KimImago
New Beginnings
Joyeuses Paques et Printemps ! Happy Easter and Spring...
“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”
Chogyam Trungpa
There is a distinct relationship between the Spring Equinox and Easter. The new religion of the Catholic Church absorbed the existing traditions and their symbols and developed a new name, ‘Easter’, which is obviously a variant of a German / Saxon Goddess name whose festival was with the arrival of spring.
In the pre-Catholic times the celebration of the Vernal Equinox was about new life and hope, the planting of seeds and the activation of the fertility cycle. But the Catholic Church replaced this with solemn displays commemorating Christ and Christian or Catholic dogma (written rules). The Old Testament heroine was the goddess Ishtar in thin disguise (Esther is the Aramaic word for Ishtar)... Ishtar is Persian for 'star'... So Ishtar was the goddess of the morning & evening star, as well as being the Great Mother, Shining One, Lady of Visions, Priestess of Priestess', she was the source of the Oracles of Prophesy, & Possessor of the Tablets of Life's Records... Her symbols were the eight pointed star, the pentagram, dove, serpents, & the double axe... Her planet was Venus... She wore a rainbow necklace...
The Persians converted this necklace (the rainbow) into a razor-sharp bridge that led to the Mount of Paradise... In ancient Sumeria, she had 180 shrines where women gathered daily for prayer, meditation, & socializing. The night of the full moon, known as Shapatu, saw joyous celebrations in her temples... At these rites (known as Qadishtu), women who lived as priestesses in her shrines took lovers to express the sacredness of sexuality as a gift from Ishtar.
New Beginnings
Joyeuses Paques et Printemps ! Happy Easter and Spring...
“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”
Chogyam Trungpa
There is a distinct relationship between the Spring Equinox and Easter. The new religion of the Catholic Church absorbed the existing traditions and their symbols and developed a new name, ‘Easter’, which is obviously a variant of a German / Saxon Goddess name whose festival was with the arrival of spring.
In the pre-Catholic times the celebration of the Vernal Equinox was about new life and hope, the planting of seeds and the activation of the fertility cycle. But the Catholic Church replaced this with solemn displays commemorating Christ and Christian or Catholic dogma (written rules). The Old Testament heroine was the goddess Ishtar in thin disguise (Esther is the Aramaic word for Ishtar)... Ishtar is Persian for 'star'... So Ishtar was the goddess of the morning & evening star, as well as being the Great Mother, Shining One, Lady of Visions, Priestess of Priestess', she was the source of the Oracles of Prophesy, & Possessor of the Tablets of Life's Records... Her symbols were the eight pointed star, the pentagram, dove, serpents, & the double axe... Her planet was Venus... She wore a rainbow necklace...
The Persians converted this necklace (the rainbow) into a razor-sharp bridge that led to the Mount of Paradise... In ancient Sumeria, she had 180 shrines where women gathered daily for prayer, meditation, & socializing. The night of the full moon, known as Shapatu, saw joyous celebrations in her temples... At these rites (known as Qadishtu), women who lived as priestesses in her shrines took lovers to express the sacredness of sexuality as a gift from Ishtar.