Ostara is the spring equinox sabbat, kept around 20 March in the Northern Hemisphere, when day and night stand close to equal and the year tips toward the light. It is the festival of seed, egg and hare, and of the first real green after a long grey stretch.
Where Ostara sits on the Wheel of the Year
Ostara is one of the eight sabbats and one of the four solar festivals — two solstices, two equinoxes — the lesser sabbats, against the greater cross-quarter fire festivals. It follows Imbolc in early February and gives way to Beltane in early May. Opposite it stands Mabon, the autumn equinox, tilting the same balance the other way. Both mark balance in passing rather than balance held: the sun does not pause at an equinox, it crosses, and after Ostara the light gains ground daily until midsummer.
The date and the astronomy behind it
The equinox is an astronomical event, not a calendar date — the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator moving north. In UTC it has fallen on 20 March every year since 2008 and will until 2044, when the 19th first appears; 21 March last occurred in 2007 and does not return until 2102. Time zone matters as much as the leap-year drift: the small hours of the 20th in Britain are still the evening of the 19th in North America, as in 2020 and 2024.
Day and night are not exactly equal even then: refraction lifts the sun’s image, so true equal day and night falls a few days earlier. By late March the soil has warmed enough to sow, lambing is under way, and hens, whose laying follows day length, are laying again. The eggs of Ostara are not only symbols; they are what a mid-March larder held.
South of the equator the seasons are reversed, and practitioners there commonly shift the wheel six months, keeping Ostara at the September equinox and Mabon in March. Others keep the northern dates for shared practice abroad. If the sabbats are about the land under your feet, the shifted wheel is the more coherent.
Where the customs actually come from
Honesty serves this festival better than romance. The name comes from the goddess Eostre, mentioned exactly once in the record: Bede, writing around 725, says the Anglo-Saxon month Eosturmonath was named for a goddess whose feasts fell in it. That is the whole of the ancient evidence. The form Ostara is Jacob Grimm’s reconstruction of 1835, worked backwards from the German word for Easter. The name is linked to an old Indo-European root meaning dawn; nothing survives of how widely she was honoured.
The hare belongs here by custom rather than ancient record: the Easter hare who brings eggs is well attested in German folk practice and described in print by 1682, but the notion that he was sacred to Eostre is a nineteenth-century guess that took root. Decorated eggs are older and more widespread than any one religion, though in Christian Europe their spring association owes much to Lent, when eggs were forbidden and saved up until the feast.
The sabbat under this name is modern. The eightfold wheel was assembled in the 1950s and 60s within Gardnerian Wicca and the Druid revival, joining the four Celtic fire festivals to the four solar points; the names Ostara, Litha and Mabon were popularised in the early 1970s by the American writer Aidan Kelly. None of this makes the festival less real; a living practice is allowed to be young. It asks only that the inherited and the newly made be named plainly.
Symbols, colours, herbs and stones
Ostara’s correspondences come from what is happening outside the door:
- Colours — pale green, primrose yellow, white, soft pink, sky blue and lilac.
- Herbs and flowers — daffodil, crocus, primrose, violet, celandine, willow catkin, birch and the first nettles, with jasmine or lemon balm for incense.
- Stones — aquamarine, moonstone, clear quartz, rose quartz, green aventurine, agate.
- Foods — eggs in every form, sprouted seeds, spring greens, nettle soup, honey and seed cakes, the first salad leaves.
- Creatures — hare and rabbit above all, with lambs, chicks, the first returning birds such as chiffchaff and wheatear, and the waking snake.
An altar for Ostara wants little bought and much gathered: a bowl of soil, a dish of seeds, budding twigs cut sparingly and with thanks, eggs blown, boiled or wooden, a green or yellow candle. The sun enters Aries at the equinox, and modern practice gives the season to Air and the east. Fuller tables live in the correspondences guide.
Ways to celebrate
Alone, the shape is simple: clean the space, cast a circle if you cast one, name what you mean to grow, plant something, eat something you made. Spring cleaning belongs here honestly: an opened window and a washed altar cloth are ritual work, done with attention.
With others the festival is generous. Decorate eggs and give them away, swap seeds and cuttings, walk somewhere green together. Covens often work a balance rite, lighting a dark candle and a light one together, then letting the light one stand alone.
With no tools and no time, three things carry the day. Open a window at first light. Notice, on a walk already being made, one plant that was not there a fortnight ago. Eat an egg slowly and consider what you are choosing to begin.
A simple Ostara working: the seed and the word
You will need: a small pot with drainage, a handful of compost, quick edible seeds such as cress or basil, paper and pencil, water, and a candle if you have one. Work in daylight on or near the equinox.
Clear the surface and wash your hands; the tidying is part of the rite. Light the candle, fill the pot loosely with compost, and settle. Write on the paper, in as few words as possible, one thing you mean to grow this year: steady work, a home that welcomes people. If the wish involves another person, turn it toward your own conditions rather than their choices — an open heart rather than a named person. That is the Wiccan Rede in practical terms, an it harm none: a seed spell invites and prepares, it does not compel.
Fold the paper small and press it to the inside wall of the pot, below the soil line. Take the seeds into cupped hands, name the intention aloud once, sow at the depth the packet gives, water, and set the pot in the light.
Then tend it. The spell is not the sowing but the returning: watering, turning it to the sun, thinning the seedlings. Note the date and the words in your Book of Shadows and read them again at Mabon. If the seedlings fail, that is horticulture and not omen. Sow again.
What the season asks
Ostara is not a festival of arrival. Nothing is harvested at the equinox and little is certain — the frosts are not finished, and every seed put into March soil is an act of trust. What it marks is the moment the balance tips and the light takes the lead; the fitting answer is to begin something with your hands.