(March 30, 2022 at 6:21 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: In the case of the easter hare, those beliefs persisted long after the point at which they would have been associated with Eostre as a fertility goddess, and into christianized populations.
That’s the point - hares don’t seem to have been associated with Eostre at all. They were, however, almost immediately associated with the virgin birth and the resurrection, primarily because hares were believed to be hermaphroditic and could reproduce without sex.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson