Continuing the theme of recycled or borrowed Pagan beliefs and
practices, the ever turning wheel brings us to the festival of
Ostara, and the Christian celebration of Easter. Although many
of Christianity’s adaptations of Pagan concept have needed
manipulation to fit the bill, Easter however with it’s theme of
death and rebirth has been an easy adaptation, for Ostara or
Eostre is just that, the birth of spring’s new life after the
death of winter. For thousands of years long before defined
culture divided the races of humanity, our simple ancestors
dwelling safe within the earth, told tales around their life
sustaining fires of a divine Earth Mother. It was she who
watched over them, guiding and providing, ever present in her
seasonal aspects of Maiden in spring time, blooming into Mother
with the fertile summer, bearing fruit, and then through into
autumn as she changed to Crone, eventually returning with death
back to the earth at winter. Most modern Pagans are familiar
with Persephone in Greek mythology: I