VM, where did you get that stuff, that's revisionist history! Ostara was a Saxon Heathen Goddess of Springtime, the rabbit was her symbol (of rebirth and the fertility of nature.)
The EGG was used by Slavic Heathens to symbolize "Icon of the Universe" and made pysanky with them. What pysanky *writing* is, is the symbols predate the conversion era, and come almost from the neolithic times. (per Marija Gimbutas, and Mary Kelly, an archeologist/anthropologist and a historian respectively.)
Some of the egg "runes" if you will, come all the way form Trypillian era.
http://www.trypillia.com/info/index.shtmlThe "easter egg" that you represent is a mushroom, which was used for eating, but as well, used in shamanic work, but NOT by everyone. Only Volvhas or certain types of priest seers used these. (one must also realize that in the Pagan era, most "priests" were chieftains of their tribe-clan, and most "cunning folk" were the ones that did the work YOU speak of. There was a societal difference.
Even today, people "write" pysanky, mostly for cultural and familial use. My Polish-American mother had a good-sized selection of them, my favorite a Lithuanian goose egg. Each culture in that area, whether Baltic or Slavic, reveres the egg.
Germans also have "egg trees". In store front windows, they put either stands with eggs on them (used to simulate a "tree", or flowering branches, maybe forsythia or cherry, plum, etc. tied with pastel colorful ribbons to simulate "Spring"! (however, they do NOT do the "egg runes" of Pysanky, that is a Slavic thing.)
Stop with the revisionist history, that is where we Heathens and Pagans come off looking like goof balls always looking for the next "high". Nothing could be further from the truth..
I run several forums for the study of Heathen history, and they stem from both my heritage:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SlavicReconstructionist/ This list is particularly well known, and has several PhD's, authors and scholars on it.
Same here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hexenkunst/That stuff you've written on, I know you mean well, VM, but that stuff is like C2CAM stuff, where *this* above IS history, documented by scholarly sources, taught in Universities.
Blu