#also obviously goes without saying but Extremely Derivative Obviously Not My Own Original Ideas]

[oozeandgoo-art]

made a weird dog

[philosopherking1887]

FWIW, my father, who is a hardcore Ayn Rand supporter, calls Thanos' philosophy derivative of a socialist mindset that doesn't recognize the value of human life, whereas my father believes capitalists see each person as capable of solving wicked problems in the future and therefore as valuable as the resources deemed scarce. Since you're calling Thanos hypothetically extreme pro-capitalist, here's what one extreme capitalist says. Maybe everyone just wants to push evil Thanos on their opponents?

I don’t doubt that people on both ends of the political spectrum want to disavow a view they see as obviously repugnant and blame it on their opponents. However, it also seems clear to me that the grounds on which people on the Left call Thanos’s worldview pro-capitalist and people on the Right call it socialist are quite different. In short, the leftist critics on Tumblr attribute his factual assumptions to capitalist ideology, while your Rand-supporting father is attributing his normative framework to a socialist mindset.

What people on Tumblr have been saying in various ways is that “overpopulation is a myth”: it is a false causal explanation for the existence and persistence of material scarcity. The idea of overpopulation, this criticism goes, enables rich people to blame poor people for their own poverty. The problem, these rich capitalists say, isn’t the distribution of resources; it isn’t that rich countries overproduce food and throw most of it away, or that rich people hoard money, or that powerful corporations renew patents on life-saving technology to make sure that the products remain scarce and expensive. It’s that those stupid poor people with no self-control just won’t stop making babies. I suspect that this criticism is something of an oversimplification; a growing human population will have more and more energy demands, which may or may not be possible to meet with only renewable energy resources, and will of course require more and more food, which will in turn require that wilderness be cleared for agriculture (unless urban farming and vertical gardens really catch on). On the other hand, population growth rates do slow down as societies become more educated and gender-egalitarian. So I suspect that the gap between the West and the rest of the world (whose labor and resources the West has been exploiting for the past few centuries) is a large part of the apparent problem, and if that gap were allowed to close, there would no longer be any reason to worry about runaway population growth.

What your father seems to be voicing is a general criticism of consequentialist ethics (which operates by maximizing some good outcome): that it aggregates well-being, and therefore has no problem sacrificing the well-being of a few people in order to improve the situation of a large number of people. The most common form of consequentialism is utilitarianism, for which the good to be maximized is pleasure or happiness. A criticism originally voiced by John Rawls and taken up by various other philosophical critics of utilitarianism is that it fails to recognize or respect “the separateness of persons.” It’s perfectly fine for one person to forgo a benefit at one time in order to enjoy a greater benefit at a later time, e.g., by saving and investing money, or by refraining from indulgences in order to preserve one’s health, because the near-term costs are borne by the same person who enjoys the long-term benefits. Utilitarianism makes the same kind of calculation across populations rather than across time, imposing smaller costs in one place in order to reap greater benefits elsewhere; but this is illegitimate (the criticism goes) because the people who bear the costs are not the same as the people who enjoy the benefits. Pretty obviously Thanos is reasoning in a consequentialist/utilitarian way: he’s trying to maximize average happiness by replacing a large number of low-quality lives with a smaller number of high-quality lives. It sucks for the people who die (or maybe not, since he wants to give them a quick, painless death) and for the people who lose loved ones, but in theory, things will be a lot better for the next few generations.

Consequentialism is a kind of collectivist thinking, you might say: the goal is to maximize well-being (however that’s defined) across the entire population of moral patients (creatures who deserve moral consideration, which might be humans, intelligent beings, sentient beings, all living beings…) without regard for how that well-being is distributed among the individuals. As a practical matter, utilitarianism tends to promote egalitarian distribution of resources because of the phenomenon of diminishing marginal utility: each added unit of whatever goods (money, food, etc.) provides more pleasure/happiness to someone with less of it than to someone with more of it, so you’ll tend to maximize happiness as the distribution nears equality – ignoring things like different individuals’ utility functions (i.e., how much pleasure/happiness each person gets from one unit of the good at each level of prior possession). So I can see how someone might think of utilitarianism as a “socialist” style of ethics… except that a lot of socialists hate it, too, and attribute it to capitalism (Bentham’s utilitarianism is one of the foundations of modern economic theory). But then both socialists and capitalists like to accuse each other of regarding human life as expendable, as something you can put a numerical value on, rather than as sacred, inviolable, possessing immeasurable dignity rather than a measurable price.

[floralmotif]

Better Together (SPN Speculation)

This took longer than I anticipated. I’m still not sure if I’ve covered everything I wanted to cover and I had to add some stuff since 12.21, but I’m posting it so it gets posted before the finale. It is a massive info dump, and I’m sorry for all the technical stuff, I promise it gets explained in there. I couldn’t figure out how to truncate it without outlining it like a novel. I wish I had time for that, but I barely have time to outline my specs atm. I lso don’t want to say that everything I say here is absolutely definitive, it’s just based on what I’ve observed and the patterns I’ve noticed. There are a lot of other factors that feed into this one that are also worth exploring but I don’t really know how to include them without over complicating everything, so this is the main set that I’m personally focusing on.

