Ashre or Asherah?

Worship in your own tradition, for it is the ecosystemic way to know the Elohim, but worship in acknowledgment of the Shekinah and of the spiritual equality of the matriarch and the Asherah that resides in every Jewish woman, for in her the men of Yahweh will find the complement of your own seed line.

http://matu1.math.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/hieros/hieros.html

The Holy Harlot was also a Virgin because she remained unmarried. Ishtar-Asherah-Mari-Anath was both the Great Whore and the Great Virgin Mother (Walker 822). Mary Magalen was the penitent Holy Whore and Mary Mother of James and Joses and Jesus was the Virgin. Ishtar the Great Whore of Babylon announced "A prostitute compassionate am I" (Walker 820).

[BTW, this is a wonderful website pertaining to history of women, goddesses, patriarchies, matriarchies, and to women's roles in history and religion. --Richard]

http://www.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/mythology/canaanite-faq

Athirat (Asherah, Ashtartian - 'the Lady of the Sea', Elat - 'the goddess') - Goddess of the Sea and mother of the gods. She is El's loving consort and is protective of her seventy children who may also be known as the gracious gods, to whom she is both mother and nursemaid. Her sons, unlike Baal initially, all have godly courts. She frequents the ocean shore. In the Syrian city of Qatra, she was considered Baal-Hadad's consort.

While washing clothing with a female companion by the sea, she is spied by El, who roasts a bird and invites the two to choose between being his daughters or his wives. They choose to become his wives and in due course give birth to the gracious gods, the cleavers of the sea, including Shachar and Shalim. The new family builds a sanctuary in the desert and lives there for eight years.

Baal and Anat hope to use her to influence El on the issue of Baal's palace. Initially suspicious and fearful of them on behalf of her children, but she warms up when she see that they have brought gifts. She and Anat successfully intercede with El on Baal's behalf for permission for Baal to build a more suitable court.

When Baal is found dead, she advocates her son Athtar be made king. Her sons, the "'pounders' of the sea", apparently colluded with Mot and were smited by Baal with sword and mace upon his return.

Baal-Hadad's creatures devour her handmaidens, so she sends them to El. El tells them to go into the wilderness and there birth horned buffalo, which will distract Baal-Hadad.

She and Anat serve as nursemaids for Keret's son Yassib, but reminds Keret of his pledge of wealth for Huray, perhaps causing his decline in health because of its lack of fulfillment.

[This one's pretty interesting. You can see a clay sculpture of Asherah, and even order one for your mantle. --Richard]

http://jblstatue.com/pages/asherah.html

Asherah (5 inch #ASH; $20) - The original bread of life. Hebrew and Canaanite women molded loaves of this figure which were blessed and ritually eaten, the precursor of the communion wafer. Her idols were found under every green tree, were carved from living trees, or erected as poles or pillars beside roadside altars. Crude clay images of her as tree of life later evolved into the more refined Syrian Artemis. Ancient sexual rites (dismissed to this day by male scholars as cult prostitution) associated with worship of Asherah insured that matrilineal descent patterns, with their partnership rather than dominator values, would continue. Hebrew priestly iconoclasts finally uprooted Asherah, supplanting matrifocal culture with patriarchy. Our Judeo-Christian inheritance of this law of the Levites, passed on by the Roman Empire, is one source of present-day sex inequality.

Here are more comments on this subject from Ken Tough:

I read with much interest the comments by richard handal h.g. about ashre/asherah on the dent. I find this fascinating, as I have also made this connection myself. Here are some related posts I made to rmta some time ago.)

Aimee Lortskell writes

>Keith Hautala (khautala@uoguelph.ca) wrote:
>: I've never heard of the Goddess Ashre - but I'm no expert. You
could
>: be thinking of Asherah. Most information on her comes from Ugaritan
>: Canaan tablets from around 1400 B.C.E. Asherah is translated to mean
>: "Holy Queen". She was a marine goddess and mother of the gods - the
>: term "Goddess who walks the sea" is found several times in the
tablets
>: of Uragit.
>
>AFAIK, there were several mother goddesses around the middle east with
>similar names, and ashre might be a derivative of asherah or one of the
>other ones.

I would agree with this interpretation, that it is somewhat of a "corruption" of asherah. The relation to the Goddess is important to BFP, because Tori has rather consistently suggested the Egyptian Goddess Isis is a running theme through the album. Her child & husband, Osiris, was taken away by the nasties and broken into 14 (?) pieces. In a long involved saga, she brought him back by collecting the pieces and conceiving a child by him.

I've heard it mentioned that each piece of Osiris, and each part of Isis' journey, corresponds to one of the songs on BfP (minus the 4 "capo" tunes).

I find a fascinating connection also through the infamous pig pic, since the mother-breastfeeding-child image originates with Isis in Egypt, and where the child is often depicted as an animal. There's also Talulah, of course.

The Goddess has been a vital part of religion since paleolithic times, and it runs deep through all modern religions. It is the subject of Muhammed My Friend, and there is an interesting discussion in Joy of Sects[1]

"If the major religious traditions have one dubious element in common, it is probably their complicity, at least on the institutional level, in relegating women to secondary status. This raises the question of how great religious founders like the Buddha, Jesus or Muhammad could be genuinely enlightened and still treat women as inferiors. The short answer is that those spiritual leaders did just the opposite. If anything, their attitudes to women were extraordinarily open and compassionate, even if their followers didn't always get the message or chose to ignore it"

He goes on to describe the goddess culture and where it started

"Goddess culture was a blend of monotheism and polytheism. From the Paleolithic the Goddess appears to have been universally worshipped across a wide swath of civilisation.. She took on numerous manifestations including birds as diverse as the crane, duck, goose, dove and owl as well as the bull, bear, doe butterfly and bee. ... With the advent of writin in c.4000 BC, she was called Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte or Asherah in the Fertile Crescent, Isis in Egypt, Gaia, Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter, and Hera in Greece, Cybele in Anatolia and Rome. Human male figures appear in tandem with the Goddess, in what is referred to as the sacred marriage. Male gods later appear in Egyptian & Mesopotamian culture as the son and/or lover of the Goddess.

