Ostara and the Rite of Spring

On the verge of the spring holiday that is supposed to be about balance, maybe what you need is some Stravinsky

This is an update of a blog post that previously appeared on Medium.

If you have never heard Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” I might suggest you rectify that immediately.  Despite his inspiration -- an ancient pagan ritual where a woman dances herself to death -- not even Stravinsky himself really  believed that his ballet (yes, it’s a ballet) bore any reasonable  relationship to actual pagan practices. Historians in this period were  famous for filling the blanks and making shit up when the factual record  got sketchy, and while Stravinsky was in communication with noted theosophists, what exactly they really understood about pre-Christian practices is open to question, as the historical record is iffy at best.

The  Rite of Spring begins with the plaintive, winding strains of wind  instruments, that very quickly transmogrify into a pulsing, swirling  cacophony that makes up in rhythm what it lacks in tonality. The sense  that things are bursting, and growing more boisterous by the minute, is  inescapable. It is intensely busy and emotional, almost relentless.There  are moments where lilting melodies show up, do a quick twirl and then  disappear again into a mesmerizing swirl of sound. But mostly it throbs  and whirls and flutters all over the place until you reach the end, a  jabbing, stabby, ominous affair of drums and staccato strings and winds  twitching their way to the edge of a cliff, and then jumps to its end.

I  am going to take the position here that Rite of Spring is the complete  embodiment of Ostara, even though its absolutely clear that Stravinsky wasn't celebrating it in any way modern pagans might recognize. I know we tend to  think of spring as being a gentle time of year, one of pastel colors of  newly blooming flowers, and of newborn animals — cute chicks and  bunnies, fawns and lambs, puppies, kittens. Stravinsky’s bitonal work,  with it’s uneven and spiky approach to melody and its throbbing rhythms,  does not seem to fit the mold.

Indeed,  everything about Stravinsky’s work was difficult. Stravinsky conceived of the work while he was composing his more popular work, "Firebird." "I had dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death," he would later claim in a book. Stravinsky turned to painter Nicholas Roerich, noted theosophist, who filled his head with stories of purported ancient Russian pagan rituals. Roerich in addition to being an occultist, was also an iconoclast. Around the same time that Roerich was spitballing with Stravisnky on the Rite of Spring, he was also working on a fresco for the Church of the Holy Spirit on a private  estate near Smolensk in Russia. The fresco, called "Queen of Heaven" was considered so radical the Orthodox Church refused to consecrate the building.

A seed sprouts! Welcome Spring! Photo by imso gabriel on Unsplash

With such origins, the finished product was bound to make people feel some kind of way. The conductor, Pierre  Montreaux, upon hearing the work for the first time played by  Stravinsky on a piano, was so disturbed he ran from the room. It was  everything the producer of Les Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghalev, could  do to get him to agree to conduct the premiere. The premiere of the  ballet on May 29, 1913, was by all accounts, mayhem. Some say it was the  risqué choreography and dancing of ballet great Vaslav Nijinsky. Some  blame it on the warring factions of the French aristocracy and the more  artistic bohemians in attendance. But for whatever reason, the audience  was unruly almost from the moment the ballet began, and members of the  orchestra reported that random objects were hurled at them through nearly the entire performance.

The  critics at the time hated it. The ballet ran for several more  performances in Paris, and a few more in London, but the choreography  was viewed with such disdain that no one even attempted to reconstruct  Nijinsky’s work until the 1980’s. Other dance masters would choreograph  their own ballets to the music, which did enjoy some popularity as a  concert piece. Though now considered one of the seminal works in 20th  Century classical music, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is also considered  perhaps one of the most disruptive. One music historian says that it “so  scattered the elements of musical language that they could never again  be put together as before.”

And  Ostara, also known as the spring equinox, is anything but balanced, no  matter what you can do with an egg on that day. Why? Because spring does  not happen in a measured, sedate, steady way. Spring is when the  elements finally break free from the ice-clad, frigidness of winter. And  it is not an easy task. Trickles from the sheen on ice melting grow  into rivulets, eventually turning into rushing and swollen rivers that  carry the brisk spring thaw to replenish drinking water. The icy frozenness that has gripped the earth begins to loosen, and soon the  soil is crackling with the activity of worms and bugs that have woken.  Seedlings begin pushing their way through their seed coat and into the  soil in a desperate search to find nourishment and light. soon they will  erupt from the ground and push out shoots and leaves, and finally  flowers in a riot of shapes and colors.

And  then the bees will come. Their hives are all bustling and buzzing with  the gathering of pollen, the beginnings of honey production, the laying  of eggs and the hatching of new drones, new workers, perhaps even a new  queen, which will eventually cause the riotousness that is a swarm.  Birds are now out in force, the renewed activity of the worms and  insects causing them to begin their tireless feeding of the chicks that  have just pecked their way out of their shells. Calves and lambs and  piglets are all starting to drop from their mothers, their squeals and  calls for their mothers piercing the peaceful bucolic scene on most  farms. The wind is no longer bitterly cold but it is quixotic — one  minute sweet and sun-warmed, and the next heavy and swirling with rain,  and then still. Lightning storms cut the sky open, and the sun is  sometimes bright, and sometimes gone, often many times in the space of a  single day.

None  of this is orderly. None of this is peaceful. It is boisterous and  halting and pulsing and relentless. Much like Stravinsky’s famous  ballet, the beginnings of the act of creation shatter the stillness of  what had gone before. All the things that had held themselves in  abeyance for so long see a chance at freedom and burst forth, seeking  their moments in the newly emboldened sun. And all of it is fragile for  its newness. We are not yet at Beltane, when the warmth of the sun and  the fecundity of the earth reach that raw rolling pitch that empowers it  to fully create and manifest in all directions. All of these new  plants, baby birds, small rivulets are tender and too young to do  anything but stand bravely in the face of the ripening season and hope  that they do not get crushed. There is no certainty that they will see  the next stage of the wheel. All they have is this fleeting time when  they can bloom, can gambol in the barns, can whisk and wend their way  through the woods and the plains and the mountains and everywhere.  Spring is the place where everything is possibility and nothing has been  fully settled yet.

Let me repeat that last part: nothing has been fully settled yet. 

Ostara is a time of beginnings, the start of the growing cycle. We are  months and months away from harvest, which is nothing more than a  glimmer in the farmer’s eye. Any decisions you may want to make can be  unmade fairly quickly and easily. Mistakes cost very little, so making  them shouldn’t bother you. There is new freedom to move, to explore, to  venture outside into the world and see what’s happening.

So  dance — even if the music is strange and the movements are awkward.  Jump and sing and be noisy and boisterous. We have all been too long in  winter’s grasp. It is time to be free and enjoy the Rite of Spring.