In my youth I was unfit for anything - vain, lazy, filled with lust for women and power, and prepared to do whatever it took to satisfy my cravings. My royal birth gave me access to many pleasures, but also marked me as the Royal Sacrifice, for I was not first in line for the throne. Then as my father’s health failed, I knew that everything I desired would soon be denied me forever, and that I was destined for a role for which I felt no call. After my brother, Urdash, ascended the throne and I was inducted into the priesthood, I had to apply myself with diligence foreign to my character to master the rituals and prayers I was suddenly called upon to perform. I also had to cleanse my heart of bitterness. I had been physically made a holy man, but in other ways I remained what I had been, save that I no longer burned with desire. It was many months before I finally came to accept my new life, at once difficult and filled with meaning.

A priest’s first duty is to be able to perform the chants and rituals perfectly. They are voided by the slightest flaw or deviation, a wrong word or gesture, a misplaced emphasis. Some are very long and all are done in unison with the other priests; a mistake near the end not only means the loss of an hour or more but will incur the anger of your fellow priests whose time is also being wasted. One cannot let one’s attention drift. Prayers fail if the heart is not in them. How I resented those long, tedious hours of learning and practice! And how frustrating were my many failures! Only when the love of Asherah finally won within me did I truely become a priest. Then the words flowed from me like a river.

If the young read these words, may they understand that this joy of truly knowing the love of the Goddess infinitely compensates us for a life that may to some seem hard and begins with pain.

A priest’s life is austere. Meals, by rule, are consumed in silence, while even at other times few words are exchanged among priests. If one speaks, it is never of one’s past. One utters only holy words to those outside the priesthood, and in the company of fellow priests there is little time for other than prayer so conversation is limited. The priesthood is a solitary life, even when there are many priests, and now that we are so few, it is painfully so.

For many days the routine of prayer and chant is unvaried, but then there are the festivals. We still carry on most of the ceremonies, meeting at places the Jews do not know. Sadly, the number of participants is not what it was, nor do the settings remotely compare with temple or grove. Some of the festivities are filled with light and joy. The annual First Seed Ceremony is perhaps the favorite since it is both pleasing and easily performed. We priests assist those males who have recently completed their thirteenth year in giving their first discharge of seed, confirming and consecrating their fertility to the Goddess. We rub their little members with gloves of hare-fur until they begin to drip and finally spurt out their male fluid with which, in the old days, we used to anoint the silver “helmets” atop the many wooden asherim in the pleasant shade beneath the sacred tree. Thus the asherim truly seemed a seed-producing forest of phalluses. It is sad that the Jews destroyed such beauty.

But the principal festival follows the lunar cycle - The Seed-offering. For this a new priest begins immediate training, using the lubricated pegs to become accustomed to accommodating the phalluses of worshipers. But more important even than a receptive body is a pure heart. The night before Full Moon is spent in purification so that we will be worthy. In female attire, we serve as recipients for the Goddess, taking the seed of copulation in ourselves. A priest must be trained to endure, for on those days we often accept so much that our legs wetly glisten with the overflow and our feet stand in white puddles.

Though taking maleness into ourselves would have been abhorrent and shameful to us as men, such feelings were pruned from us along with our manhood. Now there is a certain pleasure in being a holy vessal accepting seed-offering.

Today there are no altars to Asherah in the great temple, and our rites are held in secret. Jewish authorities routinely disturb our worship. With difficulty we preserve our people’s bond with Asherah through the simple public rites and by our own priestly devotions, but, alas, it has been many years since our altars were anointed with more than grain offerings, animal stones, and manly discharge.

Oh, yes, in the old days, Asherah was given more - as most still remember or have heard. Once a year men, sometimes two or three who needed to make right with the Gods, were selected for the rite. There were always a few prisoners guilty of some sexual offense available for this, and their guards prepared them for us by strapping their wrists together behind their backs, stuffing their mouths with leather gags, strapping their jaws shut and tightly enclosing their heads in thick leather so that they could see nothing, hear little and only just breathe. They could make no noise other than the snorts and wheezes from their nostrils. The masks they wore over these leather wraps were shaped as the heads of bulls. Thus prepared, the each man would be placed before the altar, his limbs spread and strapped so he is immobile; he is otherwise naked. The unhappy fellows are first known by young men. Having become a vessel for the man’s discharge, each is, in turn, relieved of his own seed, thus being cleansed. Since this seed is unworthy, it is allowed to spill on the ground. Then they are made into eunuchs. We first tied off the man’s stones with a leather cord which we close with a sharp, snapping jerk so that the noose shuts off all blood to them. The men let out a muffled shriek as this is nearly as painful as the actual cut. Then we chant in unison the liturgy known as “The Consecration” which ends with the taking of their manhood for Asherah. It is a great honor to be the one chosen to use the knife whose short, hooked blade is for but one purpose. I think I did perhaps twenty before the rite was suppressed. The bags with their severed orbs were skillfully sewn shut and dried in the sun before being hung like fruit from boughs of the Sacred Tree.

We consider the eunuchs to be purified and worthy, regardless of the crimes they committed when intact. They are the beloved of Asherah who remembers forever their sacrifice. They may receive for Asherah which, in the old days earned them quarters in the temple. Now our people give them food as they pass amongst us, holy beggars. Even those eunuchs who were not castrated ritually, would be given alms by our people. Even a castrated Jew would be pitied. But the Jews, whose hardness of heart must surely dismay the Gods, exclude the eunuch from their tribes and give theirs nothing.

The Jews regard the seed of copulation as impure. They wash away their discharges as though it is dung, afterward fasting as if a penance is required. Their god condemns the spilling of seed. They are a peculiar people, and their Yahweh is a peculiar god.

These terrible Jews, who have brought so much misery to our land, worship only one god who is as cruel in spirit as they are and as lacking in all that a sense of beauty would recognize as sacred. But the day will come when we shall rise up against this abomination and reap vengeance for those they have slain and oppressed. They shall be swallowed up by the grave to the last child while Asherah will bless our nation with a million sons!

Editor's Note: This is historical fiction, and was not written as "hate speech" against Jews or anyone else.