Ishtar

Ishtar is perhaps the most widely-known name in the Mesopotamian pantheon. In Assyrian/Babylonian/Akkadian mythology she is the goddess of love and fertility, of war and sexuality. She is the ruler of the planet Venus, and her symbol is the eight-pointed star. This symbol is no random choice: rather, it reflects the emphasis which these civilizations placed upon astronomy and the scrupulous study of the heavens. As viewed from Earth, Venus describes a five-pointed figure through its orbit (which also is the origin of the familiar pentagram): a figure which takes exactly eight years to complete its cycle, as indicated by Ishtar’s symbol.

My painting, which incorporates the Babylonian Tree of Life diagram and, of course, the eight-pointed star, takes its inspiration from the alabaster statue of Ishtar housed in the Louvre. The statue is shown wearing a metal choker, and this also is featured in my depiction of the goddess.

The Eternal Mother

She has many names in many histories. She is young and full of hope for the future. She is as old as the earth, and has seen all things that have happened and that are still to come. Her likenesses in clay have been discovered in the earth of Mesopotamia, in ancient Canaan, and in a Europe so distant in time that we must count it in thousands of millennia. Some of her names we know: Astarte, Inanna, Eileithyia and more. Others even more ancient have been lost to us, but her likenesses, carved from stone or from mammoth ivory, endure. She is the bearer of new life, the Eternal Mother.

In her devotion to her own children, and in her giving them both the gift of their lives and their freedom to live their own, there could be no more appropriate model for my painting than my own wife, Emma. My painting is to honour her and all mothers. 

The Word

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was a sound welling from her heart, for only when her heart had spoken could all things begin in accordance with the way in which she intended. Her intention was necessary for the beginning of all things, and from this intention arose the creator.

Whether it is Nun who created the creator god Ra in the religion of dynastic Egypt, or [1]Tiamat, the primordial Ocean out of which formed the world and the other gods in Mesopotamian beliefs, the First Cause is female, the Creatrix. My painting interprets the Sound as Aleph, the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. I could have used an aleph from a Hebrew font, but preferred instead to calligraph it on paper with a large chisel-sharpened carpenter’s pencil. Going this extra mile allows one to feel the form of things under one’s fingers, to participate, in some vicarious sense, in that original act of creation, which accords with my own intention to strive to make my paintings act as talismans: to embody some essence of the very things which they portray.

Something which English has tended to lose is the mystic association of words, of the actual forms of letters, with sounds. Hebrew and Sanskrit, with its ‘Ohm’ sound, retain that quality. In an attempt to revive some measure of this mysticism, the poet Arthur Rimbaud asigned specific [2]colours to the different nouns, deploying his words as if they were laid onto the paper from a painter's palette. Much of this original mysticism was lost when early Israelite beliefs abandoned this feminine First Cause, replacing it with a sole male creator deity, who in his hubris forgets that his creative powers originate with the Creatrix. 

Notes:

[1] In later Babylonian beliefs Tiamat took the form of a dragon, but originally her form was the more abstract Ocean.

[2] A = white, E = black, I = red, O = blue, U = green. 

Eve

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman." So wrote Augustine on the subject of Eve. Tertullian, another early Church father, described womankind as "the gateway of the Devil." That in Genesis it is the actions of the woman that leads man astray and has them both expelled from Eden has been taken as a Biblical nod of approval to blame womankind for the fall from grace ever since.

But this ploddingly literal reading of the text misses much which a more profound Gnostic version of events reveals: Eve (the spirit) in her wisdom causes Adam (the soul) to fall. Not into 'sin', but into time, into the incarnation of a corporeal body, so that the soul can experience all the joys and sorrows of an Earthly existence that it otherwise would be denied in the steady-state of paradise. In this version there is no sin, there is no awakened shame in the human body, there is no major guilt trip to lay at the feet of the woman. I'll leave you to choose which version of the story you consider to be the healthier for the human psyche.

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Genesis.3:16

You can read more about Eve on: Eve's Story and Coats of Skins.

Asherah

Asherah was the consort of the northern Canaanite storm god El, known as Baal (a title meaning 'Lord'). When El evolved into the Israelite god Yahweh ('Jehovah') Asherah continued as his consort until she was expunged from the texts by those seeking to create a male-only omnipotent deity. Her shadowy presence continues to be felt when in Genesis God refers to the plural forms of 'we' and 'us', meaning himself and Asherah. This goddess was seen as embodying the Tree of Life (which, along with the Tree of Knowledge, was found in Eden) and traditionally this tree was seen as sustaining all life, usually depicted in the form of two goats which feed on its branches. Christian tradition sought to eliminate the goddess. The life-giving and life-sustaining Asherah was its victim.

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