Easter gets its name from the Teutonic goddess of spring and the dawn, whose name is spelled Oestre or Eastre (the origin of the word "east" comes from various Germanic, Austro-Hungarian words for dawn that share the root for the word "aurora" which means " to shine"). Modern pagans have generally accepted the spelling "Ostara" which honors this goddess as our word for the Vernal Equinox.
Many Christians and others who celebrate Easter often see this holiday (which observes Christ's resurrection from the dead after his death on Good Friday) as being synonymous with rebirth and rejuvenation: the symbolic resurrection of Christ is echoed in the awakening of the plant and animal life around us. But if we look more closely at some of these Easter customs, we will see that the origins are surprisingly, pagan! Eggs, bunnies, candy, Easter baskets, new clothes, all these "traditions" have their origin in practices which may have little or nothing to do with the Christian holiday.
Why do we use eggs and decorate them at this time of year? Have you ever wondered how eggs came from rabbits and why both are so celebrated at this particular time of year? It is a question well-worth pondering. Decorating eggs and spending time with them, acknowledging them and their symbol of fertility was something that ancient pagans did to aide the mother earth in her quest for richness of soil, abundance of crops, and bountiful harvests in the coming months. This has been an image that has carried through the thousands and thousands of years bringing us to the activities of today that find many children gathered around the table dipping cooked or hollowed out eggs in pots of dye.
Today we were lucky enough to have my friend Doris and Quinn's friend, Alex here to decorate eggs. Doris has been running classes on the art of Pysanka for ten years and today she offered us an intimate opportunity to try our skills at this ancient art.
Ostara is a time to celebrate the arrival of Spring, the renewal and rebirth of Nature herself, and the coming lushness of Summer. It is at this time when light and darkness are in balance, yet the light is growing stronger by the day. The forces of masculine and feminine energy, yin and yang, are also in balance at this time.
At this time we think of renewing ourselves. We renew our thoughts, our dreams, and our aspirations. We think of renewing our relationships. This is an excellent time of year to begin anything new or to completely revitalize something. This is also an excellent month for prosperity rituals or rituals that have anything to do with growth.
In the Pagan Wheel of the Year, this is the time when the great Mother Goddess, again a virgin at Candlemas, welcomes the young Sun God unto her and conceives a child of this divine union. The child will be born nine months later, at Yule, the Winter Solstice.
There is much symbolism in eggs themselves. The golden orb of its yolk represents the Sun God, its white shell is seen as the White Goddess, and the whole is a symbol of rebirth. The Goddess Eostre's patron animal was the hare. And although the references are not recalled, the symbolism of the hare and rabbit's associations with fertility are not forgotten. The Spring Equinox is a time of new beginnings, of action, of planting seeds for future grains, and of tending gardens. Spring is a time of the Earth's renewal, a rousing of nature after the cold sleep of winter. As such, it is an ideal time to clean your home to welcome the new season. "Spring cleaning" is much more than simply physical work. It may be seen as a concentrated effort to rid your home of the problems and negativity of the past months, and to prepare for the coming spring and summer. To do this, many Pagans approach the task of cleaning their homes with positive thoughts. This frees the home of any negative feelings brought about by a harsh winter.
To that end we are enjoying a particularly windy day here in Georgetown. It is my hope that this wind brings forth a wonderful new season filled with more of the love and abundance that we have been blessed to have been experiencing in recent months. It is a great time to rid ourselves of those qualities about ourselves that make us least happy and to foster, aide, and feed those which make us glad to be a part of this fabulous world!!
Information for this post, with my own thoughts sprinkled in, are from two sites I found. You are welcome to check them out for yourself by clicking here and here.
1 comment:
How cool! I made pysanky when I lived in Ukraine and remember it was really fun and they turned out more beautiful than I could have anticipated. That was the Easter of 1993 and there was an electric feeling in Kyiv - the Ukrainian capital city. It was the first time anyone but the oldest citizens could remember being able to freely celebrate the holiday. People greeted each other in the street and carried baskets of the beautiful eggs to church to receive a blessing. Even though this was not my holiday, I loved being present for the excitement.
Post a Comment