The Vernal Equinox
According to the 8th century Christian historian Bede, the pre-Christian Germanic peoples of England celebrated the fertility based ancient earth-mother rituals around the time of the Vernal Equinox. Jacob Grimm, the famous folklorist and philologist, had the following speculations about the rituals attending the goddess:
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 by the resurrection-day of the christian's God. Bonfires were lighted at Easter and according to popular belief of long standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps, he dances for joy ... Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing ... here also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on great 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.(1)
These speculations are now up for debate among scholars. I see the goddess Eostre or Ostara [or perhaps Astarte] as a representation of the Archetypal Mother, who in that form was repressed in some measure for a long time. The Archetypal mother has seen a lot of debate in the psychological and political-psychological world especially in the 20th and 21st century. Perhaps Jung depicted her in a largely negative light, as Dr. Joan Relke points out in her work The Archetypal Female in Mythology and Religion: the Anima and Mother of the Earth and Sky. :
For Jung, the transition from unconscious life to conscious life in the development of humanity and the individual is mirrored in the separation of the child from the mother: “the first creative act of liberation [of the unconscious] is matricide” (Jung, 1954c, p.96). For art and mythology, this means the projection of this “first creative act” into the slaying of the dragon, the symbol of the unconscious and animal sides of our nature, and to some extent the control of the “chaotic urge to life”, the anima.
She goes on to say:
So for Jung, the archetypal mother represents something that we must pull away from, something with which we were once united, allowing us no individual identity. The necessity of separating from the real mother and moving into independent consciousness is projected into myths about the destruction of the divine mother, who, if not destroyed, as a “thrall of nature” threatens to devour and destroy us by keeping us unconscious. In Jung’s world, the divine mother, and to some extent, the anima, tie us to our unconscious origins: to our animal instincts for bodily survival and procreation.
Naturally, she observes that modern feminists and feminist psychoanalysts have rejected this as outdated and radically un-sophisticated view of the mother archetype. Not surprisingly, some of these scholars and observers have also tended to shred Patriarchy and Archetypal Masculinity, in what some might see as a kind of tit-for-tat [sorry , I had to invoke an inappropriate pun] war, perhaps justified after thousands of years of Patriarichal hegemony in gender politics. Dr. Relke supports a nuanced view of the overall look of the Mother Goddess Archetype:
In exploring these female archetypes, we see the interrelation of the three realms. The mother is both conscious protector, spiritual guide, and nurturer, while at the same time the unconscious forces of birth and death, life and destruction. The anima lurks in the unconscious, wielding her supernatural power to drive our lives either towards mystical knowledge, consciousness and individuation, or towards oblivion in sensual urges. The sky mothers and animas can transcend the body and ego, but in so many myths, they crave balance through the experience of the underworld, the unconscious drives of the instincts and the non-rational, and through this unity, express a balanced whole. (2)
My gloss on the subject is that we tend to project our relationship with our own actual mothers onto the Archetype, or use her as a thankless battleground (like the actual earth) for political warfare. So we see destroyer, harlot, sacred guide and nurturer, smotherer, coach, friend.
Whatever the relationship with the mother, it seems to make sense to honor, if not obey, and to love, and if love is out of reach, forgiveness [though easier said than done sometimes] is right wise. And besides, hopefully we can all be grateful for the lovely flowering of the earth, and warming weather that comes with Spring.
.png)
(3)(1) Wikipedia: Eostre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostara
(2) Dr. Joan Relke, The Archetypal Female in Mythology and Religion: the Anima and Mother of the Earth and Sky.http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/401/300
(3) Image from Old Farmer's Almanac. http://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-spring-vernal-equinox
