THE DATE PALMS OF THE ANCIENT BIRTH SANCTUARY

Jericho perfumed by jasmine and balm,

Is older than mankind can know.

Here sat the Bee Queen looking over her hive

In this sanctuary named for the Moon.

Here sat the Bee Queen, known as Deborah

Beneath Tamar, the birth tree, the palm,

With sun-like fronds arched above honey-sweet dates

In Jericho, named for the Moon.

She taught the deep mystery of souls coming in:

The descent from their bright spirit home

To the body in which they will dwell on this earth –

In our sacred place named for the Moon.

Men conquered the city and turned it to greed.

Yet with wonder we speak of this still –

Of the new life in us. May we never forget

Our sweet Jericho named for the Moon.

The ancient city of Jericho has been captured, destroyed and rebuilt many times and exists now in the midst of conflict. To find the hidden story of when it was a sacred mothering place we need to go back long before the biblical legends of Joshua bringing down the walls with trumpet blasts and conquering the city for Yahweh.

I imagine coming to Jericho in its earliest days. The approach descends rapidly over slopes that are bare except for dwarf shrubs of thorny burnet. Hawks hang with wings quivering, ready to dive at the slightest movement from some small creature daring to come out from under the stones. The heat is intense and you long for some shade.      

Then you plunge into an oasis. Moist, languorous Jericho is so lovely and fertile with its gardens irrigated from the springs. Here one can enjoy all the bounties of the earth. As you walk along narrow throughways, shade is offered by the high walls. Bird song and the scent of balm and jasmine waft out from hidden gardens.

The name Jericho means ‘moon’ with its cyclic rhythms echoed in the bleeding of women. And in this age so long ago we have entered the walled womb of the land. Jericho is the birth sanctuary and its walls are not to keep intruders out. They contain the mysteries of coming in. Within these walls the queen sits beneath the birth tree, which is Tamar the palm, also known as the phoenix the mystical bird that is ever reborn.

The queen is named Deborah, which means ‘bee’. She is Queen bee and the sanctuary is indeed like a beehive. She sends some of her women out to pick fruits and herbs and collect honey to feed the young. Others nurture the little ones in the hive and the first-born daughters receive the best of the land. Genealogy passes from mother to daughter and there has always been a queen whose name is Deborah. Every mother’s line matters because one of their daughters will be the queen and others might become queens of subsidiary hives.

There is no king, no husband in these earliest days. Women need no husband. Or you could say every woman has many husbands. Men hunt and boys tend the domestic animals. The women love any man they wish. It does not concern them who the father is, not like it would concern everyone in latter ages.

The conquerors come

Radical change began with a man we might call a ‘husband’. A Deborah enabled this when she chose to share her rule with her best worker, the man who supervised the building of a thick-walled tower for storing excess grain. But did she act wisely when she made him king? When she initiated him into her secrets? It was fine, the women believed as long as he was sacrificed at the year’s end, for his blood had to flow as every woman’s does for the good of the land. This became tradition although after a time the king was no longer killed. Instead he was given the sacred wound. So it went for generations.

I hate to tell what happened next, when a foreigner with his army camped outside the city and laid seige. Jericho was easy prey, never having been violated before. In desperation the latest Deborah went out. She lay with the enemy king at her potent time of month when his seed could enter the walls of her womb. She did this, knowing that the sanctuary could not resist these strong invaders for long. When her daughter was born, as a sign to the foreign king that the child was his, she hung a red cord from her window. The invading army broke down the walls and killed the old king and all the inhabitants of Jericho. The queen alone was saved with her newborn infant to secretly continue the tradition. But this was the end of the old way in Jericho.

Still, this place even today retains secrets of the ancient birth sanctuary in the date palms planted there. Listen now. Hear the memories in the breeze rustling the fronds , in the distant cooing of turtledoves and the humming of bees among the jasmine.

In our sad times when too many babies are born into this world amidst devastation and terror, can we learn to fully honour birth again as a gift from the divine realms? She, the divine mother, longs for us to value truly our own birth, the birth of our children, and of all children who have descended from their bright spirit home to the body in which they will dwell for a time on this earth.

• Now have a look at 'Birth - Eternal Spiritual Process' - a lovely companion to this post, looking at what takes place spiritually every time a soul is born into this world, seen from a woman's point of view. (It's a reposting of 'To Birth - the Magnificent Spiritual Journey', November 18, 2022).