Ostara

The Vernal Equinox occurs on or around March 21^st in the Northern Hemisphere, and September 21^st in the Southern Hemisphere. Classically, this is considered to be the day of equal night and daylight hours. However, if you want to get technical, that equal day/night “thing” is only a moment in time called the equiluxe.

Remember that back in the old days, the majority of Pagan folks could not calculate that exact moment, and yet they still celebrated the festival successfully.

So it’s a safe bet to go about your celebrations on the date marked as the Vernal Equinox. Enjoy the beginning of Spring and the balance of the day and night. Celebrate the Sabbat without worrying that the world will fall on your head. The equinox is a magickal time, and on an interesting note, the days of the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes allow us to view the Sun rising at true East and setting at true West. So if you’ve ever wondered where exactly true East and true West are at your house, the Equinoxes are a great time to mark it.

The Earth is finally waking up, the grass is starting to peep through, and the trees are budding. The earliest bulbs are blooming. Birds are returning from their winter homes. Spring has arrived.

Ostara marks the Vernal (meaning youthful) Equinox – a time of balance between daylight and darkness, the point before day is longer than night. It falls in the Christian season of Lent in the Northern Hemisphere, which itself comes from an Anglo-Saxon word referring to the “lengthening” of the days. It is also a celebration of growth and derives its name from a German goddess whose totem was the hare. The hare is seen as prolifically fertile and many Moon goddesses linked with women’s reproductive cycles share it as a totem of earthy sexuality and fecundity. Today’s Easter Bunny is a bowdlerised descendant of this early Pagan fertility symbol, but is nonetheless regarded with fondness by witches who recognise it as a modern remnant of an ancient tradition.

Ostara is a good time to be out in nature and witness for ourselves the effects of the sap rising in the trees, the buds and the busy behaviour of nesting birds. It is a time to visit the daffodils – the flowers of this festival – in their natural setting, and discover why they are called harbingers of spring. It is also an ideal time to seek balance in our own lives; in our celebrations, we sometimes walk between a black candle and a white one, and pause before we pass through this gateway into summer, to as the God or Goddess what we can do to restore the balance in our lives that will enable us to grow.