Heba (هبة)

“Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation. As the saying goes, women are made for love—that is, submission. Love, or submission, must be both the substance and purpose of a woman’s life. For the female, the capacity to love is exactly synonymous with the capacity to sustain abuse and the appetite for it. For the woman, the proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

“So, what have the redactors left us?

They replaced El with Yahweh and soon erased Asherah. She ends up being Yahweh’s consort for a while and then Baal’s consort so she can be demonized along with him and the rest of the host of heaven. We are left with only hints of the divine feminine—the tree of life in the garden of Eden, wisdom (Sophia) as the fruit-bearing tree of life to those who lay hold of her, the prophetess and judge Deborah rendering her judgements under her tree.

Some of the redactions are almost blatantly obvious. For example, in Genesis 49:25, the male god bestows “blessings of the breasts and of the womb.” In Deuteronomy 32:18, there is a reference to the male “god who gave you birth.”

We have also lost much of Asherah in the archeological record because most of her representations were trees and carved wooden images—items from the natural world that can easily be cut down and burned. But traces of her can still be found there.

-Excerpt from “Roots Too Deep for the Redactors,” featured in, Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree.”
― Duann Kier

“When we partake of her fruit as Eve did, our eyes are open to all knowledge and understanding. We become divine. We learn to look inward rather than outward for our reference points and find we are connected to all that there is—both the physical and nonphysical. There is no need to worship anyone or anything outside of ourselves for all is made of the same essence.

And she is returning.

This time she will be coming with her own Elohim. These powerful ones will set the record straight about our origins and history, including religion. They will set the record straight about the Heresy of Monotheism—that the One Original Source of All Creation does not equate to one male god who demands obedience and worship at the threat of torture and death.

-Excerpt from “Roots Too Deep for the Redactors,” featured in Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree.”
― Duann Kier

“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