Pagan Blog Project G Is For Debunking The Goddesses Of Easter Part 1

Last week on Facebook I came across a photo with information about how the goddess Ishtar is related to Easter. I thought maybe I had been living under a rock because I always believed Eostre was the goddess from which Easter originated. When I shared it on my Facebook page, many of my Facebook fans told me they had never heard of Ishtar being associated with Easter either. A few even outright refused to accept it writing "[it is] Eostre not Ishtar."Others said that they are the same goddess. They explained that as followers of Ishtar migrated North, she morphed into Eostre. The people of the new land took the old idea of Ishtar and made it their own, turning it into Eostre.However, one commenter who described herself as a "friendly pagan sceptic" took the opportunity to debunk several myths about paganism and Easter. Her name is Luna Garcia and she says the information came from her friend Adrian Bott. Because I don't want to break any copyright laws here I won't repost her list of "debunks" in this article, however, you can find them here. They are extensive and quite detailed. (On a side note, The Doctor Who reference in #10 was subtle but awesome!)I want to tackle debunking both goddesses in two separate posts. In part one I will discuss Eostre and in part 2 I will discuss Ishtar. I will answer questions like: Does Easter come from Eostre or Ishtar? Are they indeed the same goddess? Did Eostre even exist or is all this just the romantic notions of us pagans? Note, not one shred of the evidence I found came from Luna's post. Instead, I found several sources giving the same info Luna gave for Eostre.DID EOSTRE REALLY EXIST?The truth does appear to be that Eostre may have never existed. Like Luna shared, most of the information about Eoster does seem to come from Jacob Grimm who is well known as one of the brothers from the Brother's Grimm. Grimm did more than just write fairy tales. He studied German linguistics in the 19th century. However, it seems Grimm's research is based off of a man named Venerable Bede.Eostre first makes her appearance in literature about thirteen hundred years ago in the "Temporum Ratione "by Venerable Bede who was an English Christian monk and scholar. Bede tells us that April is known as "Eostremonth," and was named for a goddess that the Anglo-Saxons (who descended from the Germanic tribes that migrated from continental Europe) who was honored in the spring. He says: "Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated 'Paschal month,' and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honor feasts were celebrated." However, it's argued that Bede would have no reason to make up the goddess. Still, his mention about feasts is all the information he gives. There is nothing about eggs, hares, or anything resembling Easter save that it was April.In fact, Eostre doesn't appear anywhere in Germanic mythology, and despite belief that she might be a Norse deity, she doesn't show up in the Eddas either. If she did exist, she was limited to a specific tribal Germanic group and was an oral tradition. This means that her story or myth was never written down and no proof of Eostre actually exists.SO HOW DID EOSTRE GET ASSOCIATED WITH EASTER? Blame Jacob Grimm and linguistics. Grimm claimed "Ostara, Eostre seems therefore to have been a divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted to the resurrection-day of the Christian's God." Key words there are "could be". What we do know is that 'Ostara' is simply the Old High German name for the Christian Festival of Easter. Perhaps because of this, Grimm took his assumptions a step farther. He wrote, "This Ostara, like the Anglo-Saxon Eastre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries."This means the idea of hares and eggs being sacred to Eostre is also incorrect. Basically because eggs and hares are symbols of fertility and spring, someone associated these with Eostre at some point. In fact, the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore states, "Nowadays, many writers claim that hares were sacred to the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, but there is no shred of evidence for this; Bede, the only writer to mention Eostre, does not link her with any animal."It was a man named Adolf Holtzmann, writing in 1874 in German Mythology, states "The Easter Hare is unintelligible to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara." Probably!? And there's only one sentence about it?What pagan(s) decided this entire Eostre myth from only a few chosen sentences? It seems we can blame a handful of authors following Holtzmann. These were 1883 CE: K.A. Oberle in 1883 whow wrote "probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara" Then in 1890 Charles Isaac Elton wrote that Easter customs at 'Hare-pie Bank' at 'Harecrop Leys were probably connected with the worship of the Anglian goddess Eostre.' Next in 1892, Charles J Billson refers to Oberle's association of the hare with Ostara as a conclusion, rather than as a speculation. More recently 1944, John Lanyard stated that "the Saxon Easter Goddess does seem to have been connected with the hare." And most recently in 1976, Christina Hole states that "The hare was the sacred beast of Eastre (or Eostre) a Saxon goddess of Spring and of the dawn." Christina Hole also wrote about Witchcraft in Britain. It seems Pagans have been mistakenly making the associations ever since.PAGANS MAY HAVE ACTUALLY STOLE TRADITIONS FROM CHRISTIANITYYes you read that right. The theory has always been the Christianity stole the traditional images associated with Ostara and made them Easter. Evidence that I found seems to prove the reverse might actually be the truth. Pagans have been claiming hares and eggs are Ostara traditions, when in fact they were possibly originally Christian traditions of Easter.There are associations in English folklore between hares and the Christian festival of Easter. For example, in 17th century Southeastern England 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. However, there is no proof that such customs go back to pre-Christian times. The hare appears to be, in fact, a Christian association.Do we at least have eggs? Nope. Probably not. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Because the use of eggs was forbidden during Lent, they were brought to the table on Easter Day, coloured red to symbolize the Easter joy. This custom is found not only in the Latin but also in the Oriental Churches." So somehow a Germanic culture started copying Latin and Oriental traditions? Might I point out that none of the authors that associated the hare with Eostre even mentioned eggs?What's even more interesting is how this myth has grown with no evidence whatsoever. One website claims, "According to myth, pagan children would present eggs as a gift to the goddess in return for the coming of the spring." Where in the world did this come from?If the myth of Eostre and her association with Ostara and Easter is likely completely false, it makes me wonder how many other Pagan myths I have believed that are most likely completely inaccurate and wrong. I don't want to use the word "betrayed," but the idea that the story I've been told for a decade and half about Ostara and Eostre is wrong affects me on a profoundly deep level. I feel the exact same way now as I felt as a kid when I found out that the Easter Bunny wasn't real!PaganWiccan About.comWikipedia (Jacob Grimm)Wikipedia (Eostre)Manygods.orgCavalorn.livejournalCatholic Encyclopediathemonastary.org"This post has been part of the blogging project The Pagan Blog Project 2013. This is a year long blog party where you blog on pagan topics from A to Z."