Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG)

Our religion is a living religion, our gods are living gods. Because of this it is our belief that the gods speak to people, that they are active in the lives of those who form relationships with them. They send us messages and signs, they respond to prayers, they visit us with dreams and visions; communication between us and them is in this way not a one way road. Yet we must temper this belief with the understanding that entities can and do misrepresent themselves and can and do lie. Because of this we cannot throw ourselves completely to the wind with whichever entity knocks on our door.

When discussing receiving divine inspiration it is important to first discuss the generally accepted vocabulary. You may already be somewhat familiar with some or all of these terms:

UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis)

SPG (Shared Personal Gnosis)

VPG (Verified Personal Gnosis)

It is important to discuss these terms by breaking them down. “Gnosis” is a term of Greek origin that indicates religious knowledge. There is unfortunately nothing inherent in this term that really implies it is knowledge recieved from gods or spirits. Gnosis could in this way be any knowledge, learned from any source, even a book or a teacher. This is a shortcoming in the modern terminology I will discuss in a moment. But when we apply the “personal” to the gnosis it is implying that the knowledge has direct personal links to you, the gnosis is your personal knowledge recieved by you.

The proper term for “personal gnosis” should technically be “epiphany”. An epiphany (another Greek term) originally was an insight gained from a divine source. This is somewhat different than the term for a vision of a god themselves which was called “theophany”. A theophany was a specialized type of epiphany in this way because while it is relatively accepted that all epiphanies are generally of divine origin they do not always concern the gods or show the gods. Instead the epiphany becomes a theophany when the diety involved in sending the epiphany manifests themselves in the epiphany. Most of the time these days when people use the term “UPG” they are really meaning epiphany or theophany.

The P in UPG is important. If you are watching a movie, if you are reading a book, if you are listening to someone else explain something and you decide it jives with you and you put it into your practice – it is not your UPG. You didn’t have the epiphany, someone else did, it is impersonal to you, it is not your UPG, it is someone else’s. You’re merely along for the ride because they convinced you to join into their UPG. UPG is more than just a feeling of “alright, that seems reasonable, yeah okay”, UPG is supposed to be your epiphany or theophany. If someone is telling you about something it doesn’t just become your UPG any more than you would become the inventor of the lightbulb upon learning about Thomas Edison’s invention.

It is both unfortunate and fortuitous that we have UPG as our go to term; it is unfortunate because proper terms like epiphany and theophany already existed but it is fortuitous because the U in UPG is a saving grace for the term. The U in UPG is Unverified. This means that inherent in the term is the need for verification. Verification occurs through one of two avenues – research into the pre-existing religious material to see if it is supported in the lore or through time when many others over generations have recieved the same or similar UPG which has been substantiated independently.

Shared Personal Gnosis (SPG) in an of itself is not substantiation. The shared aspect does not mean you tell someone about your UPG and they agree with it. It is not your UPG if someone else recieved the vision, it’s still their UPG no matter how much you jive with it. Instead, SPG occurs when two people in unrelated events have the same epiphany such that there are two people who recieved the same piece of knowledge independently from the gods. It is SPG between those people who shared the message of the epiphany because it is personal to them. This does not in and of itself substantiate the UPG but it does provide a route for it after a long time of many people independently corroborating the information over decades or longer.

Verified Personal Gnosis (VPG) is essentially when someone receives an epiphany which upon further research they find out is directly supported by something in the lore. At that point of verification the personal nature of the gnosis is valuable only to the person who recieved the epiphany and it become more communally valuable to share the lore source as well when discussing the epiphany. Alternately, as stated previously, when many others over generations have recieved the same or similar UPG which has been substantiated independently it can also become verified. But that is not a process which generally is instant gratification but would be an organic growth over generations of use.

I would then define these terms as:

UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis): knowledge of a religious nature that was recieved by you from a divine source such as an epiphany (general religious understanding recieved from a divine source) or a theophany (an epiphany in which a god manifested themselves).

SPG (Shared Personal Gnosis): UPG which has been recieved by you from the divine which you have also found to have been recieved by several other individuals independent of one another but which corroborate the given information.

VPG (Verified Personal Gnosis): UPG that has been recieved by you from the divine which you have been able to corroborate through sources in the lore (or far in the future, through generations of being SPG).

I would also point out that in some cases our UPG will be directly contradicted by the lore. This presents a personal quandary. Is the lore, which was the culmination of generations of people’s epiphanies, incorrect? Or are the forces behind that specific epiphany misleading us for their own purposes? The lore can have it’s flaws and is Christianized in some places which flavors the text; all of that must be weighed against the world view and how the epiphany fits into the totality. But I feel it would be folly to ignore the lore entirely because while it is not gospel it is our best glimpse into those ancient religious traditions which were substantiating lore for generations before they were written down. I have personally set aside some of my own UPG because it did not mesh with the lore or with ancient world view. In the end though, it is up to you if you choose to believe your UPG. You are under no obligation to believe your UPG or anyone else’s because deities can and do lie. You are under no obligation to believe or trust a god just because they come to you. In the case that your UPG is contradicted in the lore it remains UPG, because it remains unverified, but it is up to you if you choose to act upon it.

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Declaration of Deeds

(I am indulging myself in a thought experiment, I am imagining what I might write if I were to be a part of writing a philisophical statement to stand in as a replacement for Declaration 127. This is what I came up with.)

Declaration of Deeds

We heathens, pagans, followers of the old ways; we are more than the choices that brought us into being, we are more than our orlay. Instead, we are our deeds, we are the choices we make and not those chosen for us. In acknowledgement of this we declare the following points:

1. We endeavor to be better than our forebears. Their society was a product of it’s time and was often deeply flawed, but their religious belief in the gods we hold to be timeless. We endeavor to reconstruct their religion, not the flaws in their society.

2. Our religion gives no basis for discrimination based on race, the gods have nothing to say on the matter of race. We maintain that a person’s race does not impact their ability to participate in our religion or our group.

3. Our religion gives no basis for discrimination based on gender or sex; it has divine and powerful goddesses and gods. We maintain that a person’s gender or sex does not impact their ability to participate in our religion or group.

4. Our religion gives no basis for discrimination based on sexuality; the gods we worship do not always conform to one sexuality or another and still hold their positions and importance regardless of their sexuality. We maintain that a person’s sexuality does not impact their ability to participate in our religion or our group.

5. Deeds matter to our communities and to our gods, deeds are the foundations of our reputations. We maintain that the basis we are to be judged on is through our actions and our deeds and not merely through circumstances beyond our control.

We are charged in the Havamal to speak out against evil when we see evil; bigotry and discrimination based on the chances of our birth is just such an evil. We heathens, pagans, followers of the old ways; we join our voices in unison with this our Declaration of Deeds, that we may declare that the chances of our birth that are beyond our control have no bearing on our spiritual lives, but rather it is our actions and deeds that truly matter.

Let’s talk Declaration 127

Declaration 127 has become kind of a shorthand for inclusive heathenry. Heathen folks are essentially using it as a catch all for anything that would not be considered racist or sexist or whatever. That is a problem. From the perspective of acting like a contract, Declaration 127 is really incredibly weak. What you sign on to with Declaration 127 is a statement that says “We will not promote, associate, or do business with the AFA as an organization so long as they maintain these discriminatory policies.” These discriminatory policies being that they are unwelcoming of anyone not straight or white. I love the sentiment, however there are a lot more racists out there than just those in the AFA and the declaration only prevents one from doing business with or associating with the organization of the AFA. Only the AFA, and only as an organization.

It does not:

• Take a stand against associating with individual members of the AFA
• Take a stand against associating with racist or sexist or bigoted individuals
• Bar a person from dealing with or including bigots in their group
• Do anything besides prevent working for or with the AFA organization

So for all those heathens or orgs out there touting their signatory status on Declaration 127, I do not think it does what you think it does. Furthermore, it is not likely to ever do anything more than what it is currently written to do.

It is a product of it’s time, an artifact from that moment in time that the AFA was posting extremely bigoted material publicly. So this is coming to light in 2016 and continuing in 2017; through this we get Declaration 127 as a reaction. It’s original intent was to face off against the AFA, that is how it was written. It was not written to be a catch all because the only real actionable statements apply only to the AFA. It was a singular purposed document; it does this one thing for this one moment in time. It further has not evolved into something bigger or wider no matter how much people tout it; it merely sits there on its site as an artifact.

So herein lies the problem – the simple fact is that most heathens are ignorant of Declaration 127. They are not aware of its limitations, they are not aware of it’s actual content and purpose, they are not aware of it’s history, and so it has been stretched thin trying to cover more than it really was intended to cover. You would think heathens would be oath-aware considering the importance of oaths in our religious culture, you would think we would all be contract savvy because of oath-awareness, but no. We are not. The problem of this is in a group’s ability to make this actionable. Under Declaration 127 this is not actionable for what folks think it is supposed to do.

Since this has become an obvious communal need such that we stretch Declaration 127 far beyond its capabilities, we obviously need something new, we need something that actually can and will do what heathens have been assuming Declaration 127 was already doing but wasn’t. We need some kind of philosophical statement like a Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) but for heathenry. It needs not to be tied to being against any one organization and honestly considering how there is no enforcement organization to check up on things it needs to just be a statement of philosophy. So when groups sign on, they can be pledging that they hold with a set of philosophical minimums.

And yes, it needs to be set at a minimum bar – that those who signed on essentially would collectively pledge our groups and personal practices to be opposed to discrimination against others due to their race, gender, or sexuality. That is truly all that needs to be set at the moment too, a bare minimum against bigotry. So many times people set things at the highest level for idealistic reasons but for these purposes you want to include anyone who is not a sexist or racist or homophobe and not to exclude people who would otherwise support the non-racist non-sexist position. You essentially want to draw a line in the sand. Perfect is the enemy of good, we cannot allow perfection to prevent us from coming together to face off against these issues. But so too is specificity an enemy in this case; it was the specificity of Declaration 127 that effectively neuters it. We need something though, because we cannot keep just trusting that we’re covered by Declaration 127 when we’re really not.

We also need to collectively understand something about inclusion and inclusivity that many understand but some people still struggle to wrap their minds around – that just because we take a stand against bigotry in our religious groups it doesn’t mean we necessarily must throw wide the doors of our religious groups to anyone for any reason. Not everyone is well suited for every group, not every group is well suited for every person. Taking a stand against discrimination based on things people cannot control (race, gender, sexuality, etc.) does not mean you cannot close your group off from negative things people can control (racism, bad attitude, toxic personality, dangerous behaviors, etc.). You don’t want liars in your group, you don’t want unapologetic assholery in your group, you don’t want frithless folk. The choices we make, our deeds, and the people we choose to be are what we should be judged on, not who we are born as. You want religion to be enjoyable, you should not hate the people you’re standing in worship with.

(If you would like to check out the wording for yourself, pay close attention to the actionable parts underlined: Declaration 127.)

This is my attempt at a philosophical statement on these matters: Declaration of Deeds.

⌘ This is a Valknut

⌘ This is a Valknut.

This one, not as much.

The thing we’ve come to associate fondly with as a “Valknut” is a symbol we do not fully understand the name or the meaning of. What does this mean? It means that as with oh so many other aspects of things we “know” and love, the earliest forces of modern heathenry fed us all a hefty dose of misinformation which we readily gobbled up and internalized to the extent that people were and are out there warning others not to get the “Valknut” symbol tattooed onto their bodies or they may suffer the fate of being chosen by Odin.

Case in point:

[1]
What a load of hogwash. It has zero bearing in fact when we reexamine the evidence we have available.

This symbol, dubbed the “Valknut” modernly, is unnamed on any historical source in which it is pictured and its name passed from folk reckoning. It does not appear in any lore source by that name at all. This seems odd, so why did we start calling it a “valknut” then? Basically, people modernly named it that giving it the air of accuracy and authenticity by it being in Old Norse. I tried, I really tried to figure out who incorrectly applied the term for the symbol and that information was not forthcoming; I’m sure it exists somewhere but I do not know who erroneously applied that term or when. However, there already existed a symbol by that name and it is most certainly not triangular. The looped square (⌘) is known as the valknute in Norway, it is a Valknut. That ⌘ has a history of ancient heathen use as well and if its name is a survival you’d find the etymology would be interesting and everything people want the “Valknut” to be. However, if ⌘ is a Valknut, what should the “Valknut” properly be called?

It’s in a family of symbols we refer to as triquetras (as seen above), but that is most certainly not what it would have been called for the ancient heathens. Instead, the most likely name for it would be Hrungnir’s heart. This name is derived from Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál in which he wrote:

“Hrungnir átti hjarta þat, er frægt er, af hörðum steini ok tindótt með þrimr hornum, svá sem síðan er gert ristubragð þar, er Hrungnishjarta heitir.”[2]

Here in the 1916 Brodeur Translation:

“Hrungnir had the heart which is notorious, of hard stone and spiked with three corners, even as the written character is since formed, which men call Hrungnir’s Heart.” (Skáldskaparmál, Prose Edda)[3]

This is our only source for this, and even it is unspecific, because of that it is not a definitive answer as to the name of this symbol. However, no other source exists to even hint at the name of the symbol. The name “Valknut” was applied to the symbol modernly and any connections to that name through etymology or philology would not apply because that is not the proper ancient name. Those etymologies would instead probably apply to the ⌘.

The whole Stora Hammars I stone can be seen here.

If it’s not a Valknut, is it at least connected to Odin? No, not *definitively*. It appears on various carved stones and none definitively show Odin with the symbol. On Storra’s Stone I there is a hanged(? this one is somewhat dubious) man and a raven(? it could be a raven) and perhaps a human sacrifice(? I don’t know what is going on here but it looks like some dude is being shoved into a photo copier) as well as a man with a spear and the symbol appears above.

The whole Tängelgårda stone can be seen here.

Yet in the Tängelgårda stone an eight legged horse sleipnir(? because what other horse has eight legs) is pictured in one area without any of the symbol and elsewhere a man on a four legged horse is pictured with several of them. There was clear opportunity to put the triangular symbol with Sleipnir but it was not done, there was clear knowledge of the symbol because it was pictured elsewhere on the same stone. This to me signifies that it is probably not strictly a symbol of Odin but instead something else entirely. To me, the burden of showing it as a symbol of Odin has not been met. If it isn’t entirely a symbol of Odin and if it isn’t a “Valknut”, well what is it?

Is the “Valknut” a symbol of death? I am not convinced it is a death symbol. This goes back at least to H.R. Ellis Davisdon who associated the “Valknut” to Woden through some cremation urns found in East Anglia.[4] However, Davisdon does not reproduce drawings of the particular urn or urns she was referencing and they have alluded me in my searches for them. I have seen Spong Hill urns with Horses and what looks like wolves on them, but none with the “Valknut”. I have been trying to find pictures of these specific urns. You would think you could search for the urn you wanted to see by symbol, but no. I have seen lots, LOTS of urns with swastikas on them. But here is the problem – even if there are urns covered in “Valknuts”, just because someone stamps it on an urn does not make whatever it is stamped there a symbol of death. So even if these “Valknut” urns do show the “Valknut” we know and not just some other triquetra it does not make it a death symbol. I will keep looking for them all the same though.

The simple answer is that we just do not know what this symbol means. It’s definitely not a “Valknut” though, not a “knot of the slain”, that is what we can know for certain. Too many mental connections have been made to the false etymology though and due to this it will be hard to shake. It is also probably not strictly a symbol of Odin either, but either way it isn’t provable. It could be a death symbol, but could just as easily not be one. It might have been called Hrungnir’s heart at least some of the time; but even that isn’t completely certain despite being our best bet from the lore. What is certain is that you need not fear the symbol. From everything we do know about it, we can say that there is no evidence that it is some kind of Odin beacon drawing his attention. What is far more likely to be an Odin beacon is worrying overly much about Odin beacons.

Furthermore, we as a whole should become more aware of passing on information we cannot trace back to a source. UPG is fine and dandy for you when it is your UPG. But we’re coming up against things not based in the lore that have been passed around as unquestionable truth for nearing two decades now which we cannot trace back to a source. Many of these things may have been UPG, but when they lost that personal connection and were passed off as gospel they lost all real value. The problem is that people have had this “Valknut” idea beat over their heads from day one continuing for decades and it is baseless. We need to get away from that and we need to reevaluate these things more instead of just accepting that they’re true just because so-and-so told so-and-so from a twenty year old source.

[1] http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/tattoos.html (This image shows an all too common idea we need to reexamine).

[2] Snorre Sturlason, Snorres Edda, accessed on Völuspá.org September 3, 2019, http://www.voluspa.org/skaldskaparmal21-30.htm

[3] Snorri Sturlson, The Prose Edda, Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (New York, NY: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916), accessed September 3, 2019, https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre05.htm

[4] H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1981), 147.

Against Monism and Omnipotence

So there is this concept in Neo-Platonic thought called Monism. In a nutshell, this guy Plotinus had this concept of “the One” which was like an everything god or more properly THE everything god. In a sense it is like the softest of soft polytheism, so soft that all the gods and really everything everywhere gets boiled down to the One. This is really at issue in some polytheist philosophy today in that there is a disagreement on the nature of omnipotence because Monism would have an omnipotent force because it is all of everything and therefore omnipotent. I am here to give an argument against Monism and thereby once more against omnipotence.

I would contend that Monism is inconsistent with something that appears to be evident through experience, namely, that there is a plurality of things. I see rocks and not all rocks are the same and certainly trees are not rocks and people are not trees. There is a plurality of things that are observable. We shall assume that a plurality of material things exists, and so barring radical skepticism about both perception and observation, there seems to be strong observable evidence for existence pluralism.

It is obvious through perception and observation that there is a plurality of concrete objects. It is intuitively obvious that since there is a plurality of concrete objects, then there is good evidence based reasoning to believe that there is a plurality of insubstantial objects. Let me be clear in this, if I ask you to imagine the idea of a chair that idea would be different from the idea of a frog and the idea of the frog from the idea of a cup. Even though I have asked you to imagine these things and they did not exist in the concrete world but instead were the mere idea of these things, your mind reached out and grasped the idea of these things in a way that shows that there is a plurality of insubstantial objects as well. So even in the insubstantial realm we can see that we can observe evidence of a plurality of insubstantial objects.

Even in science there is a plurality of things. The element Hydrogen is not the element Selenium is not the element Tungsten. They behave entirely different. If we go further and say they are built of the same things, we can know quite well that the proton is not the same as the neutron is not the same as the electron. And even further our scientific knowledge tells us that dark matter exists and it is fundamentally different from matter. These things differ, even in the scientific world there is a great plurality of things.

If we see such overwhelming evidence of the plurality of things in both the concrete and insubstantial realms of observation, how can we argue for the one-ness of everything? Monism is thereby contradicted by and should be found to be completely and totally inconsistent with observation and with perception.

To tackle it from another direction, let me bring up Plato himself. Plato held the idea of the existence of a multi-part soul, itself not unique to Plato but being an offshoot of a general belief in the multiplicity of the soul. However Socrates in Plato’s Republic Book IV rationalized it and provided the logic for proving a multi-part soul could and should exist. The rationale was essentially that if something is at one with itself it is not in conflict and that if conflict does indeed exist in the thing it is indeed not one thing. This goes into the law of non-contradiction.

In a sense, a person can be in conflict with themselves and that provides the rationale for the soul being multi-part, because if it were not multi-part then we would be of one nature and could not be in conflict with ourselves.

Furthermore, on divinity we utilize the stories about divinity as well as our own experiences of divinity to shed light on the nature of the gods. In even this we see conflict, and where there is conflict there is not one thing but many because to be one would mean to be in a state where conflict did not exist. Furthermore, seeing as how divinity presents itself as multitudinous, why would we consider it otherwise? That seems to me to be hubris – that we in this way think so highly of ourselves we think we know better than the gods. If a divine entity is throughout time appearing as an individual in and of themselves, who are we to argue with that entity’s expression of self?

There is conflict within the universe around us, it is readily visible and observable; how does monism overcome this most basic thing? Monism would need to completely disregard the extremely apparent conflict in the nature of the observable universe and indeed the conflicting nature of all things in order to rationalize that away into one-ness. I am sure that someone will try, but if to hold a philosophy one must contort the very nature of the universe and everything inside of it to do so then it is an unnatural thing twisted and contrived and not one inspired by observation and perception.

The Bifröst – Rainbow Bridge of the Gods… or is it?

So the other day I was thinking about the colors of the rainbow when something I had read in the Prose Edda came back into the back of my mind and began to nag and eat at me. The Prose Edda says that the Bifröst has three colors. Three colors. Three. That just did not compute for a hot minute. I sat there stumped thinking about how a rainbow on even a meagre day has more colors than that. So I decided to look it up and see what else I may have glazed over. As it turns out there are actually a few potential hiccups with our interpretations of the Bifröst, especially in how the texts we have described the thing itself. (Check out the rest of the Bifröst source material at the end of this post if you want more than I post to read here.)

 

The best description for the Bifröst comes from the Prose Edda and reads:

English, Brodeur Translation (1916):
“Then said Gangleri: ‘What is the way to heaven from earth?’
Then Hárr answered, and laughed aloud: ‘Now, that is not wisely asked; has it not been told thee, that the gods made a bridge from earth, to heaven, called Bifröst? Thou must have seen it; it may be that ye call it rainbow. It is of three colors, and very strong, and made with cunning and with more magic art than other works of craftsmanship. But strong as it is, yet must it be broken, when the sons of Múspell shall go forth harrying and ride it, and swim their horses over great rivers; thus they shall proceed.’
Then said Gangleri: ‘To my thinking the gods did not build the bridge honestly, seeing that it could be broken, and they able to make it as they would.’
Then Hárr replied: ‘The gods are not deserving of reproof because of this work of skill: a good bridge is Bifröst, but nothing in this world is of such nature that it may be relied on when the sons of Múspell go a-harrying.’”[1] Gylfaginning XIII

Old Norse:
Þá mælti Gangleri: “Hver er leið til himins af jörðu?”
Þá svarar Hárr ok hló við: “Eigi er nú fróðliga spurt. Er þér eigi sagt þat, er goðin gerðu brú af jörðu til himins, er heitir Bifröst? Hana muntu sét hafa. Kann vera, at þat kallir þú regnboga. Hon er með þrimr litum ok mjök sterk ok ger með list ok kunnáttu meiri en aðrar smíðir. En svá sterk sem hon er, þá mun hon brotna, þá er Múspellsmegir fara ok ríða hana, ok svima hestar þeira yfir stórar ár. Svá koma þeir fram.”
Þá mælti Gangleri: “Eigi þótti mér goðin gera af trúnaði brúna, ef hon skal brotna mega, er þau megu þó gera sem þau vilja.”
Þá mælti Hárr: “Eigi eru goðin hallmælis verð af þessi smíð. Góð brú er Bifröst, en enginn hlutr er sá í þessum heimi er sér megi treystast, þá er Múspellssynir herja.”[2]

 

English, Brodeur Translation (1916):
“Then said Gangleri: ‘Does fire burn over Bifröst?’
Hárr replied: ‘That which thou seest to be red in the bow is burning fire; the Hill-Giants might go up to heaven, if passage on Bifröst were open to all those who would cross. There are many fair places in heaven, and over everything there a godlike watch is kept. …’”[3] Gylfaginning XV

Old Norse
Þá mælti Gangleri: “Brenn eldr yfir Bifröst?”
Hárr segir: “Þat, er þú sér rautt í boganum, er eldr brennandi. Upp á himin mundu ganga hrímþursar ok bergrisar, ef öllum væri fært á Bifröst, þeim er fara vilja. Margir staðir eru á himni fagrir, ok er þar allt guðlig vörn fyrir. …”[4]

 

From this we can gather that the Bifröst is *perhaps* called a rainbow, has three colors, and is covered in a visible burning fire.

 

We find mention in both Prose Edda and Poetic Edda the quality of the Bifröst burning or being covered in visible fire (Þat, er þú sér rautt í boganum, er eldr brennandi). Sure they say it was perhaps called rainbow (kann vera, at þat kallir þú regnboga), but they never said that for certain merely that it could be (kann vera). It also said it had three colors (Hon er með þrimr litum). These things simply do not jive with each other if it is a rainbow. But perhaps we’re thinking about it in the wrong way, perhaps our entire interpretation of the Biföst is some kind of mild misunderstanding. Now let me spin you a tale.

 

What if the Bifröst is not a rainbow at all as we know it but is instead the Aurora Borealis? The Aurora Borealis is unlike the rainbow in many ways but is like the rainbow in others. It is multi-colored like a rainbow and can technically be seen in several colors, but it really only usually comes in three (or four) main colors – red, green (sometimes blue in there), and like a pinky violet.[5] And this apparently has to do with what elements the solar wind is affecting and at what height in the atmosphere.[6] I am not a physicist so I’m relying on others here and my sources being from student website projects done at the University of Fairbanks Alaska (because they were concise and had understandable graphics that help). So it is not a precisely perfect color match entirely to fit *perfectly* in the three; but because it is less frequent to see and it is variable it is then also far more likely that they could register and justify three colors typical for the Aurora than they could three colors for a rainbow.

[7]
This image shows that the greatest possibility is within the green spectrum but that technically a fourth color of blue is possible but is still within the mostly green spectrum.

 

[8]
This image shows a comparison between the ordinary rainbow which is represented by the spectrum of light and also the spectrum of light possible in the Aurora which greatly reduces the number of colors you can see in relation to the rainbow.

 

The other quality and one that is mentioned far more often is the burning nature of the Biföst. Nobody to my knowledge has ever mistaken a rainbow for burning. But that is precisely what has happened time and time again through history with the Aurora Borealis.

One notable example comes from Seneca who was discussing the various phenomena visible in the sky when he began talking about the Aurora Borealis –

“Among these should certainly be placed a phenomenon of which we often read in the chronicles – the heavens appeared to be on fire. The blaze of it is occasionally so high as to mount to the very stars; occasionally it is so low as to present the appearance of a distant fire. In the reign of Tiberius Caesar the fire brigade hurried off to the colony at Ostia supposing it to be in flames; during the greater part of the night there had been a dull glow in the sky, which appeared to proceed from a thick smoky fire. No one has any doubt that these burnings in the heavens contain flame as really as they display it; they have a certain substance in them.”[9]

Now here we have a Roman talking about the Aurora Borealis and speaking of it that it truly contained flames as it appeared so full of them. Yet in the next paragraph section he wonders about the illusory nature of the rainbow because it appeared to be some kind of illusion or phantasm or apparition and did not seem substantial.[10] This can show that to the ancient world there is a big difference in the realness of these two astronomical events, the Aurora Borealis is something that is so real looking and so flame like that it warrants mustering the fire brigade while one wonders if the rainbow is just a trick and illusion. This is further not the only occurrence of the flame-like quality of the Aurora Borealis, history and folklore of people the whole world wide who have remarked on the flaming nature of the Aurora.

 

The next thing to consider is that the Norse peoples would have been far enough north to see the Aurora in ways that more southern folks would not have been able to see. This works two ways, making it probably somewhat more likely for it to work its way into their myths and conversely making it harder for southern-minded people to recognize it when the northern-minded people wrote about it.

 

To recap, there are three descriptions for the Bifröst written about in the Eddas: that the Bifröst is perhaps called a rainbow, that it has three colors, and that it is covered in a visible burning fire. All three of these are well suited to describing the Aurora, however only one of these is useful in describing an actual rainbow. But the most telling aspect may be in the name itself, Bifröst. Let’s discuss etymology.

 

We can learn from the etymology which for Bifrǫst seems to be either from bifa (“shake, tremble”) or in the case of the variant Bilrǫst would be from bil (“moment”).[11] Neither of these is incredibly conducive for describing a rainbow but do fit fairly well with the Aurora which moves and shimmers and shakes in ways that the rainbow never has and never will and is furthermore far less predictable and far more in the moment than a rainbow. The “-rǫst” is somewhat more puzzling and I propose more important because it is related to “rest”.[12] The word Bifrǫst seems odd to use “-rǫst”, rest, when it could have used “-brú”, which would have been applicable seeing as how it means bridge, a word they were well accustomed to using even when describing supernatural bridges; unless the “rest” aspect is in fact very important.[13] I propose that it is precisely this that gives us the last clue that the Bifröst is indeed the Aurora Borealis – “-rǫst” being rest indicates evidence that it took place at night when people were intended to be resting.

 

Being a person living in the south and never having seen the Aurora, I would like to think that the Bifröst would be the rainbow for selfish reasons that I would get to see it. However, I can no longer personally support that conclusion because everything in the evidence is screaming at me that the Bifröst is actually the Aurora Borealis. It typically has the proper number of colors, it appears as if on fire and indeed was historically mistaken for fire, it is rainbow-like, it shimmers and shakes, and perhaps most importantly it appears when people are resting – hence the “-rǫst”. Given these things, it is most probable that the Bifröst is best understood as the Aurora Borealis.

 

 

 

 

Sources for the Bifröst:

 

Fáfnismál – Poetic Edda

Sigurth spake:
14. “Tell me then, Fafnir, | for wise thou art famed,
And much thou knowest now:
How call they the isle | where all the gods
And Surt shall sword-sweat mingle?”

Fafnir spake:
15. “Oskopnir is it, | where all the gods
Shall seek the play of swords;
Bilrost breaks | when they cross the bridge,
And the steeds shall swim in the flood.[14]

 

Grímnismál – Poetic Edda

29. Kormt and Ormt | and the Kerlaugs twain
    Shall Thor each day wade through,
    (When dooms to give | he forth shall go
    To the ash-tree Yggdrasil;)
    For heaven’s bridge | burns all in flame,
    And the sacred waters seethe.

…

44. The best of trees | must Yggdrasil be,
    Skithblathnir best of boats;
    Of all the gods | is Othin the greatest,
    And Sleipnir the best of steeds;
    Bifrost of bridges, | Bragi of skalds,
    Hobrok of hawks, | and Garm of hounds.[15]

 

Gylfaginning – Prose Edda

XIII. Then said Gangleri: “What is the way to heaven from earth?” Then Hárr answered, and laughed aloud: “Now, that is not wisely asked; has it not been told thee, that the gods made a bridge from earth, to heaven, called Bifröst? Thou must have seen it; it may be that ye call it rainbow.’ It is of three colors, and very strong, and made with cunning and with more magic art than other works of craftsmanship. But strong as it is, yet must it be broken, when the sons of Múspell shall go forth harrying and ride it, and swim their horses over great rivers; thus they shall proceed.” Then said Gangleri: “To my thinking the gods did not build the bridge honestly, seeing that it could be broken, and they able to make it as they would.” Then Hárr replied: “The gods are not deserving of reproof because of this work of skill: a good bridge is Bifröst, but nothing in this world is of such nature that it may be relied on when the sons of Múspell go a-harrying.”

 

XV … Each day the Æsir ride thither up over Bifröst, which is also called the Æsir’s Bridge. These are the names of the Æsir’s steeds: Sleipnir [The Slipper] is best, which Odin has; he has eight feet. The second is Gladr [Bright or Glad], the third Gyllir [Golden], the fourth Glenr [The Starer], the fifth Skeidbrimir [Fleet Courser], the sixth Silfrintoppr [Silver-top], the seventh Sinir [ Sinewy], the eighth Gisl [ Beam, Ray], the ninth Falhófnir [ Hairy-hoof], the tenth. Gulltoppr [ Gold-top], the eleventh Léttfeti [ Light-stepper]. Baldr’s horse was burnt with him; and Thor walks to the judgment, and wades those rivers which are called thus:

 

Körmt and Örmt | and the Kerlaugs twain,
Them shall Thor wade
Every day | when he goes to doom
At Ash Yggdrasill;
For the Æsir’s Bridge | burns all with flame,
And the holy waters howl.”

