The Seba library treats Easter in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Campbell, Joseph, Alexiou, Margaret, Harrison, Jane Ellen).
What has always been basic to resurrection, or Easter, is crucifixion. If you want to resurrect, you must have crucifixion. Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that.
Campbell argues that Easter is psychologically and mythologically meaningful only when its inseparability from crucifixion is fully acknowledged, and that suppressing this connection produces scapegoating and misreading.
, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis
The Virgin’s lament is introduced by a series of rhetorical questions, justifying her sorrow by reference to the lamentation of the Patriarchs: ‘The weeping of Jacob, the head of the Patriarchs, has been renewed today, O my beloved.’
Alexiou documents the living tradition of the Virgin’s Paschal lament in Greek Christianity, connecting it to pre-Christian mourning ritual and demonstrating its continuity through the Cyprus Passion Play.
, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 1974supporting
Leidinos is here revealed as the spirit of vegetation, who withers and dies at the approach of winter and is invoked in the refrain to return in the spring… he is in the process of merging with the Christian festival of the Cross.
Alexiou traces how the Greek folk figure Leidinos, a dying-and-returning vegetation spirit, is actively merging with the Christian Paschal calendar, illuminating the pre-Christian substrate of Easter’s symbolism.
, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 1974supporting
He grows up quickly and demands a bride… during the wedding festivities he quarrels with one of his companions… and is killed. He is then lamented by his bride, and miraculously restored to life.
Harrison reconstructs the full dramatic cycle of the fertility-daimon — death, lamentation, and miraculous restoration — that constitutes the deep structural parallel to the Paschal narrative in folk drama.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
The Phrygians think that in the Winter the god is asleep, and that in the Summer he is awake, and they celebrate to him Bacchic revels, which in winter are Goings to Sleep, and in summer Wakings-up.
Harrison cites pan-Mediterranean evidence that seasonal sleep and waking of the god constitute the mythological matrix within which Christian resurrection festivals, including Easter, have their archetypal roots.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
The cross… has two faculties — the one of supporting, and the other of separating… in so far as he supports and sustains, he is Stauros [Cross], while in so far as he divides and separates, he is Horos [Limit].
Edinger, drawing on Gnostic and Jungian sources, analyses the cross as a symbol of psychic integration that underlies the Crucifixion-Easter complex and gives it its depth-psychological valence.
, The Christian Archetype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ, 1987supporting
In Christian hermeneutics the phoenix is made an allegory of Christ, which amounts to a reinterpretation of the myth.
Jung notes that patristic tradition conscripted the phoenix myth — a death-and-rebirth symbol — as an allegory of Christ, providing the symbolic-alchemical background for Easter’s resurrection imagery.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
The east is accordingly a symbol for Mary. Ephraem Syrus says: ‘The east with its stars was a figure of Mary, from whose womb the Lord of the stars was born for us.’
Von Franz traces the liturgical symbolism of the east — the direction of dawn and resurrection — through Marian typology, providing the alchemical and patristic context for Easter’s orientation toward renewal and light.
, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966aside
In life the king is lord of the Eniautos, in death he is the daimon-hero.
Harrison’s analysis of the eniautos-daimon cycle — the year-king who dies and becomes a sustaining spirit — provides the comparative-religious groundwork for understanding Easter within the broader sacrificial renewal pattern.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside