Your Guide to Ostara’s Symbols for the Spring Equinox

Ostara is one of the modern pagan celebrations of the Spring Equinox. It’s the time of the year when the day and night are just about equal and the moment before the light half of the year begins. The turning point on the Wheel of the Year is celebrated with altars, rituals, recipes, and seasonal decorations that highlight some of the most recognizable symbols of Spring: eggs, hares, flowers, and seeds.

While Ostara is a modern pagan holiday added to the calendar in the mid-20th century by Wicca’s Gerald Gardner and others, many of the symbols associated with the festival are far older. For thousands of years, cultures across Europe, the Mediterranean, and parts of Asia have honored the coming of Spring with symbols that represented the themes of fertility and rebirth. Traditions which, in many cases, predate the Christian holiday of Easter.

Eggs symbolize the promise of new life. Hares and rabbits represent fertility and abundance. Flowers and seeds reflect the earth’s reawakening after the goddess Brigid woke it from its winter slumber at Imbolc.

And of course, there is Ostara’s mysterious namesake, the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess Ostarâ/Ēostre/Eástre, whom Jacob Grimm interpreted as “the divinity of the radiant dawn.”

Below, you’ll find the symbols that frequently adorn Ostara altars. Let’s learn more about them.

Ostara Symbols at a Glance

The Goddess Ostara / Eostre

A lot has been made of the goddess Ostara over the years.

She’s the namesake of the modern spring equinox festival and, in some contemporary pagan circles, is treated as a patron goddess of the season. In popular lore she’s even been linked to the Easter Bunny.

You may have heard the charming story: the goddess Eostre finds a wounded bird and transforms it into a hare. Because it was once a bird, the hare can still lay eggs (often brightly colored ones) which it leaves behind as a gift of gratitude.

It’s a lovely story and some goddesses, like Aphrodite, have indeed been connected with the hare. But this tale appears to be almost certainly a modern one.

The connection between Ostara and hares appears to trace back to the German scholar Adolf Holtzmann, who in 1874 tried to explain the already-popular tradition of the Easter hare. In Deutsche Mythologie Holtzmann speculated that the hare must originally have been a bird “since it lays eggs.” Later writers dropped the speculation and eventually turned it into the now-familiar myth of the goddess transforming a bird into an egg-laying hare.

The History of the Goddess Ostara

But, what about the goddess herself? Well, she is just as mysterious. Our only historical reference comes from the English monk Bede, who wrote in The Reckoning of Time in 725 CE that the Anglo-Saxon month Eosturmonath (which lines up approximately with April) was named after a goddess called Ēostre, in whose honor feasts were once held.

Centuries later, the folklorist Jacob Grimm (yup, one half of the Brothers Grimm) noted in his Deutsche Mythologie that the Anglo-Saxon name Ēostre could have been linguistically related to ancient Indo-European words connected to dawn and the east, which is why he suggested she may have been a goddess of the dawn and associated with the rising sun. He also reconstructed a possible Germanic form of the name, Ostarâ.

Not all historians are convinced. Recent research by scholar Philip A. Shaw, suggests that if Ēostre was worshipped at all, she may have been a local Anglo-Saxon goddess, possibly limited to parts of Kent, rather than a pan-Germanic deity.

Either way, her name has become firmly tied to the modern celebration of Ostara, along with the familiar symbols of the season.

How to Work with the Goddess Eostre:

• Welcome the dawn on the morning of the Spring Equinox.
• Make an altar focused on the goddess.
• Walk in nature and reflect on the Earth’s abundance.

Eggs

When it comes to spring symbols, there is perhaps no better one than the egg. After all, the egg has been a symbol of life, awakening, and fertility for thousands of years.

For thousands of years, across cultures, eggs have been a symbol of life, fertility, and awakening. In the Ancient world, long before modern Ostara (and Easter) traditions, eggs appeared in creation stories that imagined the universe itself beginning as a cosmic egg.

Also, long before modern Ostara or Easter traditions, eggs appeared in creation stories that imagined the universe itself beginning as a cosmic egg. Versions of this myth appear in ancient Egypt, India, and China.

Outside those creation myths, eggs frequently symbolized rebirth and the continuation of life. In parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, people participated in rituals that involved giving eggs to the dead as a symbol of regeneration.

As eggs-spert and science reference librarian Margaret Clifton of the Library of Congress notes, “In the first century A.D. Christians took the ancient legend of the phoenix (one symbol of the sun to the Egyptians) as a sign of the resurrection; in illustrations the bird stands on the egg from which it has risen. Hence, the Easter egg. The first color used to dye Easter eggs was red, symbolizing blood and its life-giving qualities.”

At the spring equinox, the egg encapsulates the overarching theme of the season: life is waiting just beneath the surface and is ready to break through.

How to Incorporate Eggs Into Your Ostara Celebrations:

• Dye hard-boiled eggs green (for growth), yellow (for the sun), and red (for vitality).
• Add decorated eggs to your Ostara altar.
• Make recipes that use eggs. You can find our Ostara recipes here.

Hares and Rabbits

Hares and rabbits are symbols of fertility and renewal. Their rapid reproduction and pervasiveness in spring made them natural emblems of the earth’s return to life.

As we mentioned above, the patron goddess of Ostara also got linked with the hare in the 19th century. But, she’s not the only goddess who has been associated with the animal. In Greek mythology, the hare was sacred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Aphrodite’s son Eros was sometimes depicted holding one as a symbol of desire and fertility. The Romans later associated the same symbolism with Venus.

By the early modern period in Germany, hares had also become part of spring gift-giving traditions. According to folklore, a magical hare known as the Osterhase would hide eggs for well-behaved children to find. German immigrants brought this custom to North America, where it eventually evolved into the modern Easter Bunny. Read about how the tale of the Easter Bunny came to be here.

How to Work with Hares and Rabbits During Ostara:

• Decorate your altar with images or figures of hares or rabbits.
• Build a nest or basket to house “hare eggs.”
• Make a seasonal bread or pastry shaped like a hare.
• Walk in nature and look for rabbits (and other spring creatures).

Flowers

Flowers have been part of pagan spring celebrations since at least as far back as Ancient Rome. During that period, there was a late April and early May festival known as Floralia that honored Flora, the goddess of flowers and spring.

Further north in the British Isles, we encounter another floral story much later in the 12th century in the medieval Welsh tales later compiled as the Mabinogion. In them, we find the tale of the woman Blodeuwedd, who the magicians Gwydion and Math create from the blossoms of forest flowers.

Later on in the story, Gwydion turns Blodeuwedd, often interpreted as a goddess of flowers and spring, into an owl. This is an interesting reversal of the bird-to-hare “transformation” associated with Ostara.

Myths and legends aside, the very nature of flowers and their role in reproduction, their expressiveness, their peak blooming (for many varieties) in spring, make them ideal symbols for celebrating Ostara.

How to Incorporate Flowers at Ostara

• Adorn your altar with spring flowers, such as crocus, violets, tulips, and daffodils.
• Create a floral garland or wreath.
• Press spring flowers in a journal or grimoire to mark the turning of the season.
• Plant flowers or flowering herbs in your garden or window boxes to welcome the growing season.
• Cast a circle using wildflower petals and meditate inside of it.

Seeds

Where flowers represent the visible arrival of new life, seeds are all about potential and the power of creation. Seeds represent what’s growing underneath the surface, even if it hasn’t emerged from behind the scenes just yet.

Even though it’s still cold in some places, for parts of the Northern Hemisphere, Ostara is an excellent time for planting, whether you’re using seeds or starters.

In Greek mythology, pomegranate seeds infamously seal Persephone’s fate and give us the myth of the seasons. Eating those seeds meant she had to live below ground in the Underworld with Hades for half the year.

In other traditions, seeds represent the generative force behind creation itself. In Hindu cosmology, the god Shiva is sometimes described as the “sower of the seed,” a poetic way of describing the divine spark that starts creation.

How to Work with Seeds During Ostara:

• Place seed packets on your altar to charge them before planting.
• Hold seeds in your hand and meditate on your intentions or goals for the future.
• Offer seeds or grains to birds as a gesture of gratitude.
• Save seeds from herbs, flowers, or fruits later in the year and return them to the soil the following spring, continuing the cycle of renewal.
• Plant your Ostara seeds and await their transformation.

Sources and Further Reading

Deutsche Mythologie by Jacob Grimm
Deutsche Mythologie by Adolf Holtzmann
“There Will Be Eggs” by Margaret Clifton (Library of Congress)
“Satyrae medicae, continuatio XVIII. De Ovis Paschalibus” by Georg Franck von Franckenau
The Mabinogion
“Celebrating Easter, Christmas and their associated alien fauna” by Lauritsen, M. et al.
The Reckoning of Time by Venerable Bede
Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons (Studies in Early Medieval History) by Philip Shaw