Website of the Grove of Manannan Mac Lir of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids

Archetypal Energy: Light-Lunar-Androgynous (Feminine, -/+)

Archetype: Mabon, The Divine Child

Oestre is the season between March 21 st and April 30 th. Oestre marks the peak of spring energies and renewed growth, when day and night are equal and in balance. It signals a time of outdoor activities when you can start to bring into effect the plans that you hatched in the winter. The inner creative imagination of the season of Imbolc manifests externally at the season of the spring equinox. This is a time when all nature is springing forth in terms of plants and animals. Leaves and plants are sprouting, animals are producing babies, new life abounds. This is a time to manifest and begin new projects and new creativity in the outer world. The equinox’s autumn and spring are times of balance between polarities, i.e. masculine and feminine; dark and light, outer and inner etc.

The Archetype of this season is the Mabon who is a god/goddess of youth and childhood. This is similar to the Roman and Greek god called Puer Aeternus, as represented in modern myth by Peter Pan. This god/goddess is androgynous and is associated with the purity and creativity of the child. In the Judeo-Christian mythology Jesus incarnates the energy of this Puer Aeternus archetype. Oestre is a good time to encourage ones connection to the joy and liveliness of our inner child; the playfulness and creativity of the child.

Associated energies and symbols for the season of Oestre

1. Associated Element: Air and Wind

2. Direction: East

3. Season: Spring

4. Faery Realm: Gorias, Realm of The Faery Sylphs

5. Animal: The Hawk

6. Plant/Tree: Alder and Willow

7. Color: Sky Blue and Yellow

8. Earthly Realm: Human

9. Arch Angel: Raphael

10. Polarity: Androgynous: Balance of Feminine and Masculine.

11. Energy: Balance of Light/Positive (+)/Solar and Dark/Negative(-)/Lunar

12. Focus: Balance of Outer/Extroverted and Inner/Introverted.

13. Sacred Tool: The Sword (King Arthur’s Sword Excalibur)

14. Stage of Life: Childhood

15. Time of Day/Night: Dawn

16. Body Consciousness/Chakra: The Head (Celtic); Third Eye (Hindu)

17. Consciousness: Star Consciousness

18. Jungian Functions of Personality: Thinking

The dark part of the year starts at Samhain and ends at Beltain. Another way of thinking about this is to say there is manifest and un-manifest times of the year.

The vernal equinox -Alben Eiler, Eostara, honors the time for new beginnings as we honor the spring. But this is still the dark half of the year. During Easter, the Christ is sacrificed. In looking at the old traditions, built into a lot of the seasons and mythos are coded messages for us to look at and figure out. A great deal of the old wisdom and meaning of the seasons and rituals have been lost and often misinterpreted. It is our belief that if we open our minds and hearts and look at nature and believe the truth of the statement that "As Above, So Below" - that we can start figuring things out. A good deal of the ancient wisdom deals with a balance between the energies of the un-manifest and the manifest. A good deal of ancient mysteries tradition focus on the things that are created on an un-manifest, or spiritual plane, before they are then manifest on a physical manifest or outer plane. The ancient mystery traditions, like alchemy, flows out of them and are a more modern manifestation of them. The universe is perceived in terms of various processes of transformation including death, rebirth, and looks at each of the aspects of the elaborate process of transformation within nature.

The cycles of nature and the cycle of death provide the model for our spirit transformation. For example, at Samhuin, death occurs and the spirit and the body are separated. And each , once separated begin on their own, different though similar, and they each follow their own unique process of death and transformation. The spirit goes one way and the body material form goes into another. But they are all each following a similar process. The spirit at Samhuin that leaves the body is birthed into the other world where it awaits the decision to return or reincarnate into this earthly plane, or if ready, to move into other planes, or to move to other spirit worlds to rest or recuperate. This process is preformed by what in ancient times what is called the dark mother, who is an important entity and process in the underworld and the mystery traditions. The winter solstice is symbolic of those spirits who are choosing to return to the earthly plane to begin their journey back into material form. In this ancient system, the spirit energy coalesces in an unmanifest form (spiritual) and is born. At Imbolc, the virgin goddess manifests the egg the first within her womb and is the first manifest step towards the incarnation.

In many ancient traditions, great beings such as Jesus, the Merlin, etc. are viewed as having been manifested at this level in the sense that they o not have a physical father but nly a spiritual father, in the modern sense it fits in the concept of cloning. In some ways human interference in this process is viewed as perversion. Because a child created in this nature is a very special and sacred child. In these processes the spring equinox is still a time of the unmanifest but is coming closer to the manifest. The equinox is given special power in terms of being balanced-between the spiritual and the material. This is the time where the sperm and the egg come together within the mother. This is the time when the polarities occur where the spiritual self and the material self are fully created and the masculine and feminine and all the polarities enter. This is a major reason in terms of in the old traditions where cloning is seen as dark or anti-nature because it interferes with polarities. Cloning interferes with the establishment of polarities. It destroys the initial mother-father material creation. So this is the time within the unmanifest, but it is balanced manifest because the sperm and the egg joins within the mother and creates the self; but one is still within the mother in the dark, one is still unmanifest. In the next season, the fetus that was unmanifest within the mother is born and enters the outer material world.

Spring is the time of childhood, of the Mabon. It is the time of air, of creativity, of the mind, and of the four season. It is the most ethereal, least earthy. It is the time of the incarnation of the divine child when we are most connecte to our spiritual and cosmic consciousness. It is the time before we have been hurt and confronted with the painful realities of human existence. It is, therefore, the time of star consciousness, idealism, vision, naivete, unbounding optimism, innocence, purity.

Spring is about new life, new beginnings, starting new projects and new ideas. There is a dark aspect here. As much life as is being created, there is a lot of death of new things that don't survive. It is a time of youth, childhood, creativity, newness and freshness. The equinoxes are the mid-way times where there is a balance of darkness and light.