by Sean Jobst
11 April 2020
Easter. For Christians this day is a sacred day, when their lord and savior resurrected three days following his crucifixion. The latter day follows the solemn forty-day Lenten season which recently ended to the commemoration of Christian faithful the world over. Lurking underneath though is the question of where do the symbolisms and traditions come from? "How are we to explain these strange Easter customs, which, taken all together, seem to bear the stamp of immemorial antiquity?" (Billson, 446). Behind the Easter traditions are living remnants of our own ancient traditions that have survived many centuries after our ancestors' conversion to Christianity.
We approach it as an affirmation of the sacredness invested to the seasons, the Spring personified in the form of Goddesses associated with dawn, fertility, light, return of the sun from its winter slumber. From these Easter traditions, we can easily discern and deconstruct what was ours - arising out of the forests, river valleys, mountains, plains, and fjords of Europe - not brought from the deserts of the Middle East, or contained in a book more often than not accompanied by the sword and buttressed by centralized political structures. The resulting picture is one sprouting from within, flowing forth from waters of the Unconscious.
It is in this light that I want to illuminate Ostara, the Germanic Goddess of the Spring and Dawn, arguing from folklore and Easter traditions as well as various other historical and archaeological evidences, that such a Goddess was indeed venerated by Germanic tribes. I also intend to pay some attention to the "Catholic" traditions of my own ancestral region and family background, to affirm a compelling case of continuous devotion to this Goddess even when our ancestors were not conscious of her. We need not "reconstruct" a spiritual tradition that was "lost", but merely shed light on the patterns here all along. In the process, we feel within ourselves a truly life-affirming connection to the seasonal cycles of life, the cosmos and all Nature.
OSTARA. She is "the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing" (Grimm, 291). A link to Dawn because the Sun (or "Soul") resurrects (or "reincarnates") upon the horizon each day, just as Spring ushers the increasing light each year - birthing another cycle of the year through a balance of darkness and light. Ostara is a "Spring-like fertility goddess" representing "prosperity and growth"(Simek, 74). Ostara is the renewing fertility brought by the coming Spring, just as people's increased creative faculties pouring forth during this time ties in with both the planting seasons and internal aspects of the psyche. Ostara is the Dawning Light, bringing about an illuminating process of self-transformation, an internal "cleansing" as much as an outside purification - As Above, So Below. As Within, So Without. She is multifaceted in her qualities, so discussing her requires looking at various aspects.
Etymology. Her name comes from the Old High German adverb ôstar, "movement towards the rising sun". The continental Germans personified her as Ostara and the Anglo-Saxons as Ēostre, while the adverb also appeared in Old Norse austr and Gothic áustr (Grimm, 290-291). Her name survived in various Continental and English toponyms with prefix forms of "aus" and "os", including that of Österreich or Austria, derived from the Ostarrichi "eastern realm" cited in a document from 996. Her name also appeared in the form of 6th century personal names, such as the Burgundian queen Austrechild or the Frankish Duke of Aquitaine, Austrovald. Most significantly, her name survived even Christian celebrations: "It is curious that, in Germany, both Christmas and Easter should have retained their pagan names. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the priests did their utmost to substitute 'Christmessen' for the ancient 'Weihnacht' or 'Holy Night,' and 'Paschen' instead of 'Ostern,' which showed too plainly its heathen origin. But their efforts were unsuccessful"(Dickens, 16).
All stem from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *hₐewes- "to shine, glow red, a flame", preserved in words such as Proto-Germanic *austera ("east"), Latvian àustrums ("east"), Avestan ušatara ("east"), and Latin auster ("south wind, south") (Mallory & Adams, 301). This root also appeared in the name for the PIE Dawn Goddess *H₂éwsōs, whose cognates (aside from Ostara and Ēostre) include such ethnic Dawn/Spring Goddesses as Eos (Hellenic), Aurora (Roman), Ataegina (Lusitanian/Celtiberian), Aušrinė (Lithuanian), Auseklis (Latvian), and Ushas (Vedic). Her epithet *bʰr̥ǵʰéntih₂ "high, to rise" cognates with Brigantia and Brigid, respectively the Gaullish and Irish Dawn/Spring Goddesses.Through the related word *astro "star", Grimm related her to the South Slavic Spring Goddess Vesna. All are regional personifications of the same Cosmic-Natural forces.
Historical Sources. The earliest historic reference to Ēostre was in De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time, 725CE), a Latin treatise on measuring time by observing cosmic cycles, by the English monk and historian Bede (672-735CE): "Ēosturmōnaþ [Ēosturmonath, 'month of Ēostre'] has a name which is now translated 'Paschal month', and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance." Paschal derived from the Judaic Passover and was imposed by the Church to replace indigenous Spring festivals throughout Europe. While Germanic festivals were reckoned to full moons after the equinoxes or solstices as I previously wrote, Bede describes how Easter was dated to "the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal Equinox" - part of the Roman Empire and then the Christian Church's structuring time around a rigid standardized week of holy days rather than lunisolar days dynamic with the seasonal cycles.
The Germanic Spring festival was thus reckoned to the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, usually falling sometime in early April (as with this year). Within the German context, the earliest historic reference to Ostara as a distinct Goddess was written by the folklorist and philologist Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) of "Brothers Grimm" renown, who based his case upon dual foundations of etymology and the folk traditions of German peasants: "We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmanoth is found as early as Eginhard [Einhard] (temp. car. Mag.). The great Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of OHG [Old High German] remains the name ostara. It is mostly found in the plural, because two days were kept at Easter. This Ostara, like the Eastre, must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachings tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries"(Grimm, 290).
