Oh my Gods!- Deity of the month: Eostre
- spoiled bean dip
- Mar 14
- 4 min read
Eostre is a pagan goddess who is best known for her associations of spring, fertility, and the dawn. During this time you will also see many people claim that she and her cult practices directly inspired the modern holiday of Easter, with her symbols of hares, colorful eggs, and even the name itself. But do these claims hold any sliver of truth, is Easter based off Eostre, and who is she to begin with?
To start let's look into her name, Eostre; the name Eostre is the direct origin for the name for the holiday of Easter. We learn this from a christian monk named Bede (also referred to as Saint Bede) who lived during the late 600s through the early 700s. In his book "The Reckoning of Time," he mentions how the Anglo-Saxons referred the month of April as "Ēosturmōnaþ" or "Eostre's month."
Why is this important? Well it’s helpful to note that during this time many Christians and church leaders were hellbent on finding the true date of Jesus’s crucifixion, since in the gospels it’s only mentioned that he was nailed on the cross during Passover centuries ago. It should also be mentioned that the date of Passover changes every year due to only occurring after the first full moon in the Jewish lunar solar calendar- people like Bede where trying to clear up this mess by using the Roman solar calendar to aid in the keeping of Christian holidays and events. He also kept a record of the different seasons, significant events throughout the year, and the origins of the names of the Anglo-saxon calendar; which in turn mentioned how Eostremonath was named after the goddess Eostre. Bede states in his book:
"Eostre-month has a name which is now translated to Paschal month (Passover), and which was once called after a goddess of theirs 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 ratione temporum 15.
So by this time Bede states that christians have called this time, during the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after Eostre month. So what else do we know about this goddess?
You see this is where things get a little murky....
Despite this one mention of the goddess, there are virtually no other written sources of her in the historical records. Even evidence of her artifacts or traces of her cult are nonexistent- everything we know about her solely comes from this one passage written well past hundreds of years after the last pagans were converted in that area. Her evidence is so scarce that some scholars even argue that she was simply created on Bede’s end as a novel explanation for the origin of the name of Easter.
Keep in mind that as I write this article I’m only going to give you the facts and my intention is not to discredit your beliefs and opinions, but rather to educate you about what we practice so that you may have a better understanding of the true origins of our beliefs. I'll quote this statement from the religious scholar Andrew Mark Henry (from the youtube channel Religion for breakfast) in regards to this issue:
"I'm stressing that this our only evidence not because I doubt that ancient Anglo-Saxons once worshiped a goddess by this name- I'm stressing this so that you can immediately know that anyone who links The Cult of Eostre with specific practices or symbols is either engaging in educated speculation, or inventing stuff out of thin air."
- From his video Did a Pagan Goddess Inspire Easter?
He also argues that those who correlate Eostre with the spring or dawn are using educated speculation, whilst those who link rabbits, easter eggs, or fairies with her are using baseless speculation. If we take Bede's word and believe what he says is true then we have two firm pieces of evidence about the Goddess: that her name was Eostre and that she was honored in April long before he existed.
So what are we able to conclude based off the prior knowledge? Well some scholars are using these two pieces of evidence to reconstruct a hypothesis about Eostre and her functions as a deity. For example the philologist Dr. Philip Shaw used historical linguistics to examine her name, by essentially asking what does Eostre mean; and he also compared other Goddesses from the region and mainland Europe to see if any of their functions could relate to her. So let's look into her name, Shaw suggests that the name Eostre derives from the old english word meaning 'eastern.' Other linguists have speculated that her name may derive from the Proto-Indo-European name of the goddess of dawn, H₂éwsōs.
Perhaps during the spring equinox, around the same time that the sun would be in it's more easternly position, ancient societies from the region would take notice and apply these shifting tides or dawn aspects to Eostre in her month of celebration. Perhaps she may have be an offshoot from a pan-germanic Goddess from the olden days of yore as the scholar Jacob Grimm suggested? Theories like these are again only conjectured claims since he only came to this conclusion after noticing that the old high german name for Easter in the 8th century was Ostarun. believing this holiday must've also been linked with Goddess to be named Ostara. He also believed that she filled a similar role to Jesus's rescuration around the spring equinox in his book Teutonic Mythology.
Interest in the Goddess had remained rather low up until the neopaganism revival in the mid 20th century, and it wasn't until the 1960's when the name Ostara became the established name for the spring equinox sabbat on the Wheel of the Year (you could thank people like Aiden Kelly for that). But even though her only record solely exists from Bede's account, she has now become a modern symbol for neopagans and Wiccans alike for revival, fertility, and springtime. So maybe during this Sabbat why not try and see if Eostre may connect with you, and reveal to your her modern mysteries?
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