Claims like this, spread mostly by internet memes, cannot be “disproven.” There never was any evidence for a connection between Ishtar and Easter in the first place. I do have one question for Stéphanie Sheen; you mentioned a noted change in a hares behavior moving into Spring. She was described in literature and added in to paintings, which is all it takes for a god to exist in Neil Gaimanâs fantasy world where belief alone can solidify a god into flesh and blood. There are certainly no ancient stories in which she transforms a bird into a hare. Please read our The Warren, Minnesota, Sheaf of April 13, 1911 ran the following version with a new detail about Ostara’s chariot, drawn from the already growing (and already fanciful) literature about the goddess: The Easter bunny is said to have been the bird which at one time drew the chariot of the Goddess of Spring and was turned into a hare. Customers who watched this item also watched. It’s impossible to tell if Ostara as a goddess ever existed outside Grimm’s proposal. You're now subscribed to our newsletter. Watch with STARZ. As Wikipedia notes: “Because Hislop’s claims have no linguistics foundation, his claims were rejected, but the Two Babylons would go on to have some influence in popular culture. I like to get thigs straight however and can really appreciate the work you’ve done here. As time went on, the story was sometimes blended with other tales or beliefs about Ostara, none of them older than Grimm’s 1835 book. In the finale of American Godsâ first season, Mr. Wednesday finally let the new gods of globalization, ... Ostara has enough strength to ⦠They tell whichever version they prefer and nobody complains that it isn’t accurate, because it all amounts to the same thing: life is a mystery, let’s explain it with stories! Ishtar, Inanna, Venus, Aphrodite, Ostara and Freyja are all the same fertillity goddess. Bundle up, folks. Appreciate someone who tries to get at the truth. You can unsubscribe at any time. Ostara is Oestre, Easter which is the Eastern star. Then, in 2002, Jean-Andrew Dickmann published a version of Breathnach’s story as “The Coming of Eostre” in Cricket Magazine a “Weekly Reader” sort of publication. As we can see, Krebs was reporting a new explanation citing a German book by K. A. Oberle, which was at the time brand new. Directed by Floria Sigismondi. This curious idea is thus explained: The hare was originally a bird, and was changed into a quadruped by the goddess Ostara; in gratitude to Ostara or Eastre, the hare exercises its original bird function to lay eggs for the goddess on her festal day. The search for several lost souls â dead or otherwise â is on in American Gods season 3, episode 3, âAshes and Demons.â. the Library of Congress may monitor any user-generated content as it chooses and reserves the right to I think it’s really all because eggs and bunnies are fertility symbols also typical of fairly early spring, and I suggest that Ostara is a fertility goddess. As an example, the popular blog Family Christmas Online calls the story “a modern-day hoax popularized by ‘New Age’ circles,” and further asserts that “no such myth was ever associated with Eostre or any similar goddess before 1987.”. As a practicing neo-pagan I often come across wild claims concerning the origins of stories, names, customs and practices. According to Teutonic Tradition Bunny Was Once a Bird. 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 (r. Oberle’s Ueberreste germanischen Heidentums im Christentum, 8vo, Baden-Baden, 1883, p. They do it in my name.â, But as the episode reveals, the idea of letting Jesus take over her festival rankles more than she is willing to admitâ¦. But where did Oberle get the idea that the goddess transformed a bird into a “four-footed animal?” He does not give a specific source for the story of the goddess changing a bird into a hare, but he does give a general source for his information about Ostara: Holtzmann, who (as we have already seen) is the origin of the idea that Ostara and hares were connected. When Christianity pushed its way further and further into the then barbaric world the early missionaries, not wishing to antagonize their prospective converts, took this festival and consecrated its observance to the new form of faith. But the legend of the Easter rabbit is one of the oldest in mythology, and is mentioned in the early folk lore of South Germany. Fertility and the Spring season are certainly parts of that association, but other comments here have pointed out other interesting connections, too! The interview gave me an incentive to organize my thoughts on the matter and publish two blog posts, which you can view here and here. On the eve of war, Mr. Wednesday must recruit one more Old God: Ostara, ne Easter, Goddess of the Dawn, but winning her over will require making a good impression, and that is where Mr. Nancy comes in. In my reading, Holtzmann seems just to have been speculating that a previous version of the story featured a bird, but Oberle made the leap to a tale in which a physical transformation occurred, and then ascribed that transformation to the goddess Ostara. Drama, Literary/Book Based; TV-MA; 16 Episodes; 2017 - 2019; In Season 2, the battle moves towards crisis point. ... American Gods is available on Amazon Prime Video in the UK, with new episodes added every week. This simple statement seems to be Oberle’s source for the idea that the