Spring Equinox - Southern Hemisphere
Friday, 23 September 2016 at 12:21 AM AEST - Tasmanian time.
(You will have to look up what time this is in your neighbourhood.)
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Spring Equinox - Ostara - Eostre...
Incense: Jasmine, Rose
Decorations: Yellow Disk or Wheel, Coloured Egg's, Hare Decorations, Spring Flowers. eggs
Colours: Yellow. paler pastels
Each year around the 20th of September in the southern hemisphere, our beautiful green and blue planet Earth lies “flat” in her orbit of the sun.
Neither Her north nor Her south poles are tilted into or away from the sun.
She is fully facing the sun – no turning away.
During the coming 24 hours, she will rotate once on her axis – thus the sun’s rays will have a unique opportunity to strike her surface equally from north to south poles, resulting in precisely twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night.
From this day forward the light will increase with each day or degree She turns.
This is the magikal, ancient and revered vernal, or spring equinox.
It is a truly sacred time.
They may be called the lesser sabbats, but to the ancients and to witches who understand the laws of nature, these astronomical festivals once were (and in fact still are) as significant as when the Druids gathered at Stonehenge, or the Mayans around their wheel of the year, because with the spring equinox we usher in the return of the force of life itself.
These festivals of spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox and winter solstice, are immeasurably important in our human history, as the planetary movements revealed to humanity that the light, the Sun, upon whose rays every single living thing depended was not only increasing, it would overpower the dark.
Ancient people had no way of knowing that the stars would always be there, that the Sun was many millions of years old and would continue to exist for many more millions of years.
Each winter meant the dread of eternal winter– indeed, how complacent should we be about the return of life each year?
Are our inventions not as likely to blot out life on this planet as the loss of the light itself?
Can we be sure how long we as individuals have on this planet this lifetime?
The spring equinox still signifies the coming of the light, of warmth, of the return of life itself. The myths of Celts, Romans, Greeks, Norse and the Egyptians all recognise the Spring Equinox as the new beginning.
Spring in colder climates may seem to be more a dramatic appeal to life than in Australia.
Not so.
Even in the Golden Bough, the 20th century bible of anthropology and myth by James Frazer, it recognises Australia has its own seasonal rebirth.
“The natives of central Australia regularly practice magikal ceremonies for the purpose of awakening the dormant energies of nature at what might be called the approach of the Australian spring.
Nowhere apparently are the alterations of seasons more striking than in the deserts of central Australia, where at the end of a long period of drought the sandy and stony wilderness, over which the silence and desolation of death appeared to brood is suddenly, after a few days of torrential rain, transformed into a landscape smiling with verdure and peopled with teeming multitudes of insects and lizards, of frogs and birds.”
Even if the language is flowery, the point is well made.
It is a sacred tradition to awaken spring through enacting sacred rites.
The questions is, what is the modern, often city-bound witch to do?
To answer that, ask yourself, what is spring?
At its heart, it seems to me to be a natural revival.
Ask yourself what needs reviving in your life?
Hope?
Passion?
Health?
Following your heart?
Vocation?
This is a great time to literally start again.
At the basis of spring is creative growth – the energy that fuels the obvious displays of later Spring and Summer.
But first the sap must rise – or your energy must be increased.
Your energy will naturally have been changing since the winter solstice – the sluggishness of winter becomes easier to shrug off once the darkest day is past.
But now you need to reactivate your core energy.
Here’s a simple way to do that:
Stand facing the sun each day.
Feel its rays.
Meditate on that which you desire to grow in your life.
After doing this, take a green ribbon and tie it to a branch of a flowering tree (jasmine, magnolia, or even a fruit tree is perfect – you need a strong branch – jasmine is also lovely, but use a lightweight ribbon.)
If you have two areas you desire growth in, choose two ribbons.
Chose the colours to correspond to that which needs stimulation.
Weave your intent into the ribbon/s, and tie them about your branch with care.
As the spring days gather, and as the sun lengthens its stay in the sky on this half of the planet, your plant will unfurl and reach towards the light – this is exactly the growth you need to emulate.
There comes a time when staying dormant and static becomes far more uncomfortable than the pain we imagine risk taking, growth, reaching out is – and so Spring is the time for personal growth – the timing means that any chances you take are in harmony with the energy of the season and so your chances of success are magnified.