I dunno if anyone remembers this, but back when I metad about 12.12, I said I wished I could have done it in video form because the information better lent itself to a visual medium. Yeah, this is another one of those times. Someday I may modify this into a script and do that, but the season finale is basically today, so here goes.

Some of you may have seen a post go around where @k-vichan, @drsilverfish and @angelswatchingover​ discuss what Alicia is and the questions surrounding her current state. (I can’t get it to route to one of their blogs, but check them out)

@k-vichan​ mentioned something that this series has reminded me of since S5, and had themes which have prevailed through the show for a long time.(S7 on, especially.) I went back to watch it after I saw the post, to confirm with myself what I remembered. It had been a long time since I saw the movie, and I wanted to be sure before I wrote about it.

Of all the other works that exist, no other that I know of more closely seems to resemble the themes and message of Supernatural more than the 1995 film Ghost in the Shell.

I have no idea if this is on purpose or if they just both came across the same progression on their own (inspired by the Hegel dialectic) but they both share some common philosophies that have shaped my view of SPN since I’ve watched it, and especially this season. Even without having seen the movie in a long time, these thought processes and progressions seemed to prevail. If there is some real influence between them, what would it mean?

The below place contains spoilers for the ending of Ghost in the Shell, They’re further down though. I’ll mark them. Sadly, they’re kind of important for my speculation, but you can skip them if you want.

But first, let’s talk about (a vastly simplified version of) Hegel (in relation to narrative mostly), theming and message.

For those of you who don’t know who Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is, for my purposes, he was a German Philosopher and a man who looked like several instances of Jacob Marley. He had several ideas about how history and social constructs work. His ideas have been adapted over the years to suit fictional storytelling and they do an extremely good job of it. The great wiki creature sums up the work of Hegel thusly:

Hegel's principal achievement is his development of a distinctive articulation of idealism sometimes termed "absolute idealism",[16]in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and subject and object are overcome. His philosophy of spirit conceptually integrates psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy. His account of the master–slave dialectic has been highly influential, especially in 20th-century France.[17] Of special importance is his concept of spirit (Geist: sometimes also translated as "mind") as the historical manifestation of the logical concept and the "sublation" (Aufhebung: integration without elimination or reduction) of seemingly contradictory or opposing factors; examples include the apparent opposition between nature and freedom and between immanence and transcendence. Hegel has been seen in the 20th century as the originator of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad;[18] however, as an explicit phrase, this originated with Johann Gottlieb Fichte.[19]

Already seeing some parallels? Good. (it’s ok if you don’t. Wikipedia likes to word everything like a scientific abstract.)

I know it says the triad name was attributed to a different dude, and that’s true, but in terms of our usage, we’re gonna keep dragging Hegel around with us on this journey because he’s associated with the philosophy behind it. So come, Hegel, you’re not getting out of this so easily.

The definitions for each of these instances are thus:

The thesis is an intellectual proposition.The antithesis is a critical perspective on the thesis.The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition

Sound a bit like SPN’s s1-5, s6-11 and ... now? Yeah, there might be a reason for that. Not sure if it’s on purpose, but considering how everywhere the dialectic is in writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was come across and adopted at some point. At least to an extent. (also just freaking read that description of them there, that’s so pointed, it pangs at my fingers when typing).

One the people who brought the Hegel dialectic into mainstream use in media was Blake Snyder, most notably in his book Save the Cat. The Book has been fairly influential since its publishing and it’s been used as a basis for many films and tv shows. I don’t know if the book influenced SPN, but it may have (the book was released in 2005). Whether the book was a direct influence or not, there are certainly similarities. The show may be taking influence from Hegel directly, it may have evolved on its own as part of the human approach to storytelling or, it may have came from another work influenced by Hegel… like Ghost in the Shell.

The longer something exists the more it has to explain itself. This isn’t true of all media, but it’s generally true of anything that wants to have a consistent, ongoing, story.

This is why shorts are allowed to be weird as hell and they get away with it, and it’s why SPN has been deconstructing itself for the last several years. It’s also probably why everything is people.. Other than because budget. If this whole thought process is true, this season will mark the beginning of act 3, the beginning of the synthesis part of the arc, and if my speculation is correct, the beginning of sublation or aufhebung as Hegel used it.

For our purposes, and as it's generally used in media, sublation here means “assimilate.” To merge two opposing factors into a single entity, the two factors may not be even in scope. From what I can gather, the message of the entire series is “humanity must learn to accept the aspects of itself that it runs from, that it others and demonizes as part of itself.” That may sound long, but messages in works are often sentences like that.

