End-of-pandemic hopes rise, just in time for pagan holiday Osta

Buzz on social media is forecasting a more robust celebration this year for Ostara, the pagan holiday adapted as Easter by Christian

Photo by Arno Smit/Unsplash/Creative Commons
March 19, 2021
By


(RNS) — For many of Laurie Cabot’s neighbors in Salem, Massachusetts, the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, is a sign of hope that warmer weather will soon bring relief from a long pandemic winter spent mostly apart. For Cabot, the official witch of Salem, the day known in pagan communities as the festival of Ostara will have a more profound meaning.

Cabot is one of the trailblazers who brought the practice of witchcraft “out of the broom closet” nearly 50 years ago, in part by publishing several books, including, “Celebrate the Earth: A Year of Holidays in the Pagan Tradition,” that demystified earth-based practices.

As the founder in 2010 of the Cabot Kent Hermetic Temple — the “first federally recognized Temple of Witchcraft in the history of Salem, Massachusetts,” according to its website, Cabot has also presided over decades of Ostara rituals. But this year’s festivities will be different.

RELATED: Natural by nature, pagans expect some digital rituals to survive the pandemic

The Wheel of the Year, with eight sabbats. Image via the Cabot Kent Hermetic Temple

Ostara is one of eight sabbats, or holidays, in the Wheel of the Year, the pagan spiritual calendar. It is a time of balance — with equal hours of light and dark — and renewal. As vaccination numbers climb and pandemic restrictions are eased, this year’s celebrations will look forward to a collective re-emergence from lockdowns and quarantines. The suffocating nature of too-close quarters, loneliness and days spent staring out of windows are coming to an end.

“Ostara is a time to spring into action and sow the seeds for the rewards of the months to come,” Cabot said. “The world can see the relevance as we step forward into rebirth and a reinvention of what was. The balance comes in stepping forward with compassion, kindness, and bringing forth all of the other aspects of consciousness that give us strength and bring us closer together.”

Chas Clifton, author of “Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America” and a pagan practitioner for more than 40 years, expects this year’s Ostara to be celebrated with more feeling. “Largely through pagan social media, I have seen indications that this year’s Ostara will carry some extra power,” said Clifton, who is also editor of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. “Emergence from what has felt like a year of shadow life, combined with the fact that Ostara falls on a weekend this year, may make for a more robust celebration of this normally low-key festival.”

Although Christians adapted several Easter symbols from Ostara — such as bunnies and decorated eggs — it is normally one of the lesser-known pagan holidays.

Image by Rebekka D/Pixalbay/Creative Commons

“The name is a variation of “Eostre,” Clifton explained, “which, according to the English monastic chronicler Bede, was the name of a Germanic goddess who was celebrated by the pagan Anglo-Saxon people in the spring during ‘Easturmonath’ and associated with springtime and the dawn.”

Historians think that Bede may have mistaken a Germanic dawn goddess related to the Greek “Eos” for a seasonal goddess, noted Clifton. He explained that while other Christian cultures took the name for Easter from the Hebrew “Pesach,” or Passover, Germanic and English cultures employed a form of Easter.

Ostara rituals differ greatly among practitioners. While some adherents prefer solitary activities like meditation and springtime planting, others choose to celebrate in larger groups or covens.

The Cabot Kent Hermetic Temple is celebrating its own cyclical rebirth of a sort. Having lost access to the venue where its seasonal rituals had been held in the past few years, the temple is returning to the historic Hawthorne Hotel in downtown Salem (where a memorable episode of the ’60s sitcom “Betwitched” was filmed) for its Ostara celebration. The hotel is where Laurie Cabot taught some of her original classes in the 1970s.

“The few staff members who have remained at the Hawthorne all these years, as well as some new wonderful people, accepted us with open arms,” she said. “Out of something dark came something uplifting and wonderful.”


Laurie Cabot. Courtesy photo

The ritual, which will take place at the hotel on Saturday (March 20), will be streamed on Facebook Live. Penny Cabot, reverend and green minister high priestess of the temple, said the ritual will honor the goddess Rhiannon, a Welsh goddess of sovereignty, transformation and fertility, and her son, Pryderi.

A lifelong practicing witch, Penny believes that all people can derive meaning from Ostara’s traditions. “There is much that we can do, witch or non-witch, to share in sending out positive energy into the world on Ostara,” she said.

Central to all pagan practice is a deep reverence for nature. It is from the natural energy of the cosmos — the moon and sun, the four elements — that practitioners draw power and spiritual nourishment. On Ostara, that power is found through honoring the rites of spring.

Many Ostara rituals, accordingly, involve seeds and flowers. Penny Cabot suggested gathering fresh flowers, faerie cakes (or muffins), dried cranberries (to represent winter), wildflower seeds and faerie wine (a mixture of milk, cinnamon and honey).

RELATED: In lockdown, our longing for the world could be the antidote to our spiritual anorexia

“Step into your comfortable place, either outdoors or in the sunshine,” she instructed. “Bring all of your items and place them in front of you on a table or on the ground. Raise your right hand to the sky and walk, counterclockwise, in a circular motion. Say these words: ‘I bring harmony to this place.’”

After dividing the offerings into four parts, she pours four bits of faerie milk onto the ground. (If indoors, she recommends putting the parts in four small cups.) She then says, “I bring prosperity and abundance into my world. I send balance and compassion into the universe for the good of all. So it is done.”

Clifton pointed to a similar ritual from the Druid tradition composed by pagan author and priest John Beckett, which “begins with offerings of bread and water to one’s ‘ancestors of blood and spirit,’ to the land spirits, and to the Celtic mother goddess Danu.”

At the heart of the ritual is the planting of seeds. The petitioner pledges to “join in your great work creating and nurturing life and love.”

Pagan sues Panera Bread Company alleging religious discrimination

A former baker for the chain said she was told that she 'needed to find God,' according to a court filing.

A former employee of the Panera Bread in Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, is suing the company on grounds of religious discrimination. Screenshot from Google Maps

March 27, 2021
By Heather Greene

(RNS) — A Pennsylvania woman filed a lawsuit Wednesday (March 24) against Panera Bread Company, alleging that she was discriminated against and fired due to her pagan beliefs.

Tammy McCoy, of Clairton, Pennsylvania, was hired as a baker at the Panera location in nearby Pleasant Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb, in October 2019. According to the filing, she “never discussed her religion or religious beliefs at work” because she felt the subject was private.

Paganism is an umbrella term used for a number of different growing religious and spiritual practices centered on nature and magic.

According to the lawsuit, the subject of McCoy’s religion came up in late May of 2020, when McCoy was on break with the store’s assistant manager, Lori Dubs, and the manager, Kerri Ann Show. Show asked McCoy what her religion was, and Tammy responded, “I am Pagan.”

Show reportedly responded by telling McCoy that she was going to hell, and Dubs “vigorously nodded her head in agreement.”

The lawsuit then goes on to describe a series of other discriminatory actions. Among the complaints are that McCoy’s hours were cut, and when she asked why, she was told that she “needed to find God” before returning to her “previous schedule.” She was reportedly docked pay for breaks that she did not take.

McCoy alleged that she asked to be transferred to a different store, to which the district manager reportedly said, “No,” and, “We’re probably going to get rid of you anyways.”

A call to Panera’s corporate human resources went unanswered.

According to the lawsuit, the threats continued and turned violent at times, allegedly creating a “hostile work environment.”

On July 27, McCoy said she was told to give notice that she was leaving her job. Both she and her husband, who also worked at Panera and was not otherwise mentioned in the case, were fired, according to the suit.

The lawsuit, which was filed in a Pennsylvania federal court, states that McCoy’s civil rights were violated under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

McCoy declined an interview. Panera did not answer a request for comment.

The Rev. Selena Fox, executive director of the pagan civil rights organization Lady Liberty League and senior minister of Circle Sanctuary, has reached out to both McCoy and Panera Bread Company.

“Pagans are continuing the quest for full equality, liberty and justice in the U.S.A. and other parts of the world,” Fox said.

“Although there have been a variety of pagan rights legal victories, unfortunately, anti-pagan prejudice, harassment, discrimination and defamation still happen.”

Lady Liberty League (LLL) was founded in 1985 during the “Satanic Panic,” when pagans were regularly confronted with similar situations at work and in their communities. “It is essential to stand up to anti-pagan hate and attacks whenever and wherever they occur,” Fox said.

Most typically, Lady Liberty League fields complaints related to “child custody, business, zoning, housing and job discrimination.”

Fox added that there has been a noticeable uptick in discrimination over the past four years.

The LLL team is “in the early stages of looking into the case,” she said, and they are concerned for McCoy and for the greater community. “Discrimination against pagans not only harms the individuals directly impacted in a case, but pagan people and society as a whole,” Fox said.

As of Friday, the organization has not spoken to McCoy or received a response from Panera’s corporate headquarters.

LLL is chiefly interested in speaking with the company’s diversity officers, said Fox, who added that she “understands an unwillingness for a company to discuss particulars of a lawsuit that is in process.

“It is our hope to be able to have direct dialogue with Panera Bread at the corporate level about the importance of stopping and preventing discrimination against pagan workers. We have had positive experiences with such conversations with other corporations and institutions we have contacted over the years.”

McCoy’s lawsuit claims that she was fully qualified to do her job and that the harassment and firing were solely due to her Pagan religious beliefs.

The series of actions taken by the store’s managers, and later by the district manager, as stated in the filing, were “committed with intentional and reckless disregard for (McCoy’s) protected rights.”

McCoy’s lawyer, Michael J. Bruzzese, is asking the federal court for a jury trial.

As the pioneers of modern paganism die, fears grow that their wisdom will be lost

THANK THE GODS THEY ALL WROTE BOOKS

Today’s young Wiccans and witches tune in to social media for community.

(Image from Pixabay/Creative Commons)

August 1, 2024
By Heather Greene



(RNS) — The contemporary pagan community, unlike many traditional religions, has had direct access to its living founders for decades. Now many of those pioneers, born in the 1940s, are “crossing the veil,” a common pagan phrase. And their stories may be going with them as interest in their legacy wanes among younger generations in a changing world.

“Each death of old friends and contemporaries feels like another bit of my soul is being ripped away,” said Oberon Zell in an email interview with Religion News Service.

Zell, who now resides in North Carolina, co-founded the pagan Church of All Worlds in 1962. He is a well-known author and a long-respected figure in the pagan movement since its inception.

“We felt like pioneers, venturing into unknown territory of our imaginations,” Zell said. “We’d grown up as bright kids, often bullied.”

He believes that this “peer disdain” bred their creativity and courage to be “fearless.”

Zell’s group eventually mingled with the emerging Wiccan community, occultists and other magical practitioners. Their mission, he said, was “to make the world safe for people like us, and I believe we succeeded.”


Oberon Zell. (Courtesy photo)

Today, those young pioneers are now elders in their 70s and 80s, and every year sees the loss of a few more.

Wiccan priestess Mary Elizabeth Witt, known as Lady Pythia, died in June near the summer solstice, a widely celebrated pagan seasonal holiday honoring the longest day. “Trust her to wait for the brightest light to see her off on her journey,” her sister said.

While not as nationally known as Zell, Pythia was a key player in a largely decentralized, growing religious movement. She was co-founder of the Ohio-based Coven of the Floating Spring and became a trusted voice and leader within the Covenant of the Goddess, a national organization for Wiccans and witches.

RELATED: Rabbi David Wolpe’s pagans aren’t the ones I know

This year also saw the loss of author and Wiccan high priest Ed Fitch, who became a national figure in those early years. Among his many achievements, Fitch spoke publicly in support of witchcraft and was editor of one of the first U.S. witchcraft magazines.

Derrick Land had the “rare opportunity” to meet Fitch near the end of the author’s life. “It is different to have a (live) conversation with such a person” than just reading their books or seeing them on television.

Derrick Land. (Courtesy photo)

Land is the high priest of Shadow Wolf Coven, a Wiccan group in Austin, Texas. He is also the co-founder of Austin Witchfest, a popular pagan event held every April.

Being able to “tap the shoulder of an elder is priceless,” Land said.

Those trailblazers, as he calls them, were not only birthing a new religion, but were also activists, and Land urges his own students to never “lose sight” of that legacy.

“We are able to practice safely because of them,” he said. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

Land, who considers himself a xennial — a person born at the cusp between Generation X and millennials — acknowledged that today’s young pagans are far less impressed with those trailblazers than he, and he is not alone in that observation.

