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Victorian Lace Egg Carvings

March 30, 2013 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Lace egg 1

These delightful carved eggs are created by the American sculptor Beth Ann Magnuson. They’re far more attractive the most of the tacky commerical Easter egg designs that I’ve seen this year.

Magnuson uses a high speed drill to hard-carve these turkey, chicken, duck, partridge and even phesant eggs.

Lace egg 4

Lace egg 5

Lace egg 2

Lace egg 3

In Pure Spirit

Seen any good Easter eggs this year? Drop us a link in the comment box below!

What the goddess Eostre means to Easter

March 28, 2013 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Spring reminds us of new beginnings and plans for the year ahead. With it comes the imagery of chicks and bunnies, eggs and flowers, which heralds the start of Easter. These images, which embody ideas of rebirth, are not just attached to the Christian festivities of Easter; they are formed from ancient beliefs and mythology, including the celebration of the pagan goddess Eostre.

The name Eostre derives from Northumberland Old English and was first identified in Bede’s work, De temporum ratione, written in the 8th century AD. The mythology goes back much further to pre-Christian times and, aside from the similarities in name, the themes of Easter can also be traced to these pagan beliefs.

Eostre was regarded as a goddess of fertility and has been associated with the Northern European Saxons, though there are variations of her name as she was adopted by different pagan civilisations. Today, Wiccans and Neo-pagans recognise Eostre in the form of Ostara, from Old German, and they celebrate Ostara, the start of the zodiacal year, as one of their eight annual Sabbats. Ostara occurs at the spring equinox, which falls around the same time as Christian Easter festivities, and celebrates the planting of seeds and the return of fertility to the land after the darkness of winter.

Eostre’s association with renewed life means that she has been characterised as bringing light, with her name suggestive of the sun rising in the east. Commenting on an entry he had read for Eostre in a dictionary of etymology, John Andrew Boyle described how she was supposedly imagined as surrounded by lights which were held up by hares. Hares and rabbits are appropriate symbols for new life because they sleep longer throughout winter and tend to mate in spring.

Some commentators have also been tempted to link Eostre with the Norse goddess of love and fertility, Freyja, who was said to have ridden in a chariot pulled by cats. As John Andrew Boyle states, the idea of cats and hares are seen as synonymous with witch familiars in Wiccan and Neo-pagan beliefs, and it is sometimes thought that the hare was Eostre’s incarnation.

Today we see these representations of the hare and light in the modern festivities of Easter: the Easter bunny brings eggs, which are symbols of fertility, and the longer hours of daylight brings life to crops, flowers and animals.

The Eostre figure is common across many belief systems, with several goddesses of fertility and rebirth found in the ancient pantheon of gods and goddesses. Among those most familiar to us today are Aphrodite, Demeter, Cybele and Ostara.

As well as the similarities with ancient myths, the pagan belief in Eostre also ties in with the Christian belief in Jesus. At Easter Christians celebrate the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ as a powerful cyclical motif of the promise of life after death.

One origin of this concept can be seen in Greek mythology with Cybele, the Great Mother goddess, who desired Attis. Attis, like Jesus, was said to be born to a virgin mother during winter and died and was resurrected around the spring equinox. It has been suggested that, as pagan spiritual beliefs pre-existed the Christian faith, many pagan rituals were transposed onto Christian belief during the pagan conversion to Christianity.

While it is difficult for us to be sure of the origins of particular beliefs, it seems clear that there are dominant themes which remain throughout certain festivals. Nowhere is this more obvious than the ways in which Easter and Eostre celebrate the positive regeneration of life.

In Pure Spirit

Do you still have any faith or time for Eostre? What about Easter? What does Easter mean to you?

Hell hot cross buns: “For a limited time. A bit like Jesus”

April 7, 2011 by Andrew 1 Comment

Hell Pizza in New Zealand have (another) advertising campaign that’s upsetting the Church.

What have they done? They’re selling hot cruss buns for Easter. The buns are decorated with an inverted pentagram – a symbol commonly associated with Satanism.

There’s more. The tagline for the advert – which appears in billboards all over Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand – read;

For a limited time. A bit like Jesus.

Hell are scratching their head in confusion. In a statement to the New Zealand Herald, Warren Powell a director at the pizza firm, said;

“I do not see how it could possibly be disrespectful to anyone’s religion.

“We may bring them back next year, and everyone’s saying that Jesus Christ is coming back one day,”

The ASA in New Zealand have said they’ve recieved official complaints about the adverts. An investigation is underway.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Are these adverts insulting? Are they eyecatching and successful? Would you order any of Hell Pizza’s hot cross buns? In fact, would you ever order hot cross buns alongside a pizza meal?

The meaning of the Easter Bunny

April 5, 2011 by Andrew Leave a Comment

The original celebration was not a Christian one. In Anglo-Saxon history, the festival was originally for the goddess Ēostre, also sometimes written as Ēastre.

Ēostre also gives her name to Eosturmonath, one of the months in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, and is believed to have been either a goddess of light or fertility. Experts who have debated the role of Ēostre in Anglo-Saxon culture include Jacob Grimm, one half of the Brothers Grimm, and co-author of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

As pilgrims converted Anglo-Saxon cultures to Christianity they were aware that the Ēostre worship festival occurred around the same time as the resurrection of Jesus. In order to help blend Christianity into the pagan cultures, the two festivals were actively merged. The event became known as Easter and became Christian in focus.

However, some modern churches, looking to distance themselves from the pagan origins of Easter, have started to use the phrase “Resurrection Day” instead.

The origins of Easter eggs begin in the region of Alsace. References to the Easter bunny itself are included in the writings of Georg Franck von Franckenau, a German botanist, who lived from 1643 to 1704. It was German settlers who introduced the concept to the States in the 18th century.

Pagan symbology includes the rabbit as an emblem of fertility. This ties in strongly with Ēostre as a goddess of fertility. Some suggest that the Easter bunny may be the avatar of Ēostre on earth.

The Easter bunny is the product of two religions; Christianity and some forms of Anglo-Saxon paganism. It has been adopted into modern culture easily as it is also readily available for the commercialisation of Easter.

In Pure Spirit

What have you been told about the origins of the Easter bunny? What does the Easter bunny mean to you?

Or also long as tasty Easter eggs are forthcoming – does it matter at all?

Picture credit: Iain Watson, released under Creative Commons.

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