Ostara 1998 Newsletter Meaning of the Sabbat |
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The grass has riz
I wonder where the fairies is
(Traditional Australian Spring Rhyme)
Ostara, Eostre, or the Spring Equinox is celebrated each year between the 20th and 23rd September. This year the Equinox falls on the 23rd September. The Equinox is when the hours of light and dark are the same. We have already started to feel the days becoming warmer, and now after the Equinox we will start to see the days becoming longer. We look back through the darkness of Winter, to remember the promise of Spring.
The Equinox is a time of new beginnings, of purification, or rededication and new possibilities. The seeds that we have planted earlier in the year, should now start to germinate and grow. The resolutions we made at Yule can now be fulfilled. It is also a good time of year to plant other seeds that you wish to reap throughout the coming year. This may mean the physical seeds which will produce the food you will eat, or the metaphysical seeds that represent your hops and aspirations for the coming year. It is also a good time for rededications, and initiations upon a chosen path.
The egg is a traditional symbol for this festival. It is symbolic of new beginnings that have been developing quietly during its incubation period. The egg is a symbol of fertility and reproduction. Associated with this new fertility are rabbits (well we all know just how fertile these little critters are!). The saying "as mad as a March hare" is attributed to a 15th Century Northern Hemisphere inhabitant, Erasmus, who was either talking about rabbits vigorous mating habits, or their bouts of wild bounding over wetlands in the springtime! Eggs are also symbolic of the child within, which can be active in the new season - who hasn't felt like a young child again when walking with wonder through the bush, or sniffing the new season blooms? An egg hunt might be just the thing for your family, with brightly coloured eggs representative of the new flowers and trees back in bloom.
The Despot
Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)The garden mould was damp and chill,
Winter had had his brutal will
Since over all the year's content
His devastating legions went.
Then Spring's bright banners came: there woke
Millions of little growing folk
Who thrilled to know the winter done,
Gave thanks, and strove towards the sun.
Not so the elect; reserved, and slow
To trust a stranger-sun and grow,
They hesitated, cowered and hid
Waiting to see what others did.
Yet even they, a little, grew,
Put out prim leaves to day and dew,
And lifted level formal heads
In their appointed garden beds.
The gardener came: he coldly loved
The flowers that lived as he approved,
That duly, decorously grew
As he, the despot, meant them to.
He saw the wildlings flower more brave
And bright than any cultured slave;
Yet, since he had not set them there,
He hated them for being fair.
So he uprooted, one by one
The free things that had loved the sun,
The happy, eager, fruitful seeds
That had not known that they were weeds.
The Goddess is the Spring maiden who walks with the Young God (who was born at Yule). She is her most fertile, Her most creative, She inspires new growth and movement.
It is a time to Spring clean, to clear out the cobwebs of Winter and prepare for the activity of Summer.
Lying out under the new Sun, and living with the young Earth, it is a time to be young again, a time to grow and a time to be free, a time to be open minded and a time to test the boundaries. Look up to the clouds, what do you see?