God’s Wife
So how fabulously timed is this latest “discovery” - it’s perfect for Lilith-Uranus conjunct in early Aries. Yes God had a wife or, in other words, even in the most monotheistic and mainstream religions the single male God had a female counterpart aka Goddess and She was widely worshipped. Brill article is here.
“…God, also known as Yahweh, had a wife named Asherah, according to a British theologian. Amulets, figurines, inscriptions and ancient texts, including the Bible, reveal Asherah’s once prominent standing….God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.
“…Asherah — known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar — was “an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing…Many English translations prefer to translate ‘Asherah’ as ‘Sacred Tree,’” Wright said. “This seems to be in part driven by a modern desire, clearly inspired by the Biblical narratives, to hide Asherah behind a veil once again.
“Mentions of the goddess Asherah in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are rare and have been heavily edited by the ancient authors who gathered the texts together,” Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, said.
Asherah as a tree symbol was even said to have been “chopped down and burned outside the Temple in acts of certain rulers who were trying to ‘purify’ the cult, and focus on the worship of a single male god, Yahweh,” he added….”
How is this linked with Lilith? Well, it’s a long-long-long story but in short, Lilith represents the disenfranchised, demonised (literally in the case of Lilith) sacred feminine. It’s not just Lilith, of course.
Remember, Venus in her Morning Star guise is named Lucifer – which just means Light Bearer. Guess which bunch of bright sparks decided to re-brand Lucifer as a demon?
In Gnostic christianity, the Goddess is Sophia – Wisdom, from where we get such words today as “sophistication.”
See also Thunder, Perfect Mind.
Believe it or not, I was actually taught in the highschool that I went to (a Catholic one) that God was unisex…or both…or whatever is the right word for it. So this doesn’t really surprise me.
Is this really new? Wasn’t God’s wife part of the Nag Hammadi scripture discovery? And then a whole bunch of stitched up guys suggested Sophia / Istar was actually God’s mother so as to remove any question of God giving sexual pleasure to a woman?? Unless you go creepy Oedipal, which they kinda were…
Terrible camera work here, but love the song:
Not new-new-new BUT this is a significant departure in that Nag Hammadi was all gnostic – this is an Oxford academic claiming deliberate censoring of her out of the official bible & that worship of her was far more widespread than at first thought.
So it’s new to us, as such, but it’s v.significant in the world of academic theology. The Gnostics were always fringe or said to be fringe. And their doctrine is quite radical.
Yes those poor Gnostics do get relegated to a sorta Christian Hippy status don’t they, treated like a cult rather than fundamental (in the truest sense of the word). Just read the article, thank you for the link, so true what you say about a Uranus-Lilith conjunction being apt timing for this discussion to come to the masses via television doco. I wanna see it!! ABC, please oblige…??
The person mentioned in the article you quoted ‘Brill article here’, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, is currently presenting a series of programs about the Bible on BBC TV.
The program shown last Tuesday, was titled ‘Did God Have a Wife?’, and was all about this particular topic.
Viewers in the UK can watch the entire program online here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zw3fl
But that program will not be viewable outside the UK.
That BBC page also gives links to a couple of blogs that have also been discussing this subject:
http://biblenerd.blogspot.com/2011/03/must-watch-tv-bibles-buried-secrets-on.html
http://curious-reader.livejournal.com/25238.html
Hmmm…if the trend catches, Asherah could be a new trending baby girl name.
Sounds like She-Ra: Princess of Power, super hero sister to He-Man from the 80s cartoons.
Loved her!
I wanted to be her
It makes me wonder if the peeps who made She-rah knew about Asherah or not? very suspicious.
Bet they did. It seems allusions abound in pop culture, even if the myth ain’t too mainstream..
Doesn’t surprise me. Layers and layers of history, thinking, prejudice, fear, theorising, self-aggrandisement, all obscure the original moment in time. 2000+ years is a very long time ago!
Even Winnie the Pooh would not look like its original version after that mch time..
Especially if someone (re)writing it realised they could get in a good word for themselves and use it as a means of social control, and even better to stop the feelings of inferiority around all those pesky women.
Thanks Mystic. It is a GREAT article. Makes the link between mono-man-god centred religion and deforestation very clear.
In fact, after reading that I just wanna go on a seed planting binge.
*skips off singing* “I’m plantin’ in the rain. Just plantin’ in the rain. What a glorious feeling…plantin’ in the rain”
have y’all never heard of shekhinah?
The Sacred Tree is upside down in that it is rooted in heaven — bringing the divine through physical world.
Nope, don’t know of Shekhinah yet…
*divine into the physical
if that makes sense
Forget wanting to be She-Ra… I’d like to be Mystics Scorpio Intern!!
Spot on…After 15 years of debating Genesis (we had 2 years on the meaning of ‘Light’ alone!) with the Jehov’es that come…almost religiously…to my door, I shall change the subject! HeHe!
Yin and yang, a perfect balance.
Ooh, I loved this post, I hadn’t really heard of Asherah before. I love the name Asher, it’s meant to mean fortunate or blessed and there was even a tribe of Asher. Of course that’s late in the picture, Ashira is an Arabic name meaning ‘Lady of the Sea’ which might be more meaningful.
Everywhere I look at the moment everything seems to point toward all old institutions and structures being corrupted by power-mongering elites. The old church and state is definitely disintegrating in my mind if not reality…
Would it be disrespectful to call my next cat Asherah if I was so inclined? Hm.
I love your blog Mystic, seriously, so interesting, so entertaining and SO what I need at work right now!