The German goddess of fertility - Eostre

[Deidre]

Thought this was interesting, in light of the Easter 'holiday.'

EOSTRE - the Germanic Goddess of Fertility (Germanic mythology)

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I don't think she existed. Oh, and eggs were used as symbols in early Christianity:

" the egg is a wonderful symbol of birth and rebirth, an apparently lifeless object out of which comes life. Because of this, it is a symbol of Christ's Resurrection and is seen most often at Easter. In 2006, a necropolis under the Vatican revealed an infant who'd been buried holding an egg to symbolize his parents' hope in his resurrection, because of Christ's Resurrection.

Legend has it that St. Mary Magdalen went to Rome and met with the Emperor Tiberius to tell him about the Resurrection of Jesus. She held out an egg to him as a symbol of this, and he scoffed, saying that a man could no more rise from the dead than that egg that she held could turn scarlet. The egg turned deep red in her hands, and this is the origin of Easter eggs, and the reason why Mary Magdalen is often portrayed holding a scarlet egg.

Another level of symbolism is that the egg represents the Creation, the elements, and the world itself, with the shell representing the firmament, the vault of the sky where the fiery stars lie; the thin membrane symbolizing air; the white symbolizing the waters; and the yolk representing earth."
Christian Symbols

 

[Deidre]

Lest you think I'm scoffing too, lol I happen to love all traditions, both religious and pagan that surround Christmas and Easter, in particular. But, long before Jesus, people were looking at this time of year as 'special.' It's nice to see that religious and non-religious people perhaps are all after the same thing, and that is marking certain times of the calendar with special commemoration. (Not sure I believe that scarlet egg story, but ok. )

Did you attend mass today, Frank? If so, was it nice? My dad asked me to go, but I chose not to.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Yes, I went to Mass today. It was lovely. The cathedral was standing room only and there were (real) flowers everywhere. They had the brass as well as the organ and the choir. It was a pleasing assault on the senses. Lol.

 

[Deidre]

Yes, I went to Mass today. It was lovely. The cathedral was standing room only and there were (real) flowers everywhere. They had the brass as well as the organ and the choir. It was a pleasing assault on the senses. Lol.

That sounds lovely. I remember the Triduum. I'm glad you have found your resting place. Have a happy Easter.

 

[Riverwolf]

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Old English Easterdæg, from Eastre (Northumbrian Eostre), from Proto-Germanic *austron-, "dawn," also the name of a goddess of fertility and spring, perhaps originally of sunrise, whose feast was celebrated at the spring equinox, from *aust- "east, toward the sunrise" (compare east), from PIE *aus- (1) "to shine" (especially of the dawn); see aurora.

So She's not only a Fertility Goddess, She's a Dawn Goddess.

***BEGIN PERSONAL INSIGHTS THAT HAVE NO HISTORICAL, SCHOLARLY, OR ARCHAEOLOGICAL SUPPORT***

She's therefore the Goddess of New Life and Rebirth. Hm... that actually makes Her a Goddess that I should be invoking more, as someone who's making New the Old Way.

In addition, this makes Her the Goddess who's present whenever an old, pleasant memory comes up, or a favorite childhood passtime is engaged in. Or when a nostalgic work is revived faithfully but fresh.

With the rabbits and hares (who are known for being very sexually active), and the eggs, She's a Goddess of sex for the sake of conception (as opposed to Freya, who's a Goddess of sex for its own sake), and by extension of pregnancy. While Frigga is the Goddess invoked for the sake of the Mother, Easter becomes the Goddess invoked for the sake of the baby.

All in all, She becomes a very happy Goddess.

***END PERSONAL INSIGHTS***

 

[Valjean]

One cold day Eostre found a bird on the ground with its wings frozen. Taking pity on the creature, She saved it by turning it into a rabbit (why she couldn't just have unfrozen it I can't imagine). The Rabbit hopped away, warm and well insulated, but it retained its previous power to lay eggs.

 

[Deidre]

That's a wonderful description, Riverwolf. I've read it a few times.
I'm absolutely love her name, it's so beautiful.

 

[Deidre]

One cold day Eostre found a bird on the ground with its wings frozen. Taking pity on the creature, She saved it by turning it into a rabbit (why she couldn't just have unfrozen it I can't imagine). The Rabbit hopped away, warm and well insulated, but it retained its previous power to lay eggs.

...And especially, golden eggs that held the promise of eternal life for all who believed in their amazing powers.

