“Ostara is Here”

Writes Brigit Anna McNeill . . .

Beautiful and growthful Ostara is here. A time where birds sing plants awake, where bumble bees begin to speak their low hum in response to the vibration of pollen, when greens, buttery yellows and golds begin to colour in the bare earth, where blossom and leaf bud open and the forests and hedgerows are once more blooming with medicine.

The voice of wild life force and growth is once more whispering, vibrating and singing within the trees, the nests, the little rooted ones, warm fleshy bodies, the tiny ones and the feathered.

May you too let yourself feel that life force, may it sing to you of life, of beauty, of regrowth, of dreams. And may it be to your body and soul, a beautiful wild guide.

– Source

See also the previous posts:
• The Goddess Ostara
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre

Art: Tijana Lukovic.

Finishing Touches

See also the previous posts:
• The Original Easter “Bunny”
• Easter Bunny or Eostre Hare?
• Easter Hare (2011)
• Symbol of Enlightenment

Image: Stevan Dohanos.

The Easter Hare

See also the previous posts:
• The Original Easter “Bunny”
• Easter Bunny or Eostre Hare?
• Easter Hare (2011)
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre

Related Off-site Link:
The Pagan Roots of Easter – Heather McDougall (The Guardian, April 3, 2010).

Image: The Leveret.

The Original Easter “Bunny”

The following is excerpted from "The Hare Is the Original Easter 'Bunny'" by Stephen Colton (The Irish Times, March 26, 2016).


In cultures throughout the world, from America to the Far East, Africa to Europe, the hare is embedded in the folk myths of our ancestors. It is associated with the moon, the dawn, fertility, death, resurrection and fire.

In Celtic Britain and Ireland the hare was sacred. Boudicca, the British Celtic warrior queen, was said to have prayed to a hare goddess before going in to battle with the Romans and before planning which route her army should take, she released a hare from beneath her gown to show her which way to go.

There is also evidence of hares in ritual burial pits in Suffolk and Colchester. Eostre was the Celtic version of the Anglo-Saxon hare goddess Ostara who later gave her name to the festival of Easter and who was associated with resurrection during the turning of winter to spring. She was a ‘shape-shifter’ taking the form of a hare at each full moon. All hares were sacred to her and acted as messengers.

Hares were always respected in Ireland. Their meat was only eaten at the May festival of Beltane. In places a hare crossing the path was unlucky although the mammal was also linked to many folk cures with the hare’s foot carried as a charm and a way of preventing rheumatism. A tuft of fur from a hare was used to staunch bleeding and evil spirits were kept away from newborn babies whose faces were brushed with a hare’s foot.

As Christianity took hold across Europe, hares, viewed suspiciously as witches in animal form, were replaced by the rabbit, a less controversial symbol for Easter.

So, when you next see the bright eye of a hare, remember it carries with it millennia of mythology, folklore and tradition still celebrated across the world.


See also the previous posts:
• Easter Bunny or Eostre Hare?
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre
• Hare at Eastertide
• Easter Hare

Related Off-site Link:
The Pagan Roots of Easter – Heather McDougall (The Guardian, April 3, 2010).

Image: Photographer unknown.

Easter Bunny or Eostre Hare?

Writes Roger Meyer . . .

Stores in the spring time display all manner of Easter Bunny decorations and pictures and chocolate bunnies along with all of the other trappings of the Easter holiday. Just where did the Easter Bunny come from?

In Egypt there were many gods and goddesses, and they were represented in numerous ways. They were often given an animal form as a symbolic representation. Many were depicted as a human body with an animal or bird head. Many gods and goddesses overlapped the functions of others and earlier tribal goddesses merged over time. An example is Isis, goddess of fertility (and magic and healing), who is known under many names all over the world.

Unut was the Egyptian hare goddess (though she was originally depicted as a snake). Sculptures were discovered in the Men-Kau-Re Valley temple in Egypt which depicted King Men-Kau-Re (grandson of Khufu), the goddess Hathor (the celestial mother of the sun calf), and Hermopolite, or the hare nome, wearing the hare standard. Upper Egyptian nomes, or provinces, were usually represented in the form of a standard. There is an Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for the hare. The Egyptian word for hare was un which meant "to open" or "the opener." The hare symbol may have been used for the word "to open" because a hare is born with its eyes open. The hare symbolized the opening of the new year and the beginning of new life in the spring at the vernal equinox.

