Ēostre

And the issue of Easter.

Okay, discussions about does the term Easter derive from Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess, or not? Or is it derived from a Germanic term like Eostre? For example, those of you who have studied German know that a country like Austria is Oesterreich, which means Easter.

toward the east, Reich of the country of the east.

Questions about does the term Easter, is it Ishtar or does it just mean spring or not? But for a lot of Messianic people who, Remember Passover, unleavened bread, and his resurrection during that time.

Eostre is a goddess mentioned by Bede in his On the Reckoning of Time as being the focus of Eostre Monath, the English name for the month of April.

Based on the Old High German name for April, Ostarmanoth, Jacob Grimm referred to her as Ostara and cast her as a West Germanic goddess of dawn and the spring, her name being applied to the spring festival of Easter in England.

Scholars have been somewhat divided on exactly how much Bede knew about pagan beliefs, but the discovery in 1958 in western Germany of Germano-Roman votive inscriptions to goddesses called the Matronae Austriahenae may lend some credence to Eostre as a goddess of, or possibly a group of goddesses associated with the east and with dawn.

Hretha, or sometimes called Reda, is another goddess mentioned by Bede, this time in association with the month Hreðmonath, which is the month of March.

Nunc surrexit vera vera: Joyous be our hearts and brave.

Better feast than of Eostre, Goddess of the rising sun, Or the grander old Passover, This that tells of victory won.

Nunc surrexit vera vera: Shout for what our Lord has done.

Lo, the Paschal Lamb who suffered, Now the Prince whom empires bless, Led the star above the manger To the Sun of Righteousness.

Yes.

So, like, people have this belief that Easter, specifically the name, comes from this goddess, um, Estere or Ostara.

The Wiccans use the word Ostara for their point on the wheel that is closest to Easter.

Like spring, yeah.

Yes.

Ostara is not a, a god or goddess that exists in the ancient world.

It was made up by a German-

Uh-huh

Um, yeah, I, uh, I met most of the...

Well, all of the spekingar that weren't part of my Goðar class, I guess, uh, or swan at, uh, Ostara 2016 here in Georgia.

It was kind of in the McDonough area, I think it was, or Hampton, that area.

And, uh, that's where I met Ás Goði and he did a, um, an Ostara blót at that event or, you know, he made a blót, you know, Ostara blót.

And, uh, it- that's kinda what finished sort of turning the gears for me, clicking that now this was real.

Like, you know, I wanna be part of the AFA, whether the Æsir are real or not.

Um, so I was kinda, like, edgy liberal atheist from ages, like, 13 to, well, 18.

Uh, I was a Mormon deacon before that.

But, as is often the case, misinformed claims that have a sliver of truth are the most difficult claims to address, because in order to address that sliver of truth requires synthesizing actual scholarship from half a dozen peer-reviewed articles and books.

In this case, the claim is that Easter is actually linked to the ancient pagan goddess Eostre.

a goddess supposedly linked to fertility, a goddess whose symbols were supposedly bunnies and eggs, and who was celebrated during a festival in the spring that was co-opted by Christians, a goddess whose iconography often depicts her as a blonde-haired being ushering in the spring.

So is any of this true? Let's start with the kernel of truth.

Then there's weodmonoth, or the month of weeds.

As he goes down the calendar, one of those months may sound familiar.

Eostre month 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 in that month.

Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honored name of the old observance.