Eostre - “a-OH-ster” - Goddess of Springtime, goddess of dawn. The overall ruler of the magic of Easter.
Easter is heavily celebrated by the Christian faith, but that is for a reason far different from its magic. The Christian celebration of Easter is due to an accident brought about by the Jewish Passover which really only concerns Easter by a coincidence.
While the Christian celebration of Easter clearly goes back only about 2,000 years, the homage – indeed, if you can call it that – bestowed upon its pagan predecessor, Eostre goes back ten, twenty, perhaps fifty thousand years, maybe hundreds of thousands of years!
As nomadic voyagers began moving into the plains and mountains of central Europe they began to discover different aspects of life. One was a vast wilderness filled with both strange plants and different animals, another the encounters with wild and savage people, and then there was the cold weather of winters they had not really known before. The cold weather could be handled if you were able to keep the seeds from last summer’s harvest. They could be replanted after the last freeze of the subsequent winter and would sustain themselves, and you and your family. The further north you moved though, the trickier came the great decision– when to commit those last seeds you had saved into the earth? The answer to that question is the Magic of Easter.
The people who lived back then had no TV, computers, radio, or anything else like that. They lived out under the sky, and the sky was their master, their leader, their guide, in many ways their gods. They were keen observers of all things in the sky. They knew when the sun set each evening and how far south or north it was when it did so. They knew when the sun had reached its southernmost point and when it would start back north again. They knew when it would be safe to plant their last seeds. BUT. There was a trick involved. A big trick. A killer trick. That trick involved the moon, because while it is the sun that plays the tune of the seasons, it is the moon that throws the switch that makes the change take place!
A good example is this year. 2016. The equinox occurred in the US on the east coast at 30 minutes after midnight (DST) on March 20. The following full moon, the moon of Easter, occurred on the east coast 0805 (DST) on March 23. Meanwhile, winter weather struck one last blow at the north east and the mid west.
We mentioned the church earlier, the Christian church. They threw an additional requirement into the equation, and that was there had to be three inputs to get the Springtime. 1) The Vernal Equinox had to occur. 2) The subsequent full moon, the moon of Easter had to reach fullness, and in more recent years (since 1923) 3) there had to be a Sunday. That’s where the Magic of Easter comes from – not from the time to celebrate the Easter service, but for the time to commit the last of the seed from the preceding year into the fertile ground.
