Beyond Christian Paschal Tradition: The (Re)discovery of the Lost Germanic Spring Goddess

Abstract

After the Christianization of the Germanic communities, specifically in the area of West Germanic, what was regarded as a Pagan ritual was completely altered and adapted to the new religion. Considering the Christian Paschal rituals, it is legitimate to wonder whether or not its roots are purely related to Christ. Today, what is known as Easter in English and Ostern in German reveals an etymological relation with the Pagan Germanic tradition: The celebration of the spring equinox and the worship of the goddess of fertility. Based on a review of the literature, such as editions, critical essays, and translations, the study aims to analyse and inquire about Ēostre, this lost Germanic goddess, and to define the reception of this Germanic myth in the current Christian Paschal rituals.

Is Easter a springtime ritual?

After a depressing period of darkness, long dormancy, dreary winter, the arrival of spring season carries along a boost of renewed energy, and a cyclical rebirth that leaves traces of hope in the physicality and spirituality of all living beings (Ruether, 2006, p. 41). Since the ancient times, almost every culture has had some type of ritual to celebrate the return to life and the renewal of nature. Among the countless cultural manifestations, one could cite the Roman spring festivals in honour of Ceres, the goddess of nature and fertility (Spaeth, 1996, pp. 36-37), the Babylonian and Assyrian celebrations dedicated to Ishtar (Ruether, 2006, pp. 41-42), or the Mexican annual event of the spring equinox in Teotihuacán (Delgadillo Torres, 2008, p. 57). 

Although Christian Paschal liturgy is very anchored to the idea of Easter as the resurrection of life, in the religious sense of the term, it seems to find its roots in the celebrations of the spring equinox (Sermon, 2008, p. 332). It is recognised that, in the liturgical order of Christianity, Easter is celebrated on the Sunday subsequent to the full moon after the spring equinox. Consequently, all the rituals that take place in the spring period are characterised by naturalistic symbolism and activities focused on the rebirth of nature and the fertility of life (Sermon, 2008, p. 340). 

Easter can be considered as one of the most exemplifying cases of religious syncretism^[1], since it blends Christian elements with the customs and traditions of northern European pre-Christian culture. At the time of the expansion of Christianity in Europe, mostly in the context of the Christianization of Germanic peoples enacted by the missionaries, it was customary to suppress and uproot what was regarded as Pagan, and to indoctrinate to the new faith (Russell, 1994, p. 7). Many symbolic acts destroyed “the indigenous religious worldview” (Cusack, 2011, p. 48) and violently imposed Christian doctrine. This happened by means of the eradication of the sacred trees worshipped by Pagan peoples, and whose wood was used to build chapels (Cusack, 2011, pp. 36-40; Lamberti, 2020, p. 204), through the evangelisation with the use of biblical texts translated into vernacular, or resorting to cultural analogies. This last aspect is particularly significant, since many of the rituals and traditions of the Pagan Germanic culture were absorbed by Christianity^[2] (Koehneke, 1999). It is therefore legitimate to think that the Paschal tradition has been deeply influenced by very remote customs, considering that the denomination of the Christian feast, known as Easter in the Anglophone countries and Ostern in Germany, reveals an etymological connection with a lost Pagan Germanic goddess: Ēostre or Ōstara (Shaw, 2011, pp. 53-54).

The Anglo-Saxon Ēostre: 

De Temporum Ratione, a treatise in Latin which relates the main medieval views on cosmos, the ancient calendars, and the ideas of seasonal changes. Chapter 15, entitled “De Mensibus Anglorum” (On the English Months), contains Bede’s discussions about the origins of the names of English months, his explanations of their etymologies, and the mentioning of the rituals associated with each month (Cusack, 2007, pp. 23-24; Shaw, 2011, p. 49). With regard to the month of April, the Venerable affirmed:

Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cujus nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes (Jones, 1977).

Eostur-monath 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  (Wallis, 1999, p. 54).

It is not difficult to assume that the Anglo-Saxon name for the vernal equinox could be inspired by a deity (Meaney, 1985, p. 1). March was defined Hreth-monath “the month of Hretha’”^[3] April, Eostur-monath, was therefore defined the “month of Ēostre” (North, 1997, pp. 226-228). The choice of female goddesses may refer to the root of monaϸ “month,” related to mona “moon”^[4] (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 1966), and hence emphasising the bond woman-moon (Meaney, 1985, p. 1).  

