Asherah Quotes

“When the “screech owl” calls, “villainous” Eve, described by Tertullian as the “devil’s gateway,” enters the labyrinth of her own narcissistic wounding, rewinding the threads of a lifetime of unravelling. Ariadne, Persephone, Inanna, Ereshkigal, Shapash, Ameratsu, Walu, Isis and Hecate have been here before, out with their lanterns, brewing and simmering, re-wilding the stars and constellations in their own image, fermenting their power. Downwards and inwards becomes upwards and outwards. This is why the underworld works for women.

Why have we forgotten how to listen to Mother Nature? In Genesis 1:28 God tells man to “fill the earth and subdue it.” Man has permission to rule over [and therefore exploit] every living creature and red Mother Earth herself.

From rotting flesh apple trees grow. Asherah as Tree: roots in the underworld; canopy in the cosmos; branches sagging under the weight of apples, dates and berries, ripe for eating, brewing and rotting back into the soil, is a multilayered eco-system nurturing life. A cornucopia of animal and planet familiars circle in her orbit: Moon, Sun, Venus, Ibex, lion, dove and serpent. Rivers of consciousness flow through all creatures. We are the flowers, the trees, the animals, the tides, the nature spirits. When all plants, animals and insects are equal the cycle of ownership is broken. Hierarchy falls.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Climate change has brought, along with globalization and the possibilities of nuclear war, the great evolutionary Crisis of our time. And that, I believe, is why the Great Mother is arising from the depths of humanity's collective unconscious, from shards and archives of the deep past, from the violence and erasures of patriarchy. Her time has come. And the Tree of Asherah, with its inter-woven roots deep in the dark Earth, and its seasonal leaves and sustaining fruit, is Her perfect metaphor.

Asherah, the ancient Goddess of pre-monotheistic Judaism, has very early origins. Certainly, among the Canaanites and neighboring civilizations, and possibly going back as far as Samaria. Sacred Groves were planted for Her. She was called “the Wife of Yahweh,” the Feminine aspect of God. Ubiquitous "Asherah poles" (ashirim) mentioned in the Old Testament may have been made of wood, possibly cut from trees dedicated to Asherah. Asherah poles were apparently household icons meant to invoke prosperity and fertility.

The reforms of King Josiah’s reign in Jerusalem, along with the later reforms of the Prophet Jeremiah, revised and centralized Judaism to have only God, Yahweh. All other Gods and Goddesses were banned. Asherah was called “the great abomination.” Thus, women became diminished and disempowered, as they were also Biblically blamed for the now monotheistic God’s wrath. In the Old Testament we read that Asherah poles were banned, dedicated groves cut down, and Yahweh now had no wife.”
― Lauren Raine, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Since I was a child, I've made images of women who were trees. I'm not sure where it came from, certainly I had not heard of the Tree of Life, or Goddesses associated with trees. I had never heard of Goddesses. But women with roots and leaves became a personal iconography for me. In early drawings friends somehow grew leaves. In later lithographs there She was. A 9-foot-long painting I called "Gaia" (1986) for my MFA program showed the Goddess as a Trinity before the Barron Tree: I wanted them to confront the viewer with the loss, destruction and disrespect our civilization has wrought on the Tree of Life that sustains us. And there are many other works that show female figures rooted and, importantly for me, intertwined within the Earth.


I realize now it was Asherah, the Great Mother, I was seeking. Asherah who was banished from the Judeo-Christian Bible. Banished from what became the religious underpinning of Western civilization as the Patriarchs of Jerusalem created the first monotheistic religion – which uniquely featured a solitary male deity with no female counterpart.

Yet it is not easy to eliminate half the human race from sanctity, although the his-story of Western religion demonstrates a long and continuing effort to do just that, sometimes by erasure or demonization, sometimes by mythic co-option. It is interesting, for example, to note that the ubiquitous ancient “trinity” of a 3-part Goddess, such as the Greek Persephone/Demeter/Hecate, is a Trinity that represented the cycles of nature as personified within the ancient Great Mother. This Trinity re-occurs, probably as a result of Patriarchal re-assignment, as the masculine Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva Trinity (Creator/Sustainer/Destroyer) in Hinduism. Certainly, the European Pagan Trinity was absorbed into Christianity, masculinized as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
― Lauren Raine, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“My trunk is an umbilicus, a rooted foundation. I send roots far and wide, drawing up energy of the earth. My roots are implanted but my branches, ahhhh my branches gather energy and in doing so dance freely. When they dance, they pick up the vivacity of the wind, give it a swirl and send it out again. Like Van Gogh’s starry night. I am the stars. I am the swirls. I am the dance itself. On earth as it is in heaven. Go into the woods, feel my auras. Stand still and feel the forest breezes as I kiss your breath, caress your skin, nourish your spirit. Allow the wind to brush your own soul and send it forth dancing in all directions. This is my energy that I gather and spread throughout the fertile earth. I travel along the air currents which carry my call to the seeds for life itself to arise.”
― Janet Rudolph, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“I am the center of the spiral, all emanates from my core. No creature, no manifestation, no energy lives outside my domain. All is connected through spirit. I am the loom, the web, the magic. The weaver and the woven!

I am the vulva of the world, all life comes through my body to be spun/knitted into the lattice-work of the earth. Each stone, grain of sand, wisp of cloud, drop of water, pebble, dirt, xylem and phloem create the structure of the web. Each cry of sorrow, howl of injustice, joyful laugh, note of celebration, enliven its fabric. Keening, laughing, screaming and roaring all belong to me. They are the resonances that emanate from my being.”
― Janet Rudolph, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“I am the tree, the grove, the coolness of the mist-filled orchard. Like tree-rings, I am multi-layered. Like leaves which rustle in the wind, I whisper in harmony with the energies of the land. I am bones, trunk, spinal column, sap, blood. We are the same, you and I. Play with me in the forests, in the loamy soil of the earth, in the salt-filled vessel of the oceans, in the rapids of fresh waters, in the root systems that connect us all.


I fly and remain rooted. I reach out and stay centered. Singing is the workforce of my Goddesshood. My melodies lay out vibrational pathways for life’s journeys. My song-fueled undulations dance along with the tidal currents of the air.


Time moves, landscapes change, the song remains. . .and holds within, the ancestral memories and collected wisdoms of the Great Mystery.


I am the Great Goddess who birthed you. I am the egg, the seed, the sacred cauldron of life. The Song behind the song! Let me hold you, bathe you in my vibration, sing love songs. I will guide you to all the treasures I embody.”
― Janet Rudolph, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“My name is so depthful, the casual observer only sees my surface. I invite you to dive into my essence, to explore my beauty and to share my visions.

I am the tree, the grove, the coolness of the mist-filled orchard. Like tree-rings, I am multi-layered. Like leaves which rustle in the wind, I whisper in harmony with the energies of the land. I am bones, trunk, spinal column, sap, blood. We are the same, you and I. Play with me in the forests, in the loamy soil of the earth, in the salt-filled vessel of the oceans, in the rapids of fresh waters, in the root systems that connect us all.

I fly and remain rooted. I reach out and stay centered. Singing is the workforce of my Goddesshood. My melodies lay out vibrational pathways for life’s journeys. My song-fueled undulations dance along with the tidal currents of the air.

Time moves, landscapes change, the song remains. . .and holds within, the ancestral memories and collected wisdoms of the Great Mystery.

I am the Great Goddess who birthed you. I am the egg, the seed, the sacred cauldron of life. The Song behind the song! Let me hold you, bathe you in my vibration, sing love songs. I will guide you to all the treasures I embody.”
― Janet Rudolph, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Neolithic Goddess Asherah was the Mother Tree. When King Josiah unleashed his monsters, ordering them to hack her down, a sentient, sacred, medicinal, transcendent matrix of life-sustaining trees, home to birds, mammals, insects; branches pregnant with fruit and seeds, were maimed, chopped and burnt, in the name of a new dominator religion. A precedent was set for slashing and burning, cutting and logging. We were taught Mother Earth was a resource, not something we are part of.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“The Tree-Goddess Archetype uproots us from the wilderness of modern life and plants us in the forest where we find our divinity and calling.

So come walk with me into the trees, to cool our heads and ignite our passion, throwing our imagination to that place in the sky where the leaves meet the stars. Head rushing, wind rushing through the branches, nature spirits whispering,

“Let us be your church.”

I like to walk the same path, rain-soaked, spattered in mud, through the strange and muffled world of the forest in winter. If not winter, then when, for winter is the time to retreat inward. Sometimes I don’t walk at all. I float between trees in quiet meditation, whispering with faeries and spirits who say there is a smorgasbord of knowledge and fungal richness buried down there between the tree roots. I have always known that the wisdom of the trees will outlast ours.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Seeds of hatred have been planted in those eyes where love should be. The liturgical shame game is based on ownership and divine ordination. God rallies on the side of men. Eve, as chattel, her chastity as currency, may barely survive the institution of marital and creational hierarchy, nerves frayed, weary, wounded, rendered fragile, locked into eternal cycles of blame and shame. No wonder Lilith fled, choosing sorcery over servitude.


This is not Love. None of this is love. Love is free and fair. Love is an apple, sweet and delicious. Love is gnosis, in the form of a big juicy, eye-opening apple, seeding wisdom, received by Eve, gifted by Lilith, eaten in secret, far away from pious eyes looking for a fight.


Eyes and knuckles locked across the centre of self, Eve can see, reflecting in his, the patriarchal mindset, a darkness she must descend into. She must descend into this vortex of limbs and fleshy bits: a churning shame spiral of feminine wounding and patriarchal reversal: a reputation breaker, where female power is trod down and freedom shackled. Countless unnamed and named women throughout history, including Mary Magdalene, who was mortifyingly shackled to the word “whore”; Cleopatra, the whore-queen; Helen of Troy, the bitch-whore; Jeh, the Primal Whore; Rahab the harlot; Jezebel, the witch-whore; Asherah worshipers, those brazen prostitutes and leg openers; Hypatia and her Satanic wiles; have already been blistered, minimized and even murdered here.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Let’s remember who we were before the canon told us who we should be. These illusionary divisions, in faith, gender, behaviours and consciousness, are reinforced through the symbolic separation of the apple from the tree. All beliefs and faiths, including Paganism and the Goddess can co-exist. We can respect all faiths, but not when they are used to manipulate and control.

Pillar Goddess iconography, spanning the underworld to the cosmos, teaches us balance, harmony and stability, opening us to our divine connection with universal energy. Goddess wisdom is not hidden in the vaults of the privileged few. Mother Nature wants us to gorge upon the succulent wisdom and self-awareness at the heart of the apple. She wants us to rejoin our separated consciousness to the consciousness of other living creatures and the Earth by committing to a path of sacred-wild.

Patriarchy coercively separated the Divine Body from Divine Consciousness. We internalized patriarchal-shaming. Perhaps Asherah can show us how to put Love-of-Self back on the altar.

What grows in the darkness flourishes. Seeding our divine connection with the Mother Goddess seeds our own personal growth. Asherah asks us to push our hands deep into the soil, deep into the underworld, deep into understanding self, where there is equilibrium and potential. These are the roots and seeds of the Mother Tree.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“In shame Eve hides her nakedness. Asherah celebrates hers. Many Asherah icons (described as false idols) are pillar-shaped, with sacred breasts, yoni-portals and Hathor wigs, suggesting her primordial, fertility magic had reach. Asherah, Ashtoreth, Elath, Athtar, Asthtar, Astar, Astarte and Ishtar are avatars of the same Goddess, suggesting fluidity. The Goddess morphs depending on people’s needs and location. She blows in the wind, rolls with the river and moves with the cosmos. She is not static and fixed in the sky. Love in the time of Asherah was far more free.

Asherah’s symbolism shape-shifts from tree to vulva expressing the unfettered scrolling and unfurling of nature’s fertility, in an ecstatic release of healing, renewal, and enlightenment, rippling out into the yoni-verse as a loud, tantric and rapturous OHM.


Let’s put our eco-feminist crowns on, go out into the night and walk beneath this cloak of stars, pondering the ghosts of desecrated forests. Let’s sit with the cutting; the burning; the felling of trees; the desecration of nature; land, devoid of shade, parched and ashen; the Goddess destroyed; Divine Female wisdom trod beneath the rubble. No other species is destroying its own home (Mother Earth), or pummelling life with such endless violence.

