On what we mean when we say 'pagan fertility symbols'

[cavalorn]

Can it really be that time of year again? Comes round sooner every year, doesn't it

Comments

[ext_1029532]

Mmm cake.

A minor note: it is on 29September (aka Michaelmas, formerly a feast of Odin) that the Devil pees on the blackberries. I think the explanation is very simple: they do actually taste a bit wee-like after this date, and they tend to shrivel up after the first frost, which might be what happened if the Devil's steaming sulphurous micturation landed on them.

[morbid_curious]

A friend of mine suggests fungal strike after heavy rain/frost as something that commonly lowers the quality of the berries.

[unwholesome_fen]

One question you haven't really touched on - did Germanic pagans even know what a rabbit was?

The rabbit is native to the western Mediterranean - its original (post-glacial) range was centred around the Iberian peninsula, extending into what is now SW France, and apparently parts of NW Africa. The Romans spread it to other parts of the Mediterranean (Italy, SE France etc.) It's unclear how much further they spread it within the empire, or even beyond - for example, Britain certainly had rabbits by the middle ages, but they may have been introduced by the Normans rather than the Romans. It seems to be a similar story in Germany - there's little evidence of rabbits prior to the middle ages. If the rabbit did make it to Germanic areas before Christianisation, the overlap in time wouldn't have been very long.

One of the reasons we might think of rabbits as associated with fertility is that they have proliferated to such a degree, but that may well be a relatively modern phenomenon.

[kest]

It is worth noting that there is also an egg on the Passover seder plate. While I was originally taught it is there as a symbol of 'spring', it is primarily considered a stand-in for a holiday Temple sacrifice, and also has connotations of mourning, as eggs are traditionally served as part of a Jewish ritual post-funeral 'meal of condolence', where in turn they symbolize hardness and strength, and the roundness in both cases also symbolizes the 'cycle of life'.

So gee, how would that come to be associated with the Christian Easter, I *wonder*.

[kakodaimon]

I actually think that the egg thing (a post-Talmudic custom) falls into the above category of "practical": they are eaten both to break fasts and to prepare for them (e.g. Tisha BeAv), being compact and filling. On Passover it is also related to fasting, although in a less obvious way, since it is the first filling food you eat after a long seder preamble (just think: the day before Pesah you have a fast, then you have wine, and like a tiny amount of green vegetable... you need protein and fat especially if you are going to continue with the wine, similar to bar food). In any case it is "just a custom," sages in the Talmud ate things like beans instead (e.g. Rava as reported in BT Masekhet Pesahim) and although it's early for an extant custom, too late for Christianity to have poached it at a time when they still had a clue