Then said Gangleri: “Does fire burn over Bifröst?” Hárr replied: “That which thou seest to be red in the bow is burning fire; the Hill-Giants might go up to heaven, if passage on Bifröst were open to all those who would cross. There are many fair places in heaven, and over everything there a godlike watch is kept…”

 

XVII. Then said Gangleri: “Thou knowest many tidings to tell of the heaven. What chief abodes are there more than at Urdr’s Well?” Hárr said: “Many places are there, and glorious. That which is called Álfheimr is one, where dwell the peoples called Light-Elves; but the Dark-Elves dwell down in the earth, and they are unlike in appearance, but by far more unlike in nature. The Light-Elves are fairer to look upon than the sun, but the Dark-Elves are blacker than pitch. Then there is also in that place the abode called Breidablik, and there is not in heaven a fairer dwelling. There, too, is the one called Glitnir, whose walls, and all its posts and pillars, are of red gold, but its roof of silver. There is also the abode called Himinbjörg; it stands at heaven’s end by the bridge-head, in the place where Bifröst joins heaven. Another great abode is there, which is named Valaskjálf; Odin possesses that dwelling; the gods made it and thatched it with sheer silver, and in this hall is the Hlidskjálf, the high-seat so called. Whenever Allfather sits in that seat, he surveys all lands.

 

XXVII. “Heimdallr is the name of one: he is called the White God. He is great and holy; nine maids, all sisters, bore him for a son. He is also called Hallinskídi and Gullintanni; his teeth were of gold, and his horse is called Gold-top. He dwells in the place called Himinbjörg, hard by Bifröst: he is the warder of the gods, and sits there by heaven’s end to guard the bridge from the Hill-Giants. He needs less sleep than a bird; he sees equally well night and day a hundred leagues from him, and hears how grass grows on the earth or wool on sheep, and everything that has a louder sound. He has that trumpet which is called Gjallar-Horn, and its blast is heard throughout all worlds. Heimdallr’s sword is called Head. It is said further:

Himinbjörg ‘t is called, | where Heimdallr, they say,
Aye has his housing;
There the gods’ sentinel | drinks in his snug hall
Gladly good mead.
And furthermore, he himself says in Heimdalar-galdr:
I am of nine | mothers the offspring,
Of sisters nine | am I the son.

 

1. … In this din shall the heaven be cloven, and the Sons of Múspell ride thence: Surtr shall ride first, and both before him and after him burning fire; his sword is exceeding good: from it radiance shines brighter than from the sun; when they ride over Bifröst, then the bridge shall break, as has been told before.[16]

[1] Snorri Sturlson, The Prose Edda, Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (New York, NY: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916), accessed August 15, 2019, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm (I have formatted the structure of the paragraph to better match the Old Norse but have not altered the text.)

[2] Snorre Sturlason, Snorres Edda, accessed on Völuspá.org August 15, 2019, http://www.voluspa.org/gylfaginning11-20.htm

[3] Snorri Sturlson, The Prose Edda, Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (New York, NY: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916), accessed August 15, 2019, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm  (I have formatted the structure of the paragraph to better match the Old Norse but have not altered the text.)

[4] Snorre Sturlason, Snorres Edda, accessed on Völuspá.org August 15, 2019, http://www.voluspa.org/gylfaginning11-20.htm

[5] Christina Shaw, “Why are there Colors in the Aurora?”, University of Alaska Fairbanks, accessed August 15, 2019, http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211.fall2000.web.projects/Christina%20Shaw/AuroraColors.html

[6] Christina Shaw, “Why are there Colors in the Aurora?”, University of Alaska Fairbanks, accessed August 15, 2019, http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211.fall2000.web.projects/Christina%20Shaw/AuroraColors.html

[7] Christina Shaw, “Why are there Colors in the Aurora?”, University of Alaska Fairbanks, accessed August 15, 2019, http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211.fall2000.web.projects/Christina%20Shaw/AuroraColors.html

[8] Alex Slaymaker, “Welcome to Colors”, University of Alaska Fairbanks, accessed August 15, 2019, http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/webproj/212_spring_2014/Alex_Slaymaker/Alex_Slaymaker/Colors.html

[9] Seneca, Physical Science in the Time of Nero: Being a Translation of the Quaestiones Naturales of Seneca, translated by John Clarke (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1910), 40-41. Accessed August 15, 2019, https://archive.org/stream/physicalsciencei00seneiala#page/40/mode/2up

[10] Seneca, Physical Science in the Time of Nero: Being a Translation of the Quaestiones Naturales of Seneca, translated by John Clarke (London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1910), 41. Accessed August 15, 2019, https://archive.org/stream/physicalsciencei00seneiala#page/40/mode/2up

[11] “Bifrǫst”, Wiktionary, accessed August 15, 2019,  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bifr%C7%ABst#Old_Norse (Bifröst is my usual spelling but my source here uses the more accurate Bifrǫst)

[12] “Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/rastō”, Wiktionary, accessed August 15, 2019,  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/rast%C5%8D

[13] “brú”, Wiktionary, accessed August 15, 2019, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/br%C3%BA#Old_Norse

[14] Henry Adams Bellows, trans., The Poetic Edda (New York, NY: Princeton University Press, 1936), “Fafnismol”, accessed August 15, 2019,  http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe24.htm

[15] Henry Adams Bellows, trans., The Poetic Edda (New York, NY: Princeton University Press, 1936), “Grimnismol”, accessed August 15, 2019,  http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe06.htm

[16] Snorri Sturlson, The Prose Edda, Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (New York, NY: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916), accessed August 15, 2019, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm (I added the translations for the horse names from the footnotes but did not bother with the other name translations in other verses. I like horses.)

Eostre & Ostara, We Need to Have a Talk

So here is the deal, we need to talk about Eostre. Every single year it would seem we run the gamut of people not only being woefully ill-informed and spreading misinformation but also people debunking misinformation. But the problem with this is that you also have overzealous debunkers who throw the good out with the bad. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to try to break out my sources to debunk someone else who is trying to debunk something about Eostre. And you know what? If those people are incorrect they are even more likely to cleave to their misinformation than those they are trying to debunk. Here is the thing, I’m a college educated historian, I study history. I can be swayed if the sources are compelling enough; I have altered my opinion many times as new information comes to light. Furthermore, I have come across lay historians who have no degree at all who are as well informed in their preferred subject or more so than I am. It is not a degree that matters in history; it is adherence to the historical method. But if you are trying to have a historical argument and the primary sources are staring you in the face and contradicting everything you are arguing then you’re not really having an academic argument and you should not keep that pretense. Heathenry is full of contrarians fueled by their own self-righteousness claiming they are academics yet many are ignorant of the sources or fully willing to ignore sources entirely. Reading Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology doesn’t make you an expert or an academic. This is not only an Eostre issue, it is a wider issue in heathenry, but today I am talking about Eostre.

