Approaching Eostre

We are currently in the lunar month of goddess Rheda, and the Spring Equinox is drawing near. The next lunar month is that of goddess Eostre, also known as Ostara. For this reason, many pagans celebrate the Spring Equinox as the festival of Ostara. Who is this mystery goddess? It was the 8th century historian Saint Bede who made written record of this Anglo-Saxon deity. He claimed that the Christian festival of Christ's resurrection became known as Easter because it falls on the first Sunday after Eostre's full moon. Her name is ultimately related to the word east, which comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for "shine" or "dawn". Therefore, we assume that Eostre is a goddess of the dawn, and the increasing sunlight which follows the Spring Equinox. There are several places in England which may have been named after the goddess, such as Eastry in Kent, Eastrea in Cambridgeshire, and Eastrington in Yorkshire. Jacob Grimm theorised that her Old Germanic name would have been Ostara. Etymologically, she is connected to the goddesses Eos, Aurora and Ushas, all personifications of the dawn. I imagine, that had English, Greek, or Roman religions survived to the present day, they would have turned out a lot like contemporary Hinduism.

Polytheism may seem like a chaotic world cluttered by a myriad of gods, but for many pagans there is also a belief in a universal or pantheistic deity which unifies this world view. The hundreds of thousands of gods are regarded as faces or masks of one divine being. This "world soul" is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. The all-god or pan-theos is the ultimate reality, the universe itself. In Hinduism, this supreme gender-neutral god is called Brahman. There are however many different interpretations of the scriptures within Hinduism, and many different beliefs about Brahman and the gods. Likewise, there are many interpretations of the European gods. There is a saying, "you can't see the forest for the trees" which I like to apply to theology. You might spend time getting to know every tree individually, but if you stand on top of a mountain, you stop seeing individual trees, and you see one big green organism called forest.

As a dawn goddess, Eostre represents enlightenment, the awakening of consciousness. New ideas and realisations are brought to light. Your perception becomes clearer. You wake up to the true reality. You see things as they really are. The ancient Greek poet Homer described the dawn goddess as rosy-fingered, golden-armed, and wearing a saffron coloured robe embroidered with flowers. She is often described as a lover of mortal men, which perhaps symbolises the pleasure of enlightenment. She rouses her lovers with a passion for truth and understanding. In Christian iconography she may be seen as Sophia, a winged figure in saffron robes, seated upon a golden throne. The book of Proverbs describes her as "a breath of the power of God, and the radiance of the glory of the Almighty... She is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness" (Wis 7:25-26) and Solomon confessed; "I loved her and sought her from my youth; I desired to take her for my bride, and became enamored of her beauty" (Wis 8:2).