Eyes and knuckles locked in an epic battle across the beating heart of Mother Earth, the centre of self, the still point around which all else spins, Asherah is staring down the unhoused, man-beast archetype. The depths of knowledge pooling in her eyes pre-date his. She’s challenging the belief that the psycho-socio-sexual-politico-emotional world order, set up for men, justifies abuse, violence and destruction. She’s reflecting this abuse, violence and destruction back at him. She’s telling him the separation of consciousness is illusionary. Goddess is in every living thing, not outside and above.

Not power over.

Empowerment of.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“In Goddess cultures, rather than separating consciousness, creating division and reinforcing hierarchy, consciousness entwines. Imagine a serpent, conduit for chthonic and cosmic wisdom, coiling up the Mother Tree. Returning to the roots of Earth based spiritualities shifts thinking: the cutter becomes the planter; the ruler, a custodian. Patriarchy severed our connection with spirit, stealing this knowledge from the many, giving it to the privileged few.

The fundamental difference I see between Eve and Asherah is the separation of consciousness, coercively imposed upon Eve by the patriarch. Asherah IS the tree. Eve walks beneath the tree. Asherah shape-shifts into serpent consciousness. Eve talks to the serpent. Asherah IS the apple and seed of wisdom. Eve picks the apple from the tree of knowledge and is called out for her “disobedience.”

God tells Eve that, despite her own dreams and aspirations, Adam will “rule over her.” Adam has permission to “trod” Eve in the dirt. She loses her autonomy and identity. As her womb hosts the patriarchal seed, misogyny seeds in the population.

Attacking women’s perceived promiscuity is textbook misogyny. Targeting women’s freedom is textbook misogyny. Silencing women is textbook misogyny. Victim-shaming, body-shaming and period-shaming are textbook misogyny. At a fundamental level, patriarchy objects to women having the freedom to roam the world, taste the fruit, enjoy sex, with the right to say no. At a fundamental level patriarchy wants women to submit. It wants women back in the house, where servitude awaits.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“The Mother Goddess was phased out / edited out / assimilated / shamed / burnt and torched. Deuteronomy 12:3 is a call to action,

“Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places”.

There has to be an unease within all women, manifesting as a nagging and a throbbing deep in the body, as we battle disassociation, amnesia and anxiety. We know something’s gone drastically wrong. No other species breaks its females the way humans do. Repairing the tear in the yoni-verse cannot be about retreating into aloneness. We must join the “collective screech of cathartic release,” demanding to know:

“What have you done to us?”

“And why?”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Shame is guilt and embarrassment and receding from potential; a bowing of the head; an eye not met. At its most damaging, shame is a raw edge; an unravelling of self; a grave cloth of cold dread and mortifying, consciousness wounding, perpetuated by others who seek to disallow and control us, wishing us small.

Eve sneaked out of the Garden through the picket, end-gate, searching for the source of shame. Traveling east, towards the sunrise, the way shamans do, in trance, mind relaxed and open, connecting with the liminal, she soars along cart tracks, close to the ground, leaving behind her, the lush, the dappling, the lone apple, not picked, hanging from the bough of the holy tree. Time compresses. Whole days and vast distances pass in the twinkle of an eye.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“What is shame?

An inbuilt moral compass, or a trauma response to a yoke of oppressions, weaponized to establish and maintain hierarchy? Patriarchy normalizes shaming, filtering it down into the population, giving permission for others to do the same.

When two systems [patriarchy and religion] became mutually beneficial, shame and humiliation were wielded as tools of mass mind control, honed by centuries of observing and grooming. They span their tourniquet from barbed threads of opposing and simplistic principals: good and evil; saints and sinners; virtuousness and wickedness; black and white; male and female. Sexual love, self-love and nakedness were re-branded as sin; trust turned to suspicion; innocence to humiliation; inquisitiveness to apathy; acceptance to blame.

