Sandra Gabrielle Orès : Looking for Asherah

My stay in Arad in July 2025 coincided with the Hebrew month of Tammuz. From the first crescent to its last, I could observe the moon each night rising or setting above Arad. Because of the heat, I walk in the desert at night, or at the very first and last hours of the day, like the ancient nomads. I’m looking for the Negev feminine divinity that once was central in the desert people's life: Asherah.

Asherah is the feminine aspect of the God we know today in Israel, Elohim; she was sometimes mentioned as Elohot. In my quest, I assume that she has places in the desert where she comes and rests. This kind of place that we encounter while walking randomly off the trail, where the stones suddenly appear to have a different aspect or arrangement; where the silence can be heard, whole and comforting. A place where it feels good to sit for a while.

In those magic places, I usually also notice that stones are arranged differently: generations of nomads probably sat just here before me. When after wandering for a while I finally get to one of those sites, I make improbable encounters with animals, humans or a singular medicinal plant. A fox and his family, a group of camels, a man on a donkey, a pair of dogs, or a snakeskin near a bunch of empty snails, surrounded by origanum.

One afternoon, while arranging a place to invite Asherah to come, in the middle of the desert, on the cliffs of a wadi, a man on a white donkey shows up. “Did you see a brown camel down the valley?” he asks. Looking upwards, I see about twenty camels walking up the hill. We exchange a few words, his name is Ali; he offers to make tea. He goes around to find some dry roots and lights a little fire to boil water in his black teapot.

The Negev desert is a home for the Bedouin people, with whom the Israelites share common roots back from the Neolithic times. Some of them live in farms between the mountains, others in settlements of an extended family near the road. Others, with a more recent history in the area, had to settle in one of the Bedouins' local towns, like Rahat. In the city of Rahat I meet with the girls of “Raha”, the Center for Contemporary Arts. The group of young women artists make art live in the dry surroundings with video art, photography, sculpture and painting.

Further south, after Beer Sheva, in a settlement near the road, a Bedouin woman I know prepares for me the woolen yarn that I use in the carpet making. We speak a mix of Arabic and Hebrew, sitting on carpets on the floor in the guests’ tent. She gives me camel milk to drink, she just milked her animal; it is hot and sweet.

With the wool, handmade of sheep, camels or goats hair from Negev herds, I weave a carpet for Asherah, as an invitation for her to come and rest. I choose to place it at an old place of worship, where a pile of stones still stands. According to the archeologist Uzi Avner, in the Neolithic times, a “mountain cult” arose in the Israel southern deserts, that certainly shaped the monotheistic religions we know today. Down the hill, there are stone engravings. Earlier this year, a group of Colombian shamans came from Colombia to pray on this very hill, to calm the region from the war and, as they said, the excess of fire element that lies here.

I had wandered many times around that hill and in the wadi below, but I had not climbed it to the top, and it is Sefi that shows me the “exact” place. Sefi is a man of the desert. Years ago he started the village of Shaharut, in the Arava. Today his place is a guest house on the top of a hill, looking towards the Dead Sea, facing east: Zman Midbar, about an hour walk from Arad. I had already met his two dogs in the wadi and they had shown me the way around the hill. But as they could not talk, I had to wait to meet the keeper of the place to hear the detailed story. There I also try to catch the wind at sunrise.

Stones and deities are closely linked in the Neolithic times. At the premises of the monotheistic religions, stones are believed to be places for deities to stay. Is Asherah still resting in stones around here? I invite my friend and artist Atalya to pose together as a stone in one of Asherah’s valleys. We sit still in the morning hours.

However the sun rapidly arrives and heats the air. We head for a pool of natural water hidden behind the hills. If I was the desert Goddess, I would surely go in the morning in a peaceful place with fresh water. We manage to bathe in the deep pool among the cliffs before the birds.

The name Asherah was left aside after the Bronze Age, probably through the end of the first Jerusalem Temple era, for the benefit of more defined monotheistic beliefs. Yet, the desert today still answers the Goddess call for life and wholeness.