{"id":1307,"date":"2012-03-17T21:30:14","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T01:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2012-03-17T21:30:14","modified_gmt":"2012-03-18T01:30:14","slug":"ostara-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2012\/03\/ostara-2012.html","title":{"rendered":"Ostara 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ostara, the Spring Equinox, is always beautiful here in Sonoma County, California.\u00a0 This year was threatening to be different because we have had a disturbingly dry winter.\u00a0 The grass was green, but very short.\u00a0 We were having to water parts of our garden, something largely unheard of for this time of year.\u00a0 As we began our Full Moon last week rain was not in the forecast other than maybe a little one day this week.\u00a0 For our Full Moon we did a serious rain ritual.\u00a0 I am sure we were not alone.\u00a0 Everyone around here was worried.<\/p>\n

The rains started early in the week and it has rained almost non stop ever since.\u00a0 It was never destructively intense, but steady.\u00a0 Inch after inch after inch fell, and soaked deep into the ground.\u00a0 Today, Saturday, the clouds have cleared for a time, leaving a beautifully flooded Laguna de Santa Rosa and huge puddles all around, all brightly intense in the sunlight.\u00a0 The plants are celebrating.\u00a0 It will probably still end up being a dry year, but it will not be disastrously so.\u00a0 Spring will be its usual lush and abundant green.<\/p>\n

Our local season and Ostara\u2019s symbolism have moved into perfect harmony.<\/p>\n

Wiccan Sabbats celebrate our Wheel of the Year, and like the phases of the moon, the Wheel of the Year symbolize to us the stages of life, from birth to death to rebirth.\u00a0 All things are born, grow, die, and then return to wherever it was that they came.\u00a0 Four Sabbats are \u201cGreater Sabbats\u201d originally linked with Celtic agricultural cycles: Brigit, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain.<\/p>\n

The other four \u201ccross quarter\u201d Sabbats are correlated with the solstices and equinoxes.\u00a0 Over the next few days we Witches and many other Pagans will celebrate Ostara, the Spring Equinox.<\/p>\n

Equinoxes are times of balance between day and night, light and darkness.\u00a0 But the balance is dynamic, lasting a day, before shifting into playing a role in that greater balance that is the Wheel of the Year.\u00a0 For me this sense of balance should be the dominant theme of either Ostara, or Mabon, the Fall Equinox.\u00a0 But otherwise they are very different Sabbats, for after Ostara the light will continue to grow, whereas after Mabon, it is darkness that increases.<\/p>\n

My altar will be bedecked with bright yellow daffodils and the blue of rosemary.\u00a0 Tomorrow, if I have my act together and it isn\u2019t raining I\u2019ll hike out to the Laguna for sunrise.\u00a0\u00a0 (It might rain for many more days according to the weather and I\u2019ll happily give up sunrise for that.)<\/p>\n

I have been too engrossed in doing much more than this because I have been working to meet a deadline for a big writing opportunity. A little pamphlet a few of us created for the Praxis Peace Institute<\/a> to respond to the libertarian subtext in the movie Thrive led to a publisher asking for a more complete criticism of libertarian politics.\u00a0 My share of our project needs to be done tomorrow.\u00a0 In a way that is another transition point as well and fits this time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a political scientist by training, and for thirty years I have been gradually working my way out of a strongly libertarian position while preserving its important insights.\u00a0 All this time I have been striving to share my work with others of that persuasion.\u00a0 Mostly this has been frustrating because so many libertarian scholars were more interested in promoting an ideology than thinking about addressing its weak points or about how to ground it better in speaking to human needs.\u00a0 But I am persistent to a fault.<\/p>\n

Finally, at the end of last month my\u00a0 connections with the libertarian establishment came to an end due to some less than honorable actions on their part.\u00a0 I will not go into details because they are irrelevant in this context.\u00a0 But it meant there was no longer much point in trying to address their scholarly side because it had become, for most, nonexistent except as an adjunct to their political agenda.<\/p>\n

About the same time I was asked to write a long critique addressed to a non-libertarian mostly progressive audience!\u00a0 I would be making the same arguments and offering the same insights as before, but presented not \u201cin house\u201d to ultimately hostile audience uninterested in ideas except as weapons, but rather outside, to bolster criticisms and deepen understanding. From the vantage of Ostara\u2019s symbolism, the appropriateness of this shift is striking. I am working with the same ideas (balance) but have shifted from one audience to another (from non-receptive to receptive).<\/p>\n

That the chapter will be done tomorrow, on the equinox, seems very fitting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ostara, the Spring Equinox, is always beautiful here in Sonoma County, California.\u00a0 This year was threatening to be different because we have had a disturbingly dry winter.\u00a0 The grass was green, but very short.\u00a0 We were having to water parts of our garden, something largely unheard of for this time of year.\u00a0 As we began…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pagan-holidays-and-sabbats","category-personal"],"yoast_head":"\nOstara 2012 - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2012\/03\/ostara-2012.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ostara 2012 - 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