An altar decorated with fresh flowers, budding vines and moist dirt. At the north end sits an offering of earth; to the south, fire; a container of water sits to the west; smoke to the east. One pours a handful of seeds into one hand, allowing them to fall into and around the altar, and evoking a blessing over them for the coming planting season. This is Ostara.

Ostara is another name for the Spring Equinox. It marks the first day of spring, when the sun rises and sets along the equator, making the hours of nighttime and daytime equal around the world.

As a holiday, Ostara, or Eostara, represents not only a changing of seasons to many Pagans, but also a time for celebration and the beginning of a new cycle.

“We’re looking at issues of fertility, growth, expectation and unrealized potential,” said Ray Rodriguez, a Pagan and health promotion coordinator at the Thielen Student Health Center. “Something exciting is coming. We’re coming out of the darkness; everything seems to have this moment of holding their breath.”

Rodriguez, who has identified himself as a Pagan for 16 years, said the holiday is a time for him to consider himself and the cycle of the world around him.

“I know what I’ll be doing — I’ll be spending some time in private contemplation, then time with family, thinking about balance,” he said.

Rodriguez said there are a lot of symbols that are important to him during this time of year, such as the color green.

“I’m starting to see green everywhere, like the buds on trees. I am also seeing a lot of birds and what they bring back with them. It’s sense of renewed activity,” he said. “People are looking up to the sky more, being outside more, being social more — that’s the change.”

His wife celebrates the holiday a bit differently.

“The first thing we’ll do is hit the farmers market, assuming that they’re open yet. There will be food of some kind; food and people and breakfast and hours’ worth of talk,” said Justine Dvorchak-Rodriguez, quality improvement and immunization clerk at the Thielen Student Health Center. “A lot of my faith and a lot of what I do is entrenched in the kitchen.”

For Dvorchak-Rodriguez, many of the ritual tools commonly associated with modern witchcraft aren’t only the things she uses when she connects with her religion.

“Kitchen witchery is home-and-hearth magic; it’s not necessarily ritual. Some Pagans have an athame [ritual knife]; I have a kitchen knife. It is what I use, and no one else touches it. I don’t have a staff; I have a big wooden spoon,” Dvorchak-Rodriguez said. “That’s not to say that I don’t have rituals — I just do them my own way.”

She said one of the reasons she enjoys Ostara is it is the first holiday of the year that shows a tangible change in the season.

“I can hear birds; things are going to move and grow, and I’m not going to be frozen forever,” she said.

Despite her professed lack of attachment to ritual objects, Dvorchak-Rodriguez said there are certain tangible things that symbolize Ostara for her.

“Daffodils are a huge thing... and tulips.... They’re planted when it’s cold and icky, and they’re the first thing to bloom,” she said.

Erin Wicker, ISU alumnus, wrote in an e-mail that Ostara represents the renewal of the earth to her.

“The long, dark winters, and, in Iowa, we know they are long, is coming to an end, and everything is sort of coming back to life. I always feel a sort of celebration towards sexuality, with mating starting for many animals and trees and plants pollinating, et cetera. The air seems charged with a certain energy,” she said.

Wicker said she participated in a ritual that followed the story of Persephone, and she felt that would be a good way for non-Pagans to appreciate the basic ideas of the holidays.

According to Greek mythology, Persephone was the daughter of the goddess Demeter. Persephone spends half of the year in the underworld and half of the year above ground. While her daughter is away, Demeter goes into mourning and allows the world to lapse into winter, and when she returns the spring and summer months arrive.

Wicker said while she did not ascribe to any particular branch of Pagan faith, she was influenced most heavily by the Celtic belief system and her husbands’ following of a path known as Norse Asatru.

Celebrations of the harvest and Spring Equinox are not new or unique to Pagan religions.

Nikki Bado-Fralick, associate professor of philosophy and religious studies and adviser to the ISU Pagan Community, said Ostara, like many other holidays, is rooted in agriculture.

“When you think about it, it makes sense, doesn’t it? People are going to be very concerned that the seeds that they plant are going to grow and be prosperous or that the animals that they care for are going to be fertile and give birth to lots and lots of babies,” Bado-Fralick said.

One of the reasons planting festivals developed is before the technology for large agricultural machinery was invented, people had to come together and help each other plant, Bado-Fralick said. This community activity led to festivals that mirror the seasons.

“For Pagans, the rhythms of the natural world are very much part of the religious cycle; it’s not a religion that’s historicized; it’s a religion that’s based upon the earth cycle,” she said.

Rodriguez explained there isn’t one set ritual for celebrating Pagan holidays.

“In fact,” he said with a laugh, “I’ve never met two Pagans who celebrate the holiday the same.”

One of the reasons for this, he said, is there isn’t one set path that defines a Pagan as a Pagan and that a lot of what draws people into following a Pagan path is that it focuses on a personal perspective of divinity and allows for personal experience to rule over tradition.

“Paganism, for me, is not grounded in things that happened in the past, it’s about what’s happening this year. And the message changes every year,” he said. “I interpret the holiday in the context of what is happening now.”

But, he said, that doesn’t mean that every Pagan views Ostara the same way that he does and one doesn’t have to be a Pagan to celebrate the changing of the seasons.

“There’s a universal history to this time period,” he said. “I’m not the first person to think this way about this time of year. Other people just put a different faith structure on it. I look at how my Christian and Jewish friends celebrate this time of year ,and it’s still about life returning.”

What is Ostara?

Ostara is a Pagan celebration of the Spring Equinox. Pagans celebrate Ostara in many different ways, often relating to rebirth of the land after winter.

What is a Pagan?

Pagans do not share a universal set of beliefs. According to the ISU Pagan Community’s Web site, what most Pagans have in common is “a deep reverence for nature, for the mystical nature of the self, and for inborn intuition. Pagans often embrace the old gods and goddesses and see facets of the divine in the mysteries of the universe.”

Pagan or Neo-Pagan beliefs are known today by many names for different styles: Wicca, Neo-Shamanism, Neo-Druidism, Asatru, Neo-Native American, Church of All Worlds, Discordianism, Sabaean Religious Order, Radical Faeries and Hedonism.

Other Holidays

There are eight holidays or Sabbats common to many branches of Paganism. They are:

Feb. 2-Imbolc (Candlemas, Oimelc, Imbolg)

March 21- Spring Equinox (Ostara or Alban Eilir)

April 30- Beltane (May Eve, Walpurgis Night, Cyntefyn, Roodmass)

June 22- Midsummer (Summer Solstice, Alban Hefin)

July 31- Lughnasa (August Eve, Lammas Eve, Lady Day Eve)

Sept. 21- Autumn Equinox (Alban Elfed)

Oct. 31- Samhain (Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Calan Gaeaf)

Dec. 22- Yule (Winter Solstice, Alban Arthan)

These holidays can be broken into the Greater Sabbats which are Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa and Samhain and Lesser Sabbats which are the Equinoxes and Solstices.

—Information from A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Steward Farrar