Spring is in the air. Baby animals are romping through the forest and prancing in the meadows. Flowers are bursting through the ground—and in some places even through the snow—and blooming. The trees are forming buds that grow larger every day; some will soon be flowers that will grow into fruits, and other buds will grow into leaves to help collect the nutrients the trees need to grow and thrive. The birds have built nests and eggs will soon be hatching with babies chirping to be fed. For those in the north, the red-breasted robin has returned. New life is being seen all around us, and we all know spring is well on its way.
The grass is once again growing (along with weeds!) and for many people the lawn mowers will be coming out for the first time. For those living in areas where gardens are possible, tilling has begun, and in the south, seeds may already be in the ground. In some parts of the country, March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day) is a traditional day to plant peas in order to harvest early June peas.
While the outside world is busy going about numerous changes, many people will notice an inner change going on as well. Perhaps you have been suffering from a slight case, or even a major one, of cabin fever. You may feel overly tired, trapped, or claustrophobic. You may suffer from seasonal affective disorder and literally need the sunshine. You feel the need to get out and enjoy yourself outdoors, even if it is just a quick outing. Maybe a day in the park or even just a walk around the block is just the thing you need to start feeling like your old self again. If it is warm enough, you may want to start yard work, gardening, or something that will help you reconnect with the earth and the enlivening world around you.
It’s time to shake off the old and start anew. This is one of the reasons spring cleaning is so popular. Cleaning out the old and making way for the new always helps to give us a renewed sense of purpose. Whether it is a cleaning out of your physical home or your emotional or spiritual home, sometimes old messes need to be cleared out to make way for new and fresh ideas and plans. If you are hung up on an old project that isn’t getting you anywhere, it’s time to rethink your plans and revamp them if necessary. Moving forward on goals set in motion during the dark half of the year is what this feeling of rebirth and regeneration is all about.
It’s time to take something old, fix it up, and make it new again—whether it is a home, an antique dresser, or even yourself. During the dark half of the year, we spent some time taking inventory and making plans, during the light half of the year we turn those plans into actions. For some Pagans this is their version of the more common New Year’s resolutions. When the light starts taking control over the darkness once again, we get up, we get out, and we act, turning those thoughts, dreams, and plans into reality.
For other people, the saying “love is in the air” is all too true. Whether it be a romantic, lustful, or even a platonic love, relationships also blossom this time of year. For those who are already involved, it may be time to renew that love as the feelings of friskiness take over the entire animal kingdom. (We are just mammals after all!) There is a reason we feel this way when spring hits us. It’s intuition at its finest. With the feelings of newness in the air, we want to rekindle those feelings of when our relationships were new and young and filled with energy, passion, and spark. We either try to recreate or reinvent those feelings. Sometimes when those attempts fail, we move on to create and find those intense feelings in a new place. These attempts sometimes fail, in which case we simply have to remind ourselves of the age old adage, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and, like the phoenix, rise from the ashes and start all over again.
Maybe it’s simply time for you to find a relationship, whether it is a romantic or a platonic one. After being cooped up for the winter, whether figuratively or literally or both, we long for connections and reconnections with others. It’s time to get out and make those connections and build bridges with others. Make an effort to get out and meet people. Find new groups to join to meet people who have similar interests. The time for hiding indoors is over and done, it’s time to get out and welcome the world into your life.
For many people, spring brings with it the opportunity to grow in other ways, literally to garden. More and more people are going back to growing their own food, no matter where they live. The ideas of organic and homegrown are on the rise more and more every year. Those who have their own land may put in large crops or a small garden plot. Others who live in the city with smaller yards may only have room for container gardening. Many apartments have small balconies or patios where even more types of food can be grown in containers. Container gardening can also be done inside in front of a large window of an apartment with herbs, lettuce, or other small plants that don’t need to have flowers pollinated in order to produce food. It is very important in container gardening to keep giving the soil nutrients, however, as when there is less dirt to get the nutrients from, the plants will quickly go through it. What start off as beautiful, lush green plants will wither and die halfway through the season if they do not have the proper nutrients to keep them going. Recipes for organic plant foods and composting can be found online.
Setting your gardening schedule to the same schedule as other projects in your life can be beneficial. Begin working on projects the same time you plant your physical garden and watch both grow as time goes by.
Even if you can’t do any physical gardening, there is plenty of gardening of the mind, body, and spirit to do! Now would be a great time to start a meditation practice if you don’t already have one. How about taking up yoga, Pilates, or even belly dance? These are all forms of exercise for the body, soul, and spirit. Maybe you have always wanted to learn how to read tarot cards, practice Reiki, or read auras. Maybe you want to learn how to cleanse your chakras. Whatever you want to do, you can. You only have to step up and start.
Making anything new into a daily practice can be difficult at first. Finding the time and sticking with it are often the two most difficult parts of adding a new element to your life, but even if you start with just fifteen minutes a day, you will soon find yourself making more time to do the things you enjoy doing. If something you try just isn’t doing it for you, and after a few weeks you find yourself dreading it or looking at it as a chore, it probably isn’t for you. Don’t feel bad about giving something up once you have given it a fair chance. Not every practice is for every person, and there is nothing wrong with that. People are born with different talents and interests and they develop different skill sets all the time. This doesn’t mean you failed, it simply means you are budgeting and planning your time for what is showing to be successful for you. Just make sure you give it a fair chance. A meditation practice will not have the chance to grow if you only try for two days any more than a seed will have the chance to germinate, grow, and produce food if you only water it for two days.
These are all ways to use the energies at this time of year of renewal and new beginnings for your own benefit or even for the benefit of others.
Seasonal Activities
There are many ways to celebrate the season of Ostara. I say the “season of Ostara” as many people don’t spend just one day in celebration. While a ritual may take place on a certain day, that does not necessarily mean that is when the celebration begins and ends.
Taking a spring walk is a great way to welcome the new life and growth in the world and to share in it. Even if the air is still slightly crisp, a walk in the beginning of spring is like no other time. If you live in an area where there is snow, try to get out on a warm day when the sun is out and the snow is melting. Not only are the sights something to see, but the scents of melting snow, the earthy mud breaking through the snow, and maybe even crocuses or other early flowers blooming are something to take in. Also there is something you can only hear when these conditions are just right: the snow actually melting and the water running across the frozen ground or the drips of water from icicles overhead. If you can find a park or a nature preserve that contains a small stream or creek, you can hear this sound even more so as the waters from the melting snow rush down the banks in search of the stream to carry them away.
A walk at this time of year can be more physically challenging than at any other time of year, depending on the conditions. You may be battling snow, mud, and cold, or you may have an absolutely dry and gorgeous day depending on where you live. While some places have very mild weather in the early spring, others are still fighting snow into April. Still, just because a walk may be difficult doesn’t mean a person shouldn’t give it a try, it simply means you get to start your new year off with a challenge. Just the idea of starting off with a challenge will be a new challenge for some people! For others, challenging themselves is a daily way of life. In this time of renewal, rebirth, and regeneration, why not start off with something new?
Another activity people often take part in at this time of year, especially families, is kite flying. Again this can be a difficult task depending on where you live and what your weather conditions are like, but you do need some wind to get a kite soaring through the air—and staying there—and March is often a very good time for wind! The act of kite flying can truly be a spiritual experience if you make it so. It is a great way to teach children about the element of air, which is also associated with new beginnings, and also about grounding. Kite flying is a really good metaphor for how we can send our energy and intentions out into the universe while staying firmly grounded. It also teaches us that while we may sometimes dream with our head in the clouds, we need to ensure our feet are planted on the earth. When we lose connection with the ground and don’t keep track of what our feet are doing, we can end up tripping, heading the wrong direction, or even falling, and then our kite comes crashing out of the sky. This translates to our spiritual life in the same manner. When we don’t keep ourselves grounded and balanced, things can come crashing down around us.
In many modern celebrations at Ostara there is a blessing of the seeds; these can be either literal or figurative seeds. If you are a gardener of any sort, bless the seeds at Ostara, especially ones that need to be started early indoors. Depending on where you live, the actual field or garden plot can be blessed at Beltane. If you are in a climate where you can plant before Beltane however, you can go ahead and bless the land now, too. You can also bless any figurative seeds you want to plant and sow this year. This may be done by writing a list of the goals you want to accomplish or your hopes and dreams and then using the list in your ritual. You can also just add some quiet reflection time during your ritual for everyone to think about what seeds he or she want to plant and germinate in their own lives. In a more symbolic way of planting your goals, you can write them out on a piece of paper and actually bury them in a garden plot or even a planter filled with dirt that will eventually contain seeds or a garden plant. This way as the plant grows, your goals do as well.
With the feeling of “newness” in the air, it’s fun to be able to do kidlike things again. In the spring we can feel young again. We can act young again. The Goddess is in her maiden form, and the God is a young virile man filled with energy and strength. A perfect way to honor them is to emulate them and take on similar forms and attitudes no matter what our physical age is. You are only as old as you let yourself feel. There are a variety of activities that both adults and kids will be able to enjoy together and it all falls under the heading of PLAY. From finger painting to playing old-fashioned outdoor games, play should always be an important part of our lives, but it’s often one we totally forget about. Getting into the habit of playing again is a perfect way to honor the spring.
Outdoor finger painting on a sunny day provides for easy clean up and is another way to teach children about the elements. You can have them paint representations of each element. You can explain that while outside, they are taking in the element of air, and through the paints they are working with the element of water. Finger painting tends to have a calming, grounding effect on the participants, so you can discuss this aspect as well.
Play that involves using our whole bodies is a perfect release in the spring after being cooped up all winter long. It’s time to get out and move and get some energy building and circulating through the body once again. What were some of your favorite outdoor games as a kid? Red rover? Freeze tag? Kick the can? Hide and seek? Ghosts in the graveyard? Even duck, duck, goose. Do your kids know how to play these games? It’s amazing how many kids these days don’t.
Playing with Eggs
Springtime activities are often about getting outside and enjoying the great outdoors, and another way to do that is with a fun little object known as a cascarone. A five-second Internet search on cascarones will immediately show you that they originated in China or Italy or Mexico. Most people agree they are a Mexican tradition, but there are those who will insist they started elsewhere. The concept of the cascarone is simple—a blown out egg is refilled with something else. You can order papier-mâché cascarones online or buy them in stores around the equinox with the Easter decorations. You can also make them yourself using regular chicken eggs (look for instructions in the Recipes and Crafts chapter). Prefilled papier-mâché cascarones are generally filled with confetti, though you may be able to find ones with small toys or candy as well.
Cascarones are a great way to bestow blessings on someone. They use the symbol of the fertile egg to “birth” or “hatch” those qualities for the intended.
Dust off the winter cobwebs and plan your Ostara time to include some serious playdate time for yourself and your family. There are so many different activities you can do with eggs. In fact, you could literally do an egg activity a day for weeks and not have to duplicate. There are plenty of egg games and activities far better suited for outdoor fun than indoor fun. Some of these activities include egg rolls and several other types of egg races. In a traditional American-style egg roll, long-handled spoons are used to push a (usually) hard-boiled egg from starting line to finish line. The most famous egg roll in America takes place at Easter at the White House. Similar games are played in other countries. In Germany, a track is built out of sticks for eggs to be rolled down. The fastest egg is the winner. In Denmark, decorated eggs are rolled down a slope or a hill. The egg that travels the farthest distance is the winner. In Lithuania, a game is played similar to marbles—you roll your egg and get to keep any eggs that your egg touches.
The most common of egg races is most likely one where you use a spoon to carry an egg from starting line to finish. Again these are often hard-boiled eggs, but fresh eggs can be used as well. With fresh eggs, you can add in the rule that if the egg breaks you have to start all over with a new egg.
Another type of egg race is having to carry the egg somewhere on your body without using your hands. Again, often done with hard-boiled eggs, but the added risk of mess with a fresh egg can add to the fun. You may have people carry the egg between their thighs, where they have to be careful not to squeeze hard enough to break it, but they do have to squeeze hard enough to not drop it. This can also be done with an egg being held between the chin and neck, or use two eggs—one in each underarm. To make things really difficult and silly (especially if adults are playing), try a round with all four eggs in place at once.
An even more difficult type of race for a large number of people is often played with something larger, such as an orange or a grapefruit. In this team race, everyone keeps their hands behind their back and passes an egg from one person to the next. The catch is you hold the egg between your chin and neck and have to pass it off to the next person for them to hold in between their chin and neck as well. It takes a lot of twisting and contorting to get into the right position to pass the egg without dropping it. The first team to pass the egg through all members wins! This game can also be done with either fresh or hard-boiled eggs, but since it is so difficult to do, you may want to take it easy on your family and friends and give them the hard-boiled option.
Another activity is egg tosses where teams of two toss an egg back and forth getting farther apart each time. The team who is able to get the farthest apart without breaking their egg wins. These games are fun for kids or adults, and they really get your blood pumping and your body moving again.
Egg tapping, or “jarping,” is a competition where people tap the pointy end of their hard-boiled egg against other eggs. Once an egg cracks, it is out of the competition and the egg that cracks the most other eggs is the winner. While this game can be played either inside or out, you can change things up a bit by making this an outdoor game that is played with fresh eggs instead of hard-boiled! Yes it may make a bit of a mess, but egg is easily cleaned up with a hose.
The egg dance may actually go back hundreds of years, but for many people this is a little-known tradition that seemed to have been far more popular in Germany and the United Kingdom than it ever was in America. Perhaps it’s time to change that and make the egg dance an annual event at your Ostara gathering. The concept is easy. Fill an area (preferably outdoors in the grass) with eggs scattered about and then dance in that same area while trying to avoid destroying the eggs. There are many fun “springy” songs that would go along great with this activity such as “O’ She Will Bring” by Alice Di Micele, just about any version of “Lord of the Dance,” or Lisa Thiel’s “Ostara (Spring Song).”
Get Out and Go Somewhere!
Spring field trips are great because they give you a chance to get out and about and away from the place where you may be feeling like you just spent way too much time over the winter months. If it’s a chilly or rainy day, opt for some indoor options including art galleries, museums, aquariums, or a planetarium if you are lucky enough to have one near you. Planetariums will often have special shows or exhibits explaining more about the equinox and how it works.
On warmer, sunnier days, a trip to a local zoo will not only get you outside, it will help you get in touch with a whole different kind of nature than what you are generally used to. Spend some real time exploring the animals. Use all of your senses to get to know these animals better. Watch how they interact with each other and their surroundings. Perhaps they will even interact with you. Listen to the way they communicate. You probably won’t have much of an issue smelling some of them, but others may be far more difficult or even impossible to tell what scent they give off. Often the baby animals are brought out in special exhibits with their mother at zoos during the spring as well. While some people are terribly against the idea of zoos and keeping these animals in captivity, some zoos specialize and only house special-needs animals that would not be able to survive very long in their own natural habitat. These zoos often have some type of animal adoption program where you can donate money to the care of a certain animal or a species of animal. Perhaps this is a way for you to help give new life to something else and pay it forward.
Some people might not have a zoo close by but instead might have some type of farm attraction you can go to. Even domesticated farm animals are a type of nature and a way to get in touch with your animal side. Perhaps you live near a more exotic kind of farm. For example, an ostrich, llama, or alpaca ranch may be local to you and open to the public. Each of these places will give you a different experience and most likely teach you something entirely new.
Spring is the time when the farmers’ markets start to open. Your location will dictate what is available at your own local market. Many start the spring with very few vegetables, but other products such as eggs, meats, cheese, and wine are often available. Farmers’ markets can also be very educational—from information received to other activities such as demonstrations that may be scheduled to go on during the day.
Even if the weather isn’t perfect, you can still get outside. When was the last time you played in the rain? Grab some rain boots, a poncho, and an umbrella if you must, but get outside and enjoy the element of water as it falls down all around you. Instead of avoiding those puddles on the ground, take a great big leap and jump right into the middle of it instead. Splash the people around you (as long as they are people you know and not complete strangers—they might not take too kindly to it!). Pull a Gene Kelly and dance and sing in the rain. You don’t even have to be good at dancing or singing, just do it! Let yourself be free enough to enjoy yourself and to enjoy the water as it washes down over you. Remember, water washes away the old, the dirt, and the grime, making way for a clean new start. Water is also essential to the survival of all living things. While we need to take in water to survive, we may find that playing in it also is vital to our very existence. In this time of renewal and rejuvenation, let nature take its course and do its job, washing away what you need gone so you can start anew and refreshed. If you’re brave enough, try singing and dancing in public in the rain. You may be surprised to see how contagious this simple little act can be.
While all of these activities are ideal ways to get yourself moving this spring, they really can be done at any time. The themes associated with each, however, make them ideal (particularly if you are a parent raising your child in a Pagan setting) for the rebirth of nature and the earth that takes place at Ostara.
Pagan Ways of Celebrating Ostara
For the day of Ostara itself, you will probably want to include some type of ritual. As stated before, during a ritual is a good time to bless the seeds you want to sow and plant throughout the year—both literal food and/or flower seeds and figuratively speaking mental, spiritual, or even physical seeds. But there are other aspects to your ritual or celebration you may want to include as well.
Meditations can always be included in a ritual or performed before or after the ritual. There are many different guided meditations you can work with, or you may create your own or have a silent meditation on a chosen subject. Some meditations will also be provided for you later on in this book.
Many of those who do celebrate Ostara still honor the goddess Eostre. Her symbols include rabbits, eggs, and chicks, along with other baby animals. These symbols are representative of fertility and not just the fertility of the land and the animals, but the fertility of the mind as well.
Pastel colors are often used at Ostara as they are the colors we see in the natural world around us as the vegetation starts growing again and blooms. New grass is a light color—not the dark green we get after several rains and long days of sun. The flowers that burst through the snow first are usually white or have a lighter shade. You won’t see deep red roses blooming on Ostara, but you may find crocuses and daffodils. These are the most common decorations for Ostara by far. This celebration tends to focus more on the coming of spring, the awakening of the earth, and the rebirth of new projects or ideas.
With the symbol of eggs being so popular, now is the time for egg hunts—whether these be real, colored eggs or plastic eggs filled with candy, money, and/or small toys. Egg hunts don’t have to be just for kids. Adults can join in on the fun with eggs designed especially for them. Plastic eggs can be filled with small pieces of paper that contain quotes, affirmations, or specific blessings such as “May the finder of this egg be blessed with prosperity.”
Coloring eggs is another fun activity. There are literally dozens of commercial egg-coloring kits on the market these days, from specific cartoon characters to glittery eggs to metallics and pastels. Kids can now color eggs in a multitude of colors and styles. You may want to try a more traditional approach and use foods and plants to make your own natural colorings. You can find instructions on the Internet on how to do this. Even using regular craft paint will give your eggs a more unique look than what is commercially available, and using paintbrushes to decorate eggs allows for more creativity than just setting an egg in a cup to soak some color into its shell.
