Spring Equinox or Ostara
What is it?
The Spring Equinox celebrates the end of winter and the coming of spring. It is the time for new beginnings, fertility, new life and when day and night are equal. This is the time of balance and harmony but unlike in the Fall, the light is getting stronger and we’re moving towards the Summer Solstice.
Ostara’s festival is named after the Anglo-Saxon Goddess Eostre or Eastre, also known in Old German as Ostara. She was the goddess of fertility and as her namesake suggests, her festival was converted to the Christian holiday of Easter.
Ostara was also connected with hares and eggs.
The Spring Equinox is also a good time to celebrate the return of warmth and the rebirth of life, nature, the soil and the land.
Symbols for Ostara:
Eggs: the symbol of rebirth and renewal.
Rabbits or hares: rabbits are symbols of fertility.
Spring Colors: bright, fresh colors that symbolize the end of winter
Flower bulbs: tulips, daffodils and other flowers will be poking through the ground now or in full bloom.
Seedlings: new plants to bless before you put them in the ground
Balance: black and white candles, yin and yang symbols, a scale
Gemstones: amethyst, aquamarine, moonstone, rose quartz
Egg Magic*:
Eggs are a symbol of fertility, new beginnings and at the Spring Equinox also a symbol of balance. (With your egg, you can attempt to balance it upright to symbolize balance and harmony in your life.)
Take an egg and whisper, write, or sing all of your ideas, big or small and your wishes for the upcoming year into the egg. Symbolically, the egg represents you and your wishes and an egg has everything it needs to help you manifest.
Once you are done, dye, color and decorate your egg as you wish for fun and to give your ideas life. You may wish to draw two interlocking triangles to form a six pointed start to represent a fundamental in magic: as above, so below. What you can think of you can manifest in the physical plane. This is also fun to do with kids as part of a yearly tradition.
When you are finished decorating your eggs, go and bury them in Mother Earth and ask her to hold your intentions so that they may begin to grow as summer approaches.
*Idea taken from Lisa Lister in her book Witch.
Ritual Ideas:
Planting a new seed or flower in Mother Earth as a symbol of rebirth and the coming of spring
Meditation on balance. Because light and dark are the same length, we can meditate on balance and harmony in our lives.
New Beginnings. Since the Spring Equinox is all about new beginnings and manifesting those ideas into reality, you can write down all the things you wish to manifest whether it’s big or small. After you have your intentions written down, give it to Mother Earth and the universe to work on by burying it like you would a seed and so it may grow. Alternatively you can seal and put on your altar.
Spring Cleaning and Smudging. We are all familiar with spring cleaning. It’s a great time and way to clear the energies from your house. Burning sage, palo santo or other clarifying herbs is an ancient tradition to clarify the energies in your house and body. Light your herb bundle and move counterclockwise through your house cleaning all your rooms. You can hold your crystals in the smoke to purify them and you can hold the sage in your ethereal bodies to cleanse any emotional or spiritual gunk.
These are just some of the things you could include in your Spring Equinox and Ostara celebrations. What do you like to do to celebrate the return of Spring?
Research and notes taken from:
Witch by Lisa Lister. Buy this fabulous book here.
Thought Catalog
