Somewhere in Gaul near Toulouse - Archéo village gaulois
Satios the sowing of seeds
also known as Alban Eilir, Ostra
Altar - spring equinox - hoodwitch.com
The spring equinox is also called Alban Eilir, Eostar, Eostre, the Feast of Trees, the Feast of the Lady, NawRuz, No Ruz, Ostara, Ostra and Rites of Spring. Traditions from this period have often been associated with Easter with Christianization.
The flame of Brigantia grows in strength. At the Spring Equinox day is equal to night.
In some regions, households perform a closing ritual: the servant ritually returns to her mistress the candle that has lit up their evenings, and a wooden candle is placed on the table in its place, to remind us that a light no longer needed during supper. From then on, the household goes to bed at nightfall and gets up at dawn.
Longer days and warmer weather mean that the time for spring plowing and sowing has come. The whole community gathers in one of its fields for the ritual of the first blow of the spade, accompanied by prayers. Plowing can then begin immediately after Satios.
The plowman drives his horses clockwise, to invoke the blessing of the sun on his work. When he hitches or unhitches his beasts of burden, he causes their heads to face south. The sower begins his task with the solemn words: “In the name of the gods!”, and he first gives his horses a handful of grain and throws a clod of earth on their backs.
Ashes from the hearth, or better still, ashes from the summer solstice bonfire, are mixed with the grains to gain the protection and favor of the sacred fire.
Wood primroses
In Brittany, young girls go pick primroses as soon as they appear; they make big balls of it that they throw while singing “Heol die! Heol bihan! “ (Big Sun, Small Sun)
Men rediscover the practice of solar sports: theca, sow, soule… The archers resume their competitions and their training.
Pic found on militar.org.ua
Shamrocks - photographer unknow
Teutates - Gundestrup Cauldron
Satios, which is called Alban Eilir in Welsh Celtic, is a celebration of the three classes and the cycle of Teutates, this celebration represents the “physical, agricultural, astral, cosmic, spiritual sowing”. Seed is sown there and clover is planted there as a sign of fertility. This sacrifice restores its vegetative force to the earth.
“Masha's themes are victory, success, protection, fertility and fire. His symbols are the red objects, the acorn and the raven. Masha means "mighty". Masha used her power to clear land for wheat, giving her associations with fertility. She also used her might to protect the lands of the Celts from invaders, becoming a war goddess and guardian. The art shows her dressed in red (a color heinous to evil) and with fiery red hair, forever driving away any malevolence that threatens her children's success.
There are other traditions inherent to this festival:
It is during this ceremony that the chariot of Magosia “the Plain”, “the Other World” (called Macha in Irish) is symbolically paraded. She is the wife of Crundicūns, “the Domed Summit” (Crundchu in Irish), himself the son of Agnomanos “the Charioteer”. Magosia, finally, is the mother of the divine Twins, boy and girl, the Iemni Magosias of the ancient Celtic, the Emain Macha of the Irish. She places this celebration more specifically under the aegis of the third function: she is beautiful, the wife of a rich peasant and already provided with children, she increases her wealth, she is an accomplished farmer and mistress of a model house. She runs faster than the fastest horses of the king; fertile, she dies giving birth to a boy and a girl while racing horses. She is the symbol of cosmic motherhood.
Also at this time, we make sacrifices of wealth by immersion; and in particular, if one is by the sea or in a boat, one offers Lero, god of the sea, a plate of herring, in homage to the man of the sea, the friend of sailors, the old king. Inland, on the banks of a river or a lake, a few freshwater fish are offered to the tutelary god of the rivers.
Asterix and Obelix - Herbert Geusgen Art - the sacrificial fish of discord, surely not fresh!
Finally, the passage from one season to another is celebrated by war festivals, the young men put on animal skins – sheep, deer – and straddle the horse-skirts, and dance; they are offered oats, apples, chestnuts. It is a rite linked to a magical practice and intended to promote the prosperity of harvests; it indicates at the time of carnival the agrarian character of the festival. The prancing of the horse has the same value as the cavalcades of Mediosamonios.
Finally, we find It was in this season that the myth of the rabbit of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre (or Ostara) flourished, symbol of the fertility of nature.
OTHAS Druids