Get the Look: Your Perfect Ostara & Beltane Outfits

May 13, 2025

Celtic, Germanic and Slavic Festivals

Ostara, Beltane and Walpurgis Night are some of the most important and beautiful pagan festivals. Both the Slavic, Viking, Germanic and Celtic tribes celebrated this festival. It marks the beginning of the spring equinox that means life, fertility and love. Both of the land and of people and animals. The spring festival of the goddess Ēostre (or similar goddesses) was revered by the Germanic, Celtic and Slavic peoples. The festival originates from the time of our Indo-European ancestors and is celebrated both in Europe and in Asia, where the Indo-European culture settled.

In this blog we delve into the origins of this pagan festival, give you some tips on how to celebrate it and put together the best outfit to go with it.

Ostara, a Proto-Indo-European Festival

Scholars have not only linked the name of the goddess Ēostre to a range of Germanic personal names and place names, but also discovered more than 150 inscriptions from the 2nd century AD that refer to the matronae Austriahenae, goddesses with related names revered on the European continent. This leads to a complex linguistic reconstruction, in which the origins of Ēostre can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, *H₂ewsṓs. The traces of her name and influence extend across the Germanic linguistic landscape, from Old English to Old High German. Theories circulate that associate Ēostre with Easter traditions among the Germanic peoples, such as hares and eggs. The debate among scholars about the origins of this goddess has received some attention. Particularly before the revelation of the matronae Austriahenae and new insights into Indo-European studies.

The Etymology

The names Ēastre (Old English) and Ôstara (Old High German) are linguistic relatives, stemming from a common source. They are derived from Proto-Germanic *Austrō(n), itself stemming from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *h₂ews-reh₂ (comparable to Lithuanian auš(t)rà, which means 'dawn, morning glow'), derived from the PIE root *h₂ews-, which means 'shine, glow (red)'. The modern English word "east" also comes from this root, via the Proto-Germanic adverb *aust(e)raz ('east, in an easterly direction'), from an earlier PIE *h₂ews-tero- ('east, towards the dawn').

According to linguist Guus Kroonen, the Germanic and Baltic languages replaced the old formation *h₂éws-os, the name of the PIE dawn goddess, with a form containing *-reh₂-, also found in the Lithuanian deity Aušrinė. In Anglo-Saxon England, her spring festival gave its name to a month (Northumbrian: Ēosturmōnaþ, West Saxon: Eastermonað), roughly corresponding to April, and later to the Christian festival of Easter that replaced it. In South Middle High German, the festival Ôstarûn similarly gave its name to the month Ôstarmânôth, and to the modern festival of Ostern ('Easter'), which suggests that a goddess named *Ôstara was also worshipped there. The name of the month survived in 18th-century German as Ostermonat. An Old Saxon equivalent of the spring goddess named *Āsteron can also be reconstructed from the term asteronhus, which most scholars translate as 'Easter house', which would parallel the medieval Flemish Paeshuys ('Easter house'). The Frankish historian Einhard also writes in his Vita Karoli Magni (early 9th century AD) that after Charlemagne defeated the continental Saxons and converted them to Christianity, he gave Germanic names to the Latin months of the year, including the Easter month Ostarmanoth.

Therefore, the Old English Ēastre is distantly related to numerous other dawn goddesses found among Indo-European speakers, such as Uṣás, Ēṓs and Aurora. In the words of the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, the presence of a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn is supported by both related names and the similarity of mythical representations of the dawn goddess among different Indo-European groups. In Ireland, Brigid the goddess of spring is associated with the Beltane fire ritual. Her name comes from proto-Celtic Briganti, which is related to Sanskrit Brhati, which means 'high'.

Goddess of the Dawn

All this evidence allows us to posit a Proto-Indo-European *h₂áusōs 'goddess of the dawn', who was characterized as an 'unwilling' bringer of light for which she is punished. With the presence of similar figures in European, Baltic, Greek and Indo-Iranian cultures such as Latin Aurora, Greek EOS and Vedic Ushas in India. This gives the existence of a Proto-Indo-European 'goddess of the dawn' additional linguistic support as she is described as the 'daughter of the sky'.

