Tag: Eosturdæg

A Ritual to Eostre

RoseLeave a comment

The spring has just been flying by and I have not been on top of the blog! It seems I blinked and it was Ēosturdæg. The big post I’ve been working on will be delayed, I’m afraid. But, never fear, I do have more content coming. For now, I have a somewhat belated ritual to share with you. I composed following group ritual for a meet-up with other Fyrsideras this weekend. I’m posting it a bit late but there’s no rule that says we can’t hail Ēostre any time besides Ēosturdæg! It’s a little short and sweet but I hope y’all find it helpful.

A few important notes: I am assuming that the individual or group performing the ritual has their own preferences for ritual cleansing, and so jump straight into the hallowing. And while I do not personally include a gatekeeper in my personal praxis, I have included a section for those who do; feel free to skip it. As always, my hallowing and closing are borrowed from my friend Wind in the Worldtree. See my Geol ritual for more ritual notes.

For this ritual you will need:

  • Some sort of flat space for an altar. A table, big flat rock, a window sill. Doesn’t matter.
  • An images of Ēostre (optional)
  • Libation offerings. Water or juice is absolutely fine.
  • Birdseed or similar
  • Something to pour the libations into.
  • Incense (optional). I use loose with charcoal, but whatever type you prefer is just dandy.
  • Candles. LED work just as well.

Hallowing

May the gods guide us,
May our oaths keep us,
May our deeds free us,
May our ancestors aid us always.
May the gods banish from this place ill and wrong,
Hallow this space, shield us from all baneful wights,
Let the gods’ blessing be over our heads!

Action: Walk around the space with a flame such as a candle or lamp as the words are spoken. Light the altar candles.

Statement of Purpose

We have come together today to celebrate the coming of spring, the beginning of a season of warmth and growth. Hrēðe has defeated Old Man Winter, and now Ēostre dances across the land, coaxing all that is green and good from Eorthe’s rich soil.

Gatekeeper

Æled, radiant one, offering-bearer
We ask that you give life to this flame
That it may carry our gifts and prayers
Upon its rising smoke
Open the gate!

Action: Pour a libation or light incense for Æled

Invocation

Hail Ēostre, Bringer of Summer and Bearer of Blossoms

[All: Hail Ēostre]


You bring us to wakefulness with the dawn
As you rouse the Earth from her Winter slumber.
You know the timing of flowers and the dances of bees.

We come before you to celebrate your day,
Grateful for the waking world around us,
For he dandelions that grow plentiful around our feet,
The singing of birds and the buzzing of bees.
And the sweet scent of spring rain before the summer blooms.
We thank you for these signs of the turning season
And the warmer temperatures that bring them.

They are such beautiful gifts that you give us.

A gift calls for a gift, and so now we bring you our humble offerings.

Action: Pour libations and/or scatter birdseed (if outdoors). If in a group, allow time after the main offering for individual prayers and offerings. You may also allow time for additional toasts.

Closing

From the gods, to the earth, to us
From us, to the earth, to the gods
A gift has been given, may it be well received

Action: Blow out candles to signify the end of the ritual and dispose of the offerings appropriately.

The Etymology of Easter, a Primer

RoseLeave a comment

I thought it was a bit early to be talking about Ēosturdæg, but Ostara gets celebrated earlier and the nonsense has started on social media already. So, here we are. This was not the post I was intending to write for Ēosturdæg (in fact, I have another one mostly written in drafts) but it is the one I feel compelled to write because I had the misfortune to be scrolling TikTok this morning.

There exists a certain pagan-phobic subset of Christians that refuse to use the word Easter. Some that I knew during my Christian days would stubbornly refuse to call the holiday anything other than “Resurrection Sunday” (despite the fact that other names for the holiday derived from Latin exist). And why would they do this? Because according to them, the word Easter comes from the name of the goddess Ishtar.

It’s funny, because they’re half right. Easter does come from the name of a pagan goddess… but not that one.