Ostara as a historically-attested Germanic Goddess. Throughout Europe, the Romantic period that spanned the 18th- and 19th- centuries was a flowering of folklore and reevaluating the glories of a nation's pride. This was certainly the case in how contemporary German scholars and artists were relating to Ostara. Illustrators like Carl Emil Doepler and Johannes Gehrts created representations of her. Aside from Jacob Grimm, other scholars who accepted Ostara as a historically-attested Goddess included philologist Adolf Holtzmann (1810-1870), poet and writer Karl Joseph Simrock (1802-1876), and the philologist Wilhelm Wackernagel (1806-1869). Its my firm contention that they were tapping into a force embedded within the German historical memory, what Carl Jung would later call the Collective Unconscious, and that the Ostara Archetype had come to the surface again through conscious memories of some after her memory remained in subconscious form through various fairy tales and folk traditions. This has not stopped quite an active campaign which denied there even was a Goddess named Ostara revered by the ancient Germans.
As has occurred so often with Pagan myths and folk legends at first discounted by Christian theologians or academics with a vested interest in eradicating what came before, archaeological evidence later backed up those arguing that Ostara was an actual Germanic Goddess. This came with the 1958 discovery of "over 150 Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to deities named the matronae Austriahenae, found near Morken-Harff [near Köln, in Rhineland] and datable to around 150-250 AD"(Shaw, 52). The *aus prefix we have already discussed, while the Matronae were a category of localized mother goddesses most prevalent in regions where Germanic and Celtic cultures synchronized (or where the distinctions between the two were not always apparent). Perhaps reflecting just how multifaceted the Earth is in all its fertility aspects, there were many mother goddesses unique to specific regions, such as what I documented about the Swabian Goddess Zisa, or seen in the diverse regional German traditions about Frau Holle or Holda in her various names. Why deny the etymological and folklore evidences about Ostara?
Some have dismissed Ēostre as an "invention" of Bede's, even while accepting without question the writings of Christian monks as a fully-accurate picture of Norse and Irish mythologies, for example. They neglect that Bede was arguing in the context of an actual name for an Anglo-Saxon month that obviously had some kind of meaning. Grimm answered some of the criticisms by pointing out that as a Christian monk seeking to convert the Pagans, Bede would have no interest creating a new Goddess. And furthermore, that Bede coming at a time when the island had not been fully Christianized, he would have been well-acquainted with what those Pagan traditions were just as he reported them throughout his work (Grimm, 289). As a monk Bede would be acting on the directives of a Church whose policy on converting Pagans was set by Pope Gregory barely a hundred years prior, about studying the actual ways of the Pagans and thereby convert them by absorbing those traditions within Christianity.
The author and researcher Carolyn Emerick made perhaps the most concise yet compelling case for Ēostre/Ostara being an actual historical Goddess in her article "Ēostre - Real Goddess or Bede's Invention?". First, the Church wanted to eradicate Paganism in Britain, so its faithful monk would not have "invented" a new Pagan Goddess and thus encourage her worship. Second, at a time when priests and theologians were engaging in a propaganda campaign that fabricated the worst claims about Paganism (such as ascribing human sacrifices), Bede's account of such a benevolent, compassionate, nurturing Goddess did not fit the image. Third, the Church was instructing its priests and monks to study the local Pagan customs so as to be better informed when converting them. Why accept Bede's other accounts at face value but suddenly doubt those about Ēostre? Fourth, Ēostre's qualities are similar to those of Brigid, her Irish/Gaelic equivalent whose worship is historically accepted. The final proof is an answer to those who simultaneously claim Ostara was an "invention" of Grimm: He was collecting folklore of peasants, many of them illiterate, and not scholars who may have read Bede, so why would ostensibly Christian peasants en masse accept the accounts of an English monk from 1000 years prior about a Pagan Goddess, even changing her name to Ostara?
Hare and eggs symbolism. One of the recurring images associated with both Ostara and Ēostre is the same one most associated with Easter: The Hare or Rabbit. The hare which lay the Easter eggs makes the most sense as remnants of "the sacred animal of Ostara"(Holtzmann, 141; Oberle, 104). From an esoteric standpoint, the egg is symbolic of both earthly and cosmic forces as I explained in a previous article. It being symbolically fertilized and then "found" on Easter while also being hidden, is an allegory for the Earth "concealing" its mysteries - a strange tradition for a literal-based Biblical holiday but which only makes sense as a lingering remnant of ancient Pagan traditions that spoke of complex earth and cosmic forces through allegories. The Sun "disappears" below the horizon, but is ushered in by the Dawn to again fertilize the soil. The hare or rabbit gives birth below ground, so that its inclusion among Ostara's symbolism could be an allegory for the underworld, the world of the dead within a Germanic cyclical worldview.
Noting how her animal among the Scandinavians was the cat, the English folklorist William Henderson (1813-1891) observed how among the Anglo-Saxons, the fertility Goddess Freyja "was attended by hares as her train-bearers and light-bearers"(Henderson, 206). Holtzmann wrote of how the Danes and Swedes worshiped Freyja as "Astrild" or "Austrhildis", "so that Ostara might be Freyja herself or her daughter"(Holtzmann, 138). The hare's connection to Ēostre shows a continuity from pre-Indo-European Britain: "There are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, when it probably played a very important part at the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island. It appears not unlikely that the hare was originally a totem, or divine animal among the local aborigines, and that the customs at Leicester and Hallaton are relics of the religious procession and annual sacrifice of the god"(Billson, 448). I made a similar argument in a series of articles earlier this year, tracing elements of Celtic and Germanic lore in Swabia to prehistoric shamanism, my contention being that so often our mythos represents a continuity with many layers added but being truly indigenous (not solely Indo-European) to our areas. Most known for his novels, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) also traced Easter folk traditions to Germanic Paganism, using the example of eggs:
"We now come to the universal custom of Easter eggs, which exists all over Germany. In Swabia and Hesse the Easter Hare is popularly supposed to lay them, and the Swabian mothers, when they prepare the eggs for their children, generally place a stuffed hare on the nest. The Carinthian peasantry say that the church bells go to Rome on Maunday Thursday to fetch them. It is generally considered the duty of sponsors to prove their god-children with the brightly-coloured eggs. Red is the favourite hue, a preference derived from heathenism, as red was sacred to Donar, and the Easter eggs are always, if possible, taken from those laid on Maunday Thursday....It is known that eggs were employed as a sacrifice at the ancient Spring Festivals, and this is very likely the reason why so much magical power has always been ascribed to them. The writers of the Middle Ages, such as Cesarius von Heisterbach, relate numerous stories of bewitched eggs; they were said to fly towards the sun of their own accord, they moved, and on being opened were found to contain toads, snakes, or lizards, which were the well-known transformations of the heathen deities"(Dickens, 17).
