Uncolonising Spring & Debunking Ostara
last updated 3/21/2024: addition of American Gods episode & restructured biblio
updated 4/12/2023: removal of ‘decolonisation’ as metaphor thanks to the work of Tres Rosas, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang.
“Using the term decolonization as a metaphor, tokenizes Black and Brown people while actively participating in the erasure of Indigenous peoples, completely bypassing what decolonization actually is. Decolonization is not a label, or a description of an event. [Decolonization is] Indigenous rematriation of culture and tradition as well as repatriation of land and sovereignty to Indigenous Peoples. — Tres Rosas”
Based off the work of Tres Rosas, the uncolonized term for “decolonizing spring” is Liberating Spring.
This article started, inspired by a walk to the Red-line, on an April afternoon.
“What types of plants and flowers remind you of spring?” I asked myself, as I gazed at a large clump of bright blue squill.
I kept walking. And then i saw hyacinths, tulips, and daffodils, and forsythia. Rhododendron, dandelion, pansy, and cherry blossoms. And that’s when it clicked.
“Are any of these blossoms indigenous to Turtle Island? I knew a couple were from Turkey and Palestine area of the world, and that the cherry blossoms were Japanese, but then I started digging. Because the next questions that came to mind were, “if all of these “classic” spring icons weren’t from Turtle Island, what are they actually called in their Indigenous languages? And what are the Indigenous plants and blossoms that are blooming right now near me?”
To the point: “What the hell are Turtle Island’s spring blooms?”
If we know the Latin genus and species of all of these plants, it won’t be hard to know what they are actually called, and it won’t be much harder to move past the invasive coloniser plants — and those that have “nativised” *eye-roll*— and arrive at Indigenous names. Because words are important because words have meaning, and can tell us so so much about living in right relationship with each other because to call something its proper name is to respect it’s sovereignty.
So here is a little quick run-down:
Ada soğanı (Turkish speaking Peoples)
/Squill (non-native invasive species), native to Bulgaria, the Caucasus, and Turkey. Often misnamed as Siberian Squill.
صفير Sufayr (Arabic speaking Palestinian Peoples)
/Hyacinth (non-native can be invasive species), native to eastern Mediterranean from the south of Turkey to Palestine.
Lale (Turkish Peoples)
/Tulip (non-native), native to the Pamir Alai and Tien-Shan Mountain Ranges near the modern-day Central Asia and Turkey.
النرجس البري Alnarjis albariyu (Arabic speaking Moroccan Peoples)
/Daffodil (non-native), native to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Western France, and Italy.
连翘 Lián qiáo (Mandarin speaking Chinese Peoples)
/Forsythia (non-native invasive), native to China.
Heartsease or Johnny Jump Up (english)
/Viola or Wild Pansy (non-native), native to Europe. Most of the Heartsease we know of today are from England.
चेरी फूलहरू Cērī phūlaharū/चेरी Cheree (Nepali/Hindi speaking Peoples)
/Cherry (non-native), native to the Himalayas and China. Contrary to popular belief, Sakura/Cherry blossom trees are not native to Japan or Korea.
रोडोडेन्ड्रन Rōḍōḍēnḍrana/लाली गुराश Laalee guraash (Nepali/Hindi speaking Peoples)
/Rhododendron (can be very invasive), native to the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, and through to the mountains of New Guinea. There is however a type of Rhododendron that is indigenous to North America. No Rhododendron species are indigenous to Africa or South America.
Nikakonhsá’ah (Kanyen’kehà:ka — “Mohawk” Peoples)
/Dandelion (both native & non-native), is said to be native to Euroasia, but a dandelion fossil was found to prove that they are also native to North America proving scientifically what Indigenous North Americans have been saying for centuries.
???/Trout lilies (native), to eastern Turtle Island.
???/Spring Beauty or Claytonia(native), to eastern Turtle Island.
Otsi’tsya’kó:wa (Kanyen’kehà:ka — “Mohawk” Peoples)
/Sunflower (native), to western Turtle Island but domesticated in eastern Turtle Island. I know sunflowers dont really bloom in spring, but I felt it was an important reminder.
Nifii’nflntshahikiih (Diné — Navajo Peoples)
/Zinnia (native), to southwest Turtle Island.
???/ Bloodroot (native), to Turtle Island from Nova Scotia to Florida and west to Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Manitoba.
???/Red chokeberry (native), to Turtle Island in central to eastern Turtle Island.
???/Dogwood (native), to Turtle Island northeastern Turtle Island coast to what is now northern Mexico.
