31. EASTER, A MOVEABLE FEAST

             
                     A multitude of unicorns is a "Blessing!"

     My adoration for Ostara began young. Behind the veil of blue morning glories on the porch of 101 Ostrom Avenue, ladybugs, bees and butterflies swarmed my aura and tickled my nose. At age six, the gift of a golden fleur-de-lis pin triggered everything LILY : Easter lilies, stargazers, tiger lilies, lilies-of-the-valley, Eau de 4711 cologne, Monet's paintings, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Mother sewed her daughters Medieval-wench, lace-up frocks with silver, heart-shaped, buttoned vests, and braided ribbons into our waist-long, straw-yellow hair. Easter bonnets, white kid-gloves and black mary-janes completed the Look. We were photographed in Syracuse's Thornden Park, holding baskets filled with tulips (worth more than gold in 17th-century Holland), amid fragrant hyacinths, purple irises, crocuses and daffodils.

     Easter effected a reclaiming of the purity long-since obliterated in our nuclear-blasted family, one the sweet presence of my Mother invoked shining through, regardless. It even transfixed the unhappy ogre we lived with, busting through his thundercloud to dramatize the Spirit of Christ Risen (bouncing sunlight off a dinner knife onto the walls and ceiling). We believed! (nibbling the ears of chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps). The castle curse was temporarily lifted, its garden adorned with flowery dresses for the three princesses, swaying from the Rose of Sharon and pussy willows, a moveable peace humming like cicadas in the afternoon sun.

     Spring is the Time of Quickening, as Nature raises the Dead, harkening Her Spirits to awaken! to bud and to bloom!
Resurrecting God / Goddess myths imitate the Solar Return of the Light at the Spring Equinox. The blood-stained petals of the dogwood tree bear testimony to Christ's trials and underworld Resurrection....the quintessential, rainbow light-body, rising in Ascension from a subterranean nightmare (call it Winter, Hell or Humanity's Ignorance) of persecution, betrayal and barbarism (forgive us our world, far from a nirvana of unicorns, fluffy bunnies and brotherly love). The deaths-in-vogue (crucifixion, immolation, stoning, hanging, beheading, gas chambers) ordered by recurring Inquisitions only serve to ensure the Return of the Wise Ones (devoted Healers of Universal Faith).

     Seeking to liberate humanity from Suffering, Bodhisattvas choose successive Second Comings. Heroes and heroines spring forth from the Cults of Resurrection : Inanna and Dumuzi, Ishtar and Tammuz, Isis and Osiris, Demeter, the Earth Mother and her Hades-risen daughter, Persephone, Jesus the Nazarene and Mary Magdalene, Queen Nefertiti and King Akenaten, and Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, the Divine Twins. Reincarnating Spirits code our DNA, resonant in Spiraling Fractal Revivals.   
     Not in my Name! While early cults to the Goddess Astarte (under her Babylonian name, Semiramis) offered blood sacrifices atop cone-shaped pillars (David Icke maintains the same, reincarnated black magicians / bloodlines are still at it), Her Transmigration through Time clearly reveals Her intention to embrace Benevolent Magic. Easter kills no one in Her name. She is the Goddess of Love, Venus Aphrodite, the Evening and Eastern Star. Her code of honor (Chivalry) seeks Truth, artfully decreed, in veiled knowledge, alchemical symbolism and fairytale allegory.

                                                                        Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Galahad (1864)
     The Lady of the Lake's Knights of the Grail Quest ride out to heal the poisoned land and its Mad Kings, with oaths, pentameter prose, bardic song and purification fasts; wielding magic chalices, swords, pentacles (shields), wands / staffs and cornucopia / horns-of-plenty (to feed the people). Her children sing and dance in sacred circles, re-enacting the orbits of the Sun, Moon and Stars.
     We celebrate the Providence of Her Nature, upon whose fruitful bounty we rely (sadly, we are facing probable food scarcity, due to climate change; from an overload of industrial pollution, greenhouse gases, deforestation, toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers, nuclear radiation, the spraying of drought-producing chem-trails, and petroleum, gas and coal over-consumption). The GMO and mono-culture farming practices of Monsanto (responsible for DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, Aspartame, and Round-up, to name a few) and the threat of Codex Alimentarius, along with neo-nicotinoid pesticides and cell-phone microwave technology, are responsible for the dire and unparalleled bee colony-collapse disorder (without the bees as pollinators, our entire food source is imperiled).

