12-19-2003, 12:58 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-19-2003, 05:25 PM by Occhidiangela.)
What do Easter Bunnies have to do with the actual "observance of Easter:" the crucifixion and resurrection, and why am I asking this at Christmas time? Consider the following. **
When Jesus was alive, his disciples learned a great deal from Him, and they learned about God being the Alpha and the Omega: The Beginning and the End. They inferred, after the "end that was a beginning" on Golgotha that a Second Coming would happen in their life times: the End Days.
As the original authors of the Gospels figured out that they were going to pass on before He came back, they wrote their accounts of His various works. This helped set certain ideas in place that created the foundations of early Christianity. The early Christians had no Easter Bunnies, and the early Christian Church moved from Palestine to Greece, and eventually to Rome. It is the blossoming in Greece that sparked some interesting doctrinal changes.
Greece is famous for its philosophers. This new wisdom, this message of peace, this new Faith intrigued the philosophical bent of Greek thinkers. Many of these thinkers were loners, and like many early Christians in other lands, hermits who pondered such cosmic riddles as God's mysteries, and even older riddles such as "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" The message of the juxatposed Beginning and the End with its mirror in cyclical natural mysteries provided for them an explanation of where the Chicken came from.
Those who accepted Christianity made an assumption. They assumed or accepted on Faith that Genisis was correct, and so, the Chicken came first. "God made the Heavens and the Earth, and all the beasts, and it was good" etc. Then He made Man and Woman, to whom he gave Dominion over all that. All said and done, Chicken before Egg.
They also noted that God commanded Adam and Eve to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply.
These hermits could not do that, being doomed to Onanism during their hermitage, but while living in isolation in the Wilderness they did observe that Rabbits went forth, were fruitful, and multiplied: like nothing else! With all of the grapes growing in Greece, there is some evidence to show, from ancient amphorae shards found sealed at hermetic sites, that given the synthesis of the wine and the isolation, inspiration ran rampant, as did the rabbits, all over the mountains and hills of Greece.
These Philosphers cum Christians also noted that the rabbits obeyed the Saviour's admonishment to "turn the other cheek." When a fox threatened violence on rabbits, they turned their other cheeks (presenting their rear cheeks to the fox) and "plied swift knees." These new converts to Christianity perceived the rabbit as a holy creature, a natural reflection of cosmic truth.
When the wine wore off, it is surmised, they typically addressed the problem of synthesis: how do all these different pieces of the picture, these different images and visions fit together, they wondered?
Alpha to omega, chicken to egg, beginning to end. The donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem, the ass, was Holy, but the Greeks did not divine an ass "holy paragon" such as they saw in the rabbit. In any case, no scriptural evidence for rabbits at the Crucifixion was available. So, no holy ass, and so far, no rabbitical tie in. **Deep puzzlement ensued in the hills of Greece.** As the Holy Days, which we now call holidays, started to be more widely observed, in the forms of masses, the symbolism started to take on certain forms. Beginning and End into another Beginning. Christmas and Easter. The philosophical parallel of this to the Chicken and the egg, the Beginning again that led to another End of Egg and beginning of Chicken. Who was to bear the symbolic resurrected Saviour of Chicken, Egg, to the End? Why not the Holy Rabbit?
So, to bring nature into harmony with philosophy and belief, they started the ceremonial tradition of a rabbit carrying an egg to the altar at Easter in a representation of the cyclical spiritual harmony of nature and the great Cosmic Order of things, as revealed in the wisdom of the Scriptures and the holy amphorae.
And that, dear friends, is why the Easter Bunny now delivers eggs on Easter: it is a modern version of the ceremony celebrating nature's witness to the universality of the commands to go forth, be fruitul and multiply so that the Chicken and Egg shall continue on unto the End Days, as will all of Creation.
An Anti Rabbit, of course, had to be present for the philosophic polemic necessary for any reasoned treatment of Good and Evil, on which tradition the rabbit in the Cave of Caer Banog was drawn. Rather than turning his cheeks, the anti rabbit attacks those who threaten him, "with long pointy teeth" and does not, as did the Holy Greek Hare of the Hermits, turn his other cheek. Terry Jones, a medeival and biblical scholar, knew his stuff when he inserted that scene into Monty Python and the Holy Grail, did he not?