Ostara fire and water traditions. One of the other powerful expressions of Ostara surviving through the "Easter" traditions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, is the various rituals involving fire and water. In the continental Germanic lore, fire and water are the primal oppositional elements whose interaction symbolizes beginning, end and finally a renewal of the cycle in both crops and our earthly existence (Storl, 36). One of these traditions are the bonfires which survived "despite all endeavours, secular and clerical, to do away with the custom"(Dickens, 16). At the Synod of Regensburg in 752, Boniface condemned these as "a heathenish practice", imbued by a Bible which commanded "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them. For the customs of the peoples are futile"(Jeremiah 10:2-3). Boniface may have chopped down the symbolic Donar's Oak (but not the underlying principle), but the sacred fires of Ostara were far stronger than his fanaticism and could not be extinguished.
It survived in Swabian traditions throughout the "Lenten" season such as my own ancestors would have practiced: "There are no fires in Swabia at Easter, but bonfires are lighted on the first Sunday in Lent, which therefore goes by the name of Funken-Sonntag, or Spark Sunday"(Dickens, 17). The Church's adoption of an "Easter" candle and lamp which "must be extinguished before Easter, and relighted from virgin fire, kindled by flint and steel, not from any already burning", relates to ancient Heathen practices of the hearth-fire (Dickens, 16). These ancient practices also survived in "spring cleaning" traditions laden with great symbolism, involving lighting a candle from the hearth-fire, putting the old fire out, cleaning out the hearth with a special broom, lighting another candle from the new hearth-fire, later burning the broom in the Ostara bonfires, purifying the house with a sprig dipped in "Easter waters" drawn at midnight, and rolling down fire-wheels from hilltops (Arrowyn).
Christkindl as the Spring Maiden Archetype. I learned from my family traditions about the Christkindl ("christ child"), a messenger from "Christ" who visits each home with a basket of gifts on 24 December (incidentally, my birthday). The tradition was started by Martin Luther, but quickly spread to our Catholic regions of Schwaben and Bayern, where it took on a life of its own: Contrary to his intentions, the Christkindl was now portrayed as a fair-haired young woman wearing a white robe and a shining crown of candles. Where does this female Weihnachten figure come from with no precedence in Christianity? Its my firm contention the "Christkindl" represents an ancestral memory of a Spring Maiden Archetype, perhaps even a form of the Spring Goddess. For there are glimmers of Spring even at the height of Winter, a balance seen in parallels between Weihnachten and Ostern folklore. "Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, have the season of returning spring show themselves in cliffs on the rocks and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess"(Grimm, 291).
Her white robe represents purity while her shining crown represents the returning light. Christianity downgraded her into a mere "messenger" of a "Christ" who brought the "light". The same process occurred with her close Scandinavian equivalent "Lucia" (whose name relates to "light"), possibly a memory of the Goddess Freyja but transposed upon a fictional Sicilian Christian saint, and the Irish Spring/Dawn Goddess Brigid, both delegated to mere "messengers" of a "Christ" who now brought "light". It was for the same reason that Lucifer, the Greco-Roman "light-bearer" God, was delegated to a "satan" figure despite all contrary Biblical precedence, since such a "Christ" could tolerate no rival "light"-bringers. As with many other Pagan deities, it could be that Ostara was also turned into a Christian "saint" such as suggested by Wolf Dieter Storl: "In Germany, Saint Gertraud (English Gertrude), daughter of the Frankish ruler Pepin of Landen, took the place of Ostara, the ancient goddess of spring. Her name day (March 17th) marks the beginning of the agricultural year. It is in the farmers' almanac even today: 'Gertrude leads the cow to the grass, the horse to the plough, the bee to its maiden flight'"(Storl, 177).
Comparative Mythology. Our final approach to Ostara is reconstructing her qualities based on comparison with closely-related mythologies, so we can fill in some of the "gaps" and gain a fuller understanding. Just as the hare was associated with Ostara, Holtzmann noted a hare on a statue of Abnoba, a Gaullish forest and river Goddess local to the Black Forest and closely linked to Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Hunt. Some Hellenic scholars have theorized that Helen of Troy was an allegory for a Spring Goddess who was "captured" by the God of Winter, her "freeing" representing the coming of Spring. The Hellenic Mythos also has the figure of Persephone, whose "return" from the underworld Hades symbolized the Spring while those months of the year spent in Hades represented the "retreat" of Spring during Winter. In the Vedic Rig Veda, the Goddess Ushas appears in "white splendor", driving away "darkness" and revitalizing the earth each day just as the Dawn; and bringing beauty to the earth just as the Spring.
Ushas is the "divine daughter" of the sky father Dyaus Pita, sister of Ratri ("night"), and has associations with both Varuna ("water") and Agni ("fire"), the latter similar to the interplay of water and fire in Celtic and Germanic cosmology. Ushas causes the "immortal to age", as each day is one less in our own mortal existence. There are especially parallels with Celtic cultures, the most closely related to Germanic cultures, with strong overlaps between the two in many areas (including in my ancestral regions). Not long after Ostara is the Celtic festival of Beltaine, an Old Irish term cognate to the Common Celtic *Belo-te(p)nia "bright fire" - the element *belo- relating to English bale "white, shining", Lithuanian baltas, Latvian balts, and Slavic beloye "white" (Delamarre, 70). All these associations of "light" and "fire" correlate to those of Ostara. The Gaullish Goddess Brigantia was cognate to the Celtic Briganti "the high one", which has the same root as Sanskrit bhrati "exalted one" - both being epithets for Ushas, so that we can make a similar comparison with Ostara.
Brigid was similarly named "the high one" and associated not with the fire itself but with the bringing of fire - similar to what we have theorized about the Christkindl spring maiden. She is related to the sunlight and dawn, as well as tending to the hearth-fire much like the Ostern traditions. Her "birthing" of day associated her closely with animals, much like Ostara's hare associations. Much like Ushas was "daughter" of the Vedic sky father, so was Brigid the "daughter" of the Irish sky father equivalent The Dagda - from which we can similarly extrapolate that Ostara was "daughter" of the Germanic sky father Ziu (Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz, and known to the Norse as Týr, all three words relating to PIE *dyeus pater), understanding these are allegories for the dawn comes about from the sky while also arising from his consort the earth mother.
The Lusitanian and Celtiberian Goddess Ataecina was associated with the Dawn and the rebirth of the Soul, just as Ostara was also associated with Dawn and the Spring which brought about the "rebirth" of the Sun (or "Soul"). In fact, her name stems from the Celtic roots *atte- and *geno- "reborn", or perhaps from *ad-akwi- "night" although her epigraph is unknown (Abascal, 91). The "night" being an interesting corrolary to "dawn" but seen in the same infernal allegory as Persephone. Both being "reborn" each year around Spring, much like Ostara; the Dawn being a microcosm of "Spring" each day; and her "returning" to the Underworld for six months each year relating to being "hidden" during the Winter months. As with German Ostern traditions relating to Ostara, remnants of Ataecina's veneration can be seen in village traditions like the Careto tradition of northern Portugal wherein the Dawn and Winter motif was displayed in a symbolic "chaos" that must inevitably balance out "order" - much like Germanic mock "battles" of two groups representing Winter and Spring.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Abascal, Juan Manuel. "Las inscripciones latinas de Santa Lucía del Trampal (Alcuéscar, Cáceres) y el culto de Ataecina en Hispania." Archivo Español de Arqueología, 1995, Vol. 68, Nos. 171-172, pp. 31-105.
Arrowyn. "Old Swabian Spring Dishes and Customs." Hex Magazine, Issue 6: Harvest, March 21, 2010, <https://hexmagazine.com/issue-6-harvest/old-swabian-spring-dishes-and-customs-seasonal-recipes/>.
Billson, Charles J. "The Easter Hare." Folk-Lore, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 1892, pp. 441-466.
Delamarre, Xavier. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental. Paris: Errance, 2003.
Dickens, Charles. "Eastertide in Germany." All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, Vol. 14, No. 331, April 3, 1875, pp. 16-19.
Emerick, Carolyn. "Ēostre - Real Goddess or Bede's Invention?". May 12, 2015. <https://hubpages.com/education/ostre-Germanic-Goddess-or-Bedes-Invention>.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology: Volume 1. Trans. James S. Stallybrass. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.
Henderson, William. Notes on the folk-lore of the Northern countries of England and the Borders. London: W. Satchell Peyton and Co./The Folk-Lore Society, 1879.
Holtzmann, Adolf. Deutsche Mythologie. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1874.
Mallory, James P. and Douglas Q. Adams. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Oberle, K.A. Überreste germanischen Heidentums im Christentum: oder, Die Wochentage, Monate und christlichen Feste etymologisch, mythologisch, symbolisch und historisch erklärt. Baden-Baden: Verlag von Emil Sommermeyer, 1883.
Shaw, Philip A. Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011.
Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge, England: D.S. Brewer, 2007.
Storl, Wolf Dieter. The Untold Story of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic From the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017.
11 April 2020
Easter. For Christians this day is a sacred day, when their lord and savior resurrected three days following his crucifixion. The latter day follows the solemn forty-day Lenten season which recently ended to the commemoration of Christian faithful the world over. Lurking underneath though is the question of where do the symbolisms and traditions come from? "How are we to explain these strange Easter customs, which, taken all together, seem to bear the stamp of immemorial antiquity?" (Billson, 446). Behind the Easter traditions are living remnants of our own ancient traditions that have survived many centuries after our ancestors' conversion to Christianity.
We approach it as an affirmation of the sacredness invested to the seasons, the Spring personified in the form of Goddesses associated with dawn, fertility, light, return of the sun from its winter slumber. From these Easter traditions, we can easily discern and deconstruct what was ours - arising out of the forests, river valleys, mountains, plains, and fjords of Europe - not brought from the deserts of the Middle East, or contained in a book more often than not accompanied by the sword and buttressed by centralized political structures. The resulting picture is one sprouting from within, flowing forth from waters of the Unconscious.
It is in this light that I want to illuminate Ostara, the Germanic Goddess of the Spring and Dawn, arguing from folklore and Easter traditions as well as various other historical and archaeological evidences, that such a Goddess was indeed venerated by Germanic tribes. I also intend to pay some attention to the "Catholic" traditions of my own ancestral region and family background, to affirm a compelling case of continuous devotion to this Goddess even when our ancestors were not conscious of her. We need not "reconstruct" a spiritual tradition that was "lost", but merely shed light on the patterns here all along. In the process, we feel within ourselves a truly life-affirming connection to the seasonal cycles of life, the cosmos and all Nature.
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| "Ostara" (1884) by the German illustrator Johannes Gehrts (1855-1921) |
OSTARA. She is "the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing" (Grimm, 291). A link to Dawn because the Sun (or "Soul") resurrects (or "reincarnates") upon the horizon each day, just as Spring ushers the increasing light each year - birthing another cycle of the year through a balance of darkness and light. Ostara is a "Spring-like fertility goddess" representing "prosperity and growth"(Simek, 74). Ostara is the renewing fertility brought by the coming Spring, just as people's increased creative faculties pouring forth during this time ties in with both the planting seasons and internal aspects of the psyche. Ostara is the Dawning Light, bringing about an illuminating process of self-transformation, an internal "cleansing" as much as an outside purification - As Above, So Below. As Within, So Without. She is multifaceted in her qualities, so discussing her requires looking at various aspects.
Etymology. Her name comes from the Old High German adverb ôstar, "movement towards the rising sun". The continental Germans personified her as Ostara and the Anglo-Saxons as Ēostre, while the adverb also appeared in Old Norse austr and Gothic áustr (Grimm, 290-291). Her name survived in various Continental and English toponyms with prefix forms of "aus" and "os", including that of Österreich or Austria, derived from the Ostarrichi "eastern realm" cited in a document from 996. Her name also appeared in the form of 6th century personal names, such as the Burgundian queen Austrechild or the Frankish Duke of Aquitaine, Austrovald. Most significantly, her name survived even Christian celebrations: "It is curious that, in Germany, both Christmas and Easter should have retained their pagan names. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the priests did their utmost to substitute 'Christmessen' for the ancient 'Weihnacht' or 'Holy Night,' and 'Paschen' instead of 'Ostern,' which showed too plainly its heathen origin. But their efforts were unsuccessful"(Dickens, 16).
All stem from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *hₐewes- "to shine, glow red, a flame", preserved in words such as Proto-Germanic *austera ("east"), Latvian àustrums ("east"), Avestan ušatara ("east"), and Latin auster ("south wind, south") (Mallory & Adams, 301). This root also appeared in the name for the PIE Dawn Goddess *H₂éwsōs, whose cognates (aside from Ostara and Ēostre) include such ethnic Dawn/Spring Goddesses as Eos (Hellenic), Aurora (Roman), Ataegina (Lusitanian/Celtiberian), Aušrinė (Lithuanian), Auseklis (Latvian), and Ushas (Vedic). Her epithet *bʰr̥ǵʰéntih₂ "high, to rise" cognates with Brigantia and Brigid, respectively the Gaullish and Irish Dawn/Spring Goddesses.Through the related word *astro "star", Grimm related her to the South Slavic Spring Goddess Vesna. All are regional personifications of the same Cosmic-Natural forces.
Historical Sources. The earliest historic reference to Ēostre was in De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time, 725CE), a Latin treatise on measuring time by observing cosmic cycles, by the English monk and historian Bede (672-735CE): "Ēosturmōnaþ [Ēosturmonath, 'month of Ēostre'] has a name which is now translated 'Paschal month', and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance." Paschal derived from the Judaic Passover and was imposed by the Church to replace indigenous Spring festivals throughout Europe. While Germanic festivals were reckoned to full moons after the equinoxes or solstices as I previously wrote, Bede describes how Easter was dated to "the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal Equinox" - part of the Roman Empire and then the Christian Church's structuring time around a rigid standardized week of holy days rather than lunisolar days dynamic with the seasonal cycles.
The Germanic Spring festival was thus reckoned to the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, usually falling sometime in early April (as with this year). Within the German context, the earliest historic reference to Ostara as a distinct Goddess was written by the folklorist and philologist Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) of "Brothers Grimm" renown, who based his case upon dual foundations of etymology and the folk traditions of German peasants: "We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmanoth is found as early as Eginhard [Einhard] (temp. car. Mag.). The great Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of OHG [Old High German] remains the name ostara. It is mostly found in the plural, because two days were kept at Easter. This Ostara, like the Eastre, must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachings tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries"(Grimm, 290).
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| "Frigg als Ostara" (1882) by the German painter and illustrator Carl Emil Doepler (1824-1905) |
Ostara as a historically-attested Germanic Goddess. Throughout Europe, the Romantic period that spanned the 18th- and 19th- centuries was a flowering of folklore and reevaluating the glories of a nation's pride. This was certainly the case in how contemporary German scholars and artists were relating to Ostara. Illustrators like Carl Emil Doepler and Johannes Gehrts created representations of her. Aside from Jacob Grimm, other scholars who accepted Ostara as a historically-attested Goddess included philologist Adolf Holtzmann (1810-1870), poet and writer Karl Joseph Simrock (1802-1876), and the philologist Wilhelm Wackernagel (1806-1869). Its my firm contention that they were tapping into a force embedded within the German historical memory, what Carl Jung would later call the Collective Unconscious, and that the Ostara Archetype had come to the surface again through conscious memories of some after her memory remained in subconscious form through various fairy tales and folk traditions. This has not stopped quite an active campaign which denied there even was a Goddess named Ostara revered by the ancient Germans.
As has occurred so often with Pagan myths and folk legends at first discounted by Christian theologians or academics with a vested interest in eradicating what came before, archaeological evidence later backed up those arguing that Ostara was an actual Germanic Goddess. This came with the 1958 discovery of "over 150 Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to deities named the matronae Austriahenae, found near Morken-Harff [near Köln, in Rhineland] and datable to around 150-250 AD"(Shaw, 52). The *aus prefix we have already discussed, while the Matronae were a category of localized mother goddesses most prevalent in regions where Germanic and Celtic cultures synchronized (or where the distinctions between the two were not always apparent). Perhaps reflecting just how multifaceted the Earth is in all its fertility aspects, there were many mother goddesses unique to specific regions, such as what I documented about the Swabian Goddess Zisa, or seen in the diverse regional German traditions about Frau Holle or Holda in her various names. Why deny the etymological and folklore evidences about Ostara?
Some have dismissed Ēostre as an "invention" of Bede's, even while accepting without question the writings of Christian monks as a fully-accurate picture of Norse and Irish mythologies, for example. They neglect that Bede was arguing in the context of an actual name for an Anglo-Saxon month that obviously had some kind of meaning. Grimm answered some of the criticisms by pointing out that as a Christian monk seeking to convert the Pagans, Bede would have no interest creating a new Goddess. And furthermore, that Bede coming at a time when the island had not been fully Christianized, he would have been well-acquainted with what those Pagan traditions were just as he reported them throughout his work (Grimm, 289). As a monk Bede would be acting on the directives of a Church whose policy on converting Pagans was set by Pope Gregory barely a hundred years prior, about studying the actual ways of the Pagans and thereby convert them by absorbing those traditions within Christianity.