The main source for Eostre comes from the Venerable Bede, in particular his book De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time). In this book he goes into a brief aside about the English months and how they were named.

 

The Latin source regarding Eostre reads:

“Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretetur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant, nomen habuit, a cuius nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant; consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae solemnitatis vocantes.”[1]

 

The Faith Wallis translation reads:

“Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs names Eostre, in whose honour 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-honoured name of the old observance.”[2]

 

The primary source telling us about the names of the months of his time period and their origins, Bede, has informed us that the month was named after a goddess who was celebrated by feasts in the same general season as Paschal. Some people argue that Bede is lying and that no such goddess existed. First off, Bede has no reason to lie about this because it was not ordinary for clerics to invent new gods but was however common to find them arguing against ancient gods that they knew about from earlier times. Basically, he has no reason to lie about so small a detail. Furthermore, he is generally a very reliable source of information when he is relaying information from his own time period. Bede is not a bullshitter; if he wrote it in this capacity then it is very fair to say that he genuinely believed it was true. Also since he was writing about things within his own area of the world he was better equipped to know about this material than most anyone else. We can then conclude that the evidence we have is indeed pointing toward the existence of belief in a goddess named Eostre.

So who was Eostre?

This is where the record gets a little bit murkier. There is no Anglo-Saxon source for understanding what Eostre is associated with or how she acts as a goddess. But then again it is an Indo-European religion and there is a considerable overlap between Indo-European religions; religion must have developed before the tribes broke apart and migrated considering the overlap. The religions of each culture developed with their own flair but in many cases a core kernel of continuity can be discovered and many times there are linguistic or mythological links between the cultures. Essentially, it is accepted practice to examine Indo-European religions for similarities because those similarities can help inform on the other religions.

 

In this vein of thinking, if we examine Eostre we can see that she is not the isolated unknown and unknowable goddess that some try to make her out to be. Eostre is linguistically related to several goddesses through the PIE root word *h_aéusōs: Eos (Greek), Aurora (Roman), Aušrinė (Lithuanian), Auseklis (Latvian), Ushas (Vedic).[3] Each of these goddesses is linked both to dawn and the east in this linguistic way, which makes sense given the location of dawn in the east.

 

I will provide a more full and actionable reconstruction of Eostre through these goddesses as a lens soon.

 

Now you know I feel conflicted about Jacob Grimm. On the one hand his book is incredibly old and full of too many leaps than a historian should make and stay within the boundaries of the evidence. On the other hand, Grimm also says many things most historians think in the subject but would never say because to do so would be to step beyond the evidence. Grimm is also biased. Grimm is a nationalist and wanted to condense and boil things down into a Germanic mythology. But Grimm was also pretty damn good at historical linguistics. Grimm, being German-centered, goes straight to Ostara. Now I can hear your alarm bells going off – *warning*Ostara alert *warning*. But really, we have to examine in ourselves why we react this way to Ostara. Let’s examine what Grimm actually has to say on the subject and then we will examine his sources and thought process.

 

“We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ôstarmânoth is found as early as Eginhart (temp. Car. Mag.). The great christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears the oldest of OHG. remains the name ôstarâ gen. –ûn; it is mostly found in the plural, because two days (ôstertagâ, aostortagâ, Diut. 1, 266^a) were kept at Easter. This Ostarâ, like the AS. Eástre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries. All the nations bordering on is have retained the Biblical ‘pascha’, even Ulphilas writes paska, not áustrô, though he must have known the word; the Norse tongue also has imported its pâskir, Swed. påsk, Dan. paaske. The OHG. adv. ôstar expresses movement toward the rising sun (Gramm. 3, 205), likewise the ON. auster, and probably an AS. eástor and Goth. áustr. In Latin the identical auster has been pushed round to the noonday quarter, the South. In the Edda a male being, a spirit of light, bears the name of Austri, so a female one might have been Austra; the High German and Saxon tribes seem on the contrary to have formed only an Ostarâ, Eástre (fem.) not Ostaro, Eástra (masc). And that may be the reason why the Norsemen said pâskir and not austrur: they had never worshipped a goddess Austra, or her cultus was already extinct.

Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted to the resurrection-day of the christian’s God. Bonfires were lighted at Easter, and according to a popular belief of long standing, the moment of the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps, he dances for joy (Superst. 813). Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing (Superst. 775, 804); here also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on christian festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess (see Suppl.).”[4]

 

Obviously he is incorrect on a number of his ideas like the thought of male counterparts and trying to shoehorn the Norse into having an Eostre goddess. I cringe a bit in reading them. But Grimm is not trying to tell you the gods-honest-truth here; he is trying to spitball ideas. Furthermore, his goal is to find some overarching Germanic mythology and to stop short of at least trying to spitball the idea would not have fulfilled his biases. But just because his work is biased and flawed does not make it useless. I read here in this section more truth than falsehood on the whole, but only if you are able to distinguish the two. The key to this section though is that he sees a link between Eostre and various other PIE dawn goddesses, and in this he is almost certainly correct. He further links Eostre to Ostara, and rightfully so. And that is a link all too often ignored because of many heathens having overriding bias against anything perceived as being too touched by Wicca or something else similar. Here is the thing though; Ostara is not the “fluffy” and baseless thing many of you have been led to believe.

 

A brief history of Ostara:

Ostara is first mentioned in Eginhard’s Vita Karoli Magni (the Life of Charlemagne):

 

Latin:

“Mensibus etiam iuxta propriam linguam vocabula inposuit, cum ante id temporis apud Francos partim Latinis, partim barbaris nominibus pronuntiarentur. Item ventos duodecim propriis appellationibus insignivit, cum prius non amplius quam vix quattuor ventorum vocabula possent inveniri. Et de mensibus quidem Ianuarium uuintarmanoth, Februarium hornung, Martium lenzinmanoth, Aprilem ostarmanoth, Maium uuinnemanoth, Iunium brachmanoth, Iulium heuuimanoth, Augustum aranmanoth, Septembrem uuitumanoth, Octobrem uuindumemanoth, Novembrem herbistmanoth, Decembrem heilagmanoth appellavit.”[5]

 

English translation:

“He gave the months names in his own tongue, for before his time they were called by the Franks partly by Latin and partly by barbarous names. He also gave names to the twelve winds, whereas before not more than four, and perhaps not so many, had names of their own. Of the months, he called January Winter-month (Wintarmanoth), February Mud-month (Hornung), March Spring-month (Lentzinmanoth), April Easter-month (Ostarmanoth), May Joy-month (Winnemanoth), June Plough-month (Brachmanoth), July Hay-month (Hewimanoth), August Harvest-month (Aranmanoth), September Wind-month (Witumanoth), October Vintage-month (Windumemanoth), November Autumn-month (Herbistmanoth), December Holy-month (Heiligmanoth).”[6]