Reconciling the old to embrace the new” has been what myself and some others have been calling the theme of this season. This fits into the message I’ve derived from the show by giving the characters the incentive to try new ideas and to learn from what they’ve experienced instead of relying entirely on past rhetoric. Not everything about the past is bad, but weeding out what’s preventing positive progress and merging it to new ideas which better accept the real world is a step in progressing towards a culmination of the message. In order to do that, you have to dance the destiel a little. Cas is literally the ideals of the Winchester brothers, of “humanity” as represented by them. That’s his character role. He’s also a supernatural being, linking him to the idea that “the ideas that progress are within what we have deemed other”. This aspect of his character is enforced throughout the series and is come into direct text on multiple occasions. Dean is in love with a supernatural being that represents new ideals of progress and acceptance. To me this is what destiel ultimately is, or will be. Humanity (Dean) accepting that which it was taught to other (the Supernatural (queer) love of Cas, ie new ideals) as part of itself in order to progress as a person (species) to a better future. If one aspect of humanity (Dean) accepts it (culminates his love somehow), then the other (Sam), will be forced to accept it in turn because Dean loving Cas would give Sam a visual representation of reality being different than his upbringing and experiences had previously presented. Even in that paragraph, you can see elements of the Hegel loop poking through. You can also see some reflection on the show itself and its audience…

So, what does all this mean for the rest of the series? Obviously add sadness and pain where necessary. This is SPN after all, but as long as nothing directly opposes this narrative, this seems to be the direction they’re going here. Eileen’s death was really idiotic and broke a lot of narrative rules, but it doesn’t directly refute anything. It’s a single instance and it may not even be true (it probably is, but man, either Bucklemming eated more purple berries than usual, they really shared the wealth, their entire purpose on the writing team is to sew misdirection, or something’s up here… possibly involving that last one.)

Below are a what seems to be where this is going in some form or another using the Hegel Loop as a means for the message:

1) Dean and Sam must face and reconcile with their pasts on all sides. Their past with themselves, their past with each other, their past with the important people in their life, their concept of family and how it has affected their lives and so on. Since everything must support the themes of a work if it wants to follow the rules, this idea has to prevail with every force in the current canon. Thus: Supernatural(Angels) vs Humanity(SamnDean), BMoL vs Hunters (Also mirror each other). Similar to their “force concepts”, Sam doesn’t really understand Dean, just like the BMoLs don’t really understand hunters. They think they do, they’re very efficient and rely on heavy research and technology, but their intel sucks. Similar also to Dean, the hunters aren’t generally so keen on lending themselves to the BMoLs. They believe they have reason not to, and so too does Dean believe he has reason to keep Sam from knowing his true self.

2) The two ideals of the show must also be addressed and reconciled/embraced. I said before and earlier that Cas = the ideals on the show. And yeah, he does from what I’ve gathered. From s4 on, he has always mirrored the way the Winchester's and thus “humanity” operate on a thematic level as time as gone on.(Especially Dean, the “heart of humanity’) This is because he’s the show’s “Love interest”. That’s what the Love Interest does but boy, does he take it to new and interesting levels! Like Dean and Sam, he still has self worth issues, he still has issues with his understanding of family and where he belongs, what he can be trusted with, what he’s for. If you look closely, you can see him mirroring a lot of decisions on the sides of both brothers. As of now, they both are starting to embrace a new way of looking at things, and in turn, Cas is experiencing situations that challenge his beliefs and combine both perspectives into a single progression to “better ways”.

Mary on the other hand, holds the old ideals of the show. She is basically s4 Cas and because she wasn’t around to experience all the changes, she carries the old show with her. She is what Cas could have been without the influence of the Winchesters. Still headstrong and rebellious, but falling back on old ideas and operations. Dean and Sam have truly changed Cas, and Mary is a testament to that. Like Cas as well, when she was sent back to Earth from heaven, she rebelled, and we’re seeing her s4 and 5. Most likely she won’t last any longer because the show won’t need her to prove a point anymore, but what she represents is pretty clear to me. Mary’s mirror of Cas is twisted. It has a flipped perspective with the Winchester’s being the original family and the BMoLs (Angels) being where she originally puts her faith because they share her ideals. Technically the Winchester’s held Cas’ too. His feelings of heart and freedom were found with them, but because of Mary’s situation and old ideals, she runs to the BMoLs instead.

Add Mick and some nigh omnipresent Cas references and you have a season about Cas, a season about ideals where Dean, Cas and Sam try to confront themselves, each other and the concept of family and duty that they were all fed stringently throughout their lives and times being with each other.

Those above concepts there are the thesis and the antithesis incarnate. They are the current state of affairs bumping against the old ways. This is their sticking point, they are coming to a head and they must. The pics and promos from the finale seem to enforce the idea that they will deal with the confrontation of a sort of reality, just as they have been slowly recognizing the need to confront their own hidden, unspoken realities.