 

[Vishvavajra]

There may have been a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon goddess by the name of Eostre whose festival month coincided with the Christian holiday. Our only source for that is Bede, and it's not clear where he's getting the information or if he's engaging in some "creative scholarship," as folks like him often did. It's equally likely that the Germanic word for the holiday simply refers to the concept of dawn or rebirth. We really don't have enough evidence to know either way.

Where people go astray is in claiming that the eggs and rabbits were sacred to Eostre, something for which there is no evidence whatsoever. It comes from the false assumption that any symbolism drawn from the natural world must be pagan in origin. Christian imagery has always included animals and plants. So even if we were to accept Eostre as a goddess, it's not logical to leap to the conclusion that any particular aspect of Easter celebrations can be connected to her. It's sort of like Christmas trees, another pseudo-pagan tradition that actually comes out of the Victorian period and has no real connection to anything pre-Christian.

 

[Desert Snake]

I think this is fiction, Deidre.

 

[Deidre]

I think this is fiction, Deidre.

hahahaha I know.

 

[Riverwolf]

There may have been a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon goddess by the name of Eostre whose festival month coincided with the Christian holiday. Our only source for that is Bede, and it's not clear where he's getting the information or if he's engaging in some "creative scholarship," as folks like him often did. It's equally likely that the Germanic word for the holiday simply refers to the concept of dawn or rebirth. We really don't have enough evidence to know either way.

Where people go astray is in claiming that the eggs and rabbits were sacred to Eostre, something for which there is no evidence whatsoever. It comes from the false assumption that any symbolism drawn from the natural world must be pagan in origin. Christian imagery has always included animals and plants. So even if we were to accept Eostre as a goddess, it's not logical to leap to the conclusion that any particular aspect of Easter celebrations can be connected to her. It's sort of like Christmas trees, another pseudo-pagan tradition that actually comes out of the Victorian period and has no real connection to anything pre-Christian.

It's well known that trees were of particular importance to pre-Christian Europeans. How that manifested likely differed from Tribe to Tribe, as would the exact natures of the Gods.

Whether the rabbits/hares and eggs were pre-Christian doesn't really matter to me. The Old Way is a living tradition, constantly changing with the times. Whether or not any of our ancestors thought of these things as sacred to Easter, they are now.

Still, it's always appreciated when reminders are given that we don't really know with certainty what our ancestors thought or believed, except that they likely lacked any semblance of the homogeneity that Rome, and later Christianity, brought.

 

[Vishvavajra]

I wouldn't say Rome brought anything remotely resembling homogeneity prior to the Christian period. For that to even be possible, there would have had to be some sort of homogeneity within the Roman polity, which there never was. Greco-Roman religion would be impossible to define or even locate apart from individual, localized cults. They didn't impose religious practices on people because, once removed from their context of origin, there was nothing to impose.

 

[Riverwolf]

I wouldn't say Rome brought anything remotely resembling homogeneity prior to the Christian period. For that to even be possible, there would have had to be some sort of homogeneity within the Roman polity, which there never was. Greco-Roman religion would be impossible to define or even locate apart from individual, localized cults. They didn't impose religious practices on people because, once removed from their context of origin, there was nothing to impose.

Not quite what I understand the history to be, particularly with Roman imperialism being what it was: the Roman way of life and standard of living being spread far in their known world, at least with Caesar and his legacy.

Whether that's more or less homogenous than what later Christian Europe was, or modern Anglo-American culture is, I'd say it would have been a good degree more homogenous than whatever the Northern Tribes may have had.

 

[Vishvavajra]

Not quite what I understand the history to be, particularly with Roman imperialism being what it was: the Roman way of life and standard of living being spread far in their known world, at least with Caesar and his legacy.

Whether that's more or less homogenous than what later Christian Europe was, or modern Anglo-American culture is, I'd say it would have been a good degree more homogenous than whatever the Northern Tribes may have had.

Not really. Granted, Rome was a single city to begin with, but even then you're looking at no less diversity than you'd get in any other multi-tribal urban center. But by the time Rome is expanding its hegemony across the Alps, many of the people doing the on-the-ground soldiering and day-to-day administration of provinces aren't Romans to begin with. You do see the introduction of things like baths, but is that people becoming more "Roman" or just enjoying luxuries they may not have had access to before? Actually, the concept of "Romanization," what exactly it means, and the extent to which the archaeological record supports on or another theory of it, is a hot topic in archaeology currently.

At the very least, we know that it's very sketchy to assume that Roman imperialism worked like modern imperialism, in which Christianization and the imposition of the imperial culture had a large part. Roman imperialism didn't work that way, nor did Roman religion (insofar as you can even talk about it as a single phenomenon, which is not much). I know people who identify with various neopagan movements have this narrative in their heads, as I've encountered it before, but it's a highly Romanticized view coming out of the late 19th century and doesn't accord with current classical scholarship at all. It's basically a myth.

 

[Riverwolf]

Not really. Granted, Rome was a single city to begin with, but even then you're looking at no less diversity than you'd get in any other multi-tribal urban center. But by the time Rome is expanding its hegemony across the Alps, many of the people doing the on-the-ground soldiering and day-to-day administration of provinces aren't Romans to begin with. You do see the introduction of things like baths, but is that people becoming more "Roman" or just enjoying luxuries they may not have had access to before? Actually, the concept of "Romanization," what exactly it means, and the extent to which the archaeological record supports on or another theory of it, is a hot topic in archaeology currently.

At the very least, we know that it's very sketchy to assume that Roman imperialism worked like modern imperialism, in which Christianization and the imposition of the imperial culture had a large part. Roman imperialism didn't work that way, nor did Roman religion (insofar as you can even talk about it as a single phenomenon, which is not much). I know people who identify with various neopagan movements have this narrative in their heads, as I've encountered it before, but it's a highly Romanticized view coming out of the late 19th century and doesn't accord with current classical scholarship at all. It's basically a myth.

Fair enough. I try to keep things as current as possible. A lot of neopaganism is sourced in 19th century romanticism, for good and ill, and while I rather like what's come out of that, I do still recognize the importance of staying up to date. Problem is that it's difficult to know which sources are up-to-date and which aren't.

 

[Vishvavajra]

Fair enough. I try to keep things as current as possible. A lot of neopaganism is sourced in 19th century romanticism, for good and ill, and while I rather like what's come out of that, I do still recognize the importance of staying up to date. Problem is that it's difficult to know which sources are up-to-date and which aren't.

It's true, and it's a problem. There's no direct reward for classicists to write and publish popularizing works—people in charge of stuff like tenure and promotion consider it a waste of time—so it takes a long time for the scholarly picture of things to trickle down to the popular consciousness. And then there's the fact that the presence of Christianizing assumptions in the study of ancient religion was only called out as a problem around the 1980s, which was pretty recently in terms of classical scholarship. And that is a major source of distortions, as people without a full context to work from will see descriptions of Roman religious practices and assume the context of what they're most familiar with, which will almost always be some form of Christianity. Non-Greco-Roman European practices get a pass because we know very little about them to begin with, so it's harder to apply the wrong context to them as a heuristic.

The 19th-century Romanticism that gave birth to a renewed interest in pre-Christian culture was good in many ways. However, it's good to keep in mind that it carries with it a bunch of bogus and anachronistic concepts, mostly related to ethnic essentialism and nationalism, which are also products of the Romanticism of the period and mostly unheard-of among ancient peoples. Even the "northern tribesmen vs. Romans" thing is pretty much a Victorian contrivance, born out of the British Empire's self-consciousness in light of the Greco-Roman cultural heritage of Europe, crossed with its contemporary relations with conquered peoples. It assumes a lot of ideology that just didn't exist back then—or that there even was anything like nationalist ideology as we would recognize it, which is highly doubtful.

 

[Riverwolf]

It's true, and it's a problem. There's no direct reward for classicists to write and publish popularizing works—people in charge of stuff like tenure and promotion consider it a waste of time—so it takes a long time for the scholarly picture of things to trickle down to the popular consciousness. And then there's the fact that the presence of Christianizing assumptions in the study of ancient religion was only called out as a problem around the 1980s, which was pretty recently in terms of classical scholarship. And that is a major source of distortions, as people without a full context to work from will see descriptions of Roman religious practices and assume the context of what they're most familiar with, which will almost always be some form of Christianity. Non-Greco-Roman European practices get a pass because we know very little about them to begin with, so it's harder to apply the wrong context to them as a heuristic.

The 19th-century Romanticism that gave birth to a renewed interest in pre-Christian culture was good in many ways. However, it's good to keep in mind that it carries with it a bunch of bogus and anachronistic concepts, mostly related to ethnic essentialism and nationalism, which are also products of the Romanticism of the period and mostly unheard-of among ancient peoples. Even the "northern tribesmen vs. Romans" thing is pretty much a Victorian contrivance, born out of the British Empire's self-consciousness in light of the Greco-Roman cultural heritage of Europe, crossed with its contemporary relations with conquered peoples. It assumes a lot of ideology that just didn't exist back then—or that there even was anything like nationalist ideology as we would recognize it, which is highly doubtful.

I recently saw a two-part documentary about King Herman/Arminius (don't remember the title, unfortunately), which stressed something that I didn't recall being mentioned in others: even though he did manage to unite some of the Tribes to beat back the Romans at Teutoburg Forest, a lot of the Tribes were rather suspicious of him even then. So it makes sense that when he tried to set himself up as High King, he was done away with. I only refer to him as King in terms of his own Cherusci Tribe, and hail him because he basically assured that the Old Way (which, remember, is what a lot of later people would call their pre-Christian traditions) could stick around longer in that general region longer. Plus, I've heard it said that he may have been a possible inspiration for Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer.

Documentaries are often my primary source of information, because I'm not very good at taking in textual information when it's bland and scholarly (unless it's a D&D book for some reason), but I take in audio/visual information very well (even with novels I tend to prefer audiobooks). Of course, that does lead to the problem of ... well, documentaries being rather notoriously inaccurate, based on long outdated or incomplete information, and/or severely biased, especially the stuff that comes out of the US. BBC stuff tends to be better in my experience, but even then you have the likes of ex-Python Terry Jones, who's probably the most biased documentarian I've ever seen (except perhaps the guys behind the greatest unintentional comedy that is Ancient Aliens) in terms of his pure hatred of Rome. (I mean, Caesar's conquest of Gaul was motivated entirely by the gold deposits there?? Sure it might "make sense", but I've not seen a single corroborating source on that one).

Of course, that does remind me that a lot of the Romanic-era conceptions of Rome painted it as some king of epitome of culture and civilization, as if they could do no wrong. LOL The only reason I regard the Roman legions (specifically the legions and emperors, not the Roman populace) as my "ancestral enemy" is because I'm on Queen Boudica's side in her rebellion. Even that is likely influenced, even if by a few degrees of separation, by Romantic-era conceptions, since I recall Queen Victoria being regarded as a sort of "Boudica reborn" (and I don't think I'm descended from the Iceni Tribe; I have ancestry in an English Noble House that might predate King William, but that House is based near Cornwall). I regard Rome as on relative equal ground with everyone else at the time in terms of my standards of virtue, since sure, there's indications that at least some of the Northern Tribes were more egalitarian than the Greco-Roman world, but they were also very belligerent. Sort of like how I identify as an Anglo-Saxon-esque Pagan, and yet fully admit that while William the Conqueror did to some pretty horrible things to the Britons after Hastings, it's not like the invading Saxons were much better to the Britons just a few centuries earlier; heck, if some of what I've read is true, they were arguably worse.

Hm...

BUT... the power that is Youtube could help get that contemporary consensus down to popular conception.

 

[Nietzsche]

It's true, and it's a problem. There's no direct reward for classicists to write and publish popularizing works—people in charge of stuff like tenure and promotion consider it a waste of time—so it takes a long time for the scholarly picture of things to trickle down to the popular consciousness. And then there's the fact that the presence of Christianizing assumptions in the study of ancient religion was only called out as a problem around the 1980s, which was pretty recently in terms of classical scholarship. And that is a major source of distortions, as people without a full context to work from will see descriptions of Roman religious practices and assume the context of what they're most familiar with, which will almost always be some form of Christianity. Non-Greco-Roman European practices get a pass because we know very little about them to begin with, so it's harder to apply the wrong context to them as a heuristic.

The 19th-century Romanticism that gave birth to a renewed interest in pre-Christian culture was good in many ways. However, it's good to keep in mind that it carries with it a bunch of bogus and anachronistic concepts, mostly related to ethnic essentialism and nationalism, which are also products of the Romanticism of the period and mostly unheard-of among ancient peoples. Even the "northern tribesmen vs. Romans" thing is pretty much a Victorian contrivance, born out of the British Empire's self-consciousness in light of the Greco-Roman cultural heritage of Europe, crossed with its contemporary relations with conquered peoples. It assumes a lot of ideology that just didn't exist back then—or that there even was anything like nationalist ideology as we would recognize it, which is highly doubtful.

Nationalism didn't exist until the Napoleonic era at the earliest, so yes it's very much anachronistic.