 

Of course there is a lot to work with in this list for calendar reconstruction shenanigans but of interest in this capacity currently is Ostarmanoth. I have never seen a sufficiently compelling argument for how Ostarmanoth existed without there being a native festival on the continent when it is fairly obvious that the naming convention persisted in the continental Germanic world until the time of Grimm when he noted the naming convention was still in use. I once read, though I cannot remember where, a theory thrown up by historians that Ostarmanoth was an English export and that British monks popularized it based on their own Eosturmonath. There are many theories but ultimately they are lacking evidence, especially when what we do have argues against what they are saying. We should, as historians, be led by the sources whenever possible and not try to shape them to our biases and desires. Those historians who try to brush this under the rug are completely avoiding and obfuscating the truth of the matter, Eosturmonath has no plausible path to influencing Ostarmanoth. There is this big and gaping hole in the matter. If Eostre existed in England and had an Anglo-Saxon festival and a month and these were named after the goddess Eostre, and indeed these are so given the sources already presented as evidence, then the Anglo-Saxons as Germanic migrants to England would have originated on the Continent and the cult would have had some continental precedent prior to migration. These people did not typically just spontaneously develop new gods and goddesses willy nilly, most of them were well entrenched before migration, especially when they carry linguistic cognates to one another. Eostre parallels and cognates out to several related PIE goddesses of the east and dawn. This shows a level of continuity. And you then also have Ostarmanoth appearing on the continent? And you’re going to conveniently ignore that just because some Wiccans? That’s not good historical practice.

 

What this shows is that through this continuity you can essentially show Ostara to be a perfectly well founded continental Germanic goddess and the festival equally well founded. There is enough proof and enough corroborating evidence through the Venerable Bede and through Eginhard to argue these things perfectly well. What we do not have in these sources is how to celebrate this festival. That comes through folk traditions and other survivals.

 

Let me break it down for you another way:

• Bede says Eostre is a goddess and the month Eosturmonath is named for her.
• Bede has no reason to lie and is generally reliable.
• Eginhard says that the Germans also have an Ostarmanoth.
• There is no plausible reason not to have Ostarmanoth as a native festival.
• They are from similar time periods (Bede ~725, Eginhard ~814).
• Eosturmonath and Ostarmanoth are perfect linguistic cognates of one another having shifted with their respective languages.
• If Eostre is the root of Eosturmonath, then Ostara should be the root of Ostarmanoth.
• The Angles and Saxons and Jutes came from Germania and migrated into England.
• Eostre cognates out with several other PIE dawn goddesses, so too does Ostara.
• The linguistic evidence shows religious continuity.
• This gives evidence that they brought Eostre with them from the continent.
• If they brought her with them, she must have existed on the continent prior to migration.
• It is reasonable then to say that Ostarmanoth is the continental continuation of the festival expressed in England that was held in common with the local Germanic peoples of that area of the continent.
• It is reasonable and indeed logical to say that Eostre is to Eosturmonath what Ostara should be to Ostarmanoth.

These all show continuity and give evidence to say it is only logical that Ostara was indeed a local Continental Germanic goddess and that it is a parallel path in the development of some proto-Germanic goddess that split into Eostre on the one hand and Ostara on the other in much the same way that Thunor and Donar developed along parallel linguistic lines.

 

And this all continued; Easter is still Ostern today in Germany. They have a whole range of nice words based on that root. Furthermore, the practice of calling it Ostarmanoth had persisted until quite recently as Grimm noted that it was still in use in his time. That this survived shows no shallow import theory is plausible; instead this must have been a deeply engrained, native cultural phenomenon to survive conversion against the grain of Paschal.

 

Some final thoughts:

 

The Historian’s opinion in me:
I cannot support the idea that Ostara historically extended to the Norse peoples because the linkages are simply not there. They celebrated Paschal up there just fine with no real evidence of Eostre or Ostara to speak of. There is no one Germanic paganism, but instead there were many variations expressed regionally and in time. These variations morphed and adapted.

 

The Pagan’s opinion in me:
Heathens were and are polytheistic. If a goddess jives with you then worship her. Plus you’d basically be a fool in today’s time to pass on the feasting and wonderful cultural traditions involved in Easter. It is culturally relevant to English speaking people and as “Norse” as someone’s religion may be you’re living in an English colony, speaking the English language, and steeped in English culture. Eostre is big enough for the both of us as long as you understand and respect her history.

 

So the next time you hear someone bad talking Eostre or even Ostara, inform them that there is in fact enough evidence to show Eostre and Ostara were indeed culturally specific goddesses and had festivals in that spring time of year. If you want, you can also inform them that it is generally people unable to remove their bias that argue otherwise. Further inform them that there are also ample linkages to be able to do a reconstruction of the goddess from other PIE dawn goddesses for personal religious use. Or you can just tell them that they can go shove it, either or.

 

 

[1]The Venerable Bede, “Caput XV: De mensibus Anglorum”, Beda Venerabilis: De Temporum Ratione, accessed August 12, 2019, http://www.nabkal.de/beda/beda_15.html

[2] The Venerable Bede, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, translated by Faith Wallis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 54. (This is in my opinion the best translation of this work that I have ever read and it is well worth buying if you’re into Bede. But be aware that the pertinent section for calendar reconstruction of the English months is literally two pages so if you buy it do so for the whole thing and not just for the two pages on the English months.)

[3] J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 300-301, 409. (This can be accessed online on this site if you want to check it out: https://smerdaleos.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/ie-mallory-adams.pdf )

[4] Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 1, translated from the fourth edition by James Stephen Stallybrass (London: George Bell and Sons, 1882), 290-291. (You can access this volume using this link: https://archive.org/details/teutonicmytholog01grim/ )

[5]Einhard, “EINHARDI VITA KAROLI MAGNI”, The Latin Library, accessed August 12, 2019, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ein.html#29

[6] Einhard, “The Early Lives of Charlemagne by Eginhard and the Monk of St Gall”, edited by A.J. Grant (London: Alexander Morning Limited, 1905), Project Gutenberg, accessed August 12, 2019, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48870/48870-h/48870-h.html#id52 (I have inserted the original month names from the corresponding footnote in parentheticals next to the translated month so that both may be viewed at once; besides this, the quote is direct.)