The mythology of ancient people spread all over the world. The Saxon goddess Eostre is synonymous with the Phoenician goddess Astarte, goddess of the moon and the measurer of time. Associating the hare with the moon is thought to be related to the hare's gestation period of one month, and to the hare's nocturnal feeding. The association of hares and the moon can be found all over the world. In China, figures of hares are commonly found at Chinese moon festivals, where they represent fertility. The "hare in the moon" is far more prevalent than the "man in the moon."

In ancient Anglo-Saxon myth, the goddess Eostre/Ostara/Astarte, etc., is associated with the spring and fertility, the moon, and also personifiies greeting the rising sun. To amuse children, Eostre changed her pet bird into a hare that laid brightly colored eggs which the goddess gave to the children. Saxons held the pagan festival for Eostra on the vernal equinox, the beginning of spring.

The Easter Bunny came to America in the 1700s by immigrants from Germany where it had been called "Osterhase" — Oster or Oschter being German for Easter (derived from Eostra, Ishtar, etc.), and hase being the German word for hare.

The word "Easter" is not in any reliable translation of the Bible, though it has been incorrectly translated as Easter (KJV) from the original word pascha, which is Passover. Nor does the Bible have a fertility festival involving a hare laying colored eggs. The Catholic Encyclopedia admits: "The Easter Rabbit [sic] lays the eggs, for which reason they are hidden in a nest or in the garden. The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility (Simrock, Mythologie, p. 551)."

– Source

Image 1: "Eostre and the Hare's Egg" by Wendy Andrew.
Image 2: The Leveret.

See also the previous posts:
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre
• Hare at Eastertide
• Easter Hare

Related Off-site Link:
The Pagan Roots of Easter – Heather McDougall (The Guardian, April 3, 2010).

Easter Basket

See also the previous posts:
• Hare at Eastertide
• Easter Hare
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre

Related Off-site Link:
The Pagan Roots of Easter – Heather McDougall (The Guardian, April 3, 2010).

Image: Artist unknown.

Hare at Eastertide

See also the previous posts:
• Easter Hare
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre

Related Off-site Link:
The Pagan Roots of Easter – Heather McDougall (The Guardian, April 3, 2010).

Image: The Leveret.

On Display

See also the previous posts:
• Origins of the Easter Bunny
• The Easter Hare
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Sacred

Images: The Leveret.

Origins of the Easter Bunny

The following was first published at The Holiday Spot.

The bountiful Easter bunnies have become the most favorite Easter symbol. It's universal and secular in its appeal. And, most important of all, it relates to Easter historically.

However, one fact has got to be made clear. It is the hare, and not the rabbit, that should be treated as the true symbol of Easter. Though both of them (along with Pikas), belong to the Lagomorpha family and have most of things in common, there are some differences.

If you go by the history, since the ancient times the hare has been a symbol for the moon. Not the rabbit. And, the legend says, the hare never closes its eyes, not even for a single blink! The reason for having such a belief may be rooted in the fact that hares, not rabbits, are born with eyes open.

The ancient Egyptians related hares to the moon. Egyptian name for hare was un, meaning 'open.' And they were beloved to be watching the full moon opened eyes throughout the night.

Also the hare and eggs have to the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess Eostre. Possibly, this is because both of them were regarded to be emblems of fertility.

And this fertility factor may hold the key in making rabbit more familiar as Easter symbol in America, as against the traditional hare. Rabbits beat hares by being more prolific.

The German immigrants, who brought in most of the Teutonic Easter traditions here, made rabbits so popular among the non-German kids. The German children used to have rabbit's nests filled with decorated eggs. They also used to build nests. They looked so attractive that even the non-German kids demanded such gifts on the Easter.


See also the previous posts:
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• The Goddess Ostara
• Remembering Eostre
• Celebrating Eostre
• The Easter Hare
• Symbol of Enlightenment
• Body and Soul
• Sacred

A Time of Balance

There are two equinoxes every year – in March and September – when the sun shines directly on the equator and the length of day and night is nearly equal. Seasons are opposite on either side of the equator, so the equinox in March is also known as the "spring equinox" in the northern hemisphere. However, in the southern hemisphere, it's known as the "autumnal (fall) equinox". The word "equinox" is derived from Latin, meaning "equal night."


See also the previous posts:
• Eostre at Spring Equinox
• Eostre: Goddess of New Life Beginnings
• Autumnal Equinox
• A Solstice Approaches Unnoticed

Image: Artist unknown.

Eostre at Spring Equinox

Image: Wendy Andrew.