3) At some point Cas, Dean and Sam will have to “embrace” each other in however they plan on doing that. They will not leave all of their past selves but they will all move forward to something better and new.

4) Dean will probably tell Cas he loves him or some other gesture by the end of the season. Gotta visualize/solidify those themes, m’boy! Your medium says so. In turn, Sam will be forced to learn to understand a side of Dean he wanted to believe didn’t exist and that he may have been actively hiding from because it would mean some things in his past would take on a new color with some possibly saddening meanings for him.

*coughs* I will always be a little devilishly amused at the character roles in this season and how they relate to the show and fandom directly…

5) Most likely Rowena and Crowley will reconcile at some point as well, but it’s hard to tell. They may resolve their issues by the end of the season in some form or another. Crowley mirrors a lot of characters and Rowena is sort of dark Mary, so their resolution will likely follow a similar trajectory + Crowley and Gavin feels or something. Mary’s probably gonna ascend like Gavin did. 12.21 and some general themes with Crowley overall have lead me to suspect that he’s holding the cards to this new reality. He does kind of mirror a lot of people with Rowena filling in the gaps, so him being the one to reveal something would make sense.

6) The BMoLs and the hunters will probably merge in some way. There’s likely a reason we felt there should be more names on that table. We will soon see Dean and Sam act as generals of the hunters… if that ends how I think it will, we will end with more names on that table and a defended legacy/Bunker. They will take the good of the BMoLs and incorporate it into the hunting world. Kind of a new Bobby network but with more stuff.

So then what does the finale entail?

That’s where Ghost in the Shell and Alicia may give us a clue.

If you have not already seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Its influence is seen in all sorts of places. A recent example is Westworld. It is a bit gory, so if that’s really not your cup of tea, fair enough. The following contains spoilers for the movie and it will affect how I address what happened with Alicia and how I think it may reflect on the ending of the season. You are free to skip it, but it may be a bit confusing after. If you want to skip this section, press CTRL or Command + F and search “spoilers over” in the box.

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Ghost in the Shell involves Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg who has feelings of limitation by her perspective. She believes that there is more to the world and she wants to experience and understand it.

Kusanagi: “There are countless ingredients that make up the human body and mind, like all the components that make up me as an individual with my own personality. Sure I have a face and voice to distinguish myself from others, but my thoughts and memories are unique only to me, and I carry a sense of my own destiny. Each of those things are just a small part of it. I collect information to use in my own way. All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me and gives rise to my conscience. I feel confined, only free to expand myself within boundaries.”

She is part of a Black Ops unit that investigates a hacker called The Puppetmaster who has been controlling people through their “ghosts” to do its bidding. “Ghosts” are basically brains or minds. In this world, cybernetics and biological aspects are fairly integrated but are not considered their own beings. They’re more augmentations for the humans rather than individuals.. In most cases. The people who are controlled by the Puppet Master are given false memories. They have no idea who they are or what their goals really are.

Over the course of the film, The Major and her companions investigate several ghost hacked people and the concept of identity. Eventually they learn that The Puppetmaster is actually a program created by an intelligence branch called Section 6.

The Major learns that The Puppetmaster has gained its own intelligence and has sought her out to merge with her and complete its perspective. It lacks the things a biological being has and has the vast knowledge of the internet. At the end of the movie, the two achieve sublation and combine into a single being, neither The Major, nor the Puppetmaster.

Before the merge, Kusanagi is hesitant. She fears losing herself to the merge and wants to remain an individual.

Kusanagi: You talk about redefining my identity. I want a guarantee that I can still be myself.

Puppet Master: There isn't one. Why would you wish to? All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.

This and their inevitable merge may sound like just a narrative decision, but really it seems like a decision based on philosophy of the work and its themes. The issue of stagnation. Ghost in the Shell argues that humanity would inbreed stagnation if it stayed the same (sound familiar?) and only change can save it, even if it stops being human as we know it. An interesting thing to me about the above is that it sorta addresses something directly stated in text in SPN:

Gah, there’s no transcript for 12.19 yet. Paraphrase time!

“Something something he’ll lose what makes him special”

If there is an influence in Ghost in the Shell, no he won’t. I know there are some people that want Cas to stay an angel, and I get that. It’s a fundamental part of him to many people, but depending on how they culminate Cas’ “sublation” with the Winchesters, he may become human as part of that metaphor. Just as the show may change form, but still be itself. According to GitS, he can’t fear change to preserve “what makes him special” When Kelly is talking about the Nephilim, there’s a decent chance she’s really talking about Cas… and his birth.. As a human. She’s afraid something that is integral to him will be lost, but from what Alicia showed us, he will still be the same Cas.. just sans powers… and maybe + some emotions.

So what does this mean for SPN? Alicia gave us a possible clue. She became a “ghost in the shell” when her heart was placed into the twig doll, but she retained her caring nature and her memories. As far as anyone would need to know, Alicia is Alicia. It’s possible she could be controlled, but since the ring is what controls her, I doubt Max would ever utilize it. We will probably never see them again, because they have given us what they were meant to narratively and them staying longer would mean they would have to explain themselves beyond that point. If we see them again, expect some weirdness.

Even when Alicia was placed into the doll, she still looked out for Max’s well being. Even when Cas was influenced by the Nephilim, he was still concerned with Dean’s well being. In a way, Cas has been a “ghost in the shell” for quite some time, with the question about vessels. With Alicia’s gesture, I’d say it’s pretty safe to say Cas’ body is his and Alicia’s is hers even if they can be controlled. Even if they can lose their free will, it’s not lost entirely. Even when she her body, she kept being herself in an entirely different body… made from fundamentally “lesser” materials, she retained her heart and what made her, her. Adding heart and humanity to a vessel, still retains the heart of that person. Even if Cas is no longer an angel, he will retain that heart he has. Even if the show takes a new form, if it retains its heart, it will remain the show.

Cas is currently further possessed by the nephilim, but he’s still in there. And the nature of the apparent themes means it has to release him eventually.

On that note, if 12.21 gave me anything(other than deep confusion regarding what the hell is happening and several conspiracy theories), it’s further evidence of a possible GitS influence with Mary being brainwashed to do the bidding of the BMoLs to do their bidding and slowly remove her memories in favor of memories that suit them. In GitS terms, she’s been Ghost Hacked.

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Spoilers over. Below are what I think all of this means for the ending of season regarding Cas and Dean since they seem to be the focus of assimilation. It depends on what the show thinks about the nature of Hegel, but each of the following scenarios is possible based on what I’ve been able to figure out:

Cas and Dean will occupy the same body: As a possibility to save Dean’s muffins from burning in the finale like Gadreel did for Sam in s9? Sure. As a permanence? Doubt it.

Cas becomes human but gets a new vessel. This is mostly just unlikely because people would hate it. Again, possible if temporary but TPTB, I do not recommend stretching this over a long period. Alicia looking exactly like herself makes this pretty unlikely.

Cas and the Nephilim won’t stay merged.. That’s redundant. He can’t “merge with humanity” while merged with a half luci humanoid… no. The kid is symbolic of Cas, Sam and possibly Eve. Because of Cas’ current nature and the nature of the supernatural and humanity and their sort of “forbidden” merging. Cas and the Nephilim are one atm, because their stories are. Which gives further credence to some sort of change. The kid is basically “past present and future” incarnate. It contains all of those elements at the moment, but future is its focus, same with Cas and the themes surrounding him from what I’ve gathered. Its relation to Sam is pretty obvious, since he’s been related to “a potential” evil demon child for much of the series. It not being evil makes sense for his character arc.

I have no idea what will happen to the kid. There’s evidence for a lot of things. Some I like better than others. They’re mostly personal preferences at this point.

Cas remains as he is and voices that he is himself. If GitS or Hegel in general are an influence and the showrunners like this philosophy, this probably won’t be what happens. I know there are a lot of people who want Cas to stay an angel for various reasons, and they can believe that if they want, but it just doesn't’ seem to be the way the story is going. I could be totally wrong and may have missed something, but the nature of stories is change. Cas can’t go back to being full angel, not permanently anyway. Also, if the show’s message is as I’ve deduced, he’ll have to be human in order to fully be accepted as part of humanity. If he powers up, expect him to power all the way down. Cas is a character and characters serve the story and vise versa, they are locked in an inseparable state with their themes. Cas is the themes in this story, he can’t be a weird penguin forever. That’s not climactic enough for the medium he exists in. If it were a book, it would be more likely, but it’s unlikely in a filmed work. The show can’t be a weird penguin forever either, especially if the GitS influences are correct(the non-reductable part is a factor, but if the message is thus, everything is humans). Again, I could be wrong, and I don’t want to discourage other interpretations, this just seems to cover the most bases from what I’ve observed.

I’m still operating under the idea that 12.12 is a microcosm of the season and possibly the series up to this point, so we’ll see how that plays out. I expect Crowley to save the day somehow, some dramatic declarations, Cas injury and probably Mary injury, some fiddling with anachronistic presentation/perspective on reality and a prince of hell. For this particular exercise, I was more interested in what happens, rather than how we get to the happening.

Whatever way Cas ends up physically, I think it’s safe to say the show thinks Cas and Dean better together, even if the culmination isn’t permanent at first.

