Happy Ostara

Ostara is often celebrated in ignorance as the vernal equinox. Ostara (or Eostre, or Easter) was the Teutonic lunar goddess who was born each year at the vernal full moon (the next full moon after the vernal equinox.)

Her symbols were the egg and the bunny (if you look at the full moon you can plainly see an image of a rabbit leaping).

Each month, the moon goddess Eostre died (at the new moon) and stayed dead for three days. (There are, of course, three days to a new moon.)

At the full moon, she came to full life (pregnant) and gave birth during the three days of the full moon. At the spring full moon (Ostara), she was said to give birth to all the glories of springtime — flowers, baby animals, new leaves, etc.

If any of this sounds familiar, the whole thing was stolen by Christianity for its own "Easter" celebration!

For pagans, Ostara is a time of joy in a renewed springtime. It was the ancient time of planting — as it still is in many parts of the world.

Every year farmers would plant their crops on the "first full moon after the spring equinox."  They would begin planting early in the morning and work through the night (under the full moon) until all the fields were planted. When the crops came in they would proclaim the full moon helped the seeds to germinate.

Ostara was the time of planting seeds of growth...to begin anew.

The Sanskrit word, cacadharas means both moon, and "that which carries the hare."  A traditional Hindu saying goes,

"The moon leaps like a hare when the sun dies." 

Such moon and rabbit associations carry across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas, where Ix Chel, the Mayan Goddess of the moon, midwifery and weaving has a rabbit totem. 

Ix Chel, “Lady Rainbow,” is a Mayan goddess of the moon, water, healing, childbirth, and weaving. She may be married to Voltan, an earth god, or to Itzamna, lord of all gods, founder of Mayan culture, and inventor of writing. Their children are the Bacabs, wind or jaguar gods who hold up the sky in the four directions. Ix Chel is frequently shown as an old woman, sometimes holding a serpent, sometimes a water jug.

Mexican panels of 600-900 AD illustrate this moon goddess giving birth to and suckling a rabbit, while another shows the rabbit symbolizing phases of the moon.

One story about Ix Chel tells that when she falls in love with the sun, her jealous grandfather hurls lightning at her and kills her. Thirteen dragonflies grieve over her for thirteen days, at which time she is reborn. She follows her lover, the sun, up to his palace in the sky. But now he becomes jealous and accuses her of taking a new lover, the morning star, who is the sun’s brother. Stalked and chased out of heaven by the jealous sun, Ix Chel finds sanctuary on earth among vultures, but the sun finds her again and lures her home. Wearying of this persistent domestic violence, she leaves him and wanders through the skies, making herself invisible whenever he comes near.

In North American lore, the rabbit plays the part of the trickster and the embodiment of fertility power. Worldwide, rabbits or hares co-exist with the moon as sacred symbols of vitality, fertility and the life-force.

Some of rabbit lore springs from incorrect superstition. But underneath the superstition lies a deeper core of pagan sacral belief in which symbols of sex, fertility, the moon, re-birth and renewal are intertwined. The rabbit is an enduring symbol of fertility and desire, or "spring fever."

In Greece, live rabbits were popular love gifts to connote sexual intentions. European wedded couples in the Middle Ages exchanged rabbit-shaped rings. Rabbit's popularity as a sex charm or fertility totem is related to its' natural behavior: rabbit's gestation period is approximately one month, and it tends to be the first animal to give birth in the springtime, besides continuing to have litters of kits during the year.

In Asian folklore, a rabbit is believed to become pregnant by staring at a full moon, by licking a male rabbit's fur under a full moon, or by running across a moon-lit water's surface. The saying, "mad as a March (or marsh) hare" is attributed to 15th Century Erasmus, who was referring to either the animals' vigorous mating displays, or their bouts of wild bounding over wetlands in the springtime.

From the 11th to the 13th Centuries, rabbits became reviled for their pagan connections to sexuality, easy fertility, and as the important women's religious symbol: the moon. A carved stone, southern portal of Chartres Cathedral shows a lewd, laughing rabbit-man tempting and carrying off a chaste young woman. An 11th century Latin text catalogues ominous and frightening sights including a sea dragon, a Viking ship, and a rabbit.

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales describes a corrupt monk as sparing no expense in hunting "hares"--a slang term for women. Hares joined the ranks of cats, dogs, toads, crows, bats and owls as supposed Witch familiars. Yet as Christian imagery became more prominent and confident, rabbits' esteem changed again.

During the European Middle Ages, rabbits were believed to be able to change their gender. During the Renaissance, rabbits were even considered to be able to conceive without the male, and so they became a symbol of the Madonna's virgin birth.

A 16th Century painting by Titian shows Mary clutching a white rabbit, illustrating purity and a control of sexuality.

The rabbit had become an important symbol of docility, gentleness and submission: qualities the church particularly wished to encourage in its followers.

Rabbits also represent immortality and vitality. Pliny the Elder declared that eating rabbit greatly enhanced one's beauty and radiance for a week afterwards.

Chinese myth considers rabbit meat essential for vitality, and the rabbit is a symbol of longevity: its fur supposedly turning white at age 100, and turning blue at age 500. In Eastern Asian myth, rabbits created the secret elixir of immortality, and when the Chinese Goddess Chang O drinks too much of it, she floats away to live on the moon, too light to return to earth.

Rabbits were associated with good health in 16th Century Germany, where they appear in bunny-shaped glass medicine bottles. The Algonquin trickster rabbit, Manabozho, is thought to embody all life-giving energy.

Rabbits continue to represent the trickster and longevity in popular culture in surprising ways. B'rer Rabbit and Bugs Bunny are tricksters while the Energizer bunny of the battery company 'goes on and on and on.'

Real life pet rabbits are a curious blend of docility, sweetness and unexpected twists of playfulness and smart, tricky behavior which endears them to the people who care for them.

Less evident today is the ancient symbolism connecting rabbits to women, blood cycles and the moon, although contemporary Asian images often depict rabbits with a traditional sense of womanly grace and stillness. Nevertheless, rabbits have become an enduring symbol for the beginning of springtime at Easter, and are worth considering for their deeper symbolism when we celebrate Ostara.

Wandering the grounds in the early dawn light, I could feel a breeze blowing from the east, a coolness in the air, the fresh sweet smell of damp earth and I saw rabbits bounding wildly in the marsh beyond. In the growing light, I noticed the clouds of crocus and drifts of lemon yellow daffodils, white and pink tulips, the bright scent of hyacinths...it almost took my breath away to witness this delicacy, this tremulous new life—yet the strength of all these growing things, pushing upward toward the sun: blossoms of apple, peach, pear, the dazzling yellow forsythia. I couldn't feel alone with all this silent growing all around me, and I was not alone! I began to notice here and there among the trees, children in white, climbing the trees and watching the nesting, paired birds—or were they clouds caught in the trees? Suddenly I caught the eyes of a young girl wearing white sitting high up in a tree, carefully peeking at new bird eggs, swinging her feet—and she caught my eyes at the very same time. Surprised to find we weren't alone, we just looked at each other and laughed and laughed.

Blessed be this Ostara.

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