The author and researcher Carolyn Emerick made perhaps the most concise yet compelling case for Ēostre/Ostara being an actual historical Goddess in her article "Ēostre - Real Goddess or Bede's Invention?". First, the Church wanted to eradicate Paganism in Britain, so its faithful monk would not have "invented" a new Pagan Goddess and thus encourage her worship. Second, at a time when priests and theologians were engaging in a propaganda campaign that fabricated the worst claims about Paganism (such as ascribing human sacrifices), Bede's account of such a benevolent, compassionate, nurturing Goddess did not fit the image. Third, the Church was instructing its priests and monks to study the local Pagan customs so as to be better informed when converting them. Why accept Bede's other accounts at face value but suddenly doubt those about Ēostre? Fourth, Ēostre's qualities are similar to those of Brigid, her Irish/Gaelic equivalent whose worship is historically accepted. The final proof is an answer to those who simultaneously claim Ostara was an "invention" of Grimm: He was collecting folklore of peasants, many of them illiterate, and not scholars who may have read Bede, so why would ostensibly Christian peasants en masse accept the accounts of an English monk from 1000 years prior about a Pagan Goddess, even changing her name to Ostara?
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| As late as the late 19th and early 20th century, Easter cards tended to be filled with more images of rabbits and hares than of Jesus and other Christian imagery |
Hare and eggs symbolism. One of the recurring images associated with both Ostara and Ēostre is the same one most associated with Easter: The Hare or Rabbit. The hare which lay the Easter eggs makes the most sense as remnants of "the sacred animal of Ostara"(Holtzmann, 141; Oberle, 104). From an esoteric standpoint, the egg is symbolic of both earthly and cosmic forces as I explained in a previous article. It being symbolically fertilized and then "found" on Easter while also being hidden, is an allegory for the Earth "concealing" its mysteries - a strange tradition for a literal-based Biblical holiday but which only makes sense as a lingering remnant of ancient Pagan traditions that spoke of complex earth and cosmic forces through allegories. The Sun "disappears" below the horizon, but is ushered in by the Dawn to again fertilize the soil. The hare or rabbit gives birth below ground, so that its inclusion among Ostara's symbolism could be an allegory for the underworld, the world of the dead within a Germanic cyclical worldview.
Noting how her animal among the Scandinavians was the cat, the English folklorist William Henderson (1813-1891) observed how among the Anglo-Saxons, the fertility Goddess Freyja "was attended by hares as her train-bearers and light-bearers"(Henderson, 206). Holtzmann wrote of how the Danes and Swedes worshiped Freyja as "Astrild" or "Austrhildis", "so that Ostara might be Freyja herself or her daughter"(Holtzmann, 138). The hare's connection to Ēostre shows a continuity from pre-Indo-European Britain: "There are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, when it probably played a very important part at the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island. It appears not unlikely that the hare was originally a totem, or divine animal among the local aborigines, and that the customs at Leicester and Hallaton are relics of the religious procession and annual sacrifice of the god"(Billson, 448). I made a similar argument in a series of articles earlier this year, tracing elements of Celtic and Germanic lore in Swabia to prehistoric shamanism, my contention being that so often our mythos represents a continuity with many layers added but being truly indigenous (not solely Indo-European) to our areas. Most known for his novels, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) also traced Easter folk traditions to Germanic Paganism, using the example of eggs:
"We now come to the universal custom of Easter eggs, which exists all over Germany. In Swabia and Hesse the Easter Hare is popularly supposed to lay them, and the Swabian mothers, when they prepare the eggs for their children, generally place a stuffed hare on the nest. The Carinthian peasantry say that the church bells go to Rome on Maunday Thursday to fetch them. It is generally considered the duty of sponsors to prove their god-children with the brightly-coloured eggs. Red is the favourite hue, a preference derived from heathenism, as red was sacred to Donar, and the Easter eggs are always, if possible, taken from those laid on Maunday Thursday....It is known that eggs were employed as a sacrifice at the ancient Spring Festivals, and this is very likely the reason why so much magical power has always been ascribed to them. The writers of the Middle Ages, such as Cesarius von Heisterbach, relate numerous stories of bewitched eggs; they were said to fly towards the sun of their own accord, they moved, and on being opened were found to contain toads, snakes, or lizards, which were the well-known transformations of the heathen deities"(Dickens, 17).
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| "Sunrise by the Ocean" by the Russian artist Vladimir Kush, perfectly sums up the Dawn as a conduit between the Cosmos and the Earth |
Ostara fire and water traditions. One of the other powerful expressions of Ostara surviving through the "Easter" traditions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, is the various rituals involving fire and water. In the continental Germanic lore, fire and water are the primal oppositional elements whose interaction symbolizes beginning, end and finally a renewal of the cycle in both crops and our earthly existence (Storl, 36). One of these traditions are the bonfires which survived "despite all endeavours, secular and clerical, to do away with the custom"(Dickens, 16). At the Synod of Regensburg in 752, Boniface condemned these as "a heathenish practice", imbued by a Bible which commanded "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them. For the customs of the peoples are futile"(Jeremiah 10:2-3). Boniface may have chopped down the symbolic Donar's Oak (but not the underlying principle), but the sacred fires of Ostara were far stronger than his fanaticism and could not be extinguished.
