Easter

Art by Salvador Dali

Today is the resurrection of Christ, the triumph of life over death, the revelation that the tomb cannot contain the living spirit, the very cornerstone of faith, celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon after the Vernal Equinox, when sky and season align to mark the eternal rhythm of life and renewal. Long before cathedrals rose and bells called to the faithful, however, humanity lifted its eyes to the heavens, marking the Earth’s slumber and awakening, the return of light, cyclical fertility and cosmos, all of which are enshrined in the meaning of Easter.

While the English “Easter” derives from the Germanic goddess Ēostre, whose festival celebrated the awakening of the earth in spring, the themes of Ishtar, Mesopotamian goddess of resurrection, blood, war, sexuality, and divine rebellion, who descended into the underworld, stripped of her power, confronted her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead, and emerged reborn, transformed, and radiant, charged with the chaotic energy of life itself, a goddess who refuses to be tamed, whose power courses through every turning of the sun and moon. Known now as Venus, herald of heart-light and renewal, embodiment of cosmic fecundity and the inexorable return of vitality, Easter subtly bears her signature.

Her story finds echo in Christ rising from the tomb, in Osiris reclaiming life from the underworld, in the Zoroastrian triumph of light over darkness, in the eternal rhythm that spans cultures and millennia, the descent and return that shapes the cosmos, that flows through human myth and history alike. Eggs and hares, later woven into European spring rites, reflect this same eternal pulse: fertility, regeneration, cosmic rebirth, the unstoppable resurgence of life flowing between stars and bloodlines, breaking every attempt to contain it.

So as Christians across the world celebrate the resurrection of the Christos, let us also behold the hidden currents that flow beneath the rites, the eternal archetypes that have guided humanity since the dawn of memory: life arising from death, creation flowering from chaos, and the unending dance of our Star, the Moon, and the Wanderers whose courses trace the same cycles that have inspired both gods and humanity alike, while the spirit of Ishtar, who is the deeper offering of the Christos – the heart-light - moves unseen through the ‘story’ of Easter and Yeshua’s message: the eternal heart never dies.