On the Origins of the Easter Bunny

Hello guys! I'm taking a brief intermission from my series of posts on Roman mythology to discuss today's holiday: Easter.

Easter as it is best known today has its roots in Christianity, for it celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, festivals with rituals similar to modern Easter have been held since before Christianity came onto the scene, and one thing has remained common throughout all of the celebrations. It is upon this that I wish to focus today. Let's take a look at the Easter Bunny, shall we?

 

(If you haven't seen the movie Rise of the Guardians, I highly recommend it.  This particular version of the Easter Bunny is voiced by none other than Hugh Jackman.)

The character of the Easter Bunny has confounded me for a long time. First off...he's a rabbit that lays eggs. I see two problems there – the Easter Bunny is quite often regarded as male, and rabbits bear kits, not eggs. Luckily for me these questions have been addressed by Terry Pratchett in a far better phrased and more witty way than I could hope to use myself.

“...the German and Swiss Easter Hare, who has been laying eggs for children to find since the sixteenth century. Nowadays he is known in Britain and America under the name of the Easter Bunny – a terrible come-down. At first the Hare only laid real eggs, often brightly painted; more recently he has been producing chocolate ones. German and Swiss children enjoy building little nests of moss and flowers and hay, ready for the Hare to use. Just how a hare – and a male hare at that – can lay chocolate eggs will be no mystery to anyone who has noticed certain little brown oval objects in the corner of the rabbit hutch.”

Thank you, Mr. Pratchett.

But my biggest question has been where the Easter Bunny originated. He can be found in many cultures all over the world, but the hiding of eggs by a mysterious rabbit has no origins in any mythology that I could find.

That is, until I dug deeper for this post.

I've mentioned in my posts about several other holidays that the early Christian church had a tendency to take pre-existing holidays and modify them to suit the church's needs and beliefs. Just as the celebration of Yule was changed for the church's purposes, so too was the celebration of the Vernal Equinox. The Vernal Equinox is a celebration of the coming of spring, and is almost always associated with fertility – not just of the plants and crops, but of humans and animals as well.

One of the early goddesses associated with spring and fertility was Ēostre, also sometimes spelled Ostara. Ēostre was a very early Germanic goddess, and there is little information about her still existing that I have been able to find. The works of Bede, an early Christian scholar, attest to her, as does a book by Jacob Grimm.

From what I can tell, Ēostre was a goddess associated with spring, with dawn, and with fertility. If you're interested, this post has more information on her. It is possible that Easter was named after her.

 

How does this tie in with the Easter Bunny, you may be asking?

Images of Ēostre frequently depict her with a hare or rabbit companion.

 

 

 

Now, it's a well-known fact that rabbits multiply. They are pretty much the definition of fertility. As such, rabbits are seen as symbols of fertility in many different cultures. The same holds true for the early celebrations of the Vernal Equinox – it is my belief that Ēostre's rabbit would eventually become the Easter Bunny.

There is even a story to back up this theory. I've heard several variations on it, but they all have a few things in common. Ēostre's hare companion was originally a bird. It was injured, and to save its life she transformed it into a rabbit. (I'm assuming the injury was to a wing.) The rabbit retained some of its bird-like nature, however...the ability to lay eggs.

I'll conclude there, since that's as much as I know about the Easter Bunny! Have you guys heard other stories as to his origins? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

However you celebrate Easter, I hope you have a great one!

 

 

Romulus and Remus: Renegade Royalty

Hello all!  Spring break is over, and I've just had an 8-week Science Fiction Literature class begin.  I'm really excited for it, and it gives me the perfect lead-in for this reference!

My best friend is a Trekkie, so I feel obligated to put in a Romulan joke for this post.  As a fun side fact, a race called the Remans also exists in the Star Trek universe.  Much like the Romulans, they share a gene with the Vulcans.

Alright, sci-fi geekery aside, let's turn to mythology!

I talked briefly about the brothers Romulus and Remus in my post about Valentine's Day, but I wanted to delve further into their story.  The two are arguably some of the most important characters in Roman mythology, since their tale is the story of the founding of Rome itself.

The story begins with a king named Numitor, who had a beautiful daughter named Rhea Silvia.  Numitor ruled over a city in ancient Italy, and was a fair and wise king...but he had a jealous brother named Amulius who wanted that power for himself.

In a drastic coup, Amulius seized control of the city.  He overthrew and banished Numitor, and then killed his sons, leaving him with no rightful heir.  Knowing that any children born to Rhea Silvia would be descendants of Numitor with a legitimate claim to the throne, Amulius forced the young woman to take a vow of chastity, swearing to remain a virgin.

Enter the gods.

Now, I don't know if Mars was truly smitten with Rhea Silvia or if he took her vow of chastity as a challenge.  Knowing the gods, it might have been both.  At any rate, Mars (the god of war, and one of the most important deities in the Roman pantheon) visited Rhea Silvia and impregnated her.