Paganism has evolved since Land began his pagan journey in the 1990s. There is a greater diversity of practice and less dependency on in-person training. More pagans are solitary, or practicing entirely by themselves. A decentralized movement has become even more so.

One main factor, according to our interviewees: social media.

Beckie-Ann Galentine, a millennial in Virginia who first found a witchcraft community through Tumblr, grew up in a rural community in Pennsylvania with no access to in-person groups. She read “anything she could find,” with no guidance on what was authentic.

When she discovered Tumblr’s magical community, she was hooked, describing its members as “breathing their authentic self.”

But there were pitfalls, Galentine said.

Beckie-Ann Galentine. (Courtesy photo)

“I had no conception of misinformation,” she explained, and the digital community eventually proved to be largely “driven by vanity.” The witch aesthetic was more important than spiritual practice. That was 2006.

“It was a crash course,” Galentine said, “on getting exposed to people, rather than having a deliberate goal.”

She believes that her early learning experience, from books to Tumblr, is a “perfect example” of what happens when you don’t have guidance from elders.

“Social media influencers are not a substitute for an elder or mentor,” Galentine said, recognizing the irony. Galentine has since become a popular social media influencer, known as My Bloody Galentine.

In the 2000s, she didn’t know the early pioneers existed. Very few elders were active online and, if they were, their voices were often drowned out by the “loudest social media voices.”

When you “only look at the beacons” on social media, Galentine warned, you miss the deeply personal connections that form from in-person connections.

“I don’t want to say it’s not possible,” she added, but without having guidance or a personal community connection, “it makes (learning) way messier than it needs to be.” She points to her own experience.

Galentine, however, stressed the need for discernment in choosing whom to follow. Some teachings are “deeply problematic,” she said, while others are simply no longer current in a changing pagan world.

Galentine, now a leader herself, typically directs young pagans to relatively new authors who connect well to the younger generation, but she still recommends the classic “Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft” — first published in 1986 and often referred to as “Buckland’s Big Blue” — as “a point of perspective,” she said.

“It may not make sense. But start there,” Galentine advises.

The author, Raymond Buckland, originally from London, is one of the most well-known pagan trailblazers and was instrumental in bringing Wicca to American shores. He died in 2017.

Discernment, as Galentine described, has since become central to the social media engagement of paganism’s youngest representatives, according to Luma Notti, a digital media professional and Gen Z witch in Minnesota.

RELATED: As witchcraft becomes a multibillion-dollar business, practitioners’ connection to the natural world is changing

Luma Notti. (Photo by Lilly St. Laurent)

She believes that this critical skill is fueling, in part, the waning interest in the pioneers. “Many Gen Z folks look critically into witchcraft, New Age beliefs, politics and consumerism,” Notti said.

They are having “real conversations about spiritual psychosis and toxic spirituality,” she explained. “More than half of them are cautious about brand authenticity.” Just being a famous pagan doesn’t impress them much.

For Gen Z, she added, “consumerism, colonization and appropriation are intertwined.” And many of these concerns, along with others, are absent from early pagan teachings.

The digital media experience of Gen Z pagans, overall, is vastly different from that of millennials like Galentine. Gen Z members understand the concept of misinformation and other pitfalls because they grew up with it, Notti said.

“There is a lot of research on the loss of identity and subcultures of Gen Z because of being raised in the digital era and experiencing coming of age during lockdown,” she added. “Many Gen Zers are just trying to survive.”

Pushing back against stereotypes, Notti said: “Millennial and Gen X witches have asserted their presence (online) and already have a particular perception of Gen Z witches and spiritual practitioners.”

It isn’t all aesthetics, she insisted. Notti used the phrase “low key” to describe the trend in Gen Z pagan practices.

“We don’t want to make our practice our entire personality,” she explained. They are unconcerned with labeling how they practice, Notti added. But they still do seek community and often online.

But not always. Land said he has never had a problem finding new students for his Wiccan group and always sees young people enjoying Austin Witchfest.

Buckland’s “Big Blue” decades later still remains an educational staple.

So what does Zell think of all of this, decades after the movement began?

He sees no problem with any of it. “The diffusion at the periphery (of the pagan community) is the main indication” of the pioneers’ success, he said, proudly.

“It’s exactly as I envisioned and hoped it would be,” he said. “We have gone from a scary, paranoid, isolated and persecuted minority to an interesting mainstream phenomenon.”

All these decades later, Zell is still invited to speak at festivals, conferences and other events.

“It’s like having Grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner,” he said. “I’m delighted to see new generations of pagans coming in to take the place of those who are passing away.”

A modern witch celebrates the cycle of life and death at the confluence of cultures

This time of year, a bruja, or witch, practices central Mexican Indigenous rituals and modern pagan ones, both honoring the Earth and “us as individuals as part of nature.” But the holidays of the Day of the Dead and Samhain are not the same.

The Rev. Laura Gonzalez poses after teaching about Day of the Dead at a bookstore in Chicago in 2019. Courtesy photo

October 28, 2022

By 

Heather Greene

(RNS) — As Americans of all faiths prepare for Halloween with costumes and candy or the Day of the Dead with food and flowers, the pagan community is also preparing for its holiday celebrating death and rebirth.

Samhain is the third and final harvest festival of the pagan Wheel of the Year, as the holiday calendar is known in many Earth-based religions.

“(Modern) Pagans have incorporated the seasonal concern with the dead in a holy day that celebrates the cyclicity of life, death, and rebirth,” writes folklorist and pagan scholar Sabina Magliocco in her book “Witching Culture.” 

Not unlike the Day of the Dead and Halloween, Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “Sow-en”) includes feasting and honoring one’s ancestors, though those celebrating Samhain are likely to add some divination. Based largely on Irish folk religion, it is a time when the divide between the physical and spiritual worlds are believed to be thin.

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The Rev. Laura González, who is a practicing witch and a pagan educator and podcaster in Chicago, celebrates all three. “(My practice) is a hodgepodge,” she laughs.

The Rev. Laura Gonzalez celebrating Tlaxochimaco 2022 in Little Village, Chicago. Courtesy photo

González merges modern paganism with Mexican traditions, including practices indigenous to central Mexico, where she is from. “At their core, modern paganism and these indigenous practices both honor the Earth,” she said. Nature reverence is essential, she said, to her spiritual path.