You will literally be going with the flow.
But back to the enchanted garden of spring ritual:
If your plant flowers sooner than you expect, or if the flowers struggle to appear, these are all portents of your desires, and by reading the growth patterns of the flowers this spring, and for others in the future, you can see where you need to focus your energies.
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Ritual for spring equinox -
Decorate your altar with:
Green cloth
Green and golden candles (for the element fire)
Seeds (for the element earth)
Salt for the cleansing and purity of spirit and intent
Spring water/dew from equinox morning (for the element water)
Open the magik circle
Light a cone or stick of jasmine incense (for the element air)
Raise each object one after the other, and invoke the elements
Once you have raised power, and welcomed the elements and guardians,
Write three wishes down the length of three separate ribbons.
Weave these together.
Place them on your magikal altar
(You can use this charged magik binding for Beltane as part of the ribbon ritual)
Thanks the elements and the guardians
Thank the Goddess
Close the circle
So mote it be…
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The Spring equinox is a time to celebrate the return of hope in your own life.
By connecting with the dance of nature, you connect to your own being.
It’s not a coincidence that humans become more sluggish during winter, that seasonal depression can take hold.
We need the light to live, and everything we live upon needs it too.
We are reminded at this time to acknowledge our place in the web of life – not as some kind of centre at the top of a mythical food chain, we are a part of life, effecting it and absorbed by it, influencing it yes, but no more powerful than any other agent of life.
If we honour our place in life, we will have many more years on this planet.
By inhabiting nature gladly and fully, we will continue to live, and to be guardians of the planet. If we do not, we will bring about our own catastrophic destruction.
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Sacred travel for Spring Equinox -
This would be an ideal time to make some kind of spiritual pilgrimage.
The Solstices and Equinoxes are the times when landmarks like Stonehenge and Mount Warning in far northern NSW are visited.
Astronomically, we are witnessing our own promise of life.
The Celtic witches myth sees this time as the planting of the seed of light – the birth of the son of the God.
(It’s strangely akin to the mystical Christian tale of Jesus.)
One way to commemorate the life force of the spring equinox is to take an egg and paint it with symbols of the god and goddess, who are in complete harmony at the time of the Vernal Equinox, just as they are at the Autumn Equinox.
Thus it is a favoured time to work out power balances with relationships, to handfast or marry, or to conceive a child.
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Make a magikal wand for spring
As this is the season of the air it is an auspicious time to make your own magikal wand, which is the witches tool that corresponds to the element of air, it will have been created in the perfect season and will have great power.
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Ritual for Ostara/Spring Equinox
Flowers should be laid on the altar, placed around the circle and strewn on the ground.
The cauldron can be filled with spring water and flowers, and buds and blossoms may be worn as well.
A small potted plant should be placed on the altar.
Arrange the altar, light the candles and incense, and cast the circle.
Invoke the Goddess and God in whatever words please you.
Stand before the altar and gaze upon the plant as you say:
"O Great Goddess, you have freed yourself from the icy prison of winter. Now is the greening, when the fragrance of flowers drifts on the breeze. This is the beginning. Life renews itself by Your magik, Earth Goddess. The God stretches and rises, eager in His youth, and bursting with the promise of summer."
Touch the plant.
Connect with its energies and, through it, all nature.
Travel inside its leaves and stems through your visualisation - from the centre of your consciousness out through your arm and fingers and into the plant itself.
Explore its inner nature; sense the miraculous processes of life at work within it.
After a time, still touching the plant, say:
"I walk the earth in friendship, not in dominance. Mother Goddess and Father God, instil within me through this plant a warmth for all living things. Teach me to revere the Earth and all its treasures. May I never forget."
Meditate upon the changing of the seasons.
Feel the rising of energies around you in the Earth.
Works of magik, if necessary, may follow.
Celebrate the Simple Feast.
The circle is released.
XXX
Sources - http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/thehttps://aussiewytch.wordpress.com/sabbats/ostara-springvernal-equinox/spring-equinox-or-ostara-the-rites-of-spring/_wheel_of_the_year/ostara_-_spring_equinox.asp
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Image -
witchofstitches.blogspot.com