Ostara Hares and Eggs Greetings Card by Christopher Bell

£2.60

A nest containing three eggs and three interlacing hares, both emblematic of the fecundity of the Spring, is at the centre of this design. The image is reversible, so that the faces of either the Sun or of the Moon can be in the ascendancy. Ostara, a celebration of the beginnings of growth and fertility, is celebrated on the Spring Equinox, 21 March.

The card measures 210mm x 150mm (8 and 1/4 inches x 5 and 3/4 inches).

This card is blank inside for your own message. It's cellophane-wrapped and comes with a dark green envelope.

Ostara is the solar festival that marks the transition from the dark to the light half of the year: day and night are of equal length. By Ostara, life is returning to the land in noticeable ways, and so nature demonstrates the festival's associations with revival and the ascendancy of light.

Appropriate herbs are celandine, cinquefoil, jasmine, rue, tansy, and violets. Acorns, crocuses, daffodils, dogwood, honeysuckle, irises and lilies can be used as decorations.

Ostara is a celebration of conception, regeneration and the triumph of light over darkness. In terms of the Goddess cycle, it is the time when the Maiden of Imbolc conceives the child that will be born at Yule. The Christian Church celebrates both aspects of Ostara as the day of the Annunciation (when Mary conceives Christ) and the day of the Resurrection (when Christ returns triumphant from the darkness of death).

Ostara is a Germanic goddess of spring and fertility, and the name of her Anglo-Saxon equivalent, Eostre, was used to derive the term Easter by the Venerable Bede in the 8th century. Eostre is a lunar goddess, and her symbols include the egg and the rabbit, both of which are obvious fertility symbols. Just as Ostara is a time to sow the seed that will be harvested later in the year, it is also a time to act on new ideas and begin new ventures that will grow as the year proceeds.