The existence of such a goddess was supported by the study of Shaw (2011, pp. 58-60) who found connections between Ēostre and the roots of some place and personal names. Helm (1950, p. 10) argued that she was probably one of the Idisi, the female deities similar to the valkyries, also mentioned in the First Merseburg Charm^[5]

Although some scholars did not believe in the existence of this spring goddess and claimed that she was a mere invention of Bede, Jacob Grimm, who firmly believed that Ēostre was idolized by some Germanic peoples, stated:

It would be uncritical to saddle this father of the church, who everywhere keeps heathenism at a distance, and tells us less of it than he knows, with the invention of these goddesses. […] We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ôstarmânoth is found as early as Eginarth (temp. Carl. Mag.). […] This Ostâra, like the AS Eástre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teacher tolerated the name and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries (Grimm, 1882, pp. 289-290).

Within the perspective of giving an interpretation to the name of the female deity mentioned by Bede, scholars tried to deal with its etymology. The name Ēostre seems to be associated with the word “east” (Nordén, 2004). According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), it seems to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *aus- meaning “to shine” or “eastern,” and from Proto-Germanic *austaz- that became austr in Old Norse and eāst in Old English, meaning the place where the sun rises (Bosworth and Toller, 1898). The Old Norse noun is reflected in the literary attestation of Austri, the name of the male spirit of light identified in the Gylfaginning, in the prose Edda (Shaw, 2011, p. 51). Grimm (1882, p. 291), and then Owen (1981, p. 27), claimed to agree on the etymology because Ēostre was the goddess of dawn, and she could also be the female equivalent of Austri. Knobloch (1959, pp. 42-44) wrote that Ēostre was simply a loan from the Latin “dawn.” Helm (1950, p. 9) and Shaw (2011, p. 55) interpreted Ēostre’s etymology as a metaphor of the “dawn of the year” or, in other words, the spring season. 

There is another attestation in Old English that, according to Grendon (1909, p. 156), could refer to the goddess. It is one of the twelve Old English metrical charms, Æcerbot^[6], that was intended for insuring the fruitfulness of the land. A section of the charm, that recites “Erce, eorþan modor,” implies that Erce was the mother of the earth and the goddess of fertility. It was thought to be another denomination for the spring goddess Ēostre because it followed with “æcera wexendra and wridendra / eacniendra and elniendra / sceafta hehra, scirra wæstma” (fields fruitful and flourishing / fertile and strong / high shafts, bright abundance) (Grendon, 1909, p. 174).

Ostara in the Old High German Schlummerlied

Further discussion emerged around 1859, when the historian and archaeologist Georg Zappert purchased the Codex Suppl. No. 1668, a fifteenth-century manuscript preserved in the Austrian National Library of Vienna. Even before, in 1852, he had noticed some Old High German words on a strip of parchment that covered the spine of the manuscript (Kletke, 1867, p. 8). Among the fourteen fragments of parchment binding, he claimed to have found a lost poem in five lines, probably a lullaby, in Old High German. Such poem, dating back to tenth century, seemed to contain references to some Pagan Germanic gods, including an Old High German attestation of the goddess Ēostre (Edwards, 2002, p. 149). The rationalised version of the text, provided by the same Zappert, is:

Tocha slafês sliumo   uueinon sar lazzês. 

Triuua uuerit kraftlicho   themo uuolfa uurgiantemo.

slafês unz za morgane   manes trût sunilo. 

Ostârâ stellit chinde   honak egir suozziu.

Hera prichit chinde   pluomun plobun rotun.

Zanfana sentit morgane   ueiziu scaf kleiniu,

unta Einouga, herra hurt!   horska aska harta (Edwards, 2002, p. 150).

(My beloved, may you sleep hastily, leave off crying / Triwa defends vigorously from the murdering wolf. / May you sleep until morning dear man’s son / Ostara for the child leaves honey and sweet eggs / Hera for the child breaks flowers blue and red /  Tanfana sends tomorrow a white small sheep / And One-eye, herra hurt! Rapid hard spears.)

Edwards (2002, p. 154) affirmed that “the lullaby offered a wealth of evidence for the new science of Germanic mythology, which explains Jacob Grimm’s enthusiastic welcome of the discovery”. According to Grimm the text was a wonderful discovery, indeed he described it as “der wunderbarste fund, der germachts warden konnte”, because it finally confirmed the identity of Bede’s Ēostre (Edwards, 2002, p. 149).

