🐇🌼🥚 OSTARA 🐇🌼🥚
🌼 Also known as spring equinox
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🐇 When Is Ostara?
🌼 Northern Hemisphere: 19-22 March
🌼 Southern Hemisphere: 19-22 September
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🐇What Is Ostara?
🌼 Ostara is a celebration of the start of spring, it’s when night and day have become at perfect balance with each other. At this time, light now begins to take over darkness. Signs of spring are here for most of us or are arriving very soon. New life and growth are appearing all around us. Winter is drawing to an end and it’s getting to the time where we need to shake off the winter, if we haven’t already at Imbolc, and move full force ahead. All of the planning and procrastinating at Imbolc is now to be put to the test and begun. It’s a time for fertility, new growth, the birth of animals and insects too. The sun is slowly awakening to its full potential. The sun god and the young maiden goddess are married now and so conception is imminent. When she gives birth she will become the great mother. It’s also time to begin to honour your spring deities and your fertility deities, the main one being the Germanic Anglo-Saxon goddess Ostara who the sabbat is named after. She wakes up the earth with her powerful energy and creates fertility, growth and renewal all around. Ostara often takes the form of a hare of rabbit, which is why rabbits are a huge symbol of Ostara.
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🐇 How To Celebrate It
🌼 Easter, the traditional Christian holiday that is widely celebrated, has been adapted from the pagan Sabbat Ostara. As you may know, Easter is named after the female hormone oestrogen, necesary for fertility, which is one of the main aspects of the celebration of Ostara. As Easter has evolved from Ostara, there are actually quite a few similarities between the two holidays.
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🐇 Activities
🌼 Any plans or goals that you would like to complete this year, get started on them now; motivation is high!
🌼 Start your magickal herb garden if you haven’t already, if you don’t have room, no worries! Small pots and plants in appropriate places can be just as effective.
🌼 Take a walk, look for the first inspirational and motivational signs of spring, Maybe even press a flower or two.
🌼 Hold an Ostara egg hunt.
🌼 Wear green to represent the green earth arriving.
🌼 Spells to cast at this time would be for hope, love and good fortune or any that relate to achieving goals, to fertility and to love.
🌼 Bless an egg with a property of your choice and eat it.
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🐇Altar Ideas
🌼 Decorate it with green, purple and yellow ribbons to represent the spring and greenery that comes to the earth,
🌼 Light green,purple and yellow and orange candles.
🌼 Paint real or fake eggs for your altar to represent fertility and honor the fertility goddess Ostara.
🌼 Decorate your altar with some spring flowers- only pick a few though! After picking flowers, water them to give thanks and plant some more seeds around them if you can.
🌼 Pot up a plant and place it at your altar, keep it healthy and watch it grow and flourish.
🌼 Add statues, trinkets or stuffed toys of hares or rabbits- these are major symbols of fertility and immortality, and are close representations of fertility deities.
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🐇 Food And Drink
🐇 Good foods and drinks for this time of the year are anything that represent fertility and seasonal foods to honour the beginning of spring:
🌼 Green vegetables 🌼 Seeds 🌼 Eggs 🌼 Dairy such as goat’s , cow’s and sheep’s cheese and milk. Free- range or home produced is best, but shop-bought or dairy substitutes, if you don’t eat dairy, are just as good. 🌼 Meats such as lamb, ham and rabbit, or meat substitutes 🌼 Flowers that are edible, on salads, etc. 🌼 Light breads 🌼 Fresh juices
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🐇Crystals
🐇 Relevant crystals to carry around with you this time of year and to meditate with, use in divination and spell work, and place at your altar are:
🌼 Clear Quartz
🌼 Agate
🌼 Rose Quartz
🌼 Amazonite
🌼 Jasper
🌼 Lapis Lazuli
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🐇Herbs And Flowers
🐇 Herbs and flowers that are preferable at this time of the year are seasonal flowers and herbs that can be planted, or that begin to blossom or be fragrant in the spring.
🌼 Lilies
🌼 Narcissus
🌼 Lavender
🌼 Honeysuckle
🌼 Lemon Balm
🌼 Daffodils
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🐇Incense
🐇 Good incense to use during casting circles, burning at your altar around Ostara time and for cleansing and consecrating, as well as for magickal workings, are:
🌼 Floral- spring flowers
🌼 Rose
🌼 Strawberry
🌼 Oak Moss
🌼 Sandalwood
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Source: A modern guide to witchcraft & magick by: harmony nice
Art Credit To: natachachohraart
Art by thienbao.deviantart.com