Many modern Pagans celebrate the Spring Equinox (March 19 this year) as Ostara, one of the eight sabbats of the Wheel of the Year. Unlike some Pagan holidays with well-documented ancient precursors, Ostara is entirely or perhaps mostly a modern invention. The ancient English chronicler, the Venerable Bede, wrote that the Anglo-Saxon name for the month of March, eostur-monath (which lent its name to the Christian holy day of Easter in English), was derived from the name of a dawn goddess, Eostre. There is no other evidence of this goddess, and we know of no celebrations associated with her. As an educated cleric, Bede may have been inferring a relationship between the word eostur and the Greek Eos, goddess of the dawn.
Jacob Grimm took up this remark of Bede, taking the German name for the month, Ostara, as the name of a Germanic fertility goddess. The Icelandic sagas, our primary source for Germanic paganism, make no mention of such a goddess.
There is also no record of the spring equinox being observed by ancient pagans in northern Europe. Beltane, or May Day, at the beginning of May, was the primary celebration of spring. Finding the precise day of the equinox, without modern timekeeping instruments, is actually quite difficult. Early Pagans instead celebrated when the weather was warm and spring was in full bloom, which happens considerably later in northern Europe.
Nonetheless, many of the symbolic elements associated with the spring equinox (eggs, rabbits, flowers) reflect an association of this season with rebirth, which may be quite ancient. It is no wonder, in fact, that the Christian celebration of the resurrection comes at this time of the year. It is a variation on an ancient theme, that of a fertility deity who dies and is reborn each spring. Like much of our culture, it goes back to ancient Sumer, where the role of the dying and resurrecting god was taken up by Dumuzi, consort of the goddess Inanna.
We often hear the equinox described as a time of balance, because the days and nights are of equal length. Balance does not seem an apt description to me, though, since it implies a kind of motionlessness. This is actually the time of the most rapid change in the length of the days. Rather than resting serenely at a balance point, the Earth is actually plummeting headlong into light and warmth.
That’s something worth celebrating!
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2008.March.22 at 10:09 pm
Easter for some « Khanya
[...] an interesting Neo=Pagan take on this, see Ostara, the Spring Equinox, at Starweaver’s [...]
2008.March.22 at 10:29 pm
Steve
Thanks very much ofr an interesting and enlightening post. I did not know about the Grimm connection before, but that makes a lot of things fall into place.
Christianity was spread in Germany largely by English missionaries (Boniface, Willibrord & Co), whose ancestors had migrated from Germany only a few generations before. At that time the languages had probably not diverged very much, so the English and German dialects were probably mutually intelligible. In such circumstances it is quite conceivable that the German Christians took over the English missionaries’ word for Pascha, which in German became Ostern.
I’m rather surprised that Grimm, as a linguist and philologist, didn’t apparently think of this. It’s also interesting that this didn’t happen to the Dutch, for whom Pascha became Paas, since they were also largely evangelised by English missionaries, but they were also closer to the Franks/Gauls, and were perhaps influenced by them.
2008.March.23 at 8:04 am
Starweaver
Thanks, Steve. I suspect you are correct about how the German name for Easter came about. As to why Grimm did not see it as a simple borrowing, I think the answer is that he was part of a very popular mindset amongst folkore researchers at the time – namely, that the traditions, tales, and language of the rural people were the key to unlocking Europe’s pagan past. Modern anthropologists are more cautious about this kind of thing, appreciating that living in the country without a university education does not automatically make one incapable of innovation or creative re-invention of traditions handed down from the previous generation. But for Grimm and his ilk, I think it was easier to elevate Bede’s goddess Eostre to a pan-Germanic deity than it was to give up hope that the German word could say something meaningful about Pagan antiquity.
2008.March.28 at 1:47 am
Steve
I think Grimm’s generation were given to the kind of romantic nationalism espoused by people like Herder, and influenced a lot of people in the Balkans. There’s an interesting study by Charles Stewart (an anthropologist) called Demons and the devil. He did field work on the Greek island of Naxos, and referred to the beliefs of 19th century folklorists that the local folk religion was based on survivals from ancient Greek religion. Stewart found that it wasn’t so — the villagers’ references to neraides, gorgones and the like were interpreted within a framework of Orthodox Christianity, even though the clergy tended to frown on such folk beliefs, as they do on things like fire walking in northern Greece.
I can believe it, because in Africa we can see the process taking place right now. There are many African Independent Churches, which some Western missionaries originally called “bridges back to heathenism” because of their incorporation of concepts from African traditional religion. But what was actually happening was rather different. The Western missionaries had reinterpreted Christianity to fit the paradigm of Modernity, which didn’t fit too well into what was then a largely Premodern society in Africa. But they did translate the Bible into local languages, and the Bible was a Premodern book. And African Christians realised that the Bible described their societies a lot more accurately than it did the societies of modern Europe, so they intuitively had a better grasp of it than the modern missionaries did.
I shared what I learnt from your post with some others, and I seem to have got myself into a bit of trouble with a Nordic reconstructionist who took exception to it
2008.April.30 at 4:16 pm
Beltane, The Revels of Spring « Starweaver’s Corner
[...] in pagan spirituality Tags: beltane, may day, paganism, revels, sexuality, spring Beltane, unlike Ostara, is a Neopagan sabbat with bona fide pre-Christian origins. It was celebrated in ancient Ireland [...]