[Editor’s Note: This excerpt series is from Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed by Claire Dorey, Janet Rudolph, Pat Daly, and Trista Hendren (Girl God Books, 2025).]
About this Anthology by Trista Hendren
Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree contains a variety of writing styles from people around the world. Various forms of English are included in this anthology and we chose to keep spellings of the writers’ place of origin to honor/honour everyone’s unique voice.
There are two common spellings of our Goddess: Asherah and Ashera. We have honored each contributor’s choice.
It was the expressed intent of the editors to not police standards of citation, transliteration and formatting. Contributors have determined which citation style, italicization policy and transliteration system to adopt in their pieces. The resulting diversity reflects the diversity of academic fields, genres and personal expressions represented by the authors.[1]
Mary Daly wrote long ago that, “Women have had the power of naming stolen from us.”[2] The quest for our own naming, and our own language, is never-ending, and each of us attempts it differently. People often get caught up on whether we say Goddess or Girl God or Divine Female vs. Divine Feminine. Personally, I try to just listen to what the speaker is trying to say. The fact remains that few of us were privileged with a woman-affirming education—and we all have a lot of time to make up for. Let’s all be gentle with each other through that process.
If you find that a particular writing doesn’t sit well with you, please feel free to use the Al-Anon suggestion: “Take what you like, leave the rest!” That said, if there aren’t at least several pieces that challenge you, we have not done our job here.
Reading through these pieces has reminded me of the depths my own faith of origin has gone to uphold patriarchal lies whilst burying the Goddess.[3]
I often say I have developed an allergy to the Bible due to the harm caused by its teachings. The Bible is no longer a holy book for me. Based on my personal experiences, I consider it a “Text of Terror.”[4]
Reading some of the passages contained in this book was triggering for me. Claire suggested we implement several tactics to draw readers past ‘biblical freeze’—and we have done so to ensure people are not triggered past the point of taking in all the content.
This anthology, perhaps more than any other, was challenging for me personally. I have wanted to focus on Asherah for many years now, but given my personal experience in the Lebanon, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, I find even the word “Israel” to be triggering at times. Due to colonization, wars and other factors, including our own regionally-fueled assumptions, there seem to be missing words and gaps in our geography as well. No where is this more prevalent than in the “Holy Land.”
I find Layla K. Feghali words to be helpful in understanding this ancient land:
“Cana’an was also part of the Fertile Crescent, sharing significant relationships with ancient Sumeria (present-day Iraq and eastern parts of Syria). The cultures and migrational lineages of these diverse territories are born in relationship to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Horn of Africa, the Nile, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Mediterranean Basin. Modern borders are insufficient at capturing these significant genetic, ecological, geographical, and cultural relationships, reducing them to geopolitical dynamics and modern cultural identities, many of which have been redefined and altered over time by colonial influences and empires. In English, the term for this area is “the Levant,” rooted in the word “rising” and the concept of the orient—an eastern place where the sun rises, which beckons the question Palestinian scholar Edward Said has posed, “East of where?”[5]
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.
[1] This paragraph is borrowed and adapted with love from A Jihad for Justice: Honoring the Work and Life of Amina Wadud. Edited by Kecia Ali, Juliane Hammer and Laury Silvers.
[2] Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Beacon Press, 1990.
[3] See Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess. Girl God Books. 2016. An anthology on the Tripple Arabian Goddesses is also in the works.
[4] Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Fortress Press; 1984.
[5] Feghali, Layla K. The Land in Our Bones: Plantcestral Herbalism and Healing Cultures from Syria to the Sinai—Earth-based pathways to ancestral stewardship and belonging in diaspora. North Atlantic Books; 2024.
I have to add that I too developed an allergy as you put it to christianity and do see the bible as a terrifying book parts of which we are living now – I wish I didn’t – feel the same way about the rest of them. The goddess/ nature/ or whoever we name her is the way through – women feel this in their bones if they are free.
