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SACRED HAVEN COVEN

Ostara Meditations

Ostara Meditation

 

Find a comfortable, safe and quiet place for this meditation.  Close your eyes.  Relax and center yourself by taking deep slow breaths.  Now journey inward.  

Imagine that you are in a hilly countryside.   It is just before dawn at the beginning of Springtime.  The land is nearing the end of its Wintertime slumber.

Your face the east and watch the Sun as it begins to rise.   Rays of light shimmer onto the land and into the sky.   Experience the beautiful colors of light that is the Dawn.   

Now, as the glowing disc of the Sun becomes visible above the hills, you see the Goddess Ostara appear on the land in the distance in the East.   She is beginning to move toward you.  As She moves, the land awakens with new life.

You see Her coming toward you in the form of a Beautiful Maiden.  You see Her radiant face and flowing gown.  She is carrying a golden basket filled with coloured eggs.   Beside Her is Her companion, a frisky magical Rabbit.  As They come closer to you, you see that with each step that They take, the land around them bursts into new life and grows green.  New grasses sprout from the ground.  Herbs flourish, and trees grow new leaves.

You call out a welcome to Them and to the Spring that they bring.  As you meet face to face, you see that the Goddess Ostara and the Rabbit are both smiling a welcome to you.  Ostara then holds Her golden basket towards you and invites you to choose one of the eggs in it as a gift of Spring.  You notice that each egg has a different colour.  You see the beautiful array of choices.  You feel more drawn to one of the eggs than the others and choose it.   Now you hold the egg that you have selected in both of your hands.  

Your first focus on its colour and reflect on what that colour means to you.  Then Ostara invites you to ask this Sacred Egg to give you a message about personal growth.   You ask this and then are quiet as you pay attention to whatever words, symbols, sensations, impressions, and/or other forms of messages emerge……

Ostara now invites you to take this Sacred Egg and its power of new growth into yourself.  You hold it to your heart and as you do so, you absorb it into your being.  You experience the renewal of Springtime.   You radiate vitality.  Be immersed in this experience……

Continuing to experience vitality within you, you prepare to end this meditative journey.  You reflect once more on the colour and message of the Sacred Egg.   You bid Ostara and Her Rabbit companion farewell for now, knowing that they continue to live within your consciousness to guide you in your Springtime growth.   When you feel ready, take several deep, slow breaths to aid you in returning to waking consciousness.   Then slowly rise, stretch, and orient to the here and now, as you carry with you the memory of your experiences on the journey you have just completed.  

Take a few moments now and note down your experiences, including guidance you received for personal growth.  Now, let the vitality of Spring renewal continue to be with you as you go about your daily life!

 By Selena Fox

Eostre’s Eggs and the Legend of the Easter Bunny

From “Ostara” by Edain McCoy

 

The Anglo-Saxons hailed Eostre as the Goddess of Spring, the Greening Earth, and Fertility.  Her name means “moving with the waxing sun.”  Around the time of her festival, on the day when light and dark are equal, the local animals began giving birth or going into their sexually receptive cycles, named “estrus periods” after The Goddess.  From the fiercest to the most humble, the woodland animals – who also worshipped and loved Eostre – would play in the warmth of spring light and feast on the new vegetation Eostre provided.

 One of Eostre’s devotees was a small hare who wished very much to give a gift to his Goddess, but he didn’t know what he could possibly offer that would be of any value to Her.  Then one day, while foraging, the hare came across a fresh egg, a very prized commodity indeed.  The little hare wanted very badly to eat the egg, as it had been a long time since he’d feasted on anything finder than dry grasses.  Before he could take a bit of his prize, he realized this egg might make the perfect gift for Eostre.  But, he pondered; Eostre could have all the eggs she wanted, anytime She wanted them.  She was a goddess, a creator, the embodiment of Life, itself.  Giving Her just any egg would never do.  How, he wondered, could he make this egg a fit offering for his Goddess?

 The little hare took the egg home and pondered how to make it as beautiful and new as Eostre made the world each spring.  He began to decorate the egg.  He painted it in the hues of Eostre’s spring woods and placed upon the shell symbols sacred to Eostre.  When he felt he could not make the egg any more beautiful, he took it to Eostre and offered it to Her.

 Eostre was so pleased by the little hare’s sacrifice of his egg to her, and by the manner in which he decorated it for her, that She wanted everyone – especially children, who are themselves symbols of new life – to enjoy these representations of Her bounty.  Since that Ostara day long ago, the descendants of that hare have taken up the task of delivering coloured eggs to the world’s children at spring.  They are called Eostre’s Bunnies or, more commonly, the Easter Bunny.

 

The Butterfly Meditation

 

Relax and begin to breathe deeply.  

Visualize yourself as a larva.  In the beginning your awareness is limited.  Your thoughts are limited.  Your movement is limited so that you’re at the mercy of birds and any other animal who desire you as a snack.  You exist on survival instinct alone, with little you can do to protect yourself against predators and the harshness of the elements.

As the days grow shorter and colder, you feel driven to seek shelter in a hollow tree.  Once there you attach yourself to the inner trunk.  Soon a silken thread emerges from your body and you find yourself wrapping it around you like a blanket.  You find this comforting and, when the threads are wrapped snugly around you, you burrow in to this cocoon and suddenly find that you cannot fight the urge to have a long, deep sleep.

Part of you is afraid of this deep sleep; the other part cannot think about fighting the compulsion to let go of the world you just left.  Unsure of what awaits you upon awakening; you fall into the sleep of the unconscious.

Imagine now that you’re floating in unlimited darkness, so deep in unawareness that you feel you have no body, no will, and little though processes.  You feel secure and loved, at one with the creative powers of the universe.  You are in a place of nothingness and all that is.
After incubating in this state for what you sense must be a ling time –though you gave no true consciousness of time—you begin to feel the tickling of awareness around the corners of your mind.  Flashes of consciousness sparkle in your soul.  You feel much warmer than you did when you went to sleep, and you feel compelled to leave the cocoon in which you’ve been so comfortable.

As you begin to struggle to move your body again, you are amazed at how much lighter, yet stronger, it feels.  As the dry cocoon breads apart you can see, through an opening in the tree trunk that you are awakening into a world of warm breezes and bright sunlight.  As you step off the cocoon you find yourself airborne, and somehow this in not really a surprise. As you flutter from the tree on your new wings, you see around you a world awash in greenery and spring colors.  Flowers are blooming, trees are budding and the sounds of creatures laughing and playing fill your ears.

Most wonderful of all is the sense of freedom you feel as you dance from one gently breeze to another, on wings so colourful that it awes you to watch the Ostara sun filter through their fragile thinness, infusing you with vigor.  Play about on the breezes, traveling where you will and meeting benevolent spring spirits and faeries as you go.  When you are ready to return to your normal waking consciousness, visualize your butterfly self flying toward your resting body, becoming denser the closer it gets.  Feel your consciousness shift back into your physical self and, when the butterfly merges with you, open your eyes.

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