Easter Is Coming! (Or is it Eastre?)
Added: Apr 1st, 2007 8:32 AM

Staff Writer

RaidersNewsNetwork.com -- A recent edition of Raiders News Update included a "Happy Valentine Day" greeting. A reader responded by pointing out that Valentines Day "is not a Christian celebration!"

Now Easter is around the corner, and, like many other holidays, its roots may also be found in ancient paganism.

The eighth century English monk, Venerable Bede, popularized the notion that "Easter" was derived from Eastre, the old Germanic goddess of spring. Others have concluded that "Easter" began with Ishtar, the Assyrian fertility goddess of spring, or Astarte - the Phoenician or Greek composite of Ishtar and Aphrodite. The fact that many pagans used rabbits and "Easter" eggs as fertility symbols to celebrate the forces of spring, and that such forces were usually manifested in popular goddess images, is indisputable.

In 1966, Ralph Woodrow (Babylon Mystery Religion) complained that Easter is thus an adaptation of "…the pagan spring festival into the fallen church," and that "…adding pagan customs into the worship of the true God is utterly and absolutely condemned in the Bible!"

The recently converted Worldwide Church of God disagrees, saying, "…even if the word 'Easter' was associated with an ancient goddess, it does not mean we cannot use the word today. We have many words in the English language that were connected with ancient gods. For example, our word 'cereal' comes from the name of the ancient goddess of agriculture, Ceres….[But] when we use the word 'cereal' today we're not thinking of the goddess or worshipping her, but of corn flakes or granola."

HISTORY AND THE SPRING FESTIVALS

The Thesmophoria was the most popular of such spring fertility festivals, and drew the largest crowds at Athens and at Eleusis for nearly two thousand years. Demeter, the Thesmophoria's primary goddess, boasted the most protected cult secrets of the mystery religions, because her rituals were performed inside the inner sanctum of the Temple of Demeter (the Telesterion) and were so well-guarded by the Temple devotees that little survived to enlighten us as to what actually occurred there. Only those portions of the Thesmophoria held outside the Temple were publicly recorded (sparsely) and provide us with a partial historical record.

What is known is that the rituals of the Thesmophoria were based on the mythology of the abduction and rape of Persephone (Proserpina), and of Demeter's (Persephone's mother) subsequent actions in searching for her daughter. The cult's rituals are therefore interpreted according to the Demeter myth.

The myth claimed that Hades - the dark god of the underworld - fell in love with beautiful Persephone. One day as she plucked flowers in a grassy meadow, Hades swooped down in his chariot and dragged Persephone into the underworld, where he forced her to become his bride. Above ground, Demeter was distraught by her daughter's disappearance, and searched the earth in vain to find her. With the help of Helios and Hecate, Demeter finally discovered the truth, and, in her fury, demanded that Hades release her daughter. When Hades refused, Demeter sent a horrific famine upon the earth. Plants dried up; Seeds refused to sprout and the gods began to suffer from a lack of sacrifices. Finally, Zeus dispatched Hermes to intercede with the lord of the underworld, and, after a great debate, Hades agreed to release Persephone if she would eat a pomegranate seed.

What Persephone did not understand was that, by eating the pomegranate seed in the mystical location of the underworld, a sort of divine symmetry was created that bonded Persephone with Hades. This ensured that the goddess would automatically return to the underworld for a third part of each year (in the winter), during which time the seeds of the ground would not grow.

Persephone thus became the spring goddess of youth and happiness, and the underworld queen of the dead; a dual role depicting her as both good and evil. On earth she was the goddess of the spring and the friend of the nymphs who appeared in the blooming of the spring flowers (symbolizing her annual return from Hades), while in the underworld she was the dreaded wife of Hades and the Queen of the Darkness who controlled the fates of deceased men.

The reenactment of this myth - the abduction and rape of Persephone - was central to the rituals of the Thesmophoria, and, as such, key to interpreting the bits of information that are known.

THE MYSTERIES OF THE SPRING FESTIVAL

The festival of the Thesmophoria - sometimes called the Eleusinian Mysteries - lasted between three and ten days. Each day of the festival had a different name and included specific rituals.

A highlight of the festival was a procession from Athens to Eleusis, which was led by a crowd of children known as ephebi. The ephebi assisted in carrying the hiera (sacred objects) including an egg (Easter eggs), and in pulling a statue of Dionysus as a boy (Iacchos). The children also assisted in the ceremonial cleansing of the initiates (candidates of the mystery religion) in the sea.

Upon arriving at Eleusis the women organized the first day of the celebration (anodos) by building temporary shelters and electing the leaders of the camp. On the second day (nesteia) they initiated the Greater Mysteries, which, according to myth, produced the cult's magical requests (a fertile harvest). Such mysteries included a parody of the abduction and rape of Persephone and the positioning of the female devotees upon the ground weeping (in the role of Demeter for her daughter) and fasting for the return of Persephone (the return of spring). Sitting on the ground and fasting was also intended to mystically transfer the "energies" of the women into the ground, and thus into the fall seeds. Not surprisingly, the festival was held during the time of the fall planting so as to nearly guarantee a positive response to the cult's magic.

On the fifth day of the festival, the participants drank a special grain mixture called kykeon (a symbol of Persephone) and ate (Easter) eggs in an attempt to assimilate the spirit of the goddess. The idea was to produce an incarnated blessing of fertility, both of the crops and of children.

About this same time certain women called "antleriai" were cleansed in the sea and then sent down into the mountainside trenches to recover the sacrificial piglets and various other sacred objects that had been thrown down into the hillside canyons several days before. The sacred objects included dough replicas of snakes and of genitalia, which were burned, with the piglets and a grain-seed-mixture, as an offering to Demeter.

The reason for the casting of the piglets into the mountainside cliffs has been thoroughly debated and no single interpretation has emerged as the absolute authority. While several mystical representations can be made of the symbology, and the dough replicas are obviously fertility symbols, pigs blood was sacred to the gods and thus key to understanding the ritual.

Greeks venerated pigs because of their uncanny ability to find, and unearth, underground items (roots, etc). Some scholars conclude from this that the ritual casting of the pigs "into the deep" was a form of imitative magic based on the underworld myth of Persephone and Hades. That is to say, casting the piglets into the deep canyon trenches, and fetching them back out again, represented the descent of Persephone into the underworld and then her spring return to the surface of the earth.

The piglets in the trenches may also have served the practical purpose of supplying a host (body) for Persephone to hide in until the antleriai women could assist her (by retrieving the piglets) in her annual escape from the underworld. Burning the piglets later that night would, according to an ancient religious idea that fire passes the soul from one location to another, free the spirit of Persephone into the upperworld (compare the children sacrificed to Baal who "passed through the fire" from the physical world into the spiritual).

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

The New Testament informs us that pagan rituals, such as those performed in the Thesmophoria, were the worship of demons. "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice," Paul said, "they sacrifice to devils..." (1 Corinthians 10:20).

This makes one wonder if a connection between the ritual casting of the piglets into the deep canyon trenches (representing a descent into hell), and the biblical story of the Gadarene demoniac, existed.

In Luke, chapter Eight, we read:

"And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes....And when he [Jesus] went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils....When he [the demoniac] saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not"....And Jesus asked him, saying, "What is thy name?" And he said, "Legion:" because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep [emphasis added]. And there was there an herd of swine [emphasis added] feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea [emphasis added], and were choked" (Luke 8:26-33).

The word deep in this text is Abussos (the Abyss), and refers to the underworld Bottomless Pit. Since the principle elements of the sea, the swine, and the deep were employed; and since the Abyss (part of the underworld) was central to the narrative; and last but not least since the cult rituals of the Thesmophoria were well known throughout Asia Minor and were considered by the Hebrews to be an activity of the devil (the inhabitants of Hades were known as 'Demeter's people,' and Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, was Perserphone's underworld guide during the rituals); one could surmise that Jesus was potentially mocking the Thesmophoria. He may have been revealing, to His followers and to the neighboring communities, that such spring festivals were, in fact, the consort of devils.
It may be a stretch to interpret the biblical story this way, but clearly the similarities and historical proximities are startling, especially since the demons requested an entry into the swine. Why would demons make such a plea? There are two possible connections with the Thesmophoria: 1) the demons believed that by entering the swine they could escape the underworld deep (as in the magical Persephone escape ritual described above); and 2) Jesus, by granting the request of the devils, was illustrating that the Thesmophoria ritual of casting the piglets into the deep was inherently demonic.

Other interpretations of the narrative in Luke chapter eight carry equal value, but since this is the only record of Jesus granting the petition of demons, it seems possible that a powerful social commentary on a popular pagan idea, like that of the Thesmophoria of Demeter, was made by the Master.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE

But Wait A Minute, some will say, the difference between the scenario above and true Christianity is obvious. When Christians attend Easter sunrise services they celebrate the meaning and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ancient spring goddesses are far from the picture.

Furthermore, even if the word "Easter" originated with pagan goddesses, am I forbidden to exalt the Lord on an Easter Sunday morning? That would be silly. Every day of the week is connected to some pagan deity! Monday is "moon's day," Tuesday is "Tiw's day," Wednesday is "Woden's day," Thursday is "Thor's day," and so on.

Thus, Easter Sunday, like any other day of the week, is a day to worship Christ. The fact that pagans once worshiped spring deities on "Easter" is, in these type of peoples opinion, irrelevant.