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The Celestial Origin of Easter

Richard Merrick

The Old English Ēostre (also Ēastre) and Old High German Ôstarâ are the names of the Germanic goddess whose Anglo-Saxon month, Ēostur-monath, has given its name to the festival of Easter. Ēostur-monath is the equivalent to the month of April corresponding to Spring and fertility rites.

Linguists have identified Eostre as a Germanic form of the reconstructed Indo-European goddess of the dawn, Hausos or Ausōs. The name Eostre then derives from the proto-Germanic word Austro and common Germanic goddess Austrōn and its root ‘aues,’ meaning ‘to shine.’ This, of course, is then the etymological root for the country Austria. As symbols of reproduction, putti (flying babies), hares, storks and eggs were often depicted with Eostre and Austron.

In the larger historical picture, Eostre is part of a long line of dawn goddesses including the Greek Eos, Roman Aurora and Indian Ushas who were derived from the cosmological symbolism of the Sun and Venus rising together from the eastern sea. The planet Venus was thus the East Star, or ‘Easter,’ of the sunrise.

 

Through this connection, Eostre descends from a long line of feminine fertility deities associated with the planet Venus, including Ishtar, Isis, Astarte, Inanna, Semiramis, Lilith, Asherah, Demeter, Hathor, Kali, Ostara, Eastre, Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. There is good evidence to believe that all of these goddesses had a common origin in the ancient Vedic fertility goddess named Vena (root ‘wenos’ or Sanskrit ‘vanas’) and her insemination by the Sun god Indra (Greek Dionysus and Cronus). The Romans, whose early Etruscan religion had roots in Vedic beliefs, apparently understood this connection very well when they renamed the Greek goddess Aphrodite to Venus.

Within this larger historical context, the Christian celebration of Easter can be seen as an adaptation of a much more ancient fertility rite celebrating the paired movement and conjunction of Venus with the Sun. The transit of Venus across the Sun is described in the Hindu Vedas as the Sun (Indra) swallowing Venus (Shukra), spitting her out as a ‘bright’ seed or semen.* The feminine deity Vena would then compel Shukra, who resided in her ‘variegated womb,’ to give birth where the Sun’s ‘membrane of light’ touched the waters of the Earth. In this way, Vena was the Easter(n) goddess of the dawn — resurrected every morning, reborn each Spring and inseminated twice a century in rare Venus Transits — who once again brought new life to Earth.

* The abduction and imprisonment of the dawn goddess, and her liberation by a heroic god slaying the dragon who imprisons her, is a central myth of Indo-European religion and descends from Vedic cosmology and hallucinogenic Soma rituals apparently connected to the Venus Transit.

 

Vena’s variegated womb – the Venus rose orbital pattern

Richard Merrick

Richard Merrick was the founder and CEO of Postfuture, a pioneering rich-media communications provider for companies like Best Buy and Microsoft. Under his leadership, the company grew from a tiny start-up in 1999 into the top digital communications company of 2004 and 4th fastest growing technology company in Texas. Prior to this, he was the technology founder and elected CEO of 7th Level, a global CD-ROM game publisher and Internet technology company known for such award-winning titles as TuneLand Starring Howie Mandel and Monty Python's The Quest for the Holy Grail. Merrick's work spans many areas of digital media, including search engines, graphics operating systems, multi-media authoring applications, interactive games, voice-response Web agents and dynamically personalized Internet communications. Throughout his career he has been invited to speak around the world on the future of digital media and cited as an expert in leading publications. He is an improvisational pianist & composer, archetypal artist and independent researcher into the physics, history and social ramifications of harmonic science. He received his B.A. (magna cum laude) and M.S.C.S. degrees from the University of Texas at Dallas.

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