White Rabbit: A Lovecraftian Tale of Tech Noir

Part Two: The View from the Burrow

Welcome back to The Weird Watchman. I'm your host and investigator, Jacob Nowitzki - although some may know me as Allan Hargreaves – a pseudonym I invented to investigate a strange fascination amongst my peers with the internet personality and prankster, TV Head.

Since my last update, I've noticed increasingly erratic behaviour amongst fellow students involved in the chatroom with Rabbit Ears. They spend almost all of their time staring at screens, whether it be a television, a computer, or a cell phone. When someone interrupts their screen time, they become irritable, and I've even seen arguments started if someone takes away their phone or even turns over the TV channel. They seem disinterested in anything that isn't on a screen. Conversations with loved ones take second place to the goings on of TikTok and real-life relationships have ended in favour of finding out who is America's Next Top Model. Due to the lockdown, I've no way of seeing for myself if the problem exists beyond my immediate dorms but it does have me worried. Nevertheless, the investigation continues. Here is my weekly report.

There was something about what the rabbit masked Rabbit Ears said about being "renewed for another season" that struck me. While my immediate gut reaction was to associate it with the television term, something in the back of my mind kept saying that I was wrong and that it reminded me of something I'd covered previously. Looking back through the archives of this blog came to no fruition but I did find something in an abandoned script into an investigation into the true nature of the Christian holiday, Easter.

I had intended for the blog post to go up in April but missed the deadline while knee deep in research and so put the script onto the back burner. It mostly reads as incoherent noise and I seem like that one crazed conspiracy theorist on one of those clickbait websites. I have attempted to make some semblance of sense of what seemed like disconnected titles and links and there may be a somewhat tenuous link to Rabbit Ears and ritualistic sacrifice in the name of ensuring prosperity.

Now, most people who recognise the holiday do so to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and know that it represents Spring and renewal, but overlook the glaring disconnect of how we got from Jesus rising from the dead to chocolate eggs handed out by a rabbit. For that, you have to forget the traditionally accepted version of Christianity and look into the real-life history of the creation of the religion. Abrahamic practices and theology generally have ties to much older religions and practices. Most demons, for example, where adopted into Abrahamic religions from former, more localised worship to shy away patrons of those religions and bring them into the church. Beelzebub, a name often associated with the Devil, can be traced to a Philistine god, formerly worshipped in the region of Ekron, Israel. The same is true for major holidays. Christmas has roots in Sun Worshipping proto-religions, given that it lies within the Winter Solstice of the Roman calendar.

Easter, a seemingly innocent enough holiday in which children gorge themselves on chocolate eggs, has traces of a Germanic and Northern European practice called Ostara. A Pagan celebration during the Spring equinox as a time of fertility and new growth upon the Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere, Ostara occurs between March 19 and March 22 and like Easter celebrations, this event includes eggs, rabbits, flowers, and seeds. The Goddess of the Spring, Ēostre, is worshipped during this time. A holiday that has both rabbits and eggs and is celebrated during the time Easter is celebrated and with a similar name that predates the Christian holiday? Pretty good signs that the church absorbed this event into what would become Easter and the act of dyeing eggs quickly became the consuming of chocolate was an obvious addition by the big chocolate companies. It's hard to ignore the fact that Easter is beginning to become like a mini-Christmas these days.