Category: Daily Posts

Goddess Magick with Eostre – A Blessing for Your Home

Blessed Ostara
Goddess Magick with Eostre

A Blessing for Your Home

The vernal equinox is the launch of the spring season. This festival’s familiar symbols of rabbits, pastel-colored eggs, and bright spring flowers are sweet and romantic ones. Look around you: everywhere in nature there are signs of life returning to the land. To bring a bit of this natural magick indoors, pick up a pretty pot of blooming bulbs—try tulips for love or daffodils for chivalry and honor—and take them home to brighten things up.

Perhaps you can jazz them up a little by tucking some moss over the soil or adding a festive bow or tiny colored eggs to the container. Enchant these spring flowers for fresh starts and good luck. Light a soft green votive candle and call on the goddess of spring, Eostre, to work this sabbat spell for new beginnings and to increase the positive things in your life.

Ostara begins our season of spring
Good luck, joy, and cheer these flowers do bring.
Eostre, bless my home, family, and friends
May your love and blessings never end.
For the good of all, with harm to no one
By the goddess of spring, this charm is done!

Allow the green candle to burn until it goes out on its own. Happy spring!

If you care to modify this spell a bit, here are some correspondences for the goddess Eostre/Ostara. Colors employed are all pastel shades and, of course, spring green. Symbols for the goddess include the white hare and colored eggs, birds, feathers, nests, and baskets of spring flowers. The goddess Eostre can be called on in magick for balance, illumination, renewal, new beginnings, fertility, and rebirth.

 

–Seasons of Witchery: Celebrating the Sabbats with the Garden Witch
Ellen Dugan

Spring Equinox – Ostara Traditions

Wiccan Pride

Spring Equinox – Ostara Traditions

Ostara or the Vernal Equinox is also known as Lady Day or Alban Eiler (Druidic). As spring reaches its midpoint around March 21, night and day stand in perfect balance, with light on the increase. The young Sun God now celebrates a hierogamy (sacred marriage) with the young Maiden Goddess, who conceives. In nine months, she will again become the Great Mother.

The Spring Equinox or Ostara is sacred to Eostre, the Saxon Goddess of Spring, Green Earth and Fertility. Ostara is said to be the Greek translation of Eostre’s name. Her two symbols were the egg and the rabbit. The first Easter egg was said to have been decorated for her by a small hare determined to make the egg as beautiful and new as Eostre made the world each spring. Today her symbols are commonly known as the Easter egg and Easter bunny.

In nature, hens begin to lay eggs when there is 12 hours or more of daylight. At the onset of spring our ancestors could count on gathering fresh eggs from their chickens and the egg became a reliable symbol of rebirth in the cycle of nature.

Herbs and Flowers: Daffodil, Jonquils, Woodruff, Violet, Gorse, Olive, Peony, Iris, Narcissus and all spring flowers

Incense: Jasmine, Rose, Strawberry, Floral of any type

Sacred Gemstone: Jasper

 

Wiccan & Pagan Holidays: An Easy Beginner’s Guide to Celebrating Sabbats and Esbats (Living Wicca Today Book 1)
Kardia Zoe

Ostara, The Symbolic Change

Elfo

Ostara, The Symbolic Change

Ostