Jewish Pantheon

[judysz]

I have been on the path since october 2004- I am solitary,eclectic, and Jewish, and have been researching the ancient jewish polytheistic belief systems- I have been honoring Lord El and Lady Asherah as deities. I would like to expand my pantheon, but I am having difficulties with answers I have been getting from other members on other sites than this one. Can anyone help? I also have to state that I dont want to get into the Kabbalah stuff, ,I want to know whom to honor and whom to invite into my circle when I am doing certain magicks, whom to call for the quarters, etc- Also, some of the deities that I have read about in the ancient jewish pantheon(like Baal) seem kind of not very nice, if you know what I mean. Thanks all

[Verthandi]

You mean the Canaanite pantheon, right? I just started a wonderful book called The Early History of God by Mark Smith. You also might want to check out the Yahoo group, Canaanite Paganism (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canaanitepaganism/?yguid=192651149). They have a great book list and ought to be able to help you with any questions you might have.

[Pure Ahimsa]

The Ancient Hebrews (well, some) believed that "YHVH" was a God amongst Gods, (while some blieved HaShem was everything). They honored their YHVH seeing that he was The Hebrew God, and viewed the other gods as being The Persian Gods, or the ____ Gods. Many hebrews honored Babylonian/Persian/Caananite/Assyrian? Gods.

[Asherah]

don't forget Ishtar (for whom the book of esther is written) and Tammuz who has a month named after him in the hebrew calender.

[Aowyn]

heres a link you may find useful http://www.spiralgoddess.com/Astarte.html

[Caelia RavenWolf]

I can tell you that the Akkadian, Caananite, Babylonian and Amorite pantheons are all tied to the ancient Jewish. It is believed that they all stemmed from the ancient Sumerian; passing from one civilization to the next as each previous one fell. Sumeria was the first civilization and had the first documented religion.

And consequently, just as YHVH/El is a title meaning God, Baal is also a title meaning Lord and was placed before the names of several Gods. Over time they were all whittled down to Baal. Not all of those referred to as Baal were bad, some were actually quite good and one ruled over the Earth in El's stead because he chose to remain apart and separate of humanity.

But you might have to track slightly past the Jewish faith to find everything you're looking for. I will have a search through some more of my things and see if I have anything that might help you out a little better. I do have a pretty good Wikipedia link though about Asherah, it has links to several other Gods linked to her and some pretty good outside links that might be helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah

[David19]

I thought i'd bump this up, but people may want to look into the Sumerian pantheon, as the Jews were closely tied to the Sumerian religion, and hold many of the same beliefs, and Abraham, in fact, worshipped the Sumerian/Akkadian gods, the covenant with Yahweh, i think, was set out in the same way in similar covenants with other gods in Sumeria.

The Jews were polytheistic until Levant(sp?) times, when monotheism set in, so they weren't as monotheistic as people believe.

The 10 commandments are even set out in the same way as in Sumeria.