To understand the basic etymology of the name and why English speakers generally call the holiday Easter, we need look no further than the Venerable Bede1.

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated as “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess named Eostre, in whose honor 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-honored name of the old observance.

De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time), The Venerable Bede

For those unfamiliar with Latin, “Paschal” in this context is the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this passage, Bede explains to us that an older English word has been grafted onto this celebration that is now dominate in England at the time of his writing.

So, Ēostre was a goddess in what we now called England who we know existed from this one singular reference from an English monk writing in the 700s CE. She may or may not have had cognates in other Germanic cultures, such as Jacob Grimm’s hypothesized Ostara. Honestly, this is an area of rather fascinating scholarly debate. I will save further discussion of that for my other upcoming post though.

Meanwhile, Ishtar (or Inanna, as she was known to the Sumerians) was a goddess worshiped by various cultures in and around Mesopotamia.2 The name Ishtar comes from Akkadian, a Semitic language.3

The probability that Ishtar influenced the development of Ēostre as a goddess or a linguistic concept in a completely different language family (Indo-European) is incredibly low. The Wiktionary entry for Ishtar even notes that this is a debunked modern folk-etymology.4 But if you want to explore the actual etymology of Ēostre in much greater depth (and gain a terrible headache) I suggest you check out the book I reviewed last month by Philip Shaw.

In conclusion, Easter comes from an Anglo-Saxon name for an Anglo-Saxon goddess that attached to a Christian holiday as a localized name through the normal processes of syncretism and assimilation. While the name may be pagan in origin (if you believe Bede as I do), it has been used in a Christian context for a minimum of 1300 years. If it was good enough for Bede in 725, it’s probably fine. But if you’re going to be weird about words with pagan origins I’ve got some bad news about the days of the week…

Post-Easter Edit

I’ve see so many progressive Christian clergy slandering the Venerable Bede this week that it’s making my head spin. You do not have to accuse Bede of “making shit up” to make the case that the celebration of Easter as we know it is a Christian phenomenon. In case I was not clear above, having the local name stem from a possible pagan goddess does not make the holiday itself pagan. Easter is an entirely Christian holiday and not “stolen” from pagans. That doesn’t invalidate pagans who wish to celebrate Eosturdæg as a day devoted to Eostre or pagans who wish to celebrate the equinox as Ostara. Something doesn’t have to be ancient to be valid.

  1. Bede was a monk who lived from about 672 CE to 735 CE. He wrote an An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, as well The Reckoning of Time, which is the single best source for reconstructing the pagan Anglo-Saxon calendar. Here’s the Wikipedia entry if you want a jumping off point to read more about Bede. ↩︎
  2. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Inanna if you again want a jumping off point for further reading. ↩︎
  3. Somewhat ironically, “paschal” from the Latin “pascha” actually comes from another language in the same family as Akkadian: Hebrew. ↩︎
  4. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ishtar ↩︎

Finding Your Holy Days

Rose2 Comments

One of the interesting and—dare I say it—fun things about developing your own pagan practice is deciding what holy days you will mark and how to celebrate each occasion. Just choosing which days to observe—never mind the how—there exists a dizzying array of choices. Odds are that you will not observe exactly the same holidays as another pagan in your social circle, even if you nominally follow the same tradition. (If you doubt me, just look up the Anglo-Saxon and Norse heathen debates on the correct dating of Gēol/Yule). Because of this, I think it is important to note that you do not have to observe every holiday ever conceived of. You do not have to observe a holy day just because it has historical attestation, nor because it’s what “all the other [x] pagans do.”