It survived in Swabian traditions throughout the "Lenten" season such as my own ancestors would have practiced: "There are no fires in Swabia at Easter, but bonfires are lighted on the first Sunday in Lent, which therefore goes by the name of Funken-Sonntag, or Spark Sunday"(Dickens, 17). The Church's adoption of an "Easter" candle and lamp which "must be extinguished before Easter, and relighted from virgin fire, kindled by flint and steel, not from any already burning", relates to ancient Heathen practices of the hearth-fire (Dickens, 16). These ancient practices also survived in "spring cleaning" traditions laden with great symbolism, involving lighting a candle from the hearth-fire, putting the old fire out, cleaning out the hearth with a special broom, lighting another candle from the new hearth-fire, later burning the broom in the Ostara bonfires, purifying the house with a sprig dipped in "Easter waters" drawn at midnight, and rolling down fire-wheels from hilltops (Arrowyn).
The Church absorbed the ancient veneration of sacred springs, imbuing it with "healing" properties such as those of baptismal water or that drawn from springs at important dates: "Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that of Christmas, holy and healing"(Grimm, 291). In Hesse, "Easter" pilgrimages to caves and placing a bunch of spring flowers on the waters, drinking some of the water and taking some of it home, "evidently refers to former sacrifices to Ostara"(Dickens, 17). Sacrifice in the Pagan/Heathen sense simply meant an exchange, such as with flowers or in some other form, in exchange for the blessings that may arise. As for the element of fire, in Tyrol ashes from the Easter fires and charred logs were "taken home and buried under the stable door to keep the cows in good health and to drive away witches"(Dickens, 16), as it was believed these would make the fields fruitful. Similar traditions related to symbolically "cleaning" the figures and abode of the Husing (home sprite) or Taterman (farmyard sprite), including placing hazel, holly or elderberry sprigs around the house (Arrowyn), although these figures were often Christianized as "the saint/bishop".
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| "Der Frühling" (The Spring) by the German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) |
Ostara and the seasonal cycles. Although reckoned in fixed calendar days rather than the lunisolar cycles of old, Christianized holidays such as Easter are clearly remnants of ancient Germanic festivals laden with deep allegories: "In the old German heathen religion, each great Christian feast found its corresponding festival. In December, the sun was supposed to be born anew to the world, after having completed his annual course. Early or later in spring, according to the situation of the country, the festival of the goddess Ostara was celebrated; and, at the season of Whitsnntide [Summer Finding], the German tribes were wont to symbolise in various ways the victory of summer over winter"(Dickens, 16). Through her many layers of meaning, Ostara symbolizes the "awakening" energy within Nature, when trees and plants become "awakened" from their winter hibernation, just as human beings renew their psyche with new life, vigor, and creativity in the Spring.
Just as Ostara represents the time when the light will now "dance" within our lives, so too in both Swabia and Westphalia an "Easter lamb" was said to "dance" and be reflected in a pail of water (Dickens, 17). This was linked to the Resurrection allegory, with Pagan imagery hidden under a Christian "resurrection" story. This also manifested in the folk legend of the Sun "dancing" on Easter morning, when peasants would ascend the highest mountain at sunrise to behold: "According to popular belief of long-standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning he gives three joyful leaps, he dances for joy"(Grimm, 291). The "dancing" harkens back to shamanic times. The Sun "dancing" specifically carries on ancient lore where the sacred "womb" of the Earth (symbolized by the cauldron), would be fertilized by the heat and warmth of the Sun's rays within both Celtic and Germanic Mythology (Storl, 47).
The two tides from Landsegen ("Land-Blessing", or "Charming of the Plow") to Ostara were "marked at the beginning by the soil being ready for sowing and at the end by the start of crop growth", the liminal time between likewise being "the period between the bountiful harvest and the arrival of the fresh and plentiful summer foods"(Arrowyn). The "giving up" of a bad habit or the like for Fasching, was actually "privately and inwardly a time of meditative self-examination, moderation, and purification," "for it was part of the agricultural rhythm of life in Swabia long before there were Christians"(Arrowyn). The Christianized festival of Walpurgisnacht (coinciding with Bealtaine and its Germanic equivalents) coincides with the time leading into summer. We can thus see Ostara as an important time both within and without, a chain in the cyclical dance of life. This is also why there are close parallels between Ostern and Weihnachten traditions in the Germanic lands.
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| Bavarian poster from 1917, showing the Christkindl giving out gifts to a soldier |
Christkindl as the Spring Maiden Archetype. I learned from my family traditions about the Christkindl ("christ child"), a messenger from "Christ" who visits each home with a basket of gifts on 24 December (incidentally, my birthday). The tradition was started by Martin Luther, but quickly spread to our Catholic regions of Schwaben and Bayern, where it took on a life of its own: Contrary to his intentions, the Christkindl was now portrayed as a fair-haired young woman wearing a white robe and a shining crown of candles. Where does this female Weihnachten figure come from with no precedence in Christianity? Its my firm contention the "Christkindl" represents an ancestral memory of a Spring Maiden Archetype, perhaps even a form of the Spring Goddess. For there are glimmers of Spring even at the height of Winter, a balance seen in parallels between Weihnachten and Ostern folklore. "Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, have the season of returning spring show themselves in cliffs on the rocks and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess"(Grimm, 291).
Her white robe represents purity while her shining crown represents the returning light. Christianity downgraded her into a mere "messenger" of a "Christ" who brought the "light". The same process occurred with her close Scandinavian equivalent "Lucia" (whose name relates to "light"), possibly a memory of the Goddess Freyja but transposed upon a fictional Sicilian Christian saint, and the Irish Spring/Dawn Goddess Brigid, both delegated to mere "messengers" of a "Christ" who now brought "light". It was for the same reason that Lucifer, the Greco-Roman "light-bearer" God, was delegated to a "satan" figure despite all contrary Biblical precedence, since such a "Christ" could tolerate no rival "light"-bringers. As with many other Pagan deities, it could be that Ostara was also turned into a Christian "saint" such as suggested by Wolf Dieter Storl: "In Germany, Saint Gertraud (English Gertrude), daughter of the Frankish ruler Pepin of Landen, took the place of Ostara, the ancient goddess of spring. Her name day (March 17th) marks the beginning of the agricultural year. It is in the farmers' almanac even today: 'Gertrude leads the cow to the grass, the horse to the plough, the bee to its maiden flight'"(Storl, 177).
