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Ostara
(Spring Equinox)
March 21
This is the time of springs' return, a celebration of when life begins to burst forth from the earth as the grips of winter is broken. The Sun God rises and unites with the Goddess who returns from the land of the dead. Together they encourage growth and abundance. The Equinoxs are a time when there is balance between night and day, and now we move into the light half of the year........
This holiday is named for the virgin Goddess of Spring in ancient Germany, whos name was Eostre, and who the Christian holiday Easter is named. In old times sexual relations were almost obligatory on Ostara Eve and a feast featuring fertility foods, such as cake honey and eggs. The idea of wearing new clothes at Easter and other spring festivals came from an earlier Teutonic pagan traditon. It was considered the worst of luck to wear ones spring clothing before Ostara and the Teutons would work thru the winter in secret to prepare elegant finery for the Sabbat celebration.
The entire community would than gather together for games feasting and religious rituals, while showing off their new clothing.
The lamb is a symbol of Ostara, and was sacred to all the virgin goddesses of Europe the Middle East and North Africa. This symbol was so ingrained that it was carried over in the spring religious rituals of the Jewish passover and Easter. The egg is also a symbol of Ostara, and is the universal archetype of new life, and has been held in reverence as sacred objects of eternal life, carried as fertiity amulets, decorated to honor deities, placed on spring altars and given as cherished spring gifts. The legand that eggs are delivered from a rabbit, came from the legend of the Goddess Eostre. So much did the lowly rabbit want to please this Goddess, that he laid the sacred eggs in her honor and gaily decorated them and then humbly presented them to her.
So pleased was she that she wished all humankind to share in her joy. And in her honor the rabbit went through outall the world and distributed these decorated gifts of life.
Easter egg hunting originated in pagan India where the belief in Karma is strong... and that what one does in one's life will return 3- fold in the next, and the practice of hunting for easter eggs was symbolic of the belief that we are fully responsible for ourselves and we must each find our own path to new life. Pagans on Ostara will paint the Easter eggs in pastel colors and draw a symbol or a rune up it as to what they wish to accomplish or aquire in the coming year...
This is a time when we ritually burn or cut the negative ties that bind us and the bad habits we want to "get rid of" and cast from our lives, and then we plant the seeds for our hopes and dreams and the positive things we want to bring into our lives, in the future, to them a reality......
So Welcome Spring! :)
Love, Tala
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" Darkness creeps away as the earth is reborn- Where one life has withered, another will form. The wheel turns again, to welcome Spring, rise and shine to the new gifts it shall bring!