“Let me describe to you what happens in my life,” González said in a phone interview. On Oct. 1, the decorations go up for Halloween, a purely secular holiday for her. Then, around Oct. 27, she sets up a Day of the Dead altar to honor deceased relatives, as most Mexicans do about this time, she said. “My mother died on Oct. 27, 2011. I believe it was her last wink to me,” said González.

Since then, González has been honoring her mother with bread and coffee but has also made it her mission to teach others about the Day of the Dead and its origins. She teaches those traditions as well as modern paganism both locally and over the internet at the pagan distance-learning Fraternidad de la Diosa in Chihuahua, Mexico.

On Samhain, González always hosts a small ritual for her Pagan students and participates in Samhain celebrations, either as an attendee or organizer. Some years she travels to Wisconsin to be with fellow members of the Wiccan church Circle Sanctuary.

Samhain is traditionally honored on Oct. 31, but some pagans celebrate it Nov. 6 or 7, an astrologically calculated date. Regardless, group celebrations must often yield to modern schedules, and González said she will celebrate an early Samhain this year.

“My (Samhain) celebration is for the ancestors and for the Earth going into slumber — the Goddess goes to sleep,” González said. She likes to focus her ritual on modern pagan trailblazers, often referred to as “the mighty dead,” rather than on her relatives, which she honors on the Day of the Dead.

González’s central Mexican indigenous practice and her modern pagan practice, rooted in  northern Mexico and the United States, “are very similar,” she added, both honoring the Earth and “us as individuals as part of nature,” something she believes has been lost in modern Day of the Dead traditions. However, she quickly added, “Indigenous practices are not pagan.”

Growing up in Mexico City, González was surrounded by mainstream Mexican culture, with Day of the Dead festivals and altars. As she was exposed to the Indigenous traditions that are still woven through Mexican culture, she explained, she began to study folk magic and traditions, as well as “Native philosophies.”

The Day of the Dead, she said, “is the ultimate syncretic holiday,” a merger of the European-based Catholic traditions with Indigenous beliefs and celebrations. “The practices brought to Mexico by the Catholic colonizers were filled with pagan DNA,” she said. All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day contain remnants of traditional Samhain and other older beliefs, she noted.

“These colonizers came to a land filled — filled — with skulls and its imagery,” she said, which must have been frightening and somewhat of a culture shock, she added.

An altar during Tlaxochimaco 2022 commemorations in Chicago. Courtesy photo

González is now actively participating in the revival of the Indigenous traditions as a teacher and celebrant. The Indigenous holiday, she said, is a 40-day celebration. The first 20 days is called Tlaxochimaco, or the birth of flowers, and the second is Xoco Huetzi, or the fall of the fruit.

“We all are flowers,” she explained. We grow, flower, bloom and then become fruit. Eventually falling and becoming seed, and the cycle continues. The Aztecs “used this mythology to describe life and life cycles,” she said.

“But there are people who do not make it to fruit. They die young,” González explained. These people are honored during Tlaxochimaco.

During Xoco Huetzi, celebrations are held to honor those who have made it to old age before passing. Both festivals traditionally involve dancing, she said, which is considered an offering to the dead. 

The 40-day celebration was eventually condensed into two days aligning with the colonizers’ Catholic traditions, she said, becoming the modern Day of the Dead celebration, a holiday that is quickly becoming as popular north of the Mexican border as Halloween is.

While González is not offended by purely secular Halloween celebrations, even with its classic depiction of witches, she struggles with the growing commercialization of the Day of the Dead. “I know what I am, and I know what I celebrate,” she said, speaking of Halloween. “I find it funny that the wise woman has been made into something scary.”

What does offend her is people dressed as sugar skulls. “It’s a double-edged sword,” González said. “It’s a source of pride knowing the world loves our culture,” she said. However, she added, “You love our culture, you love our music, you love our food, you love our traditions, you love our aesthetics, you love our parties and holidays, you love all of that, but you don’t love us.”

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An example of a Samhain altar. Photo by Heather Greene

This is the definition of cultural appropriation, she added.

“The world is filled with racism, discrimination, colorism, classism,” she continued. “There is a disconnection between the thing and the people who made the thing.” She likened this to a second wave of colonization.

Her recommendation: “If you like Day of the Dead stuff,” she said, “shake a tree and a Mexican artisan will fall from it. Buy Mexican. You will benefit the very people who have created the aesthetic,” she said. “The big box stores don’t need your money,” she said, but Mexican and Mexican American families do.

Many pagans, especially in the growing Latino pagan community, do honor multiple traditions like González, particularly around the time when the holidays align.

“I think it’s important to recognize where we come from and how we survive whatever challenges our ancestors had,” said González. Samhain, Day of the Dead and the Aztec traditions “are, after all, a celebration of life and their lives.”

Secret Belief Means Wagner’s Most Dangerous Men Won’t Back Down

Will McCurdy

The Daily Beast
Mon, September 4, 2023

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters

All eyes are on the Russian mercenary group Wagner in the aftermath of a mysterious plane crash that presumably killed the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, last week. Angry over what many suspect was an assassination plot ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, many factions within the infamous mercenary group are now emerging with shadowy threats of vengeance and violence.

The “Rusich” Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group, a Wagner-linked unit of fighters that have received additional sanctions for “special cruelty" in battles in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine, has recently taken to Telegram to post one such ominous warning. “Let this be a lesson to all. Always go all the way,” the group said in a statement after the plane crash.

There’s good reason for Vladimir Putin to take threats from Rusich, and other like-minded Wagner fighters, seriously.

That’s because behind the headlines, many of the Wagner units most known for their violence—including the Rusich battalion, and even the now-deceased commander Dmitry Utkin—are fighting what they believe is a spiritual battle, taking religious and ideological inspiration from sources far removed from the Russian mainstream.


These soldiers are shunning Jesus, Mary, and the Russian Orthodox patriarchs, and instead booking to Gods such as Perun— the ancient Slavic god of thunder and lightning—for protection and inspiration.

Members of the far right Russian paramilitary unit Rusich take a walk in the Kremlin square during a break in their participation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
STR/NurPhoto/Getty

The “Rusich” battalion is formed almost entirely of adherents of a variant of Slavic neopaganism known as “Rodnovery,” according to former unit commander Alexei Milchakov’s interviews with local Russian media. Marat Gabidullin, who served in the Wagner group from 2015 to 2019 and rose to the rank of commander in Syria, also confirmed these reports to The Daily Beast.