Whatever shame is, we the unworthy; the colonized and fallen; the divergent and disparate; victims of division; survivors of violence and sexual “others” know how shame feels. Perhaps to truly understand shame we should ask when we first felt it. Since we are born innocent, inquisitive, loving, trusting, absorbing information, we must assume shame came later.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“With the flick of a quill, Biblical scribes cast the Divine Female out of mythology, just as Eve and Adam were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Scholars observe that evolutions of mythology from the Ugarit texts, dating from 1400 BCE, written centuries before the Bible, exist within the Old Testament. But what of Asherah? Are there traces of Her in biblical passages, other than those calling for Her destruction?

We can imagine how Asherah’s existence challenged the authoritarian aloneness of the godhead because the patriarchal scribes slash her with their pens. Even though it is fragmented, the Baal Cycle paints a portrait of a supreme and stable Mother Goddess. Journeying through the texts, it appears the cultural memory of the Mother Goddess Asherah lives on and may also be present in the New Testament.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“According to Miriam Robbins Dexter, another possible Semitic root of Asherah is the Hebrew ʾāšar, 'to tread, to go straight on.' In the footsteps of the women, in their procession from water source to threshing ground under gentle raindrops from the sky, carrying their wooden pole dressed as a divine female figure to whom they pray for rain, I see how Asherah too, treads on. Even if hidden from view, her worship was not eradicated after all. It simply went underground, like streams of precious water. This water is there, for those with eyes to see. And it flows straight on.”
― Laura Shannon, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“The many names for the Near Eastern Goddess – Asherah, Ashtoreth, Astarte, Aset, Isis, Anat, Tanit, Elat, Baalat, Attoret, Athirat, Atiratu, Athtar, Ashertu, Ishtar – can all be understood as iterations of one Great Mother. In Syria and Palestine, Asherah was the most popular of these. Asherah is named in inscriptions and depicted in terracotta plaques and statues, identified with the Tree of Life along with other attributes. In clay pillar-figures, she is shown as a fertile goddess with generous breasts, and Ugaritic texts from Syria (ca. 1300 BCE) call her a wet nurse.”
― Laura Shannon, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“The Great Mother Goddess was honoured throughout ancient North Africa and the Near East, with many different names. In and around Canaan, she was known as Asherah, Mother of Creation, Queen of Heaven, and consort of the male god El/Yahweh. In Canaan, countless archaeological discoveries of 'images of the Goddess, some dating back as far as 7000 BCE, offer silent testimony to the most ancient worship of the Queen of Heaven in the land that is today most often remembered as the birthplace of both Judaism and Christianity.”
― Laura Shannon, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“For she was not uprooted, she did not disappear. Her worship continues, in other forms and names. Images of a life-giving Goddess identified with trees, poles, and pillars are found everywhere in women's folk art and ceremonial customs throughout North Africa and the Near East. The Tree of Life remains a central symbol in textile motifs, jewellery designs, and seasonal ceremonies.”
― Laura Shannon, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“Asherah’s story exposes exploitation, including sexual and environmental. She is calling upon those of us who weep, when trees are cut down, to rekindle our allegiance to Mother Earth. Behind us is darkness. Ahead, if we take the right path, a new age of possibilities: pristine, joyful, peaceful, restorative.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“In these starless and shifting times, the relationship binding woman to tree lies between dream and memory. We have forgotten so much. Retreating within to unearth buried stories, rooted in nourishment, is a divine act.”
― Claire Dorey, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“I have watched in horror at the atrocities in the land of our Great Mother Goddess. I have witnessed Her ancient trees being destroyed. I have seen small children under rubble and trapped in burning buildings. I have seen mothers wailing in agony. I weep with Asherah at the injustices inflicted in the name of “God.” The entire World needs Her peace again.

May the Roots of the Mother Tree pull us tightly into Her healing embrace.”
― Trista Hendren, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

“The Great Goddess Asherah, the sacred tree, Mother-Goddess of all of the gods, did not lose her sacrality in the Hebrew Bible; she was the wife of the Hebrew god as an undercurrent throughout early Hebrew religion, despite the fact that the Hebrew Fathers tried to remove her from their attempted monotheistic pantheon. Blessings to the Goddess, and to this wonderful anthology in her honor.”
― Miriam Robbins Dexter PhD, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree