   The Spring Equinox Ostara was the name of the Virgin Goddess of Spring in ancient Germany. It is for her that this Sabbat is named. Ostara was a Sabbat of great importance in Greece, Rome, and in Nordic and Germanic lands, and it is from these traditions that the vast majority of our current Ostara customs come. Many of the equinox myths from these cultures concern trips by deities into the underworld, and their struggle to return from the Land of the Dead to earth. When they eventually do return to the world of the living, they have a new life, both literally and figuratively, and this idea of life renewed plays heavily in the symbolism of the holiday. Some of these resurrected deities include Odin, Attis, Osiris, Dagda, Mithras, Orpheus, Hera, and Persephone. In keeping with the early Church's practice of grafting saintly feast days onto any pagan festival they could not eradicate, it assigned St. Patrick his feast day near the time of the equinox. After being repeatedly driven out of Ireland, Patrick's reformed procession was said to have arrived at Tara, the seat of government, to present his new faith to the High King on Easter Sunday. Easter itself falls near Ostara, and celebrates yet another resurrected deity. At Ostara, the Teutons honored their Goddess of Spring, Eostre for whom the Christian holiday of Easter is named with feasting and ritual. The Norse also honored their Virgin Goddess and celebrated her mating with the young God, an event most pagan circles have moved to Bealtaine. Sexual relations were almost obligatory on Ostara Eve, as was a communal meal featuring foods associated with fertility such as cake, honey, and eggs. The Greco-Roman tradition would celebrate Ceres, their Grain God- dess, from Ostara until first harvest. She was believed to go from field to field at the equinox, blessing the newly-sown crops. Ostara rituals in these traditions seek to urge her special blessing on their freshly-tilled lands. The lily, appropriated as a Christian symbol of death, was a symbol of life in pagan Greece and Rome, where it adorned Ostara altars and temples. Young men, playing the role of the lusty young God, would present them to the young women they were courting. Accepting the lily meant much the same thing as accepting a diamond ring does now. In Celtic lands the Ostara Sabbat was virtually overlooked until the Norse invaders brought it into prominence and it became another cherished festival. In Celtic Cornwall and Wales, Ostara was renamed "Lady Day," and was the time of the official return of the young Goddess after her winter hibernation. On this day of balance, they believed she was able to meet her youthful God on equal terms, mate with him, and become impregnated with not only the God who will be reborn at Yule, but with the autumn harvest as well. It was also the customary day for farms to change hands even if the purchase had been made months before. In England the youthful deities are honored as the Lord of the Green- wood, a version of the Horned God, and the Green Goddess, a fertile young virgin/mother. Other celebrations of pagan deities that took place at or near Ostara were the Feast of Isis (Egypt), the Feast of Cybele (Italy), Aphrodite Day (Greece), the Festival of Astarte (Greece/Rome/Persia), the Festival of Athena (Greece), and Hilaria (Rome). All these deities are still worshipped by pagans today; their holidays and customs are well-incorporated into the modern Ostara celebration. In Slavic pagan traditions this was believed to be a day when death had no power over the living. In their tradition, a personification of Death is symbolically killed by throwing him into moving water to drown. Flowers, symbols of life renewed, are tossed in after him and he is sung to as he floats down river. People who died on Ostara were thought to be favored by the deities, and would be accorded princely treatment until the time they reincarnated. After Death's drowning, brightly-painted red eggs were passed around during a procession to the ritual site, where the new life of spring was celebrated with food, dance, and strong drink.
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