See also the previous posts:
Eostre – Goddess of New Life Beginnings
The Easter Hare
Remembering Eostre
Celebrating Eostre
The Goddess Ostara
Sacred

Eostre – Goddess of New Life Beginnings

The following is excerpted from Swain Wodening's essay on the Goddess Eostre. This essay was first published at Wednesbury Shire of White Marsh Theod.

______________________________

Eostre is a very obscure Goddess, and uniquely Anglo-Saxon Pagan. She is not mentioned at all in the Norse corpus and only fleetingly in the Old English by Bede in De Temporum Rationale. Her material is so scant that some scholars have speculated she was not a Goddess at all, but that Eostre was merely a name for the holiday. Her name is connected for words for "east" and "shining." It is therefore related to the Greek godname Eos, Goddess of the dawn in their pantheon. Finding place names indicating her worship are difficult due to this relation to the word east. Her name survived in the German name of the Christian holy tide as Ostara, therefore if she was a Goddess, she was worshipped there as well.

In order to understand anything about the Goddess Eostre (or the Goddess or Goddesses worshiped at that time) we must draw on the traditions associated with the holy tide. Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology maintained that "Ostara, Eástre, was goddess of the growing light of spring." The date of the holy tide would make this a reasonable conclusion. Holy water in the form of the dew or water collected from brooks was gathered at this time. Washing with it was said to restore youth. Beautiful maidens in sheer white were said to seen frolicking in the country side. Also according to Grimm, the white maiden of Osterrode, was said to appear with a large batch of keys at her belt, and stride to the brook to collect water on Easter morning. Cross buns were of course baked and eaten. While this could be a Christian addition, that cakes were often use in Heathen rites is apparent in any survey of the lore. And the cross may be symbolic of the rune Gebo or the buns may represent the sun wheel. Easter eggs seem to go fairly far back in both English and continental celebrations, and of course symbolize the beginning of new life. The hare also known for its fertility appears fairly early in Easter celebrations. Bonfires and vigils also seemed to play a role in many Easter rites.

Based on this, Eostre would appear to be a Goddess of purity (the holy water), youth and beauty (the young maidens), as well as one of new life beginnings. . . .


To read Swain Wodening's piece on Eostre in its entirety, click here.


Image: Artist unknown.

The Easter Hare

According to Bede the name of the Christian festival of Easter was adopted from an Anglo-Saxon goddess called Eostre, spelt by other writers Eastre, Ostara, or Eastur. The name is cognate with Aurora, Eros and with Ushas, the Sanskrit for dawn. The month of April was called Eostur-monath, the Dawn month, and the pre-Christian festival of Easter included rites symbolic of death and resurrection. Few details are known, but there is no reason to think that it differed basically from other spring festivals such as that of Adonis . . . which were held in Western Asia and in Greek lands.

Eastre's favourite animal and attendant spirit was the hare. Little else is known about her, but it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn, were carried by hares. . . . The hare was a companion of Aphrodite too, and of satyrs and cupids. Wedding rings in ancient Greece bore its image and in the Middle Ages it appears beside the figure of Luxuria [self-indulgent sexual desire, personified as one of the deadly sins]. Elsewhere it represented love, fertility and growth. It is associated with the moon, dawn and Easter not only in this respect – as a symbol of physical growth – but in their deeper, spiritual meanings: the enlightenment of the soul through death, redemption and resurrection. Like the Easter egg itself the hare is an emblem of body and soul.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
pp 132-134

Image: The Leveret.

Body and Soul

Like a hare springing erect and bounding exuberantly across a dew-kissed field, the beauty and energy of the aroused male embodies the burgeoning life force often associated with spring.

The hare is symbolic of natural phenomena that connote actions of the aroused male: the rising sun, the coming spring. In folklore, art and dreams, hares herald great bursts of energy and creativity. They are often thought to be touched by divine madness, by a spirit of anarchy that overturns dogmatic tradition and restrictions. They are tricksters, offering us new ways of seeing and being in the world. They are emblems of the integration of body and soul.


The hare was the Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess Eastre's companion and messenger. It is said that her illuminating and warming powers, as goddess of the dawn, were embodied and channeled by hares. Like her, they represent the love and carnal pleasure that can lead to flourishment, to renewal, to the blossoming forth of life. They therefore have a reputation for lusty sexuality and fecundity. One artist who has incorporated this symbolism into his work is Mexican painter and sculptor Francisco Toledo.


Simon Carnell notes that in Toledo's art, "conspicuously sexualized as well as trickster-like hares can be found copulating with, fellating and buggering human figures, in a literalization of their symbolic associations with sex." In Toledo's "Crafty Hare" (opening image) a man-hare possesses four erect penises, two as ears, and is surrounded by wasps with over-sized stingers (pricks!)


Image 1: Francisco Toledo.
Image 2: The Leveret.
Image 3: Robert Canis.
Image 4: Francisco Toledo.

Remembering Eostre

Eastre (a.k.a. Eostre) was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people of Northern Europe. Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: eastre. Other variations of the name for goddesses of fertility were Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos.

The female powers in animist cultures were much more powerful to people than the male powers. This was because females had the power to create new life. But, as is described in far more detail in “The ‘Roots’ of Domination,” Section I of Cultural Vision, as tribes became more war-like and domineering, the female goddesses were discarded in favor of male deities. However, the pagans, who lived away from the cultural centers where these male gods were championed, still honored large number of goddesses within their mythologies.

As the great exoteric religions became institutionalized, it was difficult to attract ordinary folks, who lived simple agricultural lives in the countryside, to become followers of the new systems of belief. (The word “pagan” means “country dwellers.”) There thus became a concerted effort to demonize their beliefs. In fact, the word “villain” meaning wicked soul, is derived from the word “village.”

- Source

Celebrating Eostre

I am movement towards becoming
expanding
enhancing
the impulse deep within all being
to develop
evolve
press onward
to fulfill
all that is possible

The Germanic Goddess of fertility and spring, Eostre (pronounced yo'ster), or Easter, was celebrated with the ritual lighting of dawn fires as a protection for the crops. She symbolizes springtime, new growth, and rebirth.

Once, when the Goddess was late in coming, a little girl found a bird close to death from the cold and turned to Eostre for help. A rainbow bridge appeared and Eostre came, clothed in her red robe of warm, vibrant sunlight which melted the snows. Spring arrived. Because the little bird was wounded beyond repair, Eostre changed it into a snow hare who then brought rainbow eggs. As a sign of spring, Eostre instructed the little girl to watch for the snow hare to come to the woods.

Eostre comes into your life with her springtime message of personal growth. It is time to open to things in your life that facilitate growth, development, evolution. Is there a class or workshop you've been wondering if you should take? Do it now! Is there something new that you want to include in your life? Let it in now! Have you just gone through a period of stagnation and lethargy where nothing seemed to be happening? Let it go! Now is the time of growth. The Goddess says that wholeness is nurtured when you stretch. The stretching promotes your growth.

- Source

See also the previous posts:
The Goddess Ostara
Magical Creatures
Sacred

Magical Creatures

Hares and rabbits have long-standing associations with spring, especially the month of March. Both hares and rabbits are lagomorphs (not rodents) and are usually interchangeable for magical purposes.

. . . Many spells and charms draw on the power of these magical creatures. A lucky rabbit’s foot is merely the most famous example. In China, one might carry a green jade rabbit for luck. The fur of a live hare can empower spells for invisibility or speed. Rabbit or hare emblems often appear in rituals for fertility or virility.

Some believe eating hare or rabbit meat makes them become beautiful or romantically desirable. Though taboo in some cultures, hunting rabbits and hares was often allowed for spring holidays, such as Ostara and Beltane. This is undoubtedly related to the near-coinciding fertility festivals.

Altogether, hares and rabbits represent the burgeoning life force of spring, with its boundless exuberance and fruitfulness. Bringing them into your life helps attract these qualities.

- Elizabeth Barrette
(Excerpted from Llewellyn’s Witches’ Calendar 2009)


Image: Detail of “I’m for the Hare that Runs by Night” (digital paint, 2003), part of Martin Herbert’s Totem Animal Series.

The Goddess Ostara

The beautiful artwork above and the following excerpt are from the website of artist Mickie Mueller.

____________________________

The Goddess Ostara’s (Eostre’s) celebration day can vary from the spring equinox (circa March 21) to the first full moon after the equinox. She is the Anglo-Saxon/Germanic Goddess of new beginnings, fertility, hope and renewal. Her symbols include the hare, colored eggs, and spring flowers. In older times celebrants wore brand new clothing to celebrate her festival.

