Dear readers, I hope
that you are all staying safe in these strange and difficult times.
This blog post comes to you a little later than planned seeing as we are past Hexennacht/Beltane, but I would still like to share two spring goddesses who were extremely important to
the Anglo-Saxons and wider Germanic peoples – the
mysterious Hretha and the radiant Eostre, known nowadays as Ostara.
Both goddesses are
solely attested by Bede in his 8th-century manuscript De
Temporum Ratione (The Reckoning of Time), in a chapter
describing the English months. Bede states that 'Rhedmonath', now
known as March, 'is named for [the Anglo-Saxon's] goddess Rheda, to
whom they sacrificed at this time'. Rheda is reconstructed in Old
English as Hrēþe, now Hretha in modern English.
But what was Hretha the
goddess of? Bede characteristically offers no further
information on her. In the absence of any other historical accounts
of this goddess, scholars have turned to etymology of her name to
gain some clues about her nature. Rudolf Simek, following Jacob
Grimm's theories on Hretha and her possible names in other Germanic
cultures, proposes that Hretha 'could have a similar meaning to the
eponymous Roman god of the same month, Mars' (Dictionary of
Northern Mythology, 2007, p. 159).
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| 'Valkyrie Maiden' by Howard David Johnson (2013) |
Reinforcing this
warlike association, Simek considers Hretha to translate as 'the
famous' or 'the victorious'. In Looking For The Lost Gods of
England, Kathleen Herbert notes that the common Old English noun hreð
means 'glory, fame, triumph, honour', while the adjective hrethe
means ‘fierce, cruel, rough, words that can describe the cold March
winds as well as warriors'. Herbert asserts that Hretha was a
waelcyrie (valkyrie),
traditionally warriors and choosers of the slain (1994, p. 20).
Given that March is the time
of the Spring Equinox and blessed with notoriously unpredictable
weather, it's reasonable to assume that Hretha was a warrior goddess
who battled the forces of winter in order to ensure the arrival of
spring. This would explain the need for blōt (sacrifices) to
her in this month. Indeed this is the way in which many modern Heathens view
Hretha, including myself.
Other Heathens view her
as a patron of survivors or a more general goddess of war. Still
others see her as more of a goddess of the hearth, one who patiently
awaits the return of spring. These variations may well reflect
different aspects of the goddess, or even local variants as we see
with Thor, Odin and Tyr in the historical record.
I have a particular
connection to Hretha, being born in her month – having to fight for
life as an emergency Caesarean, no less!
Hrethmonath directly
precedes Eostremonath, the titular month of a much more familiar
goddess. Bede offers slightly more
information on the latter:
'Eosturmonath
has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and
which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre,
in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they
designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the
new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.' In other
words, the goddess was so important/prevalent that the people
retained her name when Christian traditions replaced their
traditional practices (indeed Eostre is thought to be where the term
'Easter' originates).
Grimm's interpretation
of these goddesses in Teutonic Mythology (1882) is
particularly interesting. Variants of the term Easter exist in
all Germanic languages, yet Greek and Latin adopted the term Paschal
for their Easter celebrations. Clearly the term Easter (or its root)
had enough cultural significance to be retained. Grimm proposed the
reconstructed Old High German word Ostara for
the goddess, which has subsequently become the modern term for
both her and the festival.
 |
| 'Ostara' by Johannes Gehrts (1901) |
Grimm theorised that
the traditional 'Easter-games
[…] which the church itself had to tolerate' were no less than
surviving celebrations of the goddess:
'Bonfires were lighted
at Easter and according to popular belief of long standing, the
moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three
joyful leaps, he dances for joy ... Water drawn on the Easter morning
is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing ... here also heathen
notions seems to have grafted themselves on great Christian
festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the season of
returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on
mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess' (Grimm p. 291).
As
modern Pagan beliefs have grown, the festival of Eostre/Ostara
has become associated with the more obviously pagan (or at least, not very Christian) elements of Easter – e.g. rabbits, chicks, eggs, and fertility (!). Grimm identified Eostre/Ostara as ' the
divinity of the radiant dawn'; subsequent studies in
resconstructional linguistics trace the name back to a
Proto-Indo-European root, Hausōs, the
archetypal goddess of the dawn who dances and rides a chariot or
steed. In 1958, the name matronae Austriahenae was
found in votive inscriptions discovered in Germany - possibly a
regional variant of Eostre.
While historical
records on both of these goddess are scarce, there are many
tantalising snippets of information that we can use to honour them
today (alongside working directly with them, of course). Eostre/Ostara in particular is still very much alive in our collective consciousness. Both she and Hretha symbolise triumph, the arrival of spring, the return of
sunny days, and looking ahead to the hazy days of summer - energy that
we could all draw from right now.
Stay safe!
Sources
& Further Reading:
Bede,
De Temporum Ratione
Grimm,
Jacob, (1882) Teutonic
Mythology
Herbert,
Kathleen, (1994) Looking
For The Lost Gods of England
Mallory, James P.;
Adams, Douglas Q. (2006), The Oxford Introduction to
Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World
Shaw, Philip A.
(2011). Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda
and the Cult of Matrons
Simek, Rudolf , (2007) Dictionary of Northern MythologyWest, Martin Litchfield, (2007) Indo-European Poetry and Myth
Simek, Rudolf , (2007) Dictionary of Northern MythologyWest, Martin Litchfield, (2007) Indo-European Poetry and Myth
Reiterates
many of the points I covered here and includes some accounts from
modern Heathens on their experiences with Hretha.
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