Researchers have connected the goddess's name with diverse Germanic personal names, a range of place names (toponyms) in England, and more than 150 inscriptions from the 2nd-3rd century CE referring to the matronae Austriahenae, discovered in 1958.

Votive Inscriptions

In 1958, more than 150 Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to the matronae Austriahenae, a trio of goddesses, were discovered near Morken-Harff, Germany. They date to around 150-250 AD. Most of these inscriptions are incomplete, but many are still quite legible. Some of these inscriptions refer to the Austriates. The name of these goddesses is certainly derived from the stem austri-, which, if Germanic, would be related to Old English Eostre, although the goddesses could equally well have developed completely independently.

Temporum Ratione

The Anglo-Saxon name for the month of April was Ēosturmōnaþ ('Ēostre's month'). In chapter 15 (De mensibus Anglorum, 'On the English Months') of his work De temporum ratione ('The Reckoning of Time') from the 8th century, Bede describes the native month names of the English people. After describing the worship of the goddess Rheda during the Anglo-Saxon month Hrēþ-mōnaþ, Bede goes on to Ēosturmōnaþ, the month dedicated to the goddess Ēostre.

Freya

With so many Indo-European dawn goddesses, one would expect a goddess of the dawn to exist in Scandinavian culture. But so far we have been unable to establish linguistic connections.

However, scholars expect that the goddess Freya in Scandinavia fulfils the role of Ostara. Freya means lady. This gives the impression that she actually had another name that we don't know today. She is known to be sexual and beautiful. She is accused of having had sex with multiple partners and her attribute is her necklace 'Brísingamen'. Both Eos and Aurora were beautiful and both had multiple lovers.

The Horse Twins

In many Indo-European traditions, the goddess of the dawn is associated with the gods of the horse twins. The Baltic goddess Saule is often pulled forward by the twins. Georges Dumézil suggests that in Norse mythology the horse twins changed into Freyr and Njördr. And Freyr's twin sister is Freya, making her also associated with the horse twins.

Many dawn goddesses are also associated with gold and treasures. They also have tears of gold and amber. Freya sheds tears of gold because she misses her husband.

Easter Hares and Easter Eggs

The connection between the goddess Ēostre and hares has been noted by scholars such as Adolf Holtzmann and Charles Isaac Elton, who speculated that hares may have been sacred animals of Ēostre. Charles J. Billson described various folk customs around hares during the Easter season in Northern Europe, suggesting that the sanctity of hares may date back to prehistoric spring festivals. A modern legend emerged in which Ēostre transformed a bird into an egg-laying hare, according to Holtzmann's speculations. In the 18th century, the Easter hare was first mentioned in Southwest Germany, but only became known elsewhere in Germany in the 18th century. Richard Sermon suggests that hares may have been the origin of hiding colored eggs in gardens, while a European tradition held that hares themselves laid eggs because of similarities between hares scratching and lapwing nests. The popularity of the Easter hare spread throughout Europe through Easter cards, toys and books, and was eventually exported to Great Britain and America by German immigrants.

Sexuality

We can assume that the goddess of the dawn, like Freya, is associated with sexuality and spring. This allows us to place the old German and English pagan Easter traditions in a clearer relationship with her cult. Even today, these festivals have a distinctly sexual meaning in which a young maiden called the May Queen is paraded through the streets as a goddess. The maypole can also be associated with the phallic symbol. But up until recent centuries, there were even more sexual examples that could be cited. In 1583, the Puritan Philips Stubbs indignantly mentioned that the girls who spent the evening of the first day of May in the woods did not return home as virgins. The Puritans banned the celebration of May 1st just as they banned Christmas. Because they saw it as pagan, which it is. Grimm also wrote about German traditions in which girls wore white dresses and displayed themselves on cliffs and in mountains, which can be traced back to the old goddess Ostara.