goddess Ostara changed a bird into a hare. Stéphanie, I have in the meantime found several stories that pheasants and partridges sometimes acually choose a hares form to lay their eggs in. As we have seen, Holtzmann’s speculation seems to be the first direct connection between hares and Ostara, so the story, in a form that includes Ostara, cannot predate Holtzmann (1874). American Gods. Thanks again: I will look for that thread on alt.gothic! Every year however, at the coming of spring the hare remembers, and in commemoration of its original bird nature lays eggs as an offering to Spring and Youth it symbolizes. But the overly empathetic Son of God would be crushed to know that Ostara harbors some deeply buried resentment over the issue. Over time, all legends and myths change, and this is likely true with Ostara and the hare. 104.). Essentially, the tale is that Ostara, the ancient Germanic goddess of the spring, transformed a bird into a hare, and the hare responded by laying colored eggs for her festival. American Gods (TV Series 2017â ) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. You are fully For this reason the hare in grateful recognition of its former quality as a bird and swift messenger of the Spring Goddess is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter time. For example in the painting “Madonna of the Rabbit” by Titian. Thank you in advance, your work is very valuable! On Easter Sunday 2016, I had the pleasure of appearing on CBS Sunday Morning as a folklore expert in a segment on the Easter Bunny. Required fields are indicated with an * asterisk. Wednesday makes a point of referring to her as Ostara during his visit, and she re-embraces her role as Ostara of the Dawn when she rebels against the New Gods and takes away the Spring. In 1990, she incorporated the article’s content in Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations of Comfort & Joy. While Mr. World plots revenge, Shadow throws in his lot with Wednesday's attempt to convince the Old Gods of the case for full-out war, with Laura and Mad Sweeney in tow. I venture now to offer a probable answer to it. 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. American Gods mythology guide | Who is Bilquis, Queen of Sheba and goddess of love? This article and the comments have been helpful. [1]. Inspector General | Legal | Accessibility | External Link Disclaimer | USA.gov, The resulting story can be viewed at this link, a note by H. Krebs in the first volume of the English journal, in the comments to this previous blog post, Voices of Civil Rights Project collection. By the way, the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs…. Pals with Jesus : Despite her "day" having to be shared with the Jesuses, Easter gets along with him(s) swimmingly and even comforts him ⦠What is it exactly, is it a due to mating? Sometimes the story grew even more in the telling. For example, Michigan’s Crawford Avalanche of April 12, 1900, tells us that the story is “one of the oldest in mythology,” despite the fact that it was then less than twenty years old: ORIGIN OF EASTER RABBITS Season 1. ... $1.99. Thanks for the suggestion, Mark, but I did mean “survivals.” This was a particular theory popular in folklore studies at the time, most associated with the English scholar Edward Burnett Tylor. Jacob Grimm, the brilliant linguist and folklorist, is one of many scholars who took Bede at his word, and in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie, he proposed that Eostre must have been a local version of a more widespread Germanic goddess, whom he named Ostara. I love the story of Easter and Her bunny and was dismayed when I came across articles proclaiming it as a hoax. The comments are thoughtful. âReligions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves youâeven, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, ⦠Ishtar was worshiped by speakers of Akkadian, a Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) language, and Ostara, if her cult existed at all, was worshiped by speakers of Germanic (Indo-European) languages. They also nest on the surface, which might contribute to the depiction of a bird-like nest. The evidence for Ostara as an actual goddess people worshipped is sketchy. We can pin her down in the writings of 8th century monk Venerable Bede, who reported that pagan Anglo-Saxons in medieval Northumbria held festivals in Ostaraâs honour during the month of Eostremonath (April). In the 2000s, a popular Internet meme similarly claimed an incorrect linguistic connection between English Easter and Ishtar. American Gods is available on Amazon Prime Video in the UK, with new episodes added every week. Eostre or Ostara, also known Easter is the Germanic Goddess of the dawn, springtime, fertility of the earth, prosperity, growth, the harvest, renewal and rebirth The morningstar. American Gods (4K UHD) Season 1. ... Mr. Wednesday must recruit one more Old God: Ostara, né Easter, Goddess of the Dawn But winning her over will require making a good impression, and that is where Mr. Nancy comes in. More purchase options. This suggestion was made by a Scottish minister named Alexander Hislop in an 1853 anti-Catholic tract called The Two Babylons. Good articlde, thank you. It doesn’t prove whether they did in fact worship any such goddess. In fact, given its origin in 1883, and the fact that it was recounted in Popular Science Monthly (a Victorian magazine, albeit