Springtime and Spirituality: Easter Rituals
Walk down any supermarket aisle this time of year, and you’ll be confronted with shelves upon shelves creaking with garish Easter goods. There are bags of tiny, speckled chocolate eggs, tall, stately foil-wrapped bunnies, those pointless fluffy chicks with the plastic legs that never stand up (I don’t know what they’re for either).
These are the springtime symbols of my childhood, along with the pew-bound Easter services at school and chaotic egg hunts around the garden. When I was younger, I didn’t really question these symbols or practices. They were just part of the festivities. But once I looked a little deeper into these seemingly commercialised heralds of modern Easter, I saw that these symbols have been carried forth from deep in our histories and that the wider celebration of spring stretches far back into time.
Spring is a reshifting – a place to stand and unfurl after the heaviness of winter – and we as humans have been celebrating spring for a long time. The lightning days and the promise of summer are always welcome. Equinoxes, the point of equal parts night and day, happen on opposite sides of the year in the autumn and spring. Solstices, the ‘extreme’ ends of darkness and daylight, are in the summer and midwinter.
Solstices and equinoxes have been momentous occasions for humans for thousands of years – and humanity’s most ancient monuments prove this. On the Spring Equinox, the depiction of Kukulcan, a Yucatec Mayan deity, is lit up by sunlight on the Temple of Kukulcán, a pyramid in the Mexican state of Yucatán. And people still flock there today to witness this - as they do in the UK. In chilly, pale midwinter or the full-colour glory of the summer solstice, people gather on Glastonbury Tor or at Stonehenge, called to mark the turning of the light.
Temple of Temple of Kukulcán, Yucatán, Mexico.
Eggs are perhaps the most potent symbol of life and rebirth – hence why they’re associated with the world waking up after winter. Decorated eggs have been found in South Africa and the Mediterranean, some of which are over 60,000 years old. And we still hold onto these symbols now, from the supermarket Easter eggs to the beautiful, intricate Ukrainian pysanka, where eggs are decorated with wax using a method called batik.
And in Wicca, my own spiritual path, you can celebrate Ostara (the spring equinox) by painting an egg, or writing your intentions on it. By doing this and placing it on your altar, you imbue it with the wishes for the coming summer. I decorated some eggs myself at Ostara this year, which has just passed – it made me feel grounded in the time of the year, and hopeful for the future.
Because for me, personally, sometimes it feels like there is so much to learn. Altars, full moon cycles, candle colours, spells. My own internal perfectionist nags at me that something is not worth doing if I can’t do it ‘right’ (whatever that means). Which can make a new spiritual path seem daunting, especially for a path with no regular communions with others (many practice alone). Not to mention the dangers of the increased commercialisation of witchcraft and Wicca itself (see ‘Girl Boss-ification of Witchcraft’), and the strange looks I get when speaking about Wicca in my day-to-day life.
So sometimes, the best way for me to connect to Wicca is to sit and notice. The signs are all around me – even the familiar ones from my church-school upbringing. The humble hot cross bun, for example. While representing the cross of Christ, it can also represent the Wheel of the Year (the pagan calendar) with the solstices and equinoxes at each end of the cross. The eggs and rabbits, even the foil-wrapped chocolate ones, are timeless symbols of fertility and new life. The burst of colour in tiny violets dotting the undergrowth, the crocuses with their vibrant orange stamens, and the triumphant bunches of daffodils on roadsides and kitchen tables.
Because for me, being Wiccan isn’t about the fancy altars or acquiring vast amounts of knowledge. I know that it requires me to just exist in the world, and harm none. All I have to do is be present, and find joy in the world – and if that’s in the middle of a supermarket, then so be it.
Written by Molly Cheek
Molly works in administration for her local town council. She has a degree in English Literature from Cardiff University, primarily studying 19th-century literature and women writers of the period. She writes poetry and songs, and enjoys walking around Bristol, Somerset and beyond.