Personally, I don’t celebrate all the holidays on the common Wheel of the Year, nor all the holidays you might find listed by various heathen organizations. My big holidays for the year are as follows:

  • Ēosturdæg
  • Midsumor
  • Winterfylleþ
  • Módraniht/Gēol

I list Modraniht and Gēol together because Modraniht is very much a subsection of the ongoing Gēol festivities for me that take up the entire month of December. In fact, you could almost say that Winterfylleþ kicks off my Gēol season, and Modraniht is my early New Year. But as you can see, this is a very abbreviated calendar compared to other lists you may find. They also line-up in time and culture with big observances going on around me: Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. Which brings me to my next point…

Modern Observances

It’s also okay to weave in wholly modern observations. Sometimes the old holy days just don’t quite line up with the schedules and rhythms of our modern lives, especially for those of us who aren’t deeply connected to agriculture. Incorporating our heathenry into holidays our culture is already celebrating is a great way to start knitting these pieces of our identities together. For example, I have been trying to work the secular Earth Day into my own spiritual calendar. Is there an attested Eorthedæg in Anglo-Saxon heathenry? Not that I’m aware of. But there’s certainly enough precedence for the worship of an Earth Mother. To me, it makes sense to dedicate time to this important figure, and lining it up with a pre-existing modern secular holiday makes sense.

Here’s some ideas for other modern holidays (as observed in the US) that you could give a heathen spin:

Earth Day – A húsel or blot to Eorthe or another earth mother goddess is an obvious option. Perhaps less obvious is signing up for some volunteer opportunities and showing the goddess your love through service. Park cleanups and tree plantings can be fun events that help tie you not only to the Earth, but also to your local community.

Mother’s Day / Father’s Day – These holidays are an excellent opportunity to incorporate ancestor veneration into your praxis. A húsel celebrating the mothers/fathers from which you come can be a lovely way to mark the occasion. You could hold a symbel and give everyone an opportunity to share stories about Great-Grandma Evie and Great Aunt Maude. Even if your living family do not share your faith, you can still give an offering on your own. 

Memorial Day – Particularly if you come from a military family, Memorial Day can be a wonderful time to incorporate ancestor veneration. You could also petition gods and ancestors for peace in ongoing conflicts. Many of us do this regularly anyway, but Memorial Day may be a time for special emphasis. Deities to consider might be Twi, Woden, or Hella.

Valentine’s Day or Sweetest’s Day – These days can be made into an opportunity to honor a god or goddess of love. Perhaps an offering to Frīg? Or if you’re of the witchy persuasion, maybe a spell or ritual to spice up the bedroom (with your partner’s consent, of course).

This is hardly an exhaustive list, of course, and rather US centric, but the principle applies to any special observation, really.

Timing & Dates

Depending on how heavily you get into reconstruction, determining the date of certain holidays can be… fraught. My advice to you is to decide how much you care about historical accuracy vs what fits into your life. Personally, I’m fairly confident that the gods are happy that you make offerings around the time of certain observances, regardless of whether you do it Tuesday or Thursday.

If you want to celebrate Gēol on December 21st every year, regardless of the exact date of the astronomical solstice, go for it. If you would prefer to celebrate Gēol on the 25th when the rest of your family is observing Christmas, I think that’s grand, too. (For the record, not all Christians agree on the dates of some of their holidays either and calculating Easter used to be basically a science).

So what holy days do I observe?

Putting all of this together, here’s how my spiritual calendar has shaped up:

  • Ēosturdæg – Full Moon following the Vernal Equinox
  • Arbor Day/Earth Day
  • Mother’s Day 
  • Father’s Day 
  • Midsommer – Summer Solstice (Around June 21st)
  • Winterfylleþ – Full Moon following the Autumn Equinox
  • Módraniht – (Around December 20th)
  • Gēola – Winter Solstice (Around December 21st)

As you can see, it’s a mix of shifting and fixed dates, historical and modern observances. I don’t mind working out the shifting holidays and making plans around them, so that’s what I do.

But I want to hear from you. What holidays do you incorporate into your spiritual calendar? What’s one of your favorite traditions? Tell me in the comments!

Suggested Reading

This may seem like an Albertsson heavy recommendation list, but he was extra relevant!