🌿 Ostara Group Ritual: Dancing the Light Back Into the World

A rite of balance, descent, renewal, and joyful return

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🌞 Preparation

This ritual may be held at night or in daylight. Adjust language to reflect your practice.

An Ostara altar may include early spring flowers and symbols of balance such as sun wheels and painted eggs.

You will need:

• One colored egg for each participant (real hard-boiled eggs preferred)
• A cauldron or womb-like vessel for the eggs
• Goddess and God candles
• Additional candles or fire source
• Dance music (traditional Celtic tunes work beautifully)
• Roles assigned: High Priestess and High Priest

“The Cuckoo’s Nest,” a traditional Irish jig, is especially fitting and may be repeated as long as the dance continues.

When the circle is cast and all are gathered, begin.

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🌿 Opening

High Priestess:
Welcome, friends.

Covenors:
Welcome.

High Priestess:
The Wheel of the Year turns without ceasing,
bringing us from season to season,
from what was into what will be.
All time is here and now within this sacred space.

We gather at the balance called Ostara,
to honor the young Goddess and her consort,
to celebrate fertility, warmth, and life renewed,
and to feel ourselves part of the turning cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Let all who would honor the Goddess and the God
enter into the protective circle.

(Directional energies may be called as customary.)

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🌗 Balance of Light and Dark

High Priestess:
This is a night of balance.
Dark and light meet as equals.

Covenors:
Blessed be the Goddess and the God.

High Priestess:
Yet the Wheel turns on.
After tonight, the light will conquer the darkness.

Covenors:
Blessed be the darkness.
Blessed be the light.

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🌑 The Descent Into Shadow

High Priestess:
Our ancestors tell many stories of deities reborn at Ostara,
returned from the underworld into the light of spring.

Before rebirth comes darkness.
Before renewal comes descent.

All fires are extinguished except the central altar flame.

A doorway is cut in the circle toward the quarter associated with the Land of the Dead.

The coven follows the Priestess counterclockwise around the outer edge of the circle in silence, heads bowed, imagining passage through winter and shadow.

On the third round, the doorway is reopened.

The cauldron of eggs is lifted.

Each participant reenters the circle, receiving an egg.

Now the coven moves clockwise three times within the circle, heads lifted, pace strong.

The music begins.

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🌞 Dance of Renewal

High Priest and Priestess:
Join us in the dance of joy,
the dance of life restored.

Covenors:
Join us in the dance of joy,
the dance of life restored.

The coven dances freely, joyfully, wildly if desired.

Movement becomes celebration.

Laughter becomes offering.

When energy peaks, the music stops.

Silence follows.

Candles are relit around the circle.

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🔥 Return of the Light

High Priest:
Behold the light of the God.

Covenors:
Blessed be the God.
Blessed be life renewed.

High Priestess:
Blessed be the turning toward light.

Covenors:
Blessed be the Goddess who turns the Wheel.
Blessed be life renewed.

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🥚 Blessing of the Eggs

High Priestess:
The eggs you hold have been honored for millennia
as symbols of life renewed.

They are now charged with the energy raised within this sacred circle.

Honor their ancient meaning.

Eggs may be kept on altars, buried in the earth, or carried home as blessings.

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🌿 Affirmation of Divinity

High Priestess:
Who is Goddess?

Women:
I am Goddess.

High Priest:
Who is God?

Men:
I am God.

High Priest and Priestess:
Who are Goddess and God?

Covenors:
All living beings are Goddess and God.

High Priest and Priestess:
And who are we?

Covenors:
We are children of deity.
And we are deity.
We are the life forces of the universe.
Microcosm and macrocosm.
Part of all that is.

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🌼 Closing

Seasonal poetry or celebration may follow.

When ready:

High Priestess:
Though we are apart, we are ever together.
Merry meet. Merry part.

Covenors:
And merry meet again.

All:
Blessed be!

A bell or clap grounds the ritual.

The circle is open, yet unbroken.

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🌿 Optional After Rite

Feasting, storytelling, dancing, and handfastings may follow.
Ostara honors joy, love, fertility, and life renewed.