Some Neopagan traditions focus more on the equinox aspect. The old-fashioned balance scale can be used as a symbol as it is a time when night and day are in balance with one another. It is also a time to work on evaluating your own life and putting it into balance. In the magickal aspect of the equinox, all things come into balance at this time, not just the night and day or light and dark. Everything and its counterpart come together in balance and harmony; yin and yang. We make the switch from the passive half of the year to the active half of the year. The dark half of the year deals often with death and decay, but the light half brings life and growth. Workings move from being inner workings to outward workings. During the dark half of the year, our lives contract and shrink, and we tend to live in what seems to be a smaller world as we stay inside more often, don’t travel as much, and generally spend less time with people outside of those who live in our homes. Now with the equinox and the new light and soon-to-be longer days, our lives expand and grow, the world becomes larger again as we travel farther away from home, and we make more plans to be outdoors and to do new things and visit new places.
Still others see the equinox as the true beginning of the sun’s power over the night. After today there will be more sun than darkness until the Autumnal Equinox. Therefore it is a celebration of the light’s victory over the dark. Sun symbols are often a part of this celebration that remind of us of the sun’s growing strength and that we too can grow in strength each day if we just decide to work on doing that ourselves. Sometimes when we try to make positive changes in our lives and work on ourselves, it helps to know there are others in the same boat as us doing the same thing. At the equinox, not only are other people working to become stronger, the sun itself is as well. We aren’t alone in our quest to become stronger, we have one of the greatest allies working right alongside of us.
Honey and maple syrup are two other symbols used at Ostara. Both can be used as offerings to whatever deities you are working with. In the spring, the bees wake from their hibernation and honey production begins again. Also in the spring, as the days warm the sap begins running in the trees again. The trees can be tapped and the sap collected can be boiled down into syrup. Sugar maples are the best trees to make syrup from, though it is possible to make it from other maples as well.
While you may not want to raise your own bees or tap your own trees, or even have trees to tap, honey and syrup can easily be picked up at just about any store. Health food stores will also offer organic versions of each. Pouring honey or syrup into the ground around gardening areas makes an excellent offering to the deities to ensure a fertile plot and a bountiful harvest later on. If you are someone who likes to work with the fey, bowls of honey and syrup can also be left out as gifts to them.
The butterfly is another symbol of Ostara. Butterflies go through a great transformation in order to exist. As a furry little caterpillar, it cocoons itself until spring, when it is able to fight its way out of the cocoon and spread its wings to enjoy its new life. The butterfly works as a symbol in a couple different regards. First of all, the butterfly can be compared to the god who is preparing to be reborn. The cocoon is the womb of the goddess where the god waits until it is time for him to come forth. The butterfly also works as a symbol for any of those of us who have projects that are related to starting anew. The butterfly gets to start a completely different life when it emerges from its cocoon, (and in this one it even gets the chance to have a life with wings!). When we burst out of the cocoon of winter, we can choose to start our lives over in any way we want as well. (We might not be able to get wings, but you get the idea.) We are coming out of our own cocoon and are ready to spread our own figurative wings and soar.
The lamb is another baby animal that holds a strong significance for Ostara. We are entering the first zodiac sign, Aries, which is of course represented by the ram. The lamb can be seen as the young god who will someday become a strong, powerful ram. Male sheep will butt their heads and horns together, just like their goat relatives, to show who is the strongest. In both recent and ancient history, the lamb was often a sacrifice to the gods. In Jewish lore, it was the blood of the lamb that had to be placed on the doorway during Passover to keep their sons safe from being killed. In Christian lore, the sacrificed lamb is connected to Jesus Christ who is often called “the lamb of God,” meaning the sacrifice of God. The lamb has been associated with this time of year for thousands of years.
While Christians and followers of some gods saw this as a time of sacrifice, that generally is not the mood in most Pagan celebrations. We deal with sacrifice on the opposite side of the wheel. Our focus now is on the returning light and the renewed life that came because of the previous sacrifice, but the sacrifice itself is not the main point. Instead, we focus heavily on those aspects of renewal, resurrection, rejuvenation, and rebirth. We are looking forward into the future. The past is done and behind us and nothing can change it anymore, we can only move forward and decide what our actions will be from here on out. We can’t go back and change the way things were done in the past, we must simply learn to accept them, live with them, whether good or bad, right or wrong, and use our past experiences to help shape our future choices and decisions.