     On a positive note, farmer's markets, the food security movement, and organic, biodynamic farming and permaculture, are beginning to Thrive1. None too late! as the Earth's core heats up, ocean temperatures rise, and the ice caps catastrophically melt. Cataclysmic change is inevitable! We are in for a Pole Shift, the Return of the Tenth Planet (Planet X, Wormwood, Nibiru) or any doomsday plan that suits your fancy (Zombies!). We won't be the first planetary civilization to crash and burn, or to disappear under giant waves.....purification by Nature is our best mutation! As the Hopi advise of this time...relax, breathe, say a prayer and "Enjoy the Show".....We Are The Ones We Are Waiting For ............to "Dance This Mess Around"2.

     Spring breathes in like a lion, out like a lamb. Peer into her tiny, sustainable agricultural / farm scenes....behold! the dewy universe inside a crystal-frosted egg! My Mother and I visited Syracuse's Ukrainian community, for a stylus, beeswax and traditional red / black / yellow dyes, to paint eggs with crescents and crosses, honoring the ancient fertility Goddess Ostara (Astarte, Ishtar, Tara, Terra). The 22,000 year old Venus of Willendorf, a stone-carved statuette bearing engorged breasts, a bulging belly and buttocks, with seven concentric rings inscribed round her head, is testament to the longest worship of a singular Deity on our planet.....When God Was A Woman3.
     Lily and fungi-infused symbology characterize the Fairy World. It is theorized that the Holy Grail platter / shield, festooned with the severed head of St. John the Baptist, may represent the Death-of-the-Ego initiation undergone through communion with psychedelic mushrooms! "Feed Your Head!"4 - the Ego must be subdued for the All-Seeing Eye to awaken. The Fleur-de-lis represents a budding iris, female genitalia and the iconographic body of the bee. 
     The Flower of Life design, which Drunvalo Melchizedek observed seared onto a wall of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Osiris at Abydos, belies the Sacred Geometry inherent in Nature, and traces our origins to the Seven Sisters, the Pleiadian star-system.  The Flower of Life cycles the evolution of planetary consciousness, from seed, to leaf, bud, flower and fruit, from which the miracle of self-generation - the seed, arises anew. Its pattern of intersecting circles is widely interpreted as a blueprint for free energy (the 3-dimensional, double torus, or 64-codon template) upon which humanity may liberate itself and the Earth from depleted-energy extinction, and join our rightful place in the Cosmic Awakening (where unicorns come from!).
     Mushrooms and their kin are forest "fruit" - "immaculately conceived" (invisibly!) from microscopic spores. Eggs are seeds, permaculturally adapted; hosting genetic information, and functioning as the receptacle inside which life grows! Enchanted children frolic with pleasant creatures, hatched from jelly-bean eggs - amphibians, reptiles and birds. Mammals gestate inside egg-wombs (here comes a platypus!). Women menstruate in tandem with lunar cycles, releasing estrogen and progesterone-laden eggs. Sperm are "smart" tadpoles, swimming upstream to fertilize / inject ovarian eggs! Tailed fetuses curl in nutrient-rich cocoons! 

    "What's up, Doc?" Even Bugs Bunny knows combining an evolutionary legacy of both Natural Selection and Intelligent Design is our only hope. Mother, May I? receive the Immortality bio-chip / DNA upgrade / rainbow light-body app? 
     Dangers inherent to Easter are conspiracy hunts (to arrest the Matriarchal Bloodline), lightning from Spring thunderstorms, and from falling down rabbit holes. Leading up to Her (co-opted) Easter Communion, Christian priests stroke third eyeballs with Holy Ash (imitating Hindu sadhus) and bestow palm fronds for peace. Dew drop down the bunny hole for the Mistress' faerie delights - sweet nectar ambrosia and lavender mushroom cakes. Eat! Drink! Expand! Shrink! Wake-up! Hundreds of years later! Daisy-chain a leprechaun to find its pot-o-gold. Tease honey from a bee-hive! Tickle your sweetheart's chin with buttercups! Drink absinthe (Artemis' wormwood) and dandelion wine! "Lilac wine!"5 Candy violets! Whistle blades of grass! Pluck harps, fiddles and four-leaf clovers! Baby-talk animals! Pack picnic baskets with elven manna bread! Twine rosemary sprigs! Fluff your aura! Detox! Seeds! Sprouts! Spring Forth!

                        
                                                                                                         Art by Josephine Wall     
                         HAIL OSTARA!!!
           The Rainbow-Bright Goddess / Easter Bunny Shapeshifter;
                         baby hedgehogs suckling her nipples, 
                         bear and wolf cubs nipping her heels,
                bluebirds circling a haloed wreath of forget-me-nots
                          around Her Myriad Acts of Kindness.

1 Gamble & Gagne, Thrive
2 The B-52s, "Dance This Mess Around"
3 Stone, Merlin, When God Was A Woman
4 Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
5 Buckley, Jeff, "Lilac Wine"