Sunday, March 20, 2016

Ostara

I've never seen this written about.

How do you mentally visualize the calendar year?

In a long straight line with little flags for the season and/or birthdays and/or festivals?

Like a circle ending at New Year's?

I see it as an ovoid.

Something like this:


But unfortunately (for me)backwards as my Imbolc is on the left and down around to Samhain on the upper right before the year ends.

Today is the vernal equinox where day and night times are exactly the same length.

And Ostara - upon which the tradition of Easter is based - orginated with the goddesses. Like most festivals on the religious calendars, prominent female personae were erased or placed in secondary roles.

I remember seeing fertility goddesses in the stone carvings of ancient Irish churches. I imagine they were carved to appease the goddess worshipping "pagans" in an attempt to convert them to Christianity.

What an enormous body of knowledge and rituals and healing we have lost.

Mother Earth is not pleased.

Ostara





9 comments:

  1. Thanks for your comment. I hope you are doing well...

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  2. I visualise the calendar as a circle going clockwise! It's good that we reached the Spring Equinox.
    Maggie x

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    Replies
    1. Yes, when Spring nudges me I start to lighten :)

      XO
      WWW

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  3. Not knowing anything about the subject, I would restrict my comment to just agreeing with your lament - "What an enormous body of knowledge and rituals and healing we have lost." This has happened in all traditions, including all the Eastern ones.
    "

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  4. I visualise the calendar in neat boxes just like the Grumpy Cat one on my wall. :D

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  5. I would love to know more about this Irish (Gaelic?) calendar, but my googling merely brings up swamp of new age-e-ness. I have heard the names before from some of my Brit friends, and there's a move, Dancing at Lughnasah, I believe. Why did Scots and Irish immigrants not bring this here with them? If they did, apart from you and a few, it seems to have been lost.

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  6. I have always visualised time as a circle. Years, months and weeks - circles within circles. No-one understood when I tried to explain as a child - my family predominantly see time linearly.
    Autumn equinox here - I hope the Sun is heading your way as it gets cooler over here.

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  7. I have always visualised time as a circle. Years, months and weeks - circles within circles. No-one understood when I tried to explain as a child - my family predominantly see time linearly.
    Autumn equinox here - I hope the Sun is heading your way as it gets cooler over here.

    ReplyDelete

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