ostara, shapeshifting hares & the green man
Spring has arrived. Flowers are popping up along roadsides, clouds of pink and white blossom delicately bloom in the trees, life has returned to the earth. I feel joy from nature at spring time. As the days grow longer, my energy levels slowly begin to increase, my heart seems to pump the blood faster around my body.
To Neo Pagans and Wiccans, Ostara or the spring equinox is sometimes considered to be one of the lesser Sabbats and marks the transition to a new season. It is the second spring festival, (Imbolc is the first), which according to traditional pagan dates usually take place between 19 to 21 March. The dates vary each year as it is astronomically measured - it depends on when the Sun crosses the Earth’s equator. The Sun rises exactly in the east and sets directly in the west giving us 12 hours of sunlight. For Christians, Easter happens on the first Sunday following the spring equinox full moon.
The mysterious origins of the Germanic Goddess Ostara has led some scholars to believe that she never existed at all. It appears that the only scholarly evidence is that of the 8th Century monk Bede, where he writes in his The Reckoning of Time, that the month of April was a time for festivities held in honour of the Goddess Ostara. Ostara was the Teutonic goddess of spring and dawn. Some scholars also consider her to be the maiden aspect of the Norse Goddess Frigg. Ostara brings all the seasonal elements associated with spring, flowers, baby animals, sprouting seeds, but she is also changeable like spring weather itself.
Sacred symbols and shapeshifting hares
The hare and the egg, which are symbols of fertility and regeneration, are sacred to her. When the pagan festival Ostara became Christianised to Easter, some of the traditional symbols such as the egg were retained. The egg belongs to many creation myths throughout cultures across the world. It represents the cosmic force of life, regeneration, rebirth, hope and healing. To Christians it symbolises the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb. Spring time heralds the laying of thousands of eggs, whether it be from chickens or other birds or frogs that lay copious amounts of spawn. The tradition of painting eggs can be traced all the way back to the Paleolithic period. Painted eggs would be left at the shrines devoted to the Goddess Ostara.
Like the egg, the hare was sacred to the goddess but today we often see rabbits associated with Easter, especially in the Christian sense of the festival. I wonder if this is due to the fact that hares have long been associated with witches and shapeshifting. Stories of women shapeshifting into hares were prevalent in the British Isles. The story of Isobel Gowdie from the 17th Century is probably the most famous. She was a Scottish woman who famously confessed to shapeshifting into a hare. Perhaps rabbits appear more innocent and therefore fit the angelic vibe that the church likes.
European wild rabbits are much smaller in size than hares - hares are bigger with longer ears and hindlegs and a head and body length measuring up to 75cm! Rabbits live underground in burrows or warrens, while hares live above ground, sleeping in small dips in the earth called ‘scapes’. When running, hares appear to simply disappear into the ground, when in fact they are just dipping into a dip or scape in the land.
Sometimes, a hare would dip down and disappear where ground nesting birds such as lapwings would have made their nest. When people then sought out the hare in the same spot and found eggs, they thought that the hare had laid them. This is one theory about where the association with eggs and the Easter bunny comes from.
Another story is that of Ostara/Eostre healing a wounded bird. She was out for a stroll one spring morning and came across a bird that had broken its wing so badly that she knew even after she had healed it, the bird would still not be able to fly. So she turned it into a hare (more shapeshifting) and the hare retained the ability to lay eggs.
The Green Man
In terms of Gods, the Green Man is associated with springtime. He is a personification of the nature spirit found in every plant, flower, tree, herb, blade of grass, vegetation, fruit and crops. During spring he rises again from his winter slumber awakening all the plant life with him. Folk legend has it that he would mate with Mother Earth in her maiden aspect during Ostara with their offspring born as the new sun during the winter solstice, so that the wheel of the year begins again.
Rituals for Ostara
All rituals for new beginnings, rebirth, revival and fertility are more powerful at this time. I really like to do a spring clean at this time of year, not just a tidy of the house but a proper spiritual cleanse, ensuring that any old or negative energy hanging around is banished from the house. Salt and peppermint are good to use for spiritual cleaning. I’ll write more on this in an upcoming blog post.
Bibliography
https://www.visitthebroads.co.uk/the-blog/the-mad-march-hare
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/leporidae
https://discoverhighlandsandislands.scot/en/story/isobel-gowdie-witch-of-auldearn
https://www.northernpaganism.org/shrines/ostara/about.html
https://theotherside.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/the-spring-equinox-and-ostara/
Eason, Cassandra, A Practical Guide Witchcraft and Magick Spells, 2001
West, Kate, The Real Witches Year
Tarbuck, Alice, A Spell in the Wild, 2020
