In the soft glow of twilight, Rachel and Leah, daughters of Laban, stood over the fragments of their GODDESSES, their hearts rent as the stone and wood shards lay scattered at their feet. The air hung thick, and from the corners of their eyes, they saw nothing but ruin. These idols, symbols of THE GREAT MOTHER, once held their world together. Each statue, each face, each form, was sacred. Each broken piece had held the memory of HER, yet now it was nothing but silence.

Rachel knelt, her trembling hands cradling what remained of ASHERAH. “MOTHER OF LIFE, LADY OF THE TREE, BEARER OF ALL FRUITS,” she whispered. In this idol, she had seen HER likeness, the life-giver whose roots twisted deep beneath the earth, HER arms sheltering the heavens. ASHERAH, the Tree and the root, protector of fields and flocks, had been with her since birth, HER blessings poured into every harvest, every cycle of the moon. And now? The face that once looked upon her in the quiet night was a faceless ruin, and her spirit, a vast emptiness.

Beside her, Leah gathered the remnants of ANAT, the fierce LADY OF BATTLE, SHE WHO PROTECTS WOMEN, guardian of the broken and betrayed. Once, ANAT had been her strength, when she felt cast aside, unloved by the man who took her yet never looked upon her with love. ANAT, fierce-eyed and tender-hearted, was the Mother of Fury, the strength she held in secret. Leah’s tears mingled with the dust at her feet, mingled with sorrow for HER, who had protected her heart.

“JACOB,” Rachel whispered, looking up to the one who had commanded the breaking of HER images. “Is not your GOD enough? Must OUR MOTHER be torn from us, too?”

Jacob looked down upon them, brow furrowed, unmoved by the pain carved upon their faces. “These idols are false,” he declared. “THE LORD is the only GOD; there is no other.”

But their hearts wailed within them, for they knew a truth he could not see. HIS GOD was hard, HIS GOD was jealous, HIS GOD demanded and never yielded. HIS GOD had no WOMB, no warmth, no breath of HER to fill the earth with seeds or cradle the stars.

The wives of Jacob had known HER by many names: ISHTAR, SHE WHO CALLS LIFE TO BLOOM; QETESH, LADY OF PASSION AND PLEASURE, who blessed the joy of bodies joined in love; BALA, MOTHER OF THE SOIL, SHE WHO DANCES LIFE FORTH. Each name, each face, was a facet of HER, the GREAT MOTHER who spun life from Her breast, who cradled death with gentle hands, who ruled the stars and knew the language of rivers. What man could know HER? What man could declare himself HER master?

As their cries fell upon ears that did not hear, they sensed that more was lost than the stone and clay. In the breaking of HER images, a wound opened deep in the bones of time, a fissure that would bleed for generations, spilling HER power from the world, as if HER womb were severed, the veins of HER life emptied.

“BELOVED MOTHER,” Leah cried, “will YOU abandon us as THEY have done? Will YOU leave us bereft of YOUR light, and allow THEIR GOD to rule without heart or compassion?”

And from the depths of that silent ruin, a voice arose, not heard by Jacob nor by any man. A voice deep, ancient, and full of a sorrow that was also rage. It was THE GREAT MOTHER, whispering to HER daughters:

“YOU ARE NOT ABANDONED, THOUGH THEY HAVE CHOSEN TO FORGET ME. IN EVERY TREE THAT BLOOMS, IN EVERY WOMB THAT SWELLS WITH LIFE, I AM THERE. EVEN IF THEY BREAK MY IMAGE, THEY CANNOT ERASE MY ESSENCE.”

Yet, as that voice faded, the sisters knew in their souls that a darkness would follow, a time when men would forget HER entirely, and in their forgetting, women too would be broken, stripped of their strength and placed in silence. With the rise of the male GOD, the world would shift. No longer would they worship a MOTHER who understood their sorrows and whispered to them in the night. Now they would be bound to men who prayed to the FATHER who only demanded submission.

Rachel touched Leah’s hand, gripping it tight. “When they broke HER, they broke us,” she whispered. “When they called HER false, they called us less. In their GOD, we are nothing more than shadows.”

And there in the cold silence of the dawn, they mourned not only the GODDESSES who had been with them since their first breath but all the daughters yet unborn who would come into a world where THE GREAT MOTHER was denied. They mourned every mother who would labor without calling upon ASHERAH, every young girl who would never know the fierce love of ANAT, every woman who would walk under a sun where THE MOTHER’S name could not be spoken.

And THE GREAT MOTHER spoke again, in the voices of the winds, in the rustle of leaves:

“THEY MAY BREAK ME IN IMAGE, BUT NEVER IN ESSENCE. FOR IN EVERY WOMAN, I ENDURE.”

And so, with each heartbeat, Rachel and Leah, and all the women after them, carried that promise forward. In secret shrines and hidden altars, in dreams and quiet whispers, they would keep HER alive. They would be the vessel of HER return, when once more, the world would be whole.

But that time had not yet come, and they knew that the years ahead would be long and bitter. So they mourned, weeping into the earth, their tears the seeds of a time yet to come.