OSTARA

This Spring Equinox, my wife made colored eggs from the first green ferns of the season. These eggs will be left as offerings at an old sacred site during  Ostara, as we travel through Europe.

Eggs have a central place in the mythic drama of rebirth which happens every spring. They tell the story of (re)creation, which happens everywhere around us, and equally, within us as well.

The Finnish creation myth tells of the Goddess of Air, Ilmatar ("Ilma" means "air", hence "Ilmatar" literally means "goddess of air"), who rested on the cosmic ocean for countless ages. She called out to Ukko (literally "old man", from whom we get "ukkonen", thunder) in the heavens and was impregnated by a storm. A large duck landed and made a nest on her knee, and laid seven eggs (six of gold and one of iron) . As she move from the heat caused by the nest, the eggs shattered, creating all of the world, the earth, the sky, the sun and the moon. Ilmatar also gave birth to Väinämöinen, the first shaman and bard, who continues creation by singing the world into being with his magical incantations, runes and songs.

One egg's lower half transformed
And became the earth below,
And its upper half transmuted
And became the sky above;
From the yolk the sun was made,
Light of day to shine upon us;
From the white the moon was formed,
Light of night to gleam above us;
All the colored brighter bits
Rose to be the stars of heaven
And the darker crumbs changed into
Clouds and cloudlets in the sky.

In his work The Phallus, Alain Daniélou writes about the cosmic egg:

"Totality is often represented in the form of an egg. The universe appears to man as an egg divided in two halves: the earth and the sky. The egg is considered the origin of life. In it the male and female principles are reunited. The form of the egg is also a sign, a lingam." 

In all of nature we see this sign. Eggs, as well as stones, rocks and other egg-shaped formations mark and remind us of this primal unity and totality, which is the source of all, and hence to be venerated as the highest principle.