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Easter Rabbit
Eggs
This is the time of year when we decorate eggs, and the bunny hides them. The basket full of decorated eggs symbolises the womb full of fertility almost ready to burst forth onto the Earth. During Ostara, eggs are decorated and used as altar decorations to honour the Goddess and the God, as well as carried as magical talismans for fertility. As sacred objects of life and fertility, eggs are also given as cherished gifts.
The Great Rite, symbolic of the sexual union between Goddess and God and of the physical and spiritual union between all men and women, began to be enacted on the day of Ostara. The positive effects of this rite, a form of sympathetic magic, helped to bring fertility to the people, the land, and their animals.
Day and night are equal as Spring begins to enliven the environment with new growth and more new born animals. The enigmatic egg is a powerful symbol of the emergence of life out of apparent death or absence of life.
Lady Day
In Wales, Ostara was known as Lady Day and signified the official return of the Goddess from her long winter hibernation. Many of the myths associated with Ostara concern trips by deities into the mysterious underworld, and their struggle and eventual return to the land of the living.
Many people feel "reborn" after the long nights and coldness of winter. The Germanic Goddess Ostara or Eostre (Goddess of the Dawn), after whom Easter is named, is the tutelary deity of this holiday. It is she, as herald of the sun, who announces the triumphal return of life to the earth.
Witches in the Greek tradition celebrate the return from Hades of Demeter's daughter Persephone; Witches in the Celtic tradition see in the blossoms the passing of Olwen, in whose footprints flowers bloom.
Lady Day may also refer to other goddesses (such as Venus and Aphrodite), many of whom have festivals celebrated at this time.
Persephone
In fall, Persephone is stolen away by Hades, Lord of the Underworld. Demeter, driven almost to frenzy by the abduction of her precious only daughter (a younger form of Demeter herself), blasts the earth and refuses to let anything grow until her daughter is restored to her.
Unfortunately, it isn't so simple. Persephone (or Kore, "the maiden"), is also a death goddess, and she has found in the underworld that her mate, Hades, is not entirely offensive to her. Despite knowing better she has eaten three pomegranate seeds, a potent blood-red symbol of female power, so no one can compel her to return to her mother and the pleasures of girlhood.
She still loves her mother, however, and eventually a deal is worked out. Persephone will return to the above world for either a third or a half of the year, depending on the different variations of the legend. In spring, she re-emerges and Demeter's delight is so great that she allows the earth to burst forth into bloom. Hades, his time of power being the fall and winter, retreats for a time until the next Equinox, in fall, when he will again abduct Persephone and continue the unending cycle.
The Egg Dance
Goethe : Wilhelm Meister (translation)
The following extract details the little known 'Egg Dance' which is believed to be of European Medieval origin.
'Lightly, nimbly, quickly, and with hairsbreadth accuracy, she carried on the dance.
She skipped so sharply and surely along between the eggs, and trod so closely down beside them, that you would have thought every instant she must trample one of them in pieces, or kick the rest away in her rapid turns.
By no means! She touched no one of them, though winding herself through their mazes with all kinds of steps, wide and narrow, nay even with leaps, and at last half kneeling.
Constant as the movement of a clock, she ran her course; and the strange music, at each repetition of the tune, gave a new impulse to the dance, recommencing and again rushing off as at first.
The dance being ended, she rolled the eggs together softly with her foot into a little heap, left none behind, harmed none; then placed herself beside it, taking the bandage from her eyes, and concluding her performance with a little bow.'
Medicinal Eggs
Eggs have been used in a range of remedies for different types of sickness whilst also being seen as wonderfully tasty and highly prized delicacies.
Bile
Take the yolk of a newly-laid egg and some honey with a little wheat flour and mix them together. Spread the mixture on a rag and lay it on when cold.
Rheum (for the eyes)
Roast an egg and then cut out the yolk. Take a spoonful of cumin seed and a handful of bear's foot; bruise them gently and put them into the hole of the white of egg. Lay this on the neck by binding it to the neck for twenty-four hours. Repeat the process.
Cholic
Take the white of four -five eggs and beat them. Spread the egg on a piece of leather and then sprinkle a spoonful of pepper and a spoonful of ginger over the egg. The ginger should be beaten and sifted finely. Take the piece of leather and place this over the navel.
Egg Proverbs
* Eggs in the pan give pancakes but nevermore chicks *
* The egg pretend to be cleverer than the hen *
* Never a chicken comes from broken eggs *
* Old eggs, old lovers and an old horse
Are either rotten or for the worse *
* Tread carefully among eggs *
* He who wants eggs must endure the clucking of the hen *
* One rotten egg spoils the pudding *
* Half and egg is worth more than all the shell *
* He who has many eggs scatters many shells *
* He thinks his eggs are of more account than other people's hens *
updated March 18, 2000
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