Members of the Rusich group, which has been active in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Africa, and Syria since 2014, have often adorned their badges, tanks, and banners with images of what’s known as the ‘kolovrat’. This spinning wheel—one of the critical symbols of the pagan revivalist belief system—could be easily mistaken for a swastika by the untrained eye. Pagan symbols such as the ‘Valknut’ and ‘Black Sun’ have also frequently appeared on the groups’ uniforms and banners.

These pagan symbols have prompted disgust and confusion in several news outlets, in both Ukraine and Africa, due to the symbols bearing a distinct similarity to the SS imagery of Nazi Germany. Outside of the Rusich unit, these pagan beliefs are common among members of the Wagner Group, and the Russian military more widely, according to several sources who spoke to The Daily Beast.

‘Rodnovers’ practice polytheism, the belief in multiple gods, roughly seven, all said to be manifestations of the one true god Rod. These ideas began to take root in the ’90s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and state atheism led to a revival of religious faiths of all kinds, including Christianity.

Men are hugely overrepresented in Rodnovery, particularly those involved in martial arts clubs and the heavy metal community, where its imagery often crops up. A core text of Rodnovery, “The Book of Veles” places the Slavs as a type of chosen people, with a unique destiny. Though texts like the above have proven likely to be 19th-century forgeries and much of the faith represents guesswork based on incomplete records from Medieval scholars, that hasn’t stopped these beliefs from slowly rising in popularity.

There are estimated to be between several 100,000 to several million Pagans in Russia, divided between different sects with quite diverse beliefs. The deity that receives the bulk of the attention, at least among male devotees, is Perun, a deity who in the Book of Veles engages in constant war against the forces of evil, not unlike the popular Norse god Thor. The belief in reincarnation is also common among believers.

Gabidullin, the ex-Wagner soldier, told The Daily Beast the practice of Rodoverny within the group as merely a type of “fashion hobby” for a marginalized community of soldiers.

The ex-mercenary says the popularity of these beliefs stems from the “laziness to study the scientific school of history” and the desire to find a justification “for self-aggrandizement in the past.” He terms the vision of the history of Rodverners in Wagner as an: “invented version with great ancestors and achievements.”

Expressing sympathy with Rodnovery may even get you promoted within the Wagner Group. A group of anonymous informants, who served in the Wagner group in Syria, told a Ukrainian publication Radio Liberty in 2018 “it is desirable to be a Rodnover” to progress in the Wagner group.

Hundreds of Wagner Men Vanish From Putin’s Designated Exile

Gabidullin, in a previous interview with a Russian language publication, has alleged that Dimitry Utkin, the group’s recently deceased commander, has Pagan beliefs of his own, alleging the general has multiple Rodnovery-inspired tattoos.

Portraits of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin are seen at a makeshift memorial in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia August 27, 2023.
Anastasia Makarycheva/Reuters

The insider also alleged that there was “an ideological department within the Wagner PMC (private mercenary company),” formed back in 2019 that is promoting the movement, which he derides as merely a “disguised form of Nazi ideology.”

Denys Brylov, a Ukrainian scholar focused on religion in the Slavic world, believes that the actual specific religious practices of the Rodnovers serving in Wagner may come secondary to the wider ideological component it can provide for soldiers.

Brylov believes that for Wagnerites neo-paganism is attractive due to its ability to provide a spiritual justification for the “cult of force”. In these types of fringe, hardline interpretations of pagan beliefs, the very act of battle or the shedding of blood can be “considered as an act of sacrifice to the pagan patron deities of warriors and war.”

That said, Brylov feels that in many cases persons “inclined to cruelty” may simply gravitate to neo-pagan ideology to justify these instincts, rather than the beliefs themselves being inherently warlike.

Rusich commander Alexei Milchakov, for instance, went viral on VK—effectively Russia’s Facebook—for beheading and eating a puppy, while barely out of his teenage years, and well before he joined the army. He would later joke he respected canines' rights to be “1-tasty, 2-fried, 3-not have a lot of veins and bones.”

Neopaganism in the West, which started to first grow in the 1960s, has yet to shake lingering associations with flower power and the hippie movement, though this hasn’t always been the case. Norse Neopaganism, the revival of old Viking and Northern European religious traditions, has often been co-opted by the far right, both in Scandinavia and in the U.S. Popular heavy metal musicians such as the Norwegian Varg Vikernes, who has served a 15-year jail sentence for murder, employ long-winded, fairly academic descriptions of Nordic paganism as a justification for antisemitism and a protest of what they view as the corrupting influence of Anglo-American liberalism. In the U.S., Norse revivalist ideas have become popular in Neo-nazi or skinhead groups, and there are even seen Asatrú ministries—a type of revivalist Norse paganism—popping up in jails across the country.

Western neo-pagans, at least between the 1960s and early 1980s, generally but by no means always, leaned left, anti-war, and pro-environment, and were seeking a more earth-centric religious philosophy. Now, western neo-pagan movements have shifted to include large numbers of individuals from across the left and right of the political spectrum.

Still, there is a definite bent towards libertarianism, according to Adrian Ivakhiv, a professor at the University of Vermont who has conducted research into Ukrainian pagan revivalism, which includes 'Ridnoviry,’ among other overlapping traditions.

Rodnovery, in contrast, tends to be marginally more socially right-wing than Western forms of neo-paganism and may portray Western liberalism and consumerism as a corrupting influence.

Rodnovers, according to Ivakhiv, ‘definitely’ often have a streak of Western anti-liberalism, because they see liberalism as a secularizing force that threatens traditional social institutions such as families and communities.

Ivakhiv feels that Rodnovery, in some but certainly not all manifestations, can play into the vaguely esoteric, right-wing sort of spirituality you can find the world over, uniting the Steve Bannon wing of the American right with the “Alexander Dugin wing” of Russian conservative politics that is intensely anti-secular.

Alexander Dugin, a Russian far-right political philosopher, is primarily known for conspiratorial rhetoric. He promotes neo-imperialist viewpoints known as ‘Eurasianism’ and characterizes Western liberalism as a spiritual evil. His popular book, The Foundations of Geopolitics, has been attributed by some sources as having some influence on Russian foreign policy and Vladamir Putin, even being called “Putin’s Brain,” although these claims are heavily disputed.

