(Excerpted)
So what happens when you hear the call of a deity you never knew existed? What do you do when that deity is Canaanite? Yes, I said Canaanite.
The general heading that many of us fondly, yet with debate, entitle “Paganism” or “Neo-Paganism” includes a myriad of different religions from many different parts of the world. Yet it seems that the heaviest concentration of information falls under a more specific category of Western European Paganism or Heathenry, while other Pagan world cultures have not had as much exposure. Information, research, sharing ritual practices, trading philosophical ideas are essential for a thriving Pagan tradition and nourishing to the solitary Pagan practitioner; information and sharing information defines the nature of a Pagan path. For a follower of an ancient Near Eastern form of Paganism, the path becomes decidedly more difficult, obscure, and seemingly covered in the sands of time. For example, a Kemetic/Egyptian Pagan, for which many scholarly works are available, would still have difficulty finding information on the modern-day Kemetic’s path.
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Because of this dearth of information, very few people outside of scholarly circles even know of the ancient Canaanites, and even fewer people know of their ancient Pagan religion. Even scholarly journals demonstrate a dearth of information simply because the culture is so ancient with much of their literature and artifacts lost, and their society overshadowed by other great contemporaneous cultures such as the Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian cultures. There are many of us out there who hear the call of the ancient Canaanite deities and their ways, yet because of the lack of information may remain oblivious to this Pagan path, or reluctant to trek through the wilderness to find the path. That path, the spiritual journey, defines Canaanite Paganism – it is the Natib Qadish, the “sacred path.”
The ancient Canaanites had a rich culture, a connection to nature and the changing seasons, and a Pagan religion complete with a Pantheon. The path of the modern Qadish, Canaanite Pagan, is difficult due to a lack of information in scholarly works and modern Pagan works, yet it can be a very fulfilling way of life. We will explore together some aspects of Natib Qadish: the ancient Canaanites, the deities, the literary texts, modern beliefs, and modern holidays. Please keep in mind that because Natib Qadish is not widespread, the facets of practice presented here may or may not demonstrate what other Qadishuma, Canaanite Pagans, practice. In fact, the Canaanites of ancient days also differed from one city-state to another as to how they practiced their religion and revered their Deities.
The Canaanite gave birth to the Phoenician culture and later the Carthaginians, and influenced and contributed to the ancient Hebrew culture and literature. The Canaanites shared a somewhat common culture and language-family from roughly 3000 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E.(1) They were an urban society and based much of their prosperity on agriculture, their craftsmanship, and a thriving merchant trade industry.(2) They lived in the Levantine area of the Near East which includes parts of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Israel along the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as a large collection of generally unaffiliated city-states.(3)
The Canaanites were a people prior to and contemporary to Biblical times, yet they remained a pantheistic Pagan people. In later times, Pagan Canaanite shrines and symbols were burned, pillaged, and destroyed by some Biblical peoples. According to the Bible, the Biblical peoples were instructed to destroy the Canaanites and their religion: “Josiah destroyed cult objects ...he burned a number of them and transported their ashes to Bethel .... Josiah also defiled the high-places.”(4) Historically speaking, the “conquest” of the Canaanites may have been one more of a “gradual synthesis of the Hebrew migrants with the indigenous population.”(5) This “gradual synthesis,” however, was certainly not without conflict.
Archaeologists uncovered much of the information available today about the religion of the Canaanites when they excavated the shrines of Ba’al and Dagan at the ancient city of Ugarit , modern-day Ras Shamra in Syria.(6) The first excavations began in Ras Shamra , Syria , in 1928-1929. It is from Ras Shamra, the ancient city of Ugarit , that we have received the bulk of our knowledge and first-hand accounts of Canaanite religion.
Canaanite MythologyThe texts date back to 1200 B.C.E. and are written in Ugaritic cuneiform; the scribes used a wedge-shaped stylus to imprint the letters onto wet clay tablets.(7) These tablets form the foundation of the small amount of Canaanite literature and what little we know about their religion. The texts tell of Ba’al and his exploits, legends of royalty, and leave a few tantalizing tidbits of ritual liturgy. These stories involve a large cast of deities, including but not limited to those listed below.
[The rest of the article includes information on Deities, ethics, festivals, and the endnotes. It is 2801 words, including endnotes]
Endnotes for Excerpt1. Stanislav Segert, A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language: with Selected Texts and Glossary, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles , CA , 1984, p. 14.
2. Adrian Curtis, Ugarit : Ras Shamra , William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids , MI , 1985, p. 86.
3. Cyrus H. Gordon, The Ancient Near East, 3rd Ed. Revised, Norton Library, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1965, p. 91.
4. Gordon, The Ancient Near East, pp. 248-249.
5. Jacob Rabinowitz, The Faces of God: Canaanite Mythology as Hebrew Theology, Spring Publications, Woodstock , CT , 1998, p. 17.
6. Curtis, Ugarit , p. 18 .
7. Segert, A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language, p. 15.
