Ostara & the hare
Original Artwork of Ostara and the Hare by Amanda Clark, more information here »
The Goddess Ostara is the divine maiden who brings forth the first light of spring, and is responsible for resurrecting the world after winter’s frozen grip has been released.
She comes just as we might have given up hope, blowing the warm winds of springtime over the lands. Fields and trees become green again, flowers blossom, and the birds sing.
Her name is also written as Estore - or East - reminding us that this is a time when we look to the East, to the return of the light and the return of the sun to a frozen landscape.
One year, though, centuries ago, Ostara came too late. As she walked about the barely thawing woods, she came upon a small bird. The bird was shivering and on the verge of death from the cold. She stopped and gently took the bird into her hands, trying to warm it and bring it back to life, but it was too late. The bird was frozen and its little body was so laden with frost that its wings did not open. Ostara knew that this tiny bird could no longer fly, and would soon perish. Desperate to help, Ostara transformed the little bird into a hare – giving him large ears to listen for predators, strong legs to run from danger, and soft fur to warm him all the year through. Honouring his earlier life as a bird, she also bestowed on him the ability to lay coloured eggs, which he still does every spring in gratitude to Ostara for saving his life.
Of course, this ancient folktale has shifted and changed over its many, many retellings. Ostara, has become aligned with both the Equinox and Easter, even if both days often don’t fall close to each other.
But Ostara endures, I think, because she represents change, transition, and trust. And also, imperfection.
Ostara arrives for Spring late, and she holds in her hands the tiny, shivering consequences of this mistake. She is fallible, as are we all. She does what she can to soothe and repair, and she honours what is no longer possible, and what must be changed for us to thrive.
In the shifting from bird to hare, she honours rebirth and renewal, transition and change, the idea that sometimes we must be reborn to become who were meant to be. And yet, she allows us the grace to hold on to what matters - to bring with us the parts of ourselves that are special and unqiue. For the bird-turned-hare, it was eggs, for us, it could be anything.
Change is hard, of course. And it often comes, as it did for the bird, after times of great hardship. Sanctuary doesn’t always arrive in the way we expect it to either. Sometimes we have to change in order for the things around us to change too.
I think Ostara also repesents the idea of everything in its own time, and a deep trust is what is ahead for us. Maybe Ostara was late, or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe this was the bird’s path all along, maybe the shapeshifting move from something fragile and delicate to something robust and powerful was always intended. Maybe when we feel that things are not going the way we want them to, surrender to what us, not what isn’t, is all that we have. And out of that, so often, new possibility that we could never have imagined, is born.