And the list can go on…
For this article, i did not want to get into it, but I would be remiss if i didnt say it. It is time, in my opinion, to divorce ourselves from the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. In 1974 Aiden Kelly himself admitted to inventing Mabon, Ostara, and Litha altogether for his “Pagan-craft Calendar”; which were popularised by Green Egg magazine in the 1970s. We will get more into this below.
Debunking Ostara
4/11/2023 UPDATE:
In the past, I said that Ostara wasn’t entirely made up. But as of today, I can safely say I was wrong. She totally is, and I explain why in what follows.
Ostara (the goddess) Herself is TOTALLY made up — she’s hypothetical, and popularised by the Naziis — which isnt something i like to give energy to.
It all started with Bede in 725 CE who wrote that the Anglo-Saxon month of Eosturmonath is the Paschal month of April. Ahearthwitch on Tiktok did a whole video March 20th 2023 on it, and I highly recommend it. She explains alot about the European “Romantic era” from 1798 and 1837, which focused on “nature and paganism, suspicions of science, want for folklore, glorifying the past, and nationalism…” (see where this is going?). This is also the period when the now discredited pseudohistorical Witch-cult theory was created by German Professor Karl Ernst Jarcke in 1828. Jarcke’s hypothesis claimed that the victims of the early modern witch trials were not innocent…, but members of a previously unknown pan-European [pre-Christian] pagan religion…been persecuted by the Christian Church as a rival religion, and finally driven underground, where it had survived in secret until being revealed in the confessions of those accused in the witch trials. This fakelore would go on to influence so many thinkers, fascistic nationalists, and later onto New Agers of the 20th century.
Cue, the famous antisemitic nationalist Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, “Teutonic Mythology” first published in 1835 where Grimm theorises about Ostara by using etymology. Morgan Daimler wrote an incredible article in 2016, and i’ll quote a main point here:
“About a thousand years later Jacob Grimm would go on to write about a hypothetical German goddess he called Ostara who he reconstructed based in part off of the German name for the Christian holiday of Easter, Ostern, and a name for April of Ostermonat (Grimm, 1835). He further supposes based on this a connection between this name and the direction of the east and the idea of dawn and spring, as well as widespread connections between Ostara [the goddess] and contemporary Christian Easter celebrations including bonfires and drawing water at dawn which had special properties (Grimm, 1835). Although it is possible that Grimm was noting genuine pagan folk practices that had survived his connection of these practices to a goddess named Ostara are impossible to prove*
So in the end we have the name of a goddess which is etymologically connected to the word east as well as the dawn, and likely related to other Indo-European dawn or spring goddesses. But basically there is no real information about her, no known symbols, no myths**.”
*that story about Ostara and the bird getting turned into a rabbit which then laid eggs is entirely modern**I am not however arguing that Eostre/Ostara never existed, just that Grimm’s evidence of her folk customs in 19th century German is pretty shaky.
So… this hypothetical entity based on shaky CONJECTURE by Jacob Grimm in 1835 in turn helped the 1853 anti-catholic book “The Two Babylons” by Rev Alexander Hislop, which attempted to “prove” that the Roman Catholic church was secretly filled with pagan practices and therefore the “Whore of Babylon” prophesised in Revelation. Hislop states: “Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar.”
This book then contributed to further nationalistic, anti-church (vis-à-vis antisemitic) fervor via theosophical societies beginning in 1875 and Germany’s 1880 surge of interest in occultism and the Völkisch religious movement.
In 1874, Adolf Holtzmann, like Grimm, published his own Deutsche Mythologie, but added in more theorised symbolism relating to the Easter hare and lumped Grimm’s etymologically engineered Eostre/Ostara with the Gaulish goddess Abnoba of the Black Forest. In 1882, Wilhelm Wackernagel, wrote “a specific story in which Eostre “rode over the fields in the spring in a wagon drawn by hares”, but this specific tale is being conflated with the actual story about Frau Herke (Jewitches & Ahearthwitch, 2023).
Between 1905–1917, another Nazi nationalist and occultist Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels founded a magazine named Ostara, Briefbücherei der Blonden und Mannesrechtler (Ostara, Newsletter of the Blonde and Masculists) in which he published antisemitic and Völkisch theories, of which he became the sole author and editor. In the volume below, Liebenfels suggested the same thing that many Neopagans claim today: that Ostara is where Easter came from, and that old pagan festivals are where Christian festivals came from. Seeing the cringe yet?
Liebenfels went on to join Guido Von List (also not a great guy) to create Ariosophy (combination of theosophy, occult freemasonry, and pagan German religion) in 1915 — Guido Von List is the dude who fabricated pseudohistorical definitions for runes that so many neopagans still use today. These two would go on to influence so much of theosophy and early neopaganism in the 1970s — especially Aiden Kelly’s Pagan Craft Calendar… how very full circle.
These Nazi notions of stripping Jewish Passover traditions and influences from Christian Easter (that syncretanised) and continuing to say that Easter is pagan is flat out Nazi rhetoric.
All of this eventually culminated in the attempt to link Easter to not only Ostara, but also the goddess Ishtar via a meme in 2013, when this was posted to the Facebook page of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, generating more than 220,000 shares… you all know what i think of lumping deities together as the same entity… but I digress.
So we have John Grimm, literal Naziis, and Aiden Kelly to thank for the continued misinformation and the further popularisation of this rhetoric in the 2017 episode “Come to Jesus” of American Gods, where Kristin Chenoweth plays Easter/Ostara, and Mr. Wednesday (Woden), played by Ian McShane, shared this misinformed Nazi rhetoric in popular culture to millions of viewers.
I will go further than Morgan and say it: if Ostara isn’t who we think She is, and as such, the Eostre/Ostara goddess we know now actually never existed… and was then elevated by actual Naziis as a nationalistic goddess…then we really need to do more research, better research… not less, more. Because fakelore like this is not only wrong, it is absolutely and fundamentally dangerous.
But now we know, that there were and are several reasons why Eostre/Ostara feels a bit too Fluffy Bunny to so many of us… maybe it is because she is 100% fabricated… and collectively maybe we knew deep down something was truly amiss.
This is why now, after a year of thinking, I suggest we throw Eostre out entirely and get more in touch with the Indigenous and animistic traditions/stories/histories of deities and spirits that we do have proof of that do have to do with the spring, that were not popularised by white supremacists.
My advice going forward? If you want to connect with Earrach (“spring” in Gaeilge/Irish) then look to the Irish indigenous plants, herbs, and trees that go in bloom in springtime in Ireland.
Look to the sacred sites that have alignments to Imbolg and the Spring Equinox.
And if you (like me) dont live in Ireland currently, then in addition to that bit of research and studying, it is very very important to connect with the nativised and Indigenous flora in the lands you are presently settler-colonising. Full stop. Period. Because we need your help!
Many of these flowers need further research into the various Indigenous names that have been lost due to continuous colonisation. Thankfully there are many Indigenous language reclamation/rematriation projects that are becoming more and more accessible to online.
What plants remind you of spring in your culture? What native plants are coming back to life in your area? What are their Indigenous names? What do the various multicultural Indigenous relationships look like and feel like with these flora? What relational medicine can we authentically embark a path on with them?
Help add to the conversation in the comments below.
Slán!
(Re)Sources & Bibliography
- Rosa, Tres (2020). Decolonization, A Guidebook For Settlers Living On Stolen Land.
- Tuck & Yang (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor.
- Kelly, Aiden (2017) About Naming Ostara, Litha, and Mabon. Patheos.
- Jewitches & Ahearthwitch (2023). Debunking Myths about Ostara with A Hearth Witch.
- Daimler, Morgan (2016). Ostara versus Easter — or Lets All Just Color an Egg.
- AAP FactCheck (2021). No, Easter wasn’t named after a Mesopotamian goddess.
- Archive (2013). This is Ishtar Meme.
- Grimm, Jacob (1835). Deutsche Mythologie, “Teutonic Mythology”.
- Koehne, S. (2014). Were the National Socialists a “Völkisch” Party? Paganism, Christianity, and the Nazi Christmas. Central European History, 47(4), 760–790. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43965085
- Nikakónhsa kánen (Project Dandelion ) https://nikakonhsaahkanen.wordpress.com/
- SF Gate Contributor (2021). Indigenous Fruit Trees.
- Junne, George H. Jr. (2017). Muslims, Navajos, and Peaches.
- New Hampshire Garden Solutions (2012). The Dandelion Debate.
- Elmore, Francis H. (1944) Ethnobotany of the Navajo.
- Howe, R. John (2013). A Curator’s Perspective on the TM’s “Sultan’s Gardens” Exhibition.
- Newman, Joyce (2016). The Best Native Bulbs and Spring Ephemerals.
- Trombley, Jeremy. (retrieved 2022) Foods Indigenous to the Western Hemisphere.
- Simons, Paul (2017) A spectacular thug is out of control. The Guardian.
- Fedele, Amy (2020). Are Non-Native Plants Always Invasive Plants?
- Raven, Sarah (2020). a brief history of daffodils.
- Allen, Ray (retrieved 2022). History of Daffodils and Tulips.
- Giles, J (1843) The Complete Works of the Venerable Bede.
- O’Brien, Lora (2018). Irish Pagan Holidays.