[cavalorn]

Why eggs and bunnies aren’t ‘pagan symbols’ (long, pedantic, dull, sorry)

Today's topic is something that's haunted the Eostre debate for years, dragging in such luminaries as Eddie Izzard and Bill Hicks, and it is this: aren't eggs and bunnies obviously pagan symbols of fertility, though? In my experience, you can cite sources and quote Bede and quote Grimm and quote Hutton and point out the limits of what's known until you are blue in the face and still you will hear the retort 'yeah well that's all very interesting, Cav, but at the end of the day, eggs and bunnies are obviously pagan fertility symbols, aren't they? I mean it just makes sense. Fertility, innit?' Okay, let's break it down. First, let's look at the evidence.

Do we have any historical evidence that eggs or bunnies were used as symbols of Easter fertility by European pagans?

NO.

There is precisely jack shit direct evidence that either the Anglo-Saxons who gave us the word 'Easter' or any other European pagans used eggs or bunnies as symbols of fertility, or indeed as symbols of anything.

There is a widespread assumption that they did so, but it is not based on evidence.

So where has the extremely widespread belief that eggs and bunnies were pre-existing pagan symbols come from?

In general terms, it has come from people following these steps in their thought:

1. It's an long-established tradition

2. It's not obviously Christian

3. Therefore it must have been pagan

4. Therefore the Christians must have stolen it.

In specific terms, the speculative association of the Osterhase or Easter Hare with the pagan goddess Eostre begins with the folklorist Adolf Holzmann in his Deutsche Mythologie (1874) while the speculative association of Easter eggs with pre-Christian pagan rites begins with the folklorist and linguist Jakob Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie (1835). Yes, they are two different books with the same title.

So how long-established are the egg and bunny traditions of Easter?

We can't say for sure. The Easter Hare is first mentioned in 1682. Easter eggs, in the sense of eggs decorated and/or eaten as part of a Christian celebration of Easter, are first mentioned in 1610. Textual sources from the 17th Century trace their origin to the early Christians of Mesopotamia.

Are there Christian explanations for the egg and bunny traditions that people have overlooked?

Yes. The Osterhase or Easter Hare was a bit of a Santa figure in that he rewarded children for being good little Christians. It's also worth noting that hares were used to symbolise chastity rather than fecundity.

So far as the egg goes, as well as the Mesopotamian custom of dyeing eggs to represent the blood of Christ, we have to consider the role of eggs as a foodstuff that was banned during Lent: 'In the medieval era eggs were considered to be dairy products (they were derived from animals without causing harm or the spilling of blood) so they were banned for Lent. This gave them a tinge of luxury when the 40 days of fasting was over... people were eager to eat them again.' (Historian Greg Jenner.)

But weren't pagans all about Symbolism?

Well, no.

Here's what actually went down. Back in Victorian times and for a good while thereafter, a bunch of learned gentlemen were very eager to show off how learned they were. They got it into their heads that the ancient world, including that of their own European forebears, was just awash with Symbols. Tomb walls, monuments, artefacts, ritual costumes... so many juicy, enigmatic Symbols there for the interpreting. And being both learned and male, they decided that it was they who were going to do the interpreting.

There's a lot to say about colonial attitudes here, in which the pompous white western academics have an Educated Overview which the mere common folk who actually perform the traditions do not. But that can wait.

To the Victorian folklorists, the appeal of 'symbols' was that you could take the remnants of former civilisations and read whatever narrative you liked into them. This went double when it came to treating folk customs as the remnants of former ritual practices. Nobody was going to tell you you were wrong, after all; the ancients weren't around to correct you and the commoners weren't educated like you were. Some of your fellow academics might have variant theories, but that just made for a good back-and-forth in the journals and a respectable debate or two at the club.

So the belief that eggs and bunnies are 'pagan fertility symbols' is modern.

Yes.

What people are actually saying when they claim 'eggs and rabbits were obvious pagan fertility symbols' is 'eggs and rabbits remind us of reproduction, and those pagans were all about Fertility weren't they, so they must have been fertility symbols'. Remember, if you're going to claim that a naturally occurring phenomenon is a 'symbol', you have to show evidence of its USE as a symbol in a particular context, as verified by participants in the culture in question. In itself, an egg is just an egg. So, 'bats are used in Chinese art to symbolise good luck' is a coherent & potentially verifiable statement. 'Eggs are pagan symbols of fertility' isn't. As mentioned above, the problem we so often face is that learned men have, for years, decided that they are more equipped to decipher the 'symbolism' of various folk traditions than are the people who actually practice those traditions. We are thus confronted with a horrendous backlog of prescriptive analyses of alleged 'symbolism' which, on being investigated, inevitably prove to be the pet theories of some folklorist or other of the last century. Ron Hutton is particularly brilliant in his acid condemnation of these people: '...it was assumed that the people who actually held the beliefs and practiced the customs would long have forgotten their original, 'real' significance, which could only be reconstructed by scholars. The latter therefore paid very little attention to the social context in which the ideas and actions concerned had actually been carried on during their recent history, when they were best recorded. Many collectors and commentators managed to combine a powerful affection for the countryside and rural life with a crushing condescension towards the ordinary people who carried on that life.'

