Easter, the pagan facts...

Springtime sacrificial festival named after the Saxon goddes Eostre Ostara), a northern form of Astarte. her sacred month was Eastremonath - the MNoon of Eostre.

SAXON poets lauded Eostre as the same goddess as INDIA's Great Mother Kali. Beowulf, for instance, spoke of "Ganges' waters, whose flood waves ride down into an unknown sea near Eostre's far home".

The Easter Bunny is older than Christianity; it was the Moon Hare sacred to the goddess in both eastern and western nations. German tradition states that in the myths of Hathor-Astarte who 'laid the golden eggs of the sun' the 'hare would lay eggs for good children on Easter Eve'....

Pagan origins of Easter show that it was part of a dating system based on the old lunar calendar, pre-dating the Christian church's feasts by several hundred years. It was fixed for the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a tradition that celebrated the "pregnant" phase of Eostre passing into the fertile season. The Christian festival wasn't called Easter until the goddess's name was given to it in the later Middle Ages.

The IRISH kept Easter on a different date from that of the ROMAN church, probably the original date of the festival of Eostre, until the ROMAN calendar was imposed on them in 632AD. The Colomban foundation and their colonies in Britain kept the old date until 680AD.

The PERSIANS began their solar new year at the spring equinox and up to the middle of the 18th century they still followed the old custom of presenting eachother with colored eggs on the occasion. Eggs were the symbol of rebirth - in the true tradition of Osiris - which is why easter eggs were usually colored red (the life color) especially in EASTER EUROPE. RUSSIANS used to lay red Easter eggs on graves to serve as resurrection charms/amulets. In B0HEMIA Christ was duly honored on Easter Sunday and his pagan festival on Easter Monday, which was the moon-day opposed to the sun-day. Village girls like ancient priestesses sacrificed the Lord of Death and threw him into water, singing "death swims in the water, spring comes to visit us, with eggs that are red. with yellow pancakes, we carried Death out of the village, we are carrying summer into the village"....

Another remnant of the pagan sacred drama was the image of the god buried in his tomb, then withdrawn and said to live again. The ROMAN church instituted such a custom in the early Middle Ages - maybe in the hopes of a reportable miracle.....A small sepulchral building having been erected and the consecrated host placed within, a priest was set to watch it from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Then the host was taken out and displyed, and the congregation was told Christ was risen.

A curious 16th century Easter custom was known as "creeping to the cross with eggs and apples", a significant use of the ancient female symbols of birth and death, beginning and fruition, the opening and closing of cycles. The Ceremonial of the Kings of England ordered carpets to be laid in the church for the comfort of the king, queen and courtiers, as they crept down the aisle on hands and knees. Windsor Castle has written archives referring to this practise in St George's Chapel, the ancient royal temple which hosts the post-Easter ceremony of the Order of the Garter on St George's Day, 23 April.

GERMANY applied to Easter the same title formerly given to the season of the sacred king'slove-death, Hoch-Zeit, the "high time". In ENGLISH too, Easter used to be called the "Hye-Tide". Hence "high days and holidays"....

"Christianity has Pagan genes."

I love educating the more fundamental folks around me about these things. Surprisingly, most of the time, they are actually pretty receptive. Only occassionally do theri head spin around a go pop.

Mother of Creation.

can I use it?

tracing the Merovigninan line from Jesus/Mary Magdalene, and the politicisation of it by "satanic" (ie. Set- oriented) cults which had infiltrated Hathor-era masonry in Ancient Lower Egypt, and which then took over nascent "Christianity" via the Emperor Constantine , finally coming home to roost in their true home: evil cult of the Bavarian Illuminati....from which cesspit sprang the BFEE!

Plus ca change....

Does it come with a diagram? :)

would be a good one, or maybe even to pre-Biblical oral legends about The Great Whore of Babylon....

...but BFEE is one abbreviation I haven't figured out yet.

way back then...you really believe that?

a Sumerian or Amharic word-root for "seed"

In hebrew, the book of genesis is bare(y)oshi(y)th, depending on how you want to render it in roman letters, which is the verb for creation that is only ever used in connection with God.

I always bring that up along with Eostre when fundies condemn Halloween as "satanic".

BTW, I love Bill Hicks' take on Easter:

"Now, this is a holiday that's supposed to be about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And how do we celebrate it? By telling our children that a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night. It's no wonder we're fucked up as a race! I mean, why not "A goldfish left Lincoln Logs in your sock drawer!" I mean, at least a fish, jumping out of its bowl, and crawling across your bedroom floor with Lincoln Logs on its back has a supernatural connotation!
'Look mummy, there's a Lincoln Log in me sock drawer!'
'That's the story of Jesus!'"

...and spring cleaning, and (ad infinitum)

When you start doing even a little research you find out that 90% of our traditions are Pagan in origin. The rest are less than 150 years old.