Raised in a wishy-washy guilt-inducing nebulous Lutheran tradition (this means my family didn't religiously practice the faith, but my sisters and I were constantly reminded that we should be), I came to think of Easter as a time to dress up, sit stiffly in church, lug Easter lilies to the cemetery, and wait for the Easter Bunny to bring baskets laden with colored eggs and jellybeans in pink plastic grass. Easter was fun as a child, but over the years became hollow, and eventually, I stopped participating in the "doings" altogether. However, in an effort to find meaning—and out of curiosity—I've recently begun to dig a bit deeper into those "traditional" practices.

Calendar: Eostre was a Saxon Goddess, also known as Ostara, which was a northern form of Astarte. Her sacred month was Eastre-monath, the Moon of Eostre. She was also India's Mother Kali. The pregnant phase of Eostre passing into the fertile season was the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This was based on the old lunar calendar, and wasn't called "Easter" until the Goddess's name was given to it during the late Middle Ages.

Easter Bunny: According to legend, the Easter Bunny began as the Moonhare, sacred to the Goddess in both eastern and western parts of the world. Back then, both cats and hares were considered animals into which witches could transform themselves. In England, cats were also confused with hares as Moongoddess totems. To the Scots, the Goddess of Witches was either a hare or a cat and Irish peasants still observe the matriarchal taboo on hare meat, saying that to eat a hare is to eat one's grandmother. (As such, it is no surprise that hares and cats had obviously yonic nicknames, such as cunny and pussy.) Similar to stories of Sevenfold Hathor (Mother Goose, Mother of the Sun King, and other incarnations in medieval myth) who laid the Golden Egg of the sun, the Easter Bunny was said to lay eggs for good children on Easter Eve.

Colored Eggs: The egg has always been the mystical symbol of the Creatress, whose World Egg contained the universe in embryo. Orphics said the Great Goddess of darkness, Mother Night, first brought forth the World Egg which was identified with the moon, and heaven and earth were made up of two halves of the eggshell. The first deity to emerge from the egg was said to be the bisexual Eros the Desired. Eggs have always been symbols of rebirth which is why Easter eggs were usually always colored red, the color of life.

This was derived from the earliest of human cultures from where the mysterious magic of creation was thought to reside in the blood women gave forth in harmony with the moon and which was sometimes retained in the womb to "coagulate" into a baby. Until the middle of the 18^th Century, the Persians, in celebration of their solar new year at spring equinox, would present each other with colored eggs as gestures of good will and blessings. Russians used to place red eggs on graves as resurrection charms.

Resurrection: This seems to date back to remnants of pagan sacred drama with the image of god buried in his tomb and then removed and said to live again. This was apparently instituted by the church in the Middle Ages in hopes of a reportable miracle. They would erect a small sepulchral building and place the consecrated host within it; a priest would then stand watch from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. When the host was taken out and displayed, the congregation was told that Christ had risen. (This should not be confused with reincarnation, which has much deeper roots in history and pertains to cycles of successive lives rather than rising from the dead.)

Lilies: The flower of Lilith/Astarte (Eostre/Ostara in northern Europe) represented the virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess. The Easter lily was the medieval pas-flower which for pagans also rep-resented the spring passion of the god for union in love-death with any goddess who claimed the lily. When Hera's milk spurted from her breasts to form the Milky Way, the drops that fell to the ground became lilies. Because of its pagan origins with virgin motherhood, the lily was used to symbolize the impreg-nation of the Virgin Mary, and during Easter is still symbolic in the Christian birth-death-resurrection cycle.

Finally, Easter was called Hoch-Zeit (the High Time) in Germany, which was the title given to the season of the sacred King's love-death. In English, Easter used to be called "the Hye-Tide." This explains why festival holidays have colloquially come to be known as "a high old time."

Resource: The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara G. Walker (Ed), Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books (1996).

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