Eggs and Bunnies in modern media When people refer to 'the eggs and bunnies' of Easter, they don't generally specify which artistic or other cultural context they're referring to in which said eggs and bunnies appear.

So what is that modern context? Well, long before chocolate Easter egg packaging and cartoons were a thing, greeting cards played a big part in popularising imagery. Easter postcards are believed to have originated in 1898 or thereabouts and employed the familiar motifs of yellow chicks, eggs and anthropomorphised rabbits. (They also featured cherubic children, lambs, little gnomes, fairies climbing out of eggshells, and a host of other peculiar images such as a child driving an egg-shaped chariot.) So we have a rich visual heritage of modern Easter imagery that involves eggs and bunnies. This explains why we associate those images with Easter. We've been drowning in this iconography since childhood. It's worth noting here that the greetings card industry thrives on cuteness. Fluffy chicks are cute. Fuzzy bunnies are cute. Foxes were not seen as cute. This may be part of the reason why the other egg-bringers of Easter, such as the Osterfuchs or Easter Fox, are all but unknown now. The Easter Fox, the Easter Stork and the Easter Cuckoo are all recorded egg-bringers in various parts of Germany, but the bunny has long since eclipsed them all. I believe we can blame the greetings card industry for the bunny's usurpation of the Easter Hare, too: it was the Osterhase, the Easter Hare, that was the egg-bringer in the earliest recorded mention of an Easter Egg-bringing animal (in De Ovis Paschalibus). Rabbits are cuddly, whereas hares are staring-eyed and a bit mad. So what did eggs and bunnies symbolise to the people who printed and sold the Easter greetings cards? I think we can safely conclude that they symbolised market appeal, while selectively tapping into familiar pre-existent traditions. Turning to the actual tradition of a hare bringing eggs, it's difficult to see how the hare can 'symbolise' anything, because it's not being employed in a context in which a symbolic subtext could meaningfully apply. In England, we have a legend that the Devil spits (or pisses, depending on who you ask) on the blackberries in the hedgerows on October the somethingth, so we shouldn't eat them after this date. The practical purpose of this tongue-in-cheek legend is to prevent us (and our kids) from eating blackberries after a frost. The Devil doesn't 'symbolise' anything. The functional purpose of the Easter Hare is readily apparent: he allows parents to prepare a tasty, colourful treat for children while pretending that they were not responsible. In this respect he is exactly like the Tooth Fairy or Father Christmas. Nobody wastes their breath arguing what the Tooth Fairy may 'symbolise'. We just understand. Let's remember, too, that Adolf Holzmann considered the Easter Hare tradition 'unintelligible'. The best he could do was to speculate that the hare might have been the 'sacred animal' of his speculative Goddess. So when the German folklorist who first tied the bunny to the Goddess has nothing more solid to say than that, maybe the rest of us should be hesitant about slapping it with the 'pagan fertility symbol' label. Easter Imagery Before The Greetings Card Era We cannot say whether rabbits, eggs or hares were used to symbolise anything in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon sacred art, because there aren't any known examples of such a use, symbolic or otherwise (to the best of my knowledge & research). It is therefore seriously pushing it to claim any of these things were 'pagan symbols'. The claim is made not by reference to Anglo-Saxon religion itself, nor to documentary or archaeological evidence thereof, but by reference to activities in an entirely Christian context that were first documented many centuries after Christianization and are imaginatively supposed to be dim and distant echoes of a forgotten pagan past. Such an interpretation, long after the fact, is exactly the kind of learned speculation-from-without that Hutton condemns above. There is a tradition of rabbits and hares being used in a symbolic manner in Christian art. Wikipedia is pretty good on the subject. Strikingly, we find that rabbits and hares were employed as symbols of virginity as well as symbols of fertility or lust. This should act as a warning against any simplistic, generically 'pagan' interpretation of perpetuated images. The Problem With Eggs It is often pointed out that the decorated eggs from the Zoroastrian New Year celebration of Nowruz 'represent fertility'; indeed, Nowruz is inevitably referred to in discussions of Easter's alleged pagan roots, as if one non-Christian spring festival somehow set the template for all others to follow, regardless of cultural, temporal or geographic distance. The symbolism does not appear to be universal; other descriptions of Nowruz eggs hold them to represent creativity and productivity. Decorated eggs are only one optional element of a Haft-Seen and do not form one of the seven S-items. In Easter greetings card art eggs are frequently depicted as freshly hatched, with unrealistically fluffy chicks peeping out. This calls our attention to a singular problem with the notion that eggs represent 'fertility'. It is impossible to tell by looking whether a given egg is fertile or not. In fact, the eggs that are typically eaten are NOT fertile, for a very good reason. Unless you are deliberately trying to breed chickens, you don't let the cockerel fertilise the hens' eggs. Fertile eggs run the risk of containing developing chicken embryos, which (at least in western Europe) isn't something you want to run into. (There are issues about whether fertile eggs are kosher, recalling the inarguable and evident influence of Passover upon the Christian Easter.) So unless you show an egg in the act of hatching or shortly after, there's no way to demonstrate that what you're showing is a fertile egg. The typical symbolism accorded to Easter eggs is that they do not celebrate 'fertility' but rather new life, a subtly different concept. 