Also called Ostara, spring equinox eggs, pysanky, pisanki, krashanky, Eostre
Decorating eggs at the spring equinox or Easter to call in spring, fertility and protection, drawing on the Ukrainian pysanka and other wax-resist egg traditions. Ostara itself is a modern Pagan name built on Bede's brief mention of the goddess Ēostre.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Keep the candle in a stable holder and away from hair and sleeves. Raw pysanky can break and smell; blown or boiled eggs are easier with children. Use food-safe dye if you plan to eat the eggs.
The name comes from pysaty, to write, because the design is written in beeswax rather than painted. Eggs were used to call spring, encourage fertility and protect the house. Suppressed in Soviet Ukraine as a religious practice, the art survived among emigrants in the Americas and returned after independence.
Uses: Raw eggs, Beeswax, Kistka, Dyes
Plain single-coloured eggs, krashanky, are hard-boiled and eaten after being blessed in church in the Easter basket. Some blessed eggs were set aside for protective uses around the house and farm, and others given as gifts to family and sweethearts.
Aidan Kelly gave the spring equinox the name Ostara in 1974, taking it from Jacob Grimm's 1835 reconstruction of a German form of Ēostre. Pagans now mark it with eggs, hares, seed blessings and balance rites. Anthropologists note there is no evidence linking Easter eggs to an ancient goddess; egg customs grew up mainly through Christian Lent and Easter.
The only early source for Ēostre is Bede, who wrote in The Reckoning of Time around 725 that the Anglo-Saxon month Ēosturmōnaþ was named for a goddess once honoured with feasts, and that the name passed to the Christian Paschal season. Some 19th-century scholars thought Bede invented her, but the discovery in 1958 of inscriptions to related Germanic matron goddesses, the Austriahenae, led most scholars to accept she was real. Bede says nothing about eggs or hares.
Jacob Grimm reconstructed a continental Ostara in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835 and speculated about links to Easter customs. Aidan Kelly then used the name for the Wiccan equinox sabbat in 1974. The egg traditions themselves are documented in their own right: wax-resist eggs are widespread among Slavic peoples, likely pre-Christian in origin, and carried protective and fertility meanings well into the 20th century.
The table of seven symbolic items whose Persian names begin with S, set for the Persian new year at the spring equinox, with the fire-jumping of Chaharshanbe Suri before it and the release of the sprouts into running water on the thirteenth day after.
Customs people have used to ask for a child, from Rome's Lupercalia and the Sheela-na-gig carvings of Irish churches to Japan's Kanamara Matsuri, with a gentle egg-and-candle blessing for the home. It is folk tradition, not fertility treatment.
The cluster of May Day customs that welcomed summer: raising a decorated maypole, Gaelic Beltane fires that cattle and people passed between for protection, and washing the face in dew on May morning for beauty and health.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
