The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/easter)
English Heritage sparked controversy after highlighting the Pagan roots of Easter in children’s materials. Critics accused the charity of erasing Christianity, while supporters argue that Easter’s layered origins and deserve broader recognition in public education and cultural interpretation.
In this week’s Pagan community, we celebrate the March Equinox—Ostara in the Northern Hemisphere and Mabon in the Southern Hemisphere!
Luke Babb meditates on the Easter weekend and their own experience of conversion from the certainty of Christianity to the multiplicity of Paganism.
There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans and Heathens out there, more than our team can write about in depth in any given week. Therefore, the Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Scott Cunningham, one of Wicca and Witchcraft’s most prominent figures. Over his career, Cunningham authored more than 30 books of which the most well known is Wicca: a Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Through that work alone, he made solitary Wiccan practice more visible, more credible, and more accessible. Cunningham died in 1993 of an AIDS-related illness.
[Please welcome Liz Williams our new UK correspondent and journalist.]
UNITED KINGDOM — You can always tell that it’s spring when the UK online Pagan community starts linking to articles by writer Adrian Bott, also known as Cavalorn. Bott came into prominence a few years ago with his blog posts regarding the origins of Ostara. Rather than taking on board the received wisdom about this festival, he began a rigorous examination of the actual origins of the holiday’s name. Bott began by linking Ostara back to an obscure reference in the writings of the Venerable Bede called The Reckoning of Time, which was then picked up by the Brothers Grimm. His posts were often contentious, challenging the accepted idea that Ostara was an ancient Germanic goddess of the dawn or of springtime, or that she had anything to do with hares, eggs, or indeed chocolate.
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