** Consider also that Guinnes and Crown Royal are both as effective as old Greek wine in producing improbable syntheses. :lol:
PS: CCD is what my kids get taught formally by The Church. I have to, where I can, supplement their indoctrination with a more varied, a more well rounded religious education, of which the is a modest example. It's not as good as my explanation about the difference between a Catholic, a Protestant, and a prostitute, but it may help some others understand the mystic symbolism of early Christian ceremony in a different light. :P
When Jesus was alive, his disciples learned a great deal from Him, and they learned about God being the Alpha and the Omega: The Beginning and the End. They inferred, after the "end that was a beginning" on Golgotha that a Second Coming would happen in their life times: the End Days.
As the original authors of the Gospels figured out that they were going to pass on before He came back, they wrote their accounts of His various works. This helped set certain ideas in place that created the foundations of early Christianity. The early Christians had no Easter Bunnies, and the early Christian Church moved from Palestine to Greece, and eventually to Rome. It is the blossoming in Greece that sparked some interesting doctrinal changes.
Greece is famous for its philosophers. This new wisdom, this message of peace, this new Faith intrigued the philosophical bent of Greek thinkers. Many of these thinkers were loners, and like many early Christians in other lands, hermits who pondered such cosmic riddles as God's mysteries, and even older riddles such as "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" The message of the juxatposed Beginning and the End with its mirror in cyclical natural mysteries provided for them an explanation of where the Chicken came from.
Those who accepted Christianity made an assumption. They assumed or accepted on Faith that Genisis was correct, and so, the Chicken came first. "God made the Heavens and the Earth, and all the beasts, and it was good" etc. Then He made Man and Woman, to whom he gave Dominion over all that. All said and done, Chicken before Egg.
They also noted that God commanded Adam and Eve to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply.
These hermits could not do that, being doomed to Onanism during their hermitage, but while living in isolation in the Wilderness they did observe that Rabbits went forth, were fruitful, and multiplied: like nothing else! With all of the grapes growing in Greece, there is some evidence to show, from ancient amphorae shards found sealed at hermetic sites, that given the synthesis of the wine and the isolation, inspiration ran rampant, as did the rabbits, all over the mountains and hills of Greece.
These Philosphers cum Christians also noted that the rabbits obeyed the Saviour's admonishment to "turn the other cheek." When a fox threatened violence on rabbits, they turned their other cheeks (presenting their rear cheeks to the fox) and "plied swift knees." These new converts to Christianity perceived the rabbit as a holy creature, a natural reflection of cosmic truth.
When the wine wore off, it is surmised, they typically addressed the problem of synthesis: how do all these different pieces of the picture, these different images and visions fit together, they wondered?
Alpha to omega, chicken to egg, beginning to end. The donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem, the ass, was Holy, but the Greeks did not divine an ass "holy paragon" such as they saw in the rabbit. In any case, no scriptural evidence for rabbits at the Crucifixion was available. So, no holy ass, and so far, no rabbitical tie in. **Deep puzzlement ensued in the hills of Greece.** As the Holy Days, which we now call holidays, started to be more widely observed, in the forms of masses, the symbolism started to take on certain forms. Beginning and End into another Beginning. Christmas and Easter. The philosophical parallel of this to the Chicken and the egg, the Beginning again that led to another End of Egg and beginning of Chicken. Who was to bear the symbolic resurrected Saviour of Chicken, Egg, to the End? Why not the Holy Rabbit?
So, to bring nature into harmony with philosophy and belief, they started the ceremonial tradition of a rabbit carrying an egg to the altar at Easter in a representation of the cyclical spiritual harmony of nature and the great Cosmic Order of things, as revealed in the wisdom of the Scriptures and the holy amphorae.
And that, dear friends, is why the Easter Bunny now delivers eggs on Easter: it is a modern version of the ceremony celebrating nature's witness to the universality of the commands to go forth, be fruitul and multiply so that the Chicken and Egg shall continue on unto the End Days, as will all of Creation.
An Anti Rabbit, of course, had to be present for the philosophic polemic necessary for any reasoned treatment of Good and Evil, on which tradition the rabbit in the Cave of Caer Banog was drawn. Rather than turning his cheeks, the anti rabbit attacks those who threaten him, "with long pointy teeth" and does not, as did the Holy Greek Hare of the Hermits, turn his other cheek. Terry Jones, a medeival and biblical scholar, knew his stuff when he inserted that scene into Monty Python and the Holy Grail, did he not?
** Consider also that Guinnes and Crown Royal are both as effective as old Greek wine in producing improbable syntheses. :lol:
PS: CCD is what my kids get taught formally by The Church. I have to, where I can, supplement their indoctrination with a more varied, a more well rounded religious education, of which the is a modest example. It's not as good as my explanation about the difference between a Catholic, a Protestant, and a prostitute, but it may help some others understand the mystic symbolism of early Christian ceremony in a different light. :P
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the Men 'O War!
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete