The Easter Bunny's Best-Ever Trick
How the Moon Rabbit Saved the Goddess of Spring In A Basket
adrien rain burke
Lots of people wonder why the Easter Bunny seems to be the star of Easter celebrations. What has the Christian celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus got to do with rabbits anyway?
It's a perfectly natural question. But there's an even more intriguing question:
ever wonder why it's called "Easter?" What does the word "Easter" mean? Does it mean 'Resurrection?' How is it connected with the week marking the sad events surrounding Jesus' death by torture?
Easter (Ishtar, Astara, etc.), a Deity of Spring, was a goddess, whose name also lives on in "estrus" and "estrogen." That's right. (Hold on to your socks, fellas - this is gonna be tough!) God was a Woman. A Goddess of Fertility. How important fertility was in ancient times, is hard for us now to comprehend. It was a matter of life and death. Everything depended on the harvest.
The basket, the eggs, the baby animals, and the flowers that still decorate the holiday, were Her symbols, and long-ago children hunted for bright eggs, then as now. The Easter Bunny was the Rabbit on the Moon - and the Moon was inevitably connected with women, their cycles and fertility, and by extension, the fertility of the Earth.
And Eastertide was a time, not the observance of a historical event. It had, and still has, no fixed date.
Times changed; religions changed. . . .
At first, there was tolerance. Even as the Roman Empire peaked, it was partly still Pagan. Christianity was oddly monotheistic (the Trinity a seeming contradiction to that), but Roman Paganism had a long tradition of inclusion, which informed European Christianity. The new church - as political as it was devout - initially accepted local feastdays, adapting them to suit the new faith, and so beloved old customs persisted. The Chirstmas greens and fires (once dedicated to Saturn and numerous others), the Easter eggs. . . .
And for awhile, Catholicism also tolerated the witch/healers who delivered babies, cooled fevers - and concocted a love potion now and then. The wise church fathers made "saints" of many old gods and goddesses, and Christian holidays of Pagan ones. Thus, Christianity at first, was inclusive and friendly to peasant traditions.
But it couldn't last: Christianity, like its parent Judaism, was deeply patriarchal. When Protestantism rose to challenge the Catholic Church, exposing those antique Pagan trappings, both sides turned with fury on the "wise women" - so out of place in a dogma that bade women to be silent and to obey.
It was in the Renaissance, and not the "Dark Ages" or the Middle Ages, that burning witches became a 300-year mania. Magic was forbidden by the Bible, which states that thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and the theorizers of witchhunting contended that healing with "poisons" (ergot, opium, etc.) was magic, and could only be the work of the Devil - who now oddly resembled the Pagan Nature deities, like Pan and Cernunnos: horned, cloven-hoofed - and not at all that "Angel of Light," the beautiful, rebellious Lucifer.
Besides its function of finishing off an old and beloved rival faith, witchhunting was easy, and very profitable. Every village had a "poison mixer," a widow or spinster who lived by her herbal skills. Under torture, she could name names - in fact, she'd say anything. Then she - and her patients - went to the stake to be burned. It was all laid out in that terrible, misogynist book, Malleus Malificarum (The Hammer of Witchcraft), commissioned by Pope Innocent III.
Itinerant witchhunters traveled about, promising to solve villagers' troubles (the harvest again!) by exterminating witches - to be paid per witch! And the town fathers got their share in the form of confiscated property.
There were so many telltale witchmarks and signs: a mole or birthmark. A pet cat, a rooster for her hens, even a dog, a rabbit or a frog in one's yard, a goat for milk- "familiars" all. (Huge numbers of cats (especially black ones) were burned at the stake, encouraging vermin, which in turn, encouraged plagues.) The beauty to inspire "carnal dreams" was a sure sign, as was ugliness or deformity, insanity, independence. A woman who lived alone was especially vulnerable.
Occasionally, most of the women in a town turned out to be "witches" - as was any man who protested or tried to protect an accused witch. Once the process had begun, dissent could be fatal - it was an inexorable juggernaut of death. The property of witches was confiscated, making it even more lucrative. Sometimes groups of women, gathered and killed themselves to avoid the witchhunters. A few men in places of authority, tried to oppose the trend. One, Father Spee published his objections anonymously. Estimates of victims of the "Burning Times" vary from hundreds of thousands to millions.
Even little girls could be found guilty of witchcraft, and suffer the same fate as their mothers and sisters.
Oh, it made an impression. And most obvious vestiges of European Paganism died at last.
The Church had spoken:
God couldn't possibly be a woman.
But the rituals endured. Who secretly, silently kept the Old Faith? Easter's symbol, a circle of rabbits, is inconspicuously carved in many old churches. Was it too close to the bone? Too precious? Too important?
In any case, it was unsafe. So, though the eggs were dyed and collected in baskets, and Hot Cross Buns were baked; though the day still bore the name of a fertility goddess, and baby animals were still the joyful symbols of the season, the centuries of terror, the smell of burning flesh, had left their mark: the reasons for the rites were unspoken, and in time, forgotten. The question was unasked because the answer was too dangerous.
Times changed again: no one in the West burns now for heresy, and many who call themselves Pagans openly seek and pursue their ancient spiritual heritage.
And thanks to that furry rascal, something was saved.
I can see him now - laughing like crazy over his Very Best Trick: How The Easter Bunny Saved The Goddess Of Spring (In a Basket.) He pulled it off alright, and I'd love to ask him how. . . . .
. . . . . .But nobody's ever going to catch that rabbit!
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