'Fertility' has (entirely non-coincidental) steamy associations, smacking as it does of Summerisle-esque pagans frolicking naked under the full moon, whereas 'new life' puts one in mind of lambs and fluffy yellow chicks. If we look at what our modern heritage of Easter iconography really depicts, it's not fertility, which is merely the passive potential to produce life. It's the actuality of new life. Little lambs, hatching chicks: spring's busting out all over. Lambs and chicks, by the way, provide a very useful thought experiment. Why is it that people always mention 'eggs and bunnies' as 'pagan fertility symbols' but never mention the other, equally common symbols of Easter, namely fluffy yellow chicks and white lambs? The obvious answer is that fluffy yellow chicks and white lambs do not make us think of pagan fertility rites. They're too innocuous, too cute. They don't put us in mind of sex. So to harp on about 'eggs and bunnies' and ignore the other, incompatible imagery is disingenuous, focusing selectively on only those Easter images that pander to our preconceptions of pagans. Next time you hear the 'eggs and bunnies' argument trotted out, try saying 'So fluffy chicks and white lambs make you think of sex, do they?' while stroking your chin thoughtfully. You may see some surprising results. So What Is A 'Pagan Symbol' Anyway? Glad you asked. 'Pagan' is bloody useless as a cultural signifier, because it's exclusive, not descriptive. It describes what something is NOT, not what it was. It's like claiming something was a 'barbaric symbol' or a 'gentile symbol'. Which specific pre-Christian faith do we mean when we say 'pagan'? Norse? Celtic? Saxon? Greek? And which time period are we talking about? Neolithic? Bronze age? Early mediaeval? The moment we begin to speak of 'pagan symbols' we inevitably invoke the Pagan Sausage Machine Fallacy, i.e. the delusional belief that there was such a thing as a common 'pagan' identity in which the various pre-Christian faiths shared, and that there are fundamental factors common to them all. 'Pagan symbolism' means thinking of 'pagan' as a mindset; a naive, scary but oddly appealing, fertility-obsessed, nature-worshipping, openly and frankly sexual way of seeing the world. If this seems familiar, it's because the Victorians created it (and dreaded it) while the neopagan movement embraced it and tried to identify with it. It may be compelling, particularly when it's used as a stick to beat Christianity with, but it's not real. It's nothing but the exaggerated, idealised contrary to urbanised humanity; what we needed our ancestors to represent back then, rather than who they actually were. Yeah But Fertility Though The same woolly-minded thinking that tends to cludge all diverse pre-Christian beliefs into 'paganism' also tends to posit 'fertility' as one of the pagans' prime concerns. This is because such an image was the very antithesis of the modern post-industrial society that produced Frazer et al. To the Victorian and post-Victorian folklorists, the bestial primitivism of the 'pagans' produced a sort of horrified fascination. They spoke of 'fertility rites' as a sanitised way of discussing the phallicism and ritualised sexual behaviour that they believed was going on. In Margaret Murray's case, the belief in an underground pagan 'fertility cult' ran so deep that she attempted to connect it with historical accounts of witchcraft. This in turn led to Gardner's creation of Wicca, which was nothing more than an attempt to make Murray's theory into reality. Murray's work has of course been long debunked, but the intrusion of flawed theory into real-world practice helps to perpetuate the misconceptions; self-indentified pagans are now asserting that 'their' traditions really do reflect an ancient preoccupation with fertility, now construed as healthy and natural, in the face of censorious Christian prudery. 'Fertility' is such a darkly evocative term, isn't it? This is especially true when it is used in the context of pagan religion. Whose fertility is being implied? The fertility of the land? Of the beasts? Or of the people? Or, most likely, some generic boundary-crossing 'fertility' in which land, beasts and people are blent together in a piquant, sweaty, atavistic fug. To speak of 'pagan fertility symbols', then, is to perpetuate an ignorant and condescending view of the past that said a lot more about the respectable scholars who created it than it does about the people we seek to understand. It's illuminating to look at the frequency with which the term 'fertility symbol' occurs in published works over the last couple of centuries. As you can see, a phrase (and concept) we take completely for granted has only come to prominence very recently. The pagan Anglo-Saxon culture that gave us the word 'Easter' (from Eosturmanoth, as Bede attests) has one known 'fertility symbol' of which I am personally aware, and that is a cake. Cakes were placed into ploughed, barren fields in order to restore fertility to them; see the Acerbot, a (barely) Christianised ritual. What you will not find are eggs and rabbits.