The rabbit “was the escort of the Germanic goddess Ostara.”​—Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend.

Springtime was sacred to the sex worshipers of Phoenicia. Their fertility goddess, Astarte, or Ishtar (Aphrodite to the Greeks), had as her symbols the egg and the hare. She had an insatiable thirst for blood and immoral sex. Her statues variously depicted her as having rudely exaggerated sex organs or with an egg in her hand and a rabbit at her side.