According to Ivakhiv, you would find certain strains of this anti-western thinking in both Ukrainian and Russian pagans. Ivakhiv believes this is more common among Russian pagans than in Ukraine, and many Ukrainians still see Russians as fellow slavs and blame Putin’s regime, not Russians in general, for the war.

Ivakhiv admits it is difficult to generalize, but that Ukrainian Rodnovers will tend to see as much commonality with Polish, Czech, Slovak, and South Slavic pagans as with Russian or Belarusians.

No area better demonstrates the appeal of Rodnovery among young Russian males than combat sports. In fact, these beliefs are held by some of the most successful Russian athletes. Heavyweight boxer Alexander Povetkin, who at one time held the WBA belt and had a high-profile title bout against Vladamir Klitschko in 2014, is a self-admitted pagan. He regularly wears a necklace of the Axe of Perun on his chest and on his left shoulder, and he has a tattoo of the star of Rus, another popular symbol in Rodnovery.

Povetkin has expressed some of the nationalist views that are so often parceled up with Russian interpretations of Rodnovery, telling a Russian sports publication: “I am a person who loves his homeland and his people. Therefore, consider myself a nationalist.” Though he shoots down the idea that nationalism necessarily means fascism or Nazism.

Denis Aleksandrovich Lebedev, who was also a WBA champion and was ranked as the best cruiserweight in the world at one point in 2016, has also come out as a believer, though he may have pivoted back to the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years, at least in public. Alexander Pavlovich Shlemenko, who has successfully competed in the middleweight division of UFC-competitor Bellator, has expressed pagan sympathies to local sports media.

In a collection of photos posted on the Russian social network VK, we can see members of the popular Moscow MMA club “R.O.D.b.,” potentially named after the supreme deity Rod, celebrating the key pagan festival the ‘Day of Perun.’ The aforementioned world-famous boxers are pictured wearing Rodnover garments.

Though it may be an overstatement to call combat sports clubs a recruitment pipeline for the military, there is certainly a connection there. These clubs are popular targets for Russian military advertising due to their core demographics of young males. It’s also not uncommon for the coaches and founders to have served in the Russian military, as is the case with the founder of the ROD MMA club.

Ivakhiv feels that young men involved in fields such as boxing, MMA, and military service all might be attracted to Rodnovery in part because of its traditional representations of masculinity, such as the god Perun, because it can provide a source of inspiration for hard training, a type of intense motivation that seems rooted in traditional ‘martial arts.’

Magda, a practicing Slavic pagan from Poland, who is attempting to reconstruct pagan traditions as part of the Witia Project, has her own theories about why Rodnovery might be popular with young men.

“I think that men are really lost in modern times. I think that masculinity, nobody really knows what it is anymore. Men are just looking for something that will tell them how to be.”

Magda also believes that Rodnovery may also appeal to young men because, at least in comparison to the Russian Orthodox church, it is pro-sex and physicality.

“In Slavic Native Faith, there's absolutely no question that physical stuff is part of it.”

“During Kupała, the Slavic pagan celebration of summer solstice, you are supposed to be in couples. You have the whole tradition of going off into the forest, which is where the couples were intimate. Men likely find this appealing.”

Russian language message boards dedicated to paganism, blocked to Western IP addresses, generally contain conservative viewpoints on most social issues such as homosexuality, abortion, and women’s place in society. There is also a clearly anti-establishment bent, with a number of posts critical of the Russian military's abuses of power as well as government censorship of the populace.

“A part of the searching for their own identity was basically just making up stuff,” Magda said. “You have all these crazy people nowadays, mostly men, and they get it in their head that they are the sons of Perun. Whether they are these fighters or these warriors, they have to gain fame or honor on the battlefield.

“It is just crazy,” she added.

Though many within the movement may use Rodnovery as a way to justify Russian nationalist ideals, so do many followers of the Russian Orthodox Church. There are likely more Muslims serving in the Russian army than Pagans, and yet many more Christians or Atheists. The Orthodox Church has arguably provided just as much backing for Russian Nationalism as Rodovery ever has, with Patriarch Kirill even personally blessing the invasion of Ukraine.

Still, it’s not surprising that a faith based so much on guesswork surrounding a long forgotten way of life, and with no central hierarchy, can attract devotees of questionable morals. For those who go into with a pre-existing tendency to be violent, bigoted, or nefarious, it’s a blank slate that offers a justification to do what they please.

And considering the current instability within Wagner and the Russian military more widely—that spiritual justification could spell trouble ahead.

The Daily Beast.

Christian groups step up harassment of pagan festivals

American pagans and witches depend heavily on assemblies with names like Pagan Pride and Between the Worlds to share information and camaraderie.

People attend WitchsFest USA 2022 in New York's Astor Place on July 16, 2022. Video screen grab

August 22, 2022

By 

Heather Greene

(RNS) — As widespread immunity and milder COVID-19 strains have spread across the U.S., pagans and witches, like their neighbors, have begun to gather more freely this summer at  annual community events after two years of relative isolation. So have some unwelcome guests.

Street preachers and Christian protesters have long been a fixture of earth-based religions’ gatherings as they try to distract and deter people from enjoying what are typically outdoor festivals and ritual gatherings. But this year, some attendees say, these opponents of witchcraft and paganism have become more aggressive and even dangerous.

“There were about 30 (evangelists) this year” said Starr RavenHawk, an elder and priestess of the New York City Wiccan Family Temple and organizer of WitchsFest USA, a street fair held in the city’s West Village in mid-July.

Over the past seven years, barely half a dozen of these disruptors would show up, RavenHawk said. But the groups who have appeared this year “aren’t just protesting,” she added. “They are collectively at war with us. They made that clear.”

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RELATED: What is Wicca? An expert on modern witchcraft explains.

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Starr RavenHawk. Photo via Facebook

RavenHawk said the evangelists and street preachers walked through WitchsFest, holding up signs and preaching through amplifiers. By the day’s end, their presence had caused class cancellations and vendor closings.

Without formal networks of houses of worship and often living far from fellow practitioners, American pagans and witches depend heavily on assemblies with names like Pagan Pride and Between the Worlds to share information and camaraderie. While some are held inside conference centers or in hotel ballrooms, summer events tend to be visible and hard to secure.

In 2016, Nashville Pagan Pride Day was visited by street preachers Quentin Deckard, Marvin Heiman and Tim Baptist, who marched through the event with signs, Bibles and a bullhorn. In 2017, The Keys of David Church protested Philadelphia Pagan Pride Day. In 2018, a Christian men’s group encircled a modest crowd at Auburn Pagan Pride Day in Alabama in an attempt to intimidate them.

Indoor events aren’t entirely immune. In 2018 and 2019, members of TFP Student Action, a division of American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, were joined by Catholics in New Orleans to protest HexFest, held annually at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Religious flyers placed under hotel doors informed attendees they were surrounded. “Your only hope is to accept defeat and surrender your life to One who created you,” read one flyer.

On the same weekend as WitchsFest USA, attendees at the Mystic South conference in Atlanta found Christian pamphlets in the lobby and on car windows outside the hotel where it was taking place. In Texas, pastor Kevin Hendrix has encouraged Christians to take a stand against the Polk County Pagan Market, held in October.

Many Pagan events are not held in public spaces for this reason, although that has been changing over the past 10 years as occult practices have found more acceptance in the public eye.

Held in busy Astor Place, a tourist crossroads, the daylong WitchsFest USA is one of the most visible pagan festivals and, therefore, one of the most vulnerable. 

“RavenHawk creates this marvelous event every year in the heart of New York City as a public celebration where everyone is welcome as long as they maintain an atmosphere of respect towards others,” said Elhoim Leafar, who was scheduled to lead a workshop at WitchsFest USA and has attended for years.

The Christian group took up a prominent position on one street corner as the festival began at 10 a.m. and began talking to attendees and preaching into amplification devices. Among them, RavenHawk said she recognized members of the NYC chapter of Christian Forgiveness Ministries, a Toronto organization that had sent visitors before.

Crowds attend WitchsFest USA 2016 in New York’s Astor Place. Photo courtesy of WitchsFest USA

After her security team asked the preachers to leave, RavenHawk called the police as she has done in past years. But, for the first time, the cops did nothing, she said.

“The Christians say nobody is being bothered,” RavenHawk was reportedly told by the officers. In past years, officers would relocate the preachers to the far side of Astor Place, where they would continue without the use of speakers, which require a permit.

This year, the Christian groups were allowed to remain at the festival with their sound amplification. According to RavenHawk, the officers called the preaching “freedom of speech.” It is unclear whether the groups had permits. 

One attendee, Soror Da Glorium Deo, said, “When the police had the opportunity to downgrade things by possibly escorting the troublemakers off the area, they chose not to de-escalate.”

The New York Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

“(The officers) treated us as if we were invading the Christians’ space, as if they had more rights than we do” RavenHawk said. “(The preachers) were loud, and they were carrying on. Of course it was disruptive.” 

When organizers moved the workshop tent away from the corner near the preachers, the Christian groups followed. “At a certain point, the protesters were not only in the surroundings and corners of the event with microphones and banners, but inside it,” said Leafar, whose class was cancelled due to the preachers.

“We are not publicly protesting at their churches on a Sunday,” he said.

“It is not correct, moral or ethical to harass any individual in public or in private based on their individual or family beliefs,” Leafar said. He believes that this behavior comes from ignorance and a “contempt for our individual values.”

By the middle of that day, two vendors left, said RavenHawk, telling her that “they didn’t feel safe.”

RavenHawk said she is tired of “turning the other cheek.” She has called New York’s Street Activity Permits Office, the Community Board and the 9th Precinct (NYPD). “I want a paper trail,” she said. “I want to know exactly what my rights are.”

RavenHawk also called Lady Liberty League, a pagan civil rights organization based in Wisconsin, for legal advice and support.

“The United States is founded on religious freedom for all,” said Lady Liberty League co-founder the Rev. Selena Fox in a statement to RNS. “Safe gathering and the right to practice our faith is as much our right as it is anyone else’s,” she said.

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RELATED: Pagan ‘metaphysical’ shops navigate threats from Christian critics

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Some attendees have suggested that RavenHawk move the event to a less public location, such as a park or hotel.

“We shouldn’t have to move,” she said. “We fought for this location for eight years.” It took that long, according to RavenHawk, for the community board to designate “WitchsFest USA” an “annual” event. Until then she was required to reapply every year, she said, enduring questions such as, “Are you going to burn babies?”

Leafar agrees that it is important to not back down. “If we remain silent in the face of these protesters, those people who are new to our community are going to feel that they do not have the right to express themselves and pursue their individual faith openly.” 

This story has been updated.

Pagan Origins of Easter

Gee I could not have said it better myself. And again we note the relationship between the Spring as a time of resurrection from winter, life bursting from death, and its relationship to carnival and the divine fool. And you thought I was just making this all up.

Another popular religion which influenced the thought of early Christians was the worship of Adonis. As is commonly known Antioch was one of the earliest seats of Christianity. It was in this city that there was celebrated each year the death and resurrection of the god Adonis. This faith had always exerted its influence on Jewish thought, so much so that the prophet Ezekiel[Footnote: Ezekiel 8:14.] found it necessary to scold the women of Jerusalem for weeping for the dead Tammuz (Adonis) at the very gate of the temple. When we come to Christian thought the influence seems even greater, for even the place at Bethleham selected by the early Christians as the scene of the birth of Jesus was none other than an early shrine of this pagan god–a fact that led many to confuse Adonis with Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Pagan origins of Easter:

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a fictional consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25. "About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." ₃

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation."

Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity. ₄ Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

Attis

by Micha F. Lindemans

A god of growth and fertility in Asia Minor, also venerated in Greece. His service remained more Asian than Greek, however, and was connected to that of Cybele. Because of his manifestations of intense sadness and ecstatic joy, his service resembles that of Adonis. Attis was thought to be beloved by Cybele and when he refused her love, in her rage she unmanned him. His followers sometimes did the same. Attis is portrayed on coins from the Roman era and on tombstones. He is represented as a young man in tight-fitting clothes and a Phrygian headdress and shepherds staff.