Amulius was furious when he found out that his niece was pregnant - after all, the resulting sons would be a great threat to his reign.  As soon as Romulus and Remus (twin boys) were born he had them exposed, a term often used in mythology for leaving children out in the wilderness to die.  In this case, the boys were left naked next to the Tiber river.

(Rhea Silvia, for her part, was ordered to be drowned in the Tiber.  In some versions of the story she is killed, while in others she is saved by the god of the Tiber river and made his immortal wife.  One god wasn't enough for her, I guess?)

Exposing children is a very common theme in mythology...and those children often survive and come back to haunt those who exposed them.  Romulus and Remus were no exception.  Through a miraculous series of events, they survived exposure.  A female wolf who had recently given birth nursed the two boys and took care of them until they were found by a shepherd, who along with his wife adopted Romulus and Remus.

The two boys grew up happy and healthy, and served as shepherds alongside their adopted father.  They were strong, and soon proved to be natural leaders.  As young men they gathered other youths from the villages around them, and eventually took to adventures outside of shepherding.

In essence, the two young men became Robin Hoods, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.  I have wondered at times if they were the basis for the Robin Hood stories.

However, Romulus and Remus had one distinct difference from Robin Hood.  Instead of robbing from nobles, they robbed from other robbers and brigands.  The two brothers took great delight in robbing a group who had just committed successful robberies of their own, and then redistributing the goods to those who needed them most.

The robbers who were not part of our band of miscreants eventually grew tired of being mugged.  They plotted a trap for Romulus and Remus' group and sprang it one night while the young men were out drinking and partying at a festival.  In the confusion of the fight Remus was captured by the brigands.

Remus was taken by the bandits before King Amulius, though no one was aware of the duo's relationship.  The cunning thieves accused Remus and his band of the crimes that they themselves had committed - namely, robbing the lands of Numitor, who had begun to rule over a small section of land after his banishment.

Amulius was unconcerned with the accusations put forth against Remus - after all, it wasn't his lands that were being robbed.  He told the bandits to go and tell Numitor of the crimes, and so they dragged Remus to the lands of Numitor and brought him before the old man.

Numitor hardly paid attention as Remus was accused of robbing his lands.  The old man was too struck by something he saw within the young man.  Some stories I've read say he recognized his daughter Rhea Silvia in Remus.  Others say that he recognized something kingly in Remus' bearing.  Either way, Numitor began to wonder if perhaps the young man might be his grandson...particularly when he was told that Remus was a twin, since he had known of Rhea Silvia's having given birth to two sons.

Curious, Numitor ordered everyone except for Remus out of the room, desiring to question the lad alone.  His plans were foiled when Romulus burst into the room with his adopted father, both having come to save Remus.  Between the four of them the men managed to piece everything together, and Numitor was overjoyed to be united with his stepsons.

The youths had grown up without knowing of their royalty, or of their mother.  When Numitor told them of how Amulius had stolen his throne and had their mother killed, Romulus and Remus were furious.

To make a long story short, the two young men killed Amulius and retook his throne, avenging the death of their mother.  They bestowed his kingdom upon its rightful ruler, Numitor, and then left to found a city of their own.

Here is where tragedy enters the story.  Romulus and Remus could not decide who should be the rightful king of the city they were constructing.  They were twins, so neither had the definitive birthright to the throne.  They decided that they would each stand atop a hill and watch for a sign from the gods, and whoever received the sign would become king.

Unfortunately, both men received what they took to be signs, and so they began to argue about which sign was better.

Ahh, the joys of sibling rivalries.

In the end, Romulus decided that the city should be his and so began to construct a stone wall.  Remus, mocking his efforts, leapt over the wall to show how easily the city could be taken.  In a fit of anger Romulus struck his brother down, killing Remus for his insolence.

He then declared that such a fate would meet any who dared attempt to storm the gates of the city.

That city, named in his honor, was Rome.

I hope you guys enjoyed the story!  I'll be back next week with a special holiday post.  See you then!

Intro to Roman Mythology

Hey guys!  I hope you're doing well.  I'm currently on Spring break, so I am one happy camper.

I realized that although I added new links to side, I never mentioned them in a post, so now I shall!  If you're interested in either of my books, you can now buy them directly from me through my Etsy shop.  Hammerfall is available here, and Lovesick here.  (I currently only have shipping to the US, since I haven't had an order from outside of the country yet.  If you're one of my readers from outside the US and you'd like a copy, please feel free to shoot me a message!  We'll work things out.)

And with that out of the way, let's begin!

In this series of posts we'll be taking a look at some of the core stories and deities in Roman mythology.

I think one of the most common misconceptions about the Roman myths is that "They're just the Greek gods with different names."  Many of the books I've seen for Greek or Roman myths, and several of the mythology classes I've taken, have included cheat sheets showing the Roman name of Greek gods.

This irritates the heck out of me.

To be sure, there are a lot of similarities between the two.  The Romans did adopt a lot of the gods they liked from other religions.  However, this adoption was not limited to the Greek gods (worship of Isis, an Egyptian goddess, was quite prominent in Rome, amongst others).  There are characters in the Roman myths who are entirely unique to Rome (Romulus and Remus, for example, who we'll talk about next week).

Even for those gods who are very, very similar to those from Greek mythology, there tend to be differences that make the gods distinctive from what a lot of people consider to be their counterpart.  (Though this is not always true - Dionysus and Bacchus are almost exactly the same.)

Take, for instance, the goddess Minerva.  She is often equated to the Greek goddess Athena.  Now, Athena is a powerful, intelligent warrior goddess who rules over intellectual warfare.  She is cunning and clever, but also is the goddess of several more feminine aspects such as weaving and virginity.

Minerva, on the other hand, loses the attributes of war and is made almost entirely a domestic goddess.

Another example would be the comparison between the Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter.  If you read my posts on Greek mythology, you may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of Zeus.  He's a womanizing self-centered jerk who does whatever he wants in life no matter the consequences for anyone else.  He's fairly immature.  Jupiter, on the other hand, is a mature, level-headed god.

The maturity with which Jupiter regards his duties is actually one of the hallmarks of the Roman culture.  Their heroes embodied the ideals their culture held highest - loyalty and honor.  House Tully in Game of Thrones has for their saying "Family.  Duty.  Honor."  This exemplifies the ancient Roman mindset.  The duty of a man (actually, of any citizen, as we'll see when we get to my post about Lucretia) was first to Rome, then to his family, then to himself.  I find that quite beautiful and interesting.

In the coming weeks I plan to talk about several of the gods and goddesses I haven't mentioned here, as well as some of the demigods and heroes from Roman mythology.

One thing that I'll mention in this intro, though I won't do a post specifically about it: The Romans also sometimes worshipped their emperors.  There was a process through which an emperor could be deified.  Sometimes this was done during their life, and the people worshipped the emperor as a living god amongst them.  (Some early Christians actually got into a lot of trouble for refusing to worship a man over their God.)

At other times, this deification took place after an emperor had died.  The senate could vote on whether or not they thought the emperor was worthy of godhood.  If they decided that he was, the emperor was written into history as a living god who had ascended.

Imagine dying and having some of the people who knew you decide that you had actually been a god.  Kind of interesting, no?

I'll end this post there, and see you guys next week when I talk about Romulus and Remus, twin demigods and founders of Rome!  Take care.

The Nile: The Waters of Life

Hey guys!  This weekend marked my blog's 8000th pageview - many thanks to my readers!

Today I'll wrap up this series on Egyptian mythology with a short post about the Nile river.

The role of the Nile river in Egyptian life - and particularly in their mythology - is fascinating to me.  The Nile river floods annually, and the silt contained in its waters makes the lands it floods more fertile.  This allows a greater yield of crops, and so the productivity of Egypt's land is directly tied to the floods of the river.

Understandably, this relationship with the river led to associations of deities with the Nile.  I would have thought that there would be only one god tied to the river, but in fact there are two in mythology - and the Nile itself is sometimes regarded as a third divine being.

The gods Khnum and Hapi were both tied to the Nile river.  Both were associated with the river's flooding, and sacrifices and prayers were offered to both.  As far as I can tell, Khnum is generally regarded as the god  who controlled the annual rising of the Nile.  Hapi is primarily tied to the fertility of the river, and the fish, birds, and plants contained within and around it.  One of the two gods, though the stories I've found vary on which one, is considered the deity of the source of the Nile's waters.

What interests me most about the Nile river is the way it is almost personified as a deity itself.  The best example of this is the Hymn to the Nile, which you can read in full here if you'd like.

I'll highlight one line from the Hymn here:

"But all is changed for mankind when He comes; He is endowed with the qualities of Nun. If He shines, the earth is joyous, every stomach is full of rejoicing, every spine is happy, every jaw-bone crushes (its food)."

 

This quote fascinates me for several reasons.  First of all, the gods Khnum and Nut are not mentioned anywhere in this Hymn - a prayer, effectively.  The "He" of which it speaks is the river itself.

 

I've grown up a Christian.  I'm used to references to my God having the pronouns capitalized, and that capitalization being a way to denote the fact that my deity is being referred to.  To see the same thing done to denote the Nile river is fascinating to me.  It shows that the ancient Egyptians truly regarded the river as a god in its own right.

 

The importance of the Nile is easily seen in this verse.  The "Nun" who it references is the Egyptian deity of water.  This water that the Nile has brings prosperity to the people of Egypt, allowing prosperity in food, and thus joy.

 

I find the entire Hymn quite beautiful, and would encourage you to read it if you have time.

 

With this I'll conclude my series on Egyptian mythology for the time being.  Thank you so much for reading!

 

Tune in next week as I begin a series of posts on a mythology I haven't covered yet...that of the Romans.

 

I'll see you then!