an American one with academic leanings), her story seems quite plausible. Searching the Library’s Chronicling America collection for more versions of the story might fill in even more details. However, there is no evidence of any connection between her and Easter. privilege to post content on the Library site. In other words, there is no confirmed existence for the goddess name “Ostara” in any language. Well done and God bless you. Whether the Easter bunny is male or female is an interesting question. [International Release] When Shadow Moon is released from prison, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday and a storm begins to brew. More developed stories have since emerged connecting Eostre/Ostara and the hare, one of which was the subject of Holly B.’s question: I have been trying to track the origins of Easter rabbit myths, and of course very little primary source material exists for oral traditions. As a spring goddess she oversees the budding plants and burgeoning fertility of the earth. It’s hard to recommend books because as far as I know few reputable books have taken the claim seriously enough to argue against it. Originally, it appears, the rabbit was a bird, which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara–goddess of the east or of spring–transformed into a quadruped. In former days, when the dawn of civilization was just beginning to break, that time of the year when winter was passing away and summer approaching, was made a period of festivity. Nevertheless, It could even be possible that a hare might chase a bird out of its form that had just laid an egg there, thus creating a situation where one might find a hare “sitting” on an egg…. All of this being said, research into UseNet in alt.gothic for a thread titled “kill the wabbit”. (Emphasis mine.)”. It’s become a common meme on the internet in the last few years, but it has no basis in archaeology or mythology. She awakens the sun in the morning, just as she awakens the spring from the dead Winter. The goddess Ostara of the Dawn (Easter) was unable to restore her life because she died at the hands of a god⦠Thank you for the excellent article and historical research. In 1874, in another book also titled Deutsche Mythologie, Adolf Holtzmann speculated about the already-popular German tradition of the “Easter hare” (the tradition from which our Easter bunny derives) by associating it with the goddess, thus claiming for the first time a connection between Ostara and the hare: The Easter Hare is inexplicable to to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [the Celtic goddess] Abnoba.” [My translation from German.]. This “pert, tall-eared rabbit” was featured in Michigan’s Crawford Avalanche on April 12, 1900. What is the mythology behind Ostara, goddess of spring? Quite early, the story began to be prefaced by statements about how very ancient it was. Let me back up a moment to set the scene. On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. [3] Whether the story can be considered “New Age,” as Family Christmas Online suggests, is another question. I’ve traced the story back to the late 19th century. –RWH PHILADELPHIA PA. (Emphasis mine.)”. Nevertheless, I expressed my “best guess”: If I had to guess, I would say it probably came from a German scholar writing in the wake of Grimm. As a holiday, Easter predates Christianity and was originally the name for the spring Equinox. Are you aware of how the rabit has been associated with virgin Mary since the 1500’s? Unfortunately, this reference was given as an answer to someone’s question, with no source cited. I’ll continue to look for a more definitive source. She is also associated with rabbits and hares. Her story begins with Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess who is not documented from pagan sources at all, and turns up in only one early Christian source, the writings of the English churchman Bede. So the Easter Bunny would be a “survival” in this sense if it had originally been associated with a Germanic goddess but most 19th century Germans were unaware of this and thought of it as a secular folklore figure. Watch with Prime. Happy Spring to all. The Horned God, sometimes envisioned as the god Pan, symbolizes the festive enjoyment of nature through hunting and dancing. On American Gods, Chenowethâs Easter (née Ostara) is the pagan goddess of spring and fertility, one of the old gods who came to America from the Old World and . On the old Germanic calendar, the equivalent month to April was called âÅstarmÄnodâ â or Easter-month. [1] As a reader of the previous posts pointed out, local shrines in Germany have turned up with the somewhat similar name “Matronae Austriahenae,” but again since both “Eostre” and “Austriahenae” are etymologically related to “east,” it’s impossible to tell if there’s any relationship or if we have several goddesses understood as in some sense eastern. This blog is governed by the general rules of respectful civil discourse. Watch with Prime. These images in the context of their other work in this kind of mass publishing. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each other flowers. Drama 2017. American Gods' first season ended on June 18, 2017. For example, we still paint Easter eggs with bright colours, a tradition which may be linked to chickensâ return to laying after the long eggless winter months.
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