Author Topic: Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!  (Read 3447 times)

LawDog

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« on: March 27, 2005, 06:38:16 AM »
Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!

LawDog

Wildalaska

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2005, 07:45:55 AM »
Shes still conducting her fertility rights behind closed doors, its snowing here

WildweathermanAlaska
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wasrjoe

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2005, 08:15:47 AM »
Quote
Shes still conducting her fertility rights behind closed doors, its snowing here
Spiffy's a she?
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Wildalaska

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2005, 08:24:39 AM »
Nice visual! Way to start a sunday Morning with vomiting!

WildgagAlaska
I'm just a condescending, supercilious,  pompous ass .But then again, my opinion is as irrelevant as yours, and keep in mind kids, it's only the internet! If I bug ya that much, ignore me. Anyway, need something? Call me at 800/992-4570.
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RevDisk

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2005, 09:08:59 AM »
Still felt like winter here.  Couldn't find any local Fests this year, darn.


I found a photo of Istara.   So, WA, this is what Spiffy looks like?

"Rev, your picture is in my King James Bible, where Paul talks about "inventors of evil."  Yes, I know you'll take that as a compliment."  - Fistful, possibly highest compliment I've ever received.

Cool Hand Luke 22:36

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2005, 06:46:22 PM »
Here's an opposing viewpoint:

Fur flies over bunny theory
By SIMON BEVILACQUA
27mar05

IT'S official -- the Easter bunny story is not true.

The fable about the magical rabbit who brings eggs on Easter Sunday is a fabrication.

Academics have scoured medieval history and found the story is based on a lie.

They blame a meddling medieval monk for mucking up pagan history.

The mischievous monk literally made up a Saxon goddess who many today erroneously believe is the basis of the Easter bunny story.

University of Tasmania academic Elizabeth Freeman said German academics had searched extensively for clues to Easter tradition.

"They found it's all wrong," Dr Freeman, an expert on medieval history, said.

The commonly believed story about the Easter bunny, as the magical companion of the Saxon goddess Ostara, is repeated in books, poems and extensively on websites.

That fallacious story says the Easter bunny's roots are buried in the mythology of Germanic Saxon tribes.

The Saxons, in the first centuries after the death of Jesus, are said to have celebrated the arrival of the pagan goddess Ostara.

The Sun King, according to the story, would journey across the sky in his chariot bringing an end to winter.

Ostara, a beautiful spring maiden, then came to earth with a basket of coloured eggs.

The goddess, helped by a magical rabbit, brought new life to dying plants and flowers by hiding eggs under them.

When the Saxons moved into Britain in the fifth century, they took their pagan ways with them.

Ostara then evolved into the Anglo-Saxon Oestre, goddess of dawn and spring.

When Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity and started to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, they combined the religious traditions.

The pagan Oestre celebration became today's Easter.

So when modern-day parents hid coloured eggs under plants in the garden for their children, it was widely thought they had been unwittingly re-enacting the ancient pagan myth of Ostara and her rabbit. But this is all wrong, according to modern academic thought.

Dr Freeman said research shows the Ostara and Oestre story is fundamentally flawed.

The goddess did not exist.

The earliest reference to goddess Ostara or Oestre is by a celebrated medieval intellectual -- the monk known as the "venerable Bede".

Working in north-east England in 730AD, Bede wrote a book about calculating time. Bede identified a pagan spring celebration called Eosturmonath. He said this celebration got its name from a pagan goddess called Oestre for whom they had a feast.

But when modern-day researchers scoured the history books they could find no prior reference to the goddess.

Researchers found many references to the spring celebration Eosturmonath but absolutely no mention of the goddess Bede reckoned the feast was named after. They suspect Bede fabricated the pagan goddess to suit his purposes.

"He has definitely made up that goddess," Dr Freeman said. "Bede is the first one to mention it. German academics have found no evidence of the spring goddess Oestre anywhere else before Bede."

Dr Freeman said Bede, who had been a monk since he was seven years old, was revered in an era where very few people were educated.

"Bede was extremely influential and his view has survived until the last 50 years when scholarship developed to the level it could show he was wrong," she said.

Dr Freeman said Bede and his contemporaries constantly sought to find moral meaning for words and often made up definitions to suit their moral outlook.

So if the Saxon goddess Oestre did not exist, what about her magical bunny? Where did he come from?

"I really have no idea," Dr Freeman said.