Chapter 34. The Myth and Ritual of Attis.
Sir James George Frazer

Indeed the story that Attis unmanned himself under a pine-tree was clearly devised to explain why his priests did the same beside the sacred violet-wreathed tree at his festival. At all events, we can hardly doubt that the Day of Blood witnessed the mourning for Attis over an effigy of him which was afterwards buried. The image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had hung upon the tree. Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted from bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the death of Attis, but really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they wept for Tammuz. To partake of bread or flour at such a season might have been deemed a wanton profanation of the bruised and broken body of the god. Or the fast may possibly have been a preparation for a sacramental meal.

But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave. On the morrow, the twenty-fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal equinox, the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival. It was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria). A universal licence prevailed. Every man might say and do what he pleased. People went about the streets in disguise. No dignity was too high or too sacred for the humblest citizen to assume with impunity. In the reign of Commodus a band of conspirators thought to take advantage of the masquerade by dressing in the uniform of the Imperial Guard, and so, mingling with the crowd of merrymakers, to get within stabbing distance of the emperor. But the plot miscarried. Even the stern Alexander Severus used to relax so far on the joyous day as to admit a pheasant to his frugal board. The next day, the twenty-sixth of March, was given to repose, which must have been much needed after the varied excitements and fatigues of the preceding days. Finally, the Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh of March with a procession to the brook Almo. The silver image of the goddess, with its face of jagged black stone, sat in a waggon drawn by oxen. Preceded by the nobles walking barefoot, it moved slowly, to the loud music of pipes and tambourines, out by the Porta Capena, and so down to the banks of the Almo, which flows into the Tiber just below the walls of Rome. There the high-priest, robed in purple, washed the waggon, the image, and the other sacred objects in the water of the stream. On returning from their bath, the wain and the oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers. All was mirth and gaiety. No one thought of the blood that had flowed so lately. Even the eunuch priests forgot their wounds.

The Pagan origins of the Easter Bunny

Have you ever wondered where the celebration of the Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Christ acquired its unusual name and odd symbols of colored eggs and rabbits?

The answer lies in the ingenious way that the Christian church absorbed Pagan practices. After discovering that people were more reluctant to give up their holidays and festivals than their gods, they simply incorporated Pagan practices into Christian festivals. As recounted by the Venerable Bede, an early Christian writer, clever clerics copied Pagan practices and by doing so, made Christianity more palatable to pagan folk reluctant to give up their festivals for somber Christian practices.

In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Eastre (Ostara), whose sacred animal was a hare.

The colored eggs associated with the bunny are of another, even more ancient origin. The eggs associated with this and other Vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long the precise roots of the tradition are unknown, and may date to the beginning of human civilization. Ancient Romans and Greeks used eggs as symbols of fertility, rebirth, and abundance- eggs were solar symbols, and figured in the festivals of numerous resurrected gods.

Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the Spring equinox were common- it was believed that at this time, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and the hare together represent the god and the goddess, respectively.

Christian denominations and cults that do not observe Easter

Easter traditions deemed "pagan" by some Reformation leaders, along with Christmas celebrations, were among the first casualties of some areas of the Protestant Reformation. Other Reformation Churches, such as the Lutheran and Anglican, retained a very full observance of the Church Year. In Lutheran Churches, not only were the days of Holy Week observed, but also Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost were observed with three day festivals, including the day itself and the two following. Among the other Reformation traditions, things were a bit different. These holidays were eventually restored (though Christmas only became a legal holiday in Scotland in 1967, after the Church of Scotland finally relaxed its objections). Some Christians (usually, but not always fundamentalists), however, continue to reject the celebration of Easter (and, often, of Christmas), because they believe them to be irrevocably tainted with paganism and idolatry.

Their rejection of these traditions is based partly on the words of 2 Corinthians 6:14-16. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (King James Version)

That is also the view of Jehovah's Witnesses, who instead observe a yearly commemorative service of the Last Supper and subsequent death of Christ on the evening of 14 Nisan, as they calculate it derived from the lunar Hebrew Calendar. It is commonly referred to, in short, by many Witnesses as simply "The Memorial." Jehovah's Witnesses believe that such verses as Luke 22:19-20 constitute a commandment to remember the death of Christ, and they do so on a yearly basis just as Passover is celebrated yearly by the Jews.

Some groups feel that Easter (or, as they prefer to call it, "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day") is properly regarded with great joy: not marking the day itself, but remembering and rejoicing in the event it commemorates—the miracle of Christ's resurrection. In this spirit, these Christians teach that each day and all Sabbaths should be kept holy, in Christ's teachings.

Other groups, such as the Sabbatarian Church of God, believe in keeping the feasts and commandments of God as given in the Bible, including a Christian Passover that lacks most of the practices or symbols associated with Western Easter and retains more features of the Passover observed by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.

Etymology and the origins of Easter traditions

In his De temporum ratione the Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat (Eosturmonath) (April) was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month.^[15] Others note that Bede's status as "the Father of English History," having been the author of the first substantial history of England ever written, might make the lack of additional mention for a goddess whose worship had already died out by Bede's time unsurprising. The debate receives considerable attention because the name 'Easter' is derived from Eostremonat (Eosturmonath), and thus, according to Bede, from the pagan goddess Eostre, though this etymology is disputed.^[16]

Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat (Eosturmonath) and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede's mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independently. Others point to Grimm's stated intent to gather and record oral traditions which might otherwise be lost as explanation for the lack of further documentation. Amongst other traditions, Grimm connected the 'Osterhase' (Easter Bunny) and Easter Eggs to the goddess Ostara/Eostre. He also cites various place names in Germany as being evidence of Ostara, but critics contend that the close etymological relationship between Ostara and the words for 'east' and 'dawn' could mean that these place names referred to either of those two things rather than a goddess.

Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastic History of the English People") contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards Christianity instead of to their indigenous gods (whom the Pope refers to as "devils"), "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God." The Pope sanctioned such conversion tactics as biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices. If his statement on the origin of the name "Easter" is accurate, this practice might explain the incorporation of Eostre traditions into the Christian holiday.

However, the giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, Romans, Jews and the Armenians. They were a widespread symbol of rebirth and resurrection and thus might have been adopted from any number of sources.

Musei Vaticani, State of the Vatican City

Artist/Maker Unknown

Attis performing a dance of the Cybele cult. Marble, Roman Imperial Era.

Dimensions Unspecified

Credit line Formerly at Palazzo Altieri

Accession number Inv. 1656

Museo Chiaramonti

Photographer/Source Jastrow (2006)

See:

Passover Song

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Judas the Obscure

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