Join Sara this week as she chats with Team TSE Assistant Christina Boos on all things Ostara!

Ostara: The Beginning of Spring 

Happy Ostara! It is the Spring Equinox this weekend, on Saturday 20th March in the Northern Hemisphere.  

Ostara is when we finally get some hints of Spring. We’ve been hunkered down all winter long, especially this winter with Covid restrictions and lockdowns. Finally, it feels like the Sun is shining. 

On this week’s ‘Magic on the Inside’ Podcast, Sara chatted all about Ostara and how to celebrate with Christina Boos, a specialist in Norse shamanism and one of our teammates here at The Sisters Enchanted. 

Ostara and the Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the Year consists of eight seasonal points, the center points of the year; spring, summer, fall, winter, the longest and shortest days of the year and the equinoxes, the two days of the year in the spring and autumn where there are equal parts of light and dark in the day.  These points are like eight spokes on the Wheel of the Year and are commemorated and celebrated as festivals. Many have deities and Celtic stories and legends around them. Ostara is the Spring Equinox. 

The Story of Ostara or Eostre, The Goddess of Spring

Ostara, sometimes spelt Eostre, is a deity in Germanic paganism, the Germanic Goddess of Spring. Her name means East, and Glory, representing the Sun’s rising again in the East, after the winter and bringing hope and glory to the world. 

Ostara or Eostre is the bringer of spring. In legend, she was once late bringing spring. The first thing she saw as she arrived was a little bird dying because winter lasted too long. Feeling so bad, she picked up the bird. In one version of the legend, the bird turned into her lover. In another version, the bird became a rabbit but was still able to lay eggs, colorful rainbow eggs. 

Both versions of the story represent fertility and the new life that comes with the spring. Eostre’s story also ties in with the Christian festival of Easter, a celebration of the Son of God raising in glory from the dead, thus Easter is named after her. Ostara and Easter both celebrate the new life and fertility we see at the start of spring. 

There is a version of this story where Ostara is upset with the rabbit because he’s a rabbit who can lay eggs and so gets very lusty, having lots of little rabbit flings. So, she banishes him to the skies. In myth and legend, many of the constellations were people getting in trouble and being banished to the sky. The constellation of The Hare is thought to be Ostara’s rabbit. She lets him down from the sky once a year at this time to lay his eggs. This is where the legend of the Easter Bunny comes from.

Ideas for Celebrating Ostara

Ostara is the time to celebrate the return of warmth and light, new life and fertility.  Use light and candles in your celebrations and use the first signs of spring in the nature around you – flowers, leaves, buds, branches. Eggs, as a symbol of new life, fertility, new beginnings and creativity are often central to Ostara and Easter celebrations, as are Hot Cross Buns.

We have a printable for you brimming with ideas for your Ostara celebrations. The link is at the bottom of this blog. Here are some of our favorite ideas.

• Make something new from something old

One of the suggestions in the printable is to make an alter broom with sticks and flowers.

Christina had a really clever idea, carrying over from Mabon in the fall season to now. When we look at these spokes on the wheel of the year, they really represent cycles or parts of the cycle of the year.  Mabon to Ostara is a cycle of Equinox to Equinox, right. Around the time of Mabon there are lots of cinnamon brooms around for Halloween. You may have some left over, sitting stagnant in the corner or at the bottom of a cupboard. To commemorate the cycle of life through the year, now would be a great time to recycle those old brooms and repurpose them, decorating them for Ostara. 

• Spring Clean

You could decorate your house broom, or even vacuum cleaner. Here at The Sisters Enchanted, we believe in making magic in our everyday life. All of us have so much to do in a day as it is so why have a cleaning broom plus a separate broom for being magical?  Isn’t it the same? Cleaning your house should be a magical practice. So, tie flowers and ribbons on your broom or cleaner and have a magical spring clean. Don’t forget your front door! Washing your door is such an easy magical practice. All this cleaning at the beginning of spring brings a fresh, new, fertile beginning.

• Get out in the garden! 

Ostara is a really good time for sowing seeds, planting and getting your garden ready for the Spring.

• Watch the Sun rise and fall

On the Equinox days, watching the sunrise and sunset is a great activity to do, if you’re a person who can be up for both of those.

• Make and eat hot cross buns

Hot cross buns are often associated with the Christian festival of Easter, with the cross representing the cross Jesus was hung upon. Hot cross buns actually have Celtic society origins as a circle with a cross in between making the four equal armed cross. The middle of the cross is the center of the cycle of life, where there is balance. The four arms represent the four seasons. 

You can make your own interpretation of hot cross buns, with the arms representing, the four seasons, the four elements, the compass points. Whatever meaning you want to bring into your celebrations. 

• Decorate eggs

There is a long tradition of painting eggs at this time of year. You can clean the inside of the egg by making a small pin hole at each end and blowing out the contents. Or you can hard-boil eggs to decorate.   Choose your design with intention, sit there with a symbol that you want, and clear your head and envision what you want to bring into your life and paint it on your egg. You can save a blown eggshell so you can put it on an altar or somewhere to remember your intention or you can bury an egg in front of your house, right by your front door to help bring abundance into your home. 

When to Celebrate

The spokes on the Wheel of the Year are markers but they are not really markers of a single day, more of seasons. Ostara is a season, the season of awakening that falls around March 20th to Beltane, around May 1st. You don’t have to celebrate Ostara on the exact day of the Equinox. You may decide you mix your Ostara with Easter, which comes a few weeks later this year. You may decide to do both. Whatever you choose, celebrate and harness new life, creativity, abundance, renewal. The coming of spring! 

Check out our free printable, packed with ideas to help you celebrate Ostara. Whatever you choose, have a great time and a lot of fun. 

Get your Ostara guide here

Get Christina’s hot cross buns family recipe and egg ritual here

Sarah Milne, Expedition Astrology co-teacher, The Sisters Enchanted