The Easter bunny, it seems, is as mysterious to historians as he is elusive to children.

Catching a glimpse of the rabbit who leaves chocolate eggs is easier than pinning down the origins of the mythical creature.

Dr Freeman suggested the tradition was a jumbled version of many ancient beliefs.

She said pagan Britons, who lived in the isles before the Saxons arrived and are commonly portrayed as the traditional dark-haired Celts, revered sacred hares.

She considers these sacred hares may be the kernel of the Easter bunny story.

Baltic pagans and other cultures used eggs in rituals of rebirth and renewel.

Eggs decorated with colours or gilt have been a symbol of life since the ancient Greeks.

The egg appears in many pagan and early history stories, including the birth of the Sun-Bird, hatched from the World Egg. In some pagan stories heaven and earth were thought to have been formed from two halves of an egg.

Easter eggs evolved through the 18th and 19th centuries with hollow cardboard Easter eggs filled with Easter gifts and sumptuously decorated.

Decadent Faberge Eggs, made for the Czar's of Russia by Carl Faberge, were encrusted with jewels.

The first chocolate Easter eggs appeared in Germany and France in the early 1800s.

Dr Freeman said she suspected the combination of the imagery to create our modern Easter occurred some time in the 19th century.

http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12666249%255E3462,00.html
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Wildalaska

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2005, 06:58:41 PM »
Quote
So, WA, this is what Spiffy looks like?
never let him take his clothes off in front of me Smiley

WildoutcastAlaska
I'm just a condescending, supercilious,  pompous ass .But then again, my opinion is as irrelevant as yours, and keep in mind kids, it's only the internet! If I bug ya that much, ignore me. Anyway, need something? Call me at 800/992-4570.
?If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers?

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RevDisk

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2005, 09:11:37 PM »
Luke,

  From what I've researched, the rabbit has always been a symbol of fertility, ditto the egg.  All pagan holidays are based off their dates.  Yule is to give hope and happiness during harsh winter months.  Oestre's Fest or any other spring time holidays are always symbols of fertility and new life.   Beltaine has always been my favorite holiday, for obvious reasons.

  Even Samhain has fairly clear symbolic meaning.  The coming of winter, and of life in eclipse.  Harvesting and preparing for winter.

  Over time, the names change.  The general themes and meanings do not.


http://www.witchvox.com/xholidays.html


  Emperor Constantine borrowed much from pagan holidays when he laid out the Christian holidays.   Lay out a list of pagan season based holidays next to the list of Christian holidays.   Note the symbols and themes of each.  A good number of them have very similiar themes.

  http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/EastEurope/ConstantineConverts.CP.html
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Antibubba

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2005, 12:33:26 AM »
Oestre's festival?  Why are they celebrating my kitchen appliances?


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Preacherman

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2005, 02:29:53 AM »
Revdisk, have you heard Jethro Tull's musical tribute to Beltane?  It's an old recording, but was never released until very recently on a remix album.  If you haven't got it, let me know, and I'll see if I can e-mail an MP3 of it to you.  Fun!
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enfield

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #10 on: March 28, 2005, 05:30:31 AM »
Next month is Cuisinart -- mark your calendars.  Don't nobody even mention Festivus -- it's too early to start that thread again.
- enfield

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Cool Hand Luke 22:36

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #11 on: March 28, 2005, 05:56:09 AM »
Quote
Emperor Constantine borrowed much from pagan holidays when he laid out the Christian holidays.   Lay out a list of pagan season based holidays next to the list of Christian holidays.   Note the symbols and themes of each.  A good number of them have very similiar themes.
You see that in Central America with the former native holidays also.
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spacemanspiff

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #12 on: March 29, 2005, 06:31:00 PM »
gawwsh i didnt know so many of you were imagining me in this way.


i'm kind of flattered.
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RevDisk

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Happy Oestre's Festival everyone!
« Reply #13 on: March 30, 2005, 10:24:57 AM »
Quote from: Preacherman
Revdisk, have you heard Jethro Tull's musical tribute to Beltane?  It's an old recording, but was never released until very recently on a remix album.  If you haven't got it, let me know, and I'll see if I can e-mail an MP3 of it to you.  Fun!
Nope, never heard of it.  Sounds nifty.  Beltane isn't that far away either.
"Rev, your picture is in my King James Bible, where Paul talks about "inventors of evil."  Yes, I know you'll take that as a compliment."  - Fistful, possibly highest compliment I've ever received.