Meet the Goddess Behind the Season
Here's a super cute YouTube video telling the story of Ostara. It explains how Easter bunnies and eggs became Easter icons (skip ahead 50 seconds if you’d rather jump past the singing).
A few basic things about Ostara (pronounced ow·staa·ruh)
Ostara sits on the Wheel of the Year and celebrates the beginning of spring and the rebirth of nature. The Spring Equinox, also called the vernal equinox (pronounced vur·nuhl), marks that shift. Daylight and night hours are equal on this day, and it usually lands on or around March 20th, give or take a day.
Ostara is sometimes referred to as Ēostre (pronounced AY·oh·struh), the goddess of spring.
Ostara sleeps underground, guarded by rabbits, and typically wakes every year on the equinox to bring the season in. But some years she’s a little too comfortable.
You know those mornings when the air is cold and crisp, the blankets are warm, and getting up feels physically impossible? When the snooze button gets hit four times before your feet touch the floor? Ostara has those mornings too. Some years the rabbits knock and knock, and she doesn’t hear them. That’s the story behind the late springs, the ones where winter overstays its welcome and the warm, sunny days take their sweet time showing up.
Magical Correspondences for Ostara
Eggs – potential, fertility, new beginnings
Rabbits and hares – abundance, quick growth, playfulness
Seeds – hope, patience, things not yet visible
Green – new growth, renewal
Yellow and pastel pink – sunlight returning, gentleness after a hard winter
Daffodils and crocuses – resilience, the first bloom after the freeze
Honey – sweetness after scarcity
Lemon – clarity, brightness, a little bit of a wake-up call (much like Ostara herself)
How to Honor Ostara
You don’t need a full ritual setup to mark this one. A few low-lift ways to let the season in:
Crack open something citrus. This is the exact energy behind the Ostara Cake Recipe, which leans into that same “wake up and be bright” symbolism.
Get your hands dirty, literally. Plant something, even if it’s one pot of herbs on a windowsill. Watching a seed do its thing is Ostara in real time.
Make something with your hands that represents what you’re hoping grows this season. If you want a guided version of this, [link to Ostara DIY craft post] walks through exactly that.
Set out eggs, real or painted, somewhere you’ll actually see them as a small daily reminder that things are stirring, even the stuff you can’t see yet.
You’re allowed to let this holiday be small. A candle and five quiet minutes still count.
“By the egg of potential and the seed of life, I welcome the light, the warmth, and the green.
What was sleeping now awakens. ”