mother who was banished from the Bible and banished from what became the religious underpinnings of western civilization as the Patriarchs of Jerusalem erased the Feminine to create the first monotheistic  religion (that we know of).  Yawah became the sole God, male and "a jealous God who would have no other".  The Goddesses, along with sundry other regional Gods,  became "the great abomination" to those who were the "Chosen" of Yaweh.   Later this concept  evolved into Christianity and Islam.  And the Goddess continued to be written out of religion, although She kept making Her appearance here and there.  It is not easy to completely eliminate the divinity of half the human race, although the his-story of  Western religion demonstrates a long and continuing effort, sometimes by negation, as in turning Asherah into "abomination", or sometimes by mythological co-option.  It is interesting, for example,  that the ancient and ubiquitous Trinity, the 3-part Goddess such as Persephone/Demeter/Hecate,  which represented the cycles of nature as embodied withing the Great Mother, was later absorbed into Christianity as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  In fact, this Trinity may be very ancient indeed, and may also even preceed the Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva Trinity (Creator/Sustainer/Destroyer).

A whole lot of co-option and re-mything goes on as religions evolve!  Especially, it seems,  if theologians are determined to get rid of the Goddess all together.

As I began to explore clay sculpture and leather sculpture later in life, I found myself fascinated with torsos that  became the Goddess, emerging from the trees, sustaining, the Mother within the Tree, breasts and belly. 

So, the Mother who was a Tree called to me, as I believe She has called to many.  As the great evolutionary Crisis of our time -  ecological destruction and the possibilities of nuclear war - have arrived,  so must the Great Mother arise from the depths of humanity's collective unconscious and it's layered Mythos. 

Her time has come, and She is speaking, loud and clear.  

It was a few years back that I finally learned about  Asherah, the ancient Canaanite and early Hebrew Goddess associated with pre-monotheistic Judaism.  She likely has much earlier origins as well.  As  Asherah  was often represented as a tree, the ubiquitous  "Asherah poles" (ashirim)  associated with Her worship in early (pre-monotheistic) tribal  Judaism were possibly made of wood, and possibly they were taken from sacred trees dedicated to Asherah, as there is Biblical mention of groves.  These (presumably wooden) icons may have been household icons dedicated to Asherah, and were believed to invoke prosperity and fertility.  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 itself, 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" and sometimes also called the  "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 artistic and spiritual vocabulary for more years than I remember,  with  Asherah had I not had a kind of visionary experience during a healing session in the early Fall of  2017 with an alternative  healer. 

Not unlike Reiki practitioners she worked with me for over an hour, helping me to enter into an altered state of consciousness.  As I closed my eyes, the session began with a vivid inner appearance of a white dove.  But it was not a literal kind of bird, it was more like a sacred emblem or symbol, 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 Sophia,  like Asherah, was eventually removed from monotheistic theology.

The healer, after the session was over, told me that she saw a Goddess form present during the healing.   The healer, who was 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 at the time, not until I later looked it up on the Internet.  And then (of course!) I discovered the Hebrew Goddess  "Asherah". 

At that time,  I felt this had to do with my passage into old age.  Rites of passage, in my experience, are never easy or comfortable, cozy or predictable.  They are thresholds. I like to think I was  given a Blessing as I entered into the last part of my life. I reflect as well that at that time I was working to heal and release old wounds, familial wounds that were arising for examination. 

It occurs to me now as then that it is not 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 including  the long reach of ancestors, going back, and 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.  As always,  I am grateful to be graced at any time in my life with these Visitations of the transcendant and ineffable. 

"Asherah"  by David Hostetler

Asherah poles (from Wikipedia)

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] 

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

.

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)]. 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 and creators of monotheism, which came to have 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, objects that represented a Goddess identified with the form of a tree.  

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 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" - they may have been other objects meant to represent the Goddess in addition to the trees.

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.

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