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| Representation of the Lusitanian and Celtiberian equivalent of the Spring/Dawn Goddess, Ataecina |
Comparative Mythology. Our final approach to Ostara is reconstructing her qualities based on comparison with closely-related mythologies, so we can fill in some of the "gaps" and gain a fuller understanding. Just as the hare was associated with Ostara, Holtzmann noted a hare on a statue of Abnoba, a Gaullish forest and river Goddess local to the Black Forest and closely linked to Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Hunt. Some Hellenic scholars have theorized that Helen of Troy was an allegory for a Spring Goddess who was "captured" by the God of Winter, her "freeing" representing the coming of Spring. The Hellenic Mythos also has the figure of Persephone, whose "return" from the underworld Hades symbolized the Spring while those months of the year spent in Hades represented the "retreat" of Spring during Winter. In the Vedic Rig Veda, the Goddess Ushas appears in "white splendor", driving away "darkness" and revitalizing the earth each day just as the Dawn; and bringing beauty to the earth just as the Spring.
Ushas is the "divine daughter" of the sky father Dyaus Pita, sister of Ratri ("night"), and has associations with both Varuna ("water") and Agni ("fire"), the latter similar to the interplay of water and fire in Celtic and Germanic cosmology. Ushas causes the "immortal to age", as each day is one less in our own mortal existence. There are especially parallels with Celtic cultures, the most closely related to Germanic cultures, with strong overlaps between the two in many areas (including in my ancestral regions). Not long after Ostara is the Celtic festival of Beltaine, an Old Irish term cognate to the Common Celtic *Belo-te(p)nia "bright fire" - the element *belo- relating to English bale "white, shining", Lithuanian baltas, Latvian balts, and Slavic beloye "white" (Delamarre, 70). All these associations of "light" and "fire" correlate to those of Ostara. The Gaullish Goddess Brigantia was cognate to the Celtic Briganti "the high one", which has the same root as Sanskrit bhrati "exalted one" - both being epithets for Ushas, so that we can make a similar comparison with Ostara.
Brigid was similarly named "the high one" and associated not with the fire itself but with the bringing of fire - similar to what we have theorized about the Christkindl spring maiden. She is related to the sunlight and dawn, as well as tending to the hearth-fire much like the Ostern traditions. Her "birthing" of day associated her closely with animals, much like Ostara's hare associations. Much like Ushas was "daughter" of the Vedic sky father, so was Brigid the "daughter" of the Irish sky father equivalent The Dagda - from which we can similarly extrapolate that Ostara was "daughter" of the Germanic sky father Ziu (Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz, and known to the Norse as Týr, all three words relating to PIE *dyeus pater), understanding these are allegories for the dawn comes about from the sky while also arising from his consort the earth mother.
The Lusitanian and Celtiberian Goddess Ataecina was associated with the Dawn and the rebirth of the Soul, just as Ostara was also associated with Dawn and the Spring which brought about the "rebirth" of the Sun (or "Soul"). In fact, her name stems from the Celtic roots *atte- and *geno- "reborn", or perhaps from *ad-akwi- "night" although her epigraph is unknown (Abascal, 91). The "night" being an interesting corrolary to "dawn" but seen in the same infernal allegory as Persephone. Both being "reborn" each year around Spring, much like Ostara; the Dawn being a microcosm of "Spring" each day; and her "returning" to the Underworld for six months each year relating to being "hidden" during the Winter months. As with German Ostern traditions relating to Ostara, remnants of Ataecina's veneration can be seen in village traditions like the Careto tradition of northern Portugal wherein the Dawn and Winter motif was displayed in a symbolic "chaos" that must inevitably balance out "order" - much like Germanic mock "battles" of two groups representing Winter and Spring.
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| "O du Frülingslust!" (The Arrival of Spring!) by the Swabian-German painter Rudolf Epp (1834-1910), known for his folkloric paintings of Schwaben and Bayern |
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Abascal, Juan Manuel. "Las inscripciones latinas de Santa Lucía del Trampal (Alcuéscar, Cáceres) y el culto de Ataecina en Hispania." Archivo Español de Arqueología, 1995, Vol. 68, Nos. 171-172, pp. 31-105.
Arrowyn. "Old Swabian Spring Dishes and Customs." Hex Magazine, Issue 6: Harvest, March 21, 2010, <https://hexmagazine.com/issue-6-harvest/old-swabian-spring-dishes-and-customs-seasonal-recipes/>.
Billson, Charles J. "The Easter Hare." Folk-Lore, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 1892, pp. 441-466.
Delamarre, Xavier. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental. Paris: Errance, 2003.
Dickens, Charles. "Eastertide in Germany." All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, Vol. 14, No. 331, April 3, 1875, pp. 16-19.
Emerick, Carolyn. "Ēostre - Real Goddess or Bede's Invention?". May 12, 2015. <https://hubpages.com/education/ostre-Germanic-Goddess-or-Bedes-Invention>.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology: Volume 1. Trans. James S. Stallybrass. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.
Henderson, William. Notes on the folk-lore of the Northern countries of England and the Borders. London: W. Satchell Peyton and Co./The Folk-Lore Society, 1879.
Holtzmann, Adolf. Deutsche Mythologie. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1874.
Mallory, James P. and Douglas Q. Adams. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Oberle, K.A. Überreste germanischen Heidentums im Christentum: oder, Die Wochentage, Monate und christlichen Feste etymologisch, mythologisch, symbolisch und historisch erklärt. Baden-Baden: Verlag von Emil Sommermeyer, 1883.
Shaw, Philip A. Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011.
Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge, England: D.S. Brewer, 2007.
Storl, Wolf Dieter. The Untold Story of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic From the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017.
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