Thank you for your comment dear Danica and your amazing work on this. I can’t seem to reply directly to your comment but it was lovely to see you here. Sending love and hugs from me and Helani!
My Slavic roots and Clinical work, especially on the Balkan Route with Bosnians, Palestinians, Syrians Indian and Afghanistan have so many mothers and grandmother talk of their roots torn and eradicate.
For me, I titled my comment:
Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree, the XX Chromosome, and the Epigenetic Herstory of the First Mother
The name Asherah carries with it a sacred legacy that predates the patriarchal silencing of goddesses across the so-called “Holy Land.” She was once widely revered as a tree goddess, a life-giver, consort to El, and protector of the people of the Levant. She is not myth. She is memory.
Mary Daly is accurate with the patriarchal power to name, in this way the matriverse is targeted and eradicated.
The linguistic root of Asherah is linked to “straight,” “upright,” and “groves,” signifying her embodiment as a sacred tree, a vertical axis between earth and sky. In the ancient texts of Ugarit, she is known as Athirat, the one who walks the seas. The latter is about the great migration.
In Hebrew father sky god tradition, her name was almost entirely erased, her altars burned, her poles (asherim) cut down—acts of theological colonization that continue to echo through our social structures.
But the roots of Asherah run deeper than the scrolls that tried to bury Her.
In my own work—particularly in Asylum Seekers and Kolo-informed trauma theory—I understand Asherah as a living code within our female biology.
The XX chromosome is not simply a genetic marker; it is a vessel of matrilineal transmission. Within its structure lies epigenetic social memory: the emotional, biological, and cultural knowledge passed down from the First Mother. This is not metaphor—it is biology.
Each daughter, whether she knows the name Asherah or not, carries within her the seeds of this epigenetic memory. This is the Mother Tree encoded within the body. Mitochondrial DNA, passed down exclusively from the mother, echoes the original maternal line. These biological truths resist colonial erasure.
We must move beyond the patriarchal colonization with transgenerational dominant survival trauma narratives.
It keeps women trapped in autonomic survival modes.
Just as Asherah was more than a passive mother figure, so too must we be more than survivors.
I define trauma as intensified learning—it is the capacity to adapt, to encode knowledge for future generations, and to reclaim spiritual agency that has been methodically denied to us.
And we must name the violence.
Asherah’s lands—Cana’an, Phoenicia, Palestine—have been carved up by modern colonial borders, stripped of their original names and meanings. These were once regions where the Divine was understood through the lens of female power, of trees and waters and sacred groves.
Today, they are scarred by genocidal wars, erasure, and ecological destruction. The Mother Tree is felled again and again in the name of religion and empire.
I look at my own family tree, my mother survived a WWII concentration camp and the Bosnian women war crimes and war survivors endured a century of wars and now these women survivors speak of the Afghanistan wars, Gaza, Sudan,Sub Saharan Africa, Ukrainian War as the complete eradication of epigenetic memory of Asherah’s body- land and trees.
As women, as feminists, as scholars, and as survivors, we do not just remember Her—we embody Her.
When we publish our voices in cyberspace, when we restore Her name to public discourse, we are engaging in epigenetic activism. We are reforesting a memoryscape that was deforested by colonial theology and masculinized gods.
Thank you for your work and restoring HER.
The XX chromosome is not merely scientific data. It is living archive. The trauma it encodes can be transformed, just as the earth renews herself. But only if we remember Her. Only if we speak Her name.
Asherah.
References
Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Beacon Press, 1990.
Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror. Fortress Press, 1984.
Feghali, Layla K. The Land in Our Bones: Plantcestral Herbalism and Healing Cultures from Syria to the Sinai. North Atlantic Books, 2024.
Echols, C. L. The Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Brill, 2020.
Balogh, A. L. The Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern Iconography. Brill, 2020.
Adhikari, S. 5 Questions of the Inquisitive Ape. 2019.
‘This is the Mother Tree encoded within the body. Mitochondrial DNA, passed down exclusively from the mother, echoes the original maternal line’ all of nature understands this to be truth…