Like the Second Merseburg Charm,^[7]which mentions some deities (among which the unknown Sinthgunt and Phol) who tried to heal the horse of Balder, the Old High German lullaby invokes some “unheard-of deities.” Such goddesses are Triuua, probably the personification of the virtue Loyalty, Hera, the earth-goddess, Zanfana, a goddess mentioned by Tacitus, and Ostara, the goddess of spring. As in the final verses of the Second Merseburg Charm in which Odin heals the horse, the last line of the Schlummerlied mentions Einouga “One-eye,” the father of the Germanic deities. Hence, although it was considered an invention of Zappert according to some scholars, the lullaby seems to share many features of the heathen Old High German poetic texts (Edwards, 2002, p. 156).

Ostara and the legend of the Hare

With the rise of the Romantic movement in Europe and the will to provide a cultural identity to the nations, there was a tendency to explore the past roots, through the rediscovery of ancient mythology and tradition. It is particularly in Germany that, thanks to German nationalism and to the discovery of the medieval texts, this interest in celebrating the history of the nation developed. After Georg Zappert’s finding and Jacob Grimm’s statements about Ostara, the nineteenth century saw the dissemination of various legends and painting representations of Germanic gods (Kohn, 1950, p. 443). 

Despite the great interest in the spring goddess, there is no trace of her original appearance, although Grimm found that her memory had remained anchored in the German oral tradition, according to which the deity was depicted as a maiden with the head of a hare (Grimm, 1882, p. 290). The association with this animal derives from some legends that were widespread in the nineteenth century throughout Germany. Krebs (1883, pp. 121-122) told one of the versions^[8]

Some time ago the question was raised how it came that, according to South German still prevailing folk-lore, the Hare is believed by children to lay the Easter-eggs. […] Originally the hare seems to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara (the Anglo-Saxon Eàstre or Eostre, as Bede calls her) transformed into a quadruped. For this reason the Hare, in grateful recollection of its former quality as bird and swift messenger of the Spring-Goddess, is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter-time. 

Billson (1892, p. 441), in his study of the origins of the sacredness of the hare, stated that the evidence of the connection between the Christian festival of Easter and the worship of hares had to be found in the folk-customs, namely the period preceding the Roman invasion of northern Europe. In Celtic tradition, the hare was a totem animal of the lunar goddesses because it died every morning and resurrected every evening, like the moon. It stands for the cyclic movement of life, and this is the reason why the goddess of spring is symbolised by the hare (Billson, 1892, p. 449). Moreover, the egg is the symbol of fertility and rebirth, but it also depicts the balance between male and female, between light and darkness, like the equinox^[9] (John the Wizz, 2005).

Grimm (1883, p. 780) confirmed the custom of the Easter eggs in Germany and he found evidence of a further interesting celebration held on the occasion of the vernal equinox: 

Bonfires were lighted at Easter […] Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess (Grimm, 1882, p. 291). 

Conclusion

Since the 1950s, Neo-Pagan religions have been celebrating the goddess of spring on the day of spring equinox. Cusack (2007, pp. 34-36) has found at least three new-pagan rituals in honour of Ostara, all focused on the symbolism of the natural world. The most well-attested ritual, that blends both Germanic elements (with Old English invocations) and Wiccan elements (Flowers, 1981), refers to the Wiccan religion that defines Ostara as one of the eight Sabbats. Another one celebrates the coming of spring as a defeat of winter, and it involves the preparation of a cauldron filled with water and flowers. The third is known as Ostara Blot, a ritual that employs eggs, rune magic and ale (Cusack, 2007, p. 36). 

In conclusion, taking into account the current Paschal tradition, it is possible to notice the meddling of heathen Germanic customs in the Christian liturgy. Despite the fact that in some countries, the etymon of Easter seems to have been influenced by the Catholic term,  resulting from the Hebrew Pesah (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 1966), in the English-speaking countries and in Germany the feast’s name is still anchored to the Pagan Germanic past. Christianity founded one of its most relevant celebrations, acquiring the customs and the symbology of the Germanic peoples, eradicating what was contrary to the dogma (Koehneke, 1999, pp. 21-22). Among the symbolic elements of pre-Christian worship, Christian doctrine took possession of symbols like the egg, the hare or the rabbit. This would in turn point to an explanation for the current Easter tradition, in which the spring equinox is nothing but a time reference for Easter and the egg came to symbolise, not the fertility of nature, but the resurrection of Christ. What about Ēostre or Ostara? As Jacob Grimm (1882, p. 291) stated:

Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the 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.