This is fascinating because of its parallel in Christianity through the cult of Mary, the extension of the goddess into early christianity to help ease (squeeze?) in the new religion. In some ways, Mary is a parallel of Isis/Osiris with a Dante-esque descent into hell. Marina Warner discusses the theme [2]

"The Virgin's intercession with her son can bring healing and fertility and consolation to the living; but by far her greatest function in the Catholic scheme of salvation is to reprieve the sufferings of sinners after death.

She goes on to describe various images of the Virgin and her son in the judgements after death and the torments of hell.

"In many eastern Apocalypses, the Vigin Mary descends into the underworld. She does not enter the underworld to wrestle with death, but to see the fate of the wicked. "The apocalyptic violence of the motifs are Christian in conception; but the central drama of judgement appears in ancient Egypt where it was believed that Osiris ruled in the judgement of the hall of the dead"

"Like Isis, who snatched Osiris' dismembered body from the powers of evil by reanimating his corpse and conceiving his child, Mary through the virgin birth had defeated the death of sin.

So from what I gather, Tori is presenting Muhammed's understanding of the Goddess, and connecting Mary/Jesus with Asherah or Isis/Osiris. That the mother & child/god theme is so crucial in both Egyptian and Christian religion is really such a rich source of imagery and nooks and crannies of delicious tidbits to seek and and devour.

Personally, I'd like to delve into this Isis thing a bit deeper. Though interpreting Tori music is a bit like reading Nostradamus (make anything of it you will), you can open the lyric sheet anywhere and find a starting point.

[Here goes... Father Lucifer: "everyday's my wedding day though baby's still in his comatose state. I'll die my own Easter eggs] Now, what's the significance of "die" c.f. "dye"? Easter eggs are pagan imagery of the rebirth of the world in spring, baby's in a comatose state because Isis has not yet reanimated him via the conception ... hmmmm ... so much fun, and so much work to do...

-------------

References:
[1] The Joy of Sects: A Spirited Guide to the World's Religious Traditions, Peter Occhiogrosso, Doubleday, 1994, ISBN 0-385-42564-3

[2] Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and The Cult of the Virgin Mary Marina Warner, Picador, 1985, ISBN 0-330-28771-0

Melanie Watts writes:

> wrote:
>>I would agree with this interpretation, that it is somewhat of a
>>"corruption" of asherah.
>I wouldn't. I was curious as to it's meaning, and I actually found the
>word "ashre" in a *very* large dictionary. I don't remember the *exact*
>meaning, but I know the ashre is part of the daily prayers said by
>members of the Jewish faith. Something like Proverbs 46 and 127, I
>think. I just remember that the ashre, like I said, is a prayer (that
>is supposed to be) meditated on daily.

Yeah, it seems to be hebrew for blessing, but some more interesting tidbits (tit-bits?) are offered up by the Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford University Press, 1993):

Asher[*]:
Second son of Jacob & Z., one of the 12 tribes of Israel. Genesis 30:13 associates the name with the hebrew for "blessing", but many scholars associate it with the Goddess Asherah.

Asherah:
The Canaanite mother goddess associated with lions, serpents and sacred trees. This word in the bible most often refers to a stylized wooden tree [God instructed the Israelites in Exodus "You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their Asherim", which were groves sacred to Asherah].

Biblical writers generally condemned worship of the goddess, but evidence exists that many in israel devoted themselves to Asherah or perhaps even worshipped her as a consort to Yaweh.

[!Echoes of God(Utp)! "God sometimes you just don't come through, do you need a woman to look after you?"]

At several times an asherah stood in Yaweh's temple in Jerusalem (2Kings 18:4...) There were in the temple, moreover, vessels dedicated to Asherah and a compound where women wove garments for her statue [2K 23:7]. Recent archological discoveries have confirmed that the cult of Asherah was a part of Yawistic tradition for at least some Israelites.

It is possible all this is really for nothing, and perhaps the original meaning that Tori wanted for the word is indeed "We are one" in Hebrew. According to Toriphie Melissa Mazzeo, In February or March of 1996, Tori performed in New York City in a cafe. Part of the performance was broadcast on the NY radio station Z100 (92.3 FM). She took questions from the audience and one person asked what the term "ashre" meant. Tori replied, roughly, "It is Hebrew for "we are one".

Benjamin Mobley adds:

This is Asherah (which could be ashre?), the Hebrew Goddess of the common people. She stood side by side with her consort El (or Yahweh) in Solomon's Temple until the raging patriarchs finally succeeded in eradicating the 'old' ways... burning Her sacred groves in the high places and slaying Her male priestesses (qadeshim).

Among biblical mentions are Jeremiah 44:15-19, II Kings 23:4-27, II Chronicles 34:3-7.

This was taken from http://www.azstarnet.com/~gallae/mater6.htm.

Interesting enough, I found this while doing a websearch on keyword: Inanna, which is what I believed to be the word tori uses for the backing vocals in Caught a Lite Sneeze.

Toriphile Amber Hansel met David Pearl, who is the guy who arranges the various sheet music books for Tori. Read what he says about the 'Ashre' lyric in Amber's description of the meeting.