Eostre is first mentioned in De temporum ratione (On calculating time) in the 8th century CE. We only have the word of an English bishop that she was an Anglo-Saxon goddess. (Bede may just have personified the dawn, which is most probably the root of the word.) Leaving that aside though, there are many instances of Christians taking over pre-Christian divinities, locales, or practices: it's called syncretism.This message has been edited. Last edited by: jheem,
Yet while the association with east/dawn is evident, the goddess of springtime seems less direct. Since the ancients had the points of the compass and the four corresponding winds ascribed to divine beings, would it not follow that the four seasons would also have gods to cause them? Nevertheless, I don't know of a god/goddess of summer, autumn, or winter. Do they exist, or do the personified winds suffice here?
I don't know either, but then maybe nobody knows for sure.
The idea of a dying, dead, and resurrected god is common enough in other religions (cf. Horus and Mithras), and the connection between spring and renewal seems obvious to me. Like many ancient Germanic gods in general, we lack any pre-Christian writings on them. For Anglo-Saxon gods we have the equation of the 7 gods and planets in the 7-day week names, some AS dynasty lists, and that's about it. Winds and seasons, might be associated with gods and goddesses, but not everybody personifyied so facilely these phenomena as the Romans (or the Vedic Indians). To the Greeks, Ares was not a popular god, but the Romans loved their Mars (and his fellow deity of war, Quirinus). The AS Tiwes is equated with Mars (in Tuesday, dies Martis), but how did the AS feel about him?
Easter is like many Christian festivals in that it is heavily associated with ancient rites, in this case connected with spring and fertility. Many of the traditional ceremonies for the Anglo Saxon goddess Eostre revolve around fire and water due to their purificatory character. We can see this tradition carried on in the Easter candle. The Easter egg itself also comes from pagan rituals. At school I was always told that the egg represented the stone that was removed from the tomb by angels but in fact has it's roots as a symbol of life and fertility in pagan custom. Why Christians should have chosen to adopt pagan customs I'm not sure, perhaps as a way of gaining favour with the old pagan faiths so they could then convert them.
Doad, I've heard it said that Patrick converted Ireland to Catholicism by equating the many pagan celebrations with christian ones, creating a fusion religion, much as the Spanish did in South America, where christian and pagan rites still coexist.
Thanks Asa, I've always suspected that was the case but never really bothered to investigate it. It always seemed logical to me but as logic so rarely appears in the world I wasn't sure.