Does this all sound familiar? It should. The symbolism and even the name of Ostaras/Eostre’s festival were adopted by the Christian celebration of Easter which also celebrates renewal and rebirth. One should note, that the holiday of Easter moves every year. It always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

Ostara is an interesting Goddess because she is considered a Maiden Goddess but instead of a new crescent, uses full moon energy. This makes sense if we consider that she is the Goddess who fires up all the growth in the spring. Physics teaches us that an object at rest, tends to stay at rest, it takes more energy to begin momentum than continue it. Consider the seed sleeping beneath the earth or the bud tightly wrapped on a tree branch. It’s like when the alarm goes off while you are snug under your blankets; the hardest part is just getting up and moving, and it takes a lot of energy to get started. That may explain a Maiden with full moon energy.

This dynamic Lady of spring has also had the female hormone Estrogen named after her. Bursting full of the power of femininity as well as regeneration, she takes the relay of life firmly in hand as the Crone has passed it to her from the underworld. As we note the sprouts, buds and blossoms bursting forth from the deep dark earth, take a moment to thank Ostara.


Image: “Goddess Ostara” by Mickie Mueller (11x14 acrylic and Berol Prismacolor pencils on Illustration board).

Sacred

I find it fascinating that just as the hare, throughout history and across cultures, has been considered sacred by some yet “unclean” by others, so too have expressions of human sexuality that depart from traditional gender roles and/or the norms of heterosexuality.

In many Native American cultures, for instance, the “two-spirited” ones were held in high regard, and their unique role in community life honored, even revered. They crossed boundaries, blending, for instance, the genders. Accordingly, they were often the shamans – the ones who communed with and traveled to the spirit realm, the ultimate boundary crossing.

Within the ancient Jewish culture, the hare’s ambiguity stemmed from the strange and erroneous belief that every hare was both male and female. Such perceived blending of the genders made the hare ritualistically impure and unfit to eat. Writing in the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Browne observed that the ancient Jews believed that all manner of vices resulted from eating the flesh of the hare, with its “mixture of sexes.” Two such “vices” were “unnatural venery” and “degenerous effemination.”

Expanding on such ideas, Christianity (though not Christ himself) later declared that sexual activity between members of the same gender was “sinful,” that it separated those who engaged in it from the sacred.


Especially symbolic

Of course, all creation is sacred – infused with the divine spark of life. Yet, without doubt, certain creatures, including the hare, have been considered especially symbolic to humans throughout history. In pre-urban cultures, for instance, many animals and other naturalistic figures were seen to spiritually represent a group of related people such as a clan. Such an animal was considered the clan’s totem.

In various trickster tales found from Asia and Africa to North America, rabbits and hares are both good and bad. The Algonquin tribes of North America had as their chief deity a great hare to whom they went at death. According to one account this mighty hare lived in the east, according to another, in the north. In his anthropomorphized form he was known as Menabosho or Michabo.

Terri Windling notes that in Egyptian myth, “hares were . . . closely associated with the cycles of the moon, which was viewed as masculine when waxing and feminine when waning. Hares were thus believed to be androgynous, shifting back and forth between the genders—not only in ancient Egypt and, as has been noted, Native American culture, but also in European folklore right up to the 18th century. A hare-headed god and goddess can be seen on the Egyptian temple walls of Dendera, where the female is believed to be the goddess Unut (or Wenet), while the male is most likely a representation of Osiris (also called Wepuat or Un-nefer), who was sacrificed to the Nile annually in the form of a hare.”



Greco-Roman, Teutonic, Norse, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Chinese, and Buddhist myths all feature the hare. The ancient Germanic and Scandinavian peoples used the hare as a sacred symbol in association with the nature goddess Freyja. In a similar way, the Anglo-Saxons associated the hare with Ostara or Eostre, the goddess of spring. Later, Christianity appropriated many of these symbols in its celebrating of Easter, the commemoration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.


The Easter Hare

There are unique associations in English folklore between hares and Easter. In 17th century Southeastern England, for example, there is evidence of a custom of hunting a hare on Good Friday, and in 18th century Coleshill there was a manorial custom in which young men tried to catch a hare on Easter Monday.

According to Stuart Buchanan, the English traditionally eat young spring lamb at Easter. Yet he suggests that “it was the early Christian monks who thought up the ‘paschal lamb’ as an alternative to the hare, totem of Oestre, pagan goddess of dawn, fertility and rebirth, whose annual festival took place, naturally enough, at the spring equinox.”

“The Easter Bunny,” says Buchanan, “is in fact the hare, one of England’s five noble beasts of venery under the ancient forest laws of William the Conqueror and his successors.”



Image 1: “I’m for the Hare that Runs by Night” (digital paint, 2003), part of Martin Herbert’s Totem Animal Series.
Image 2: Egyptian hare.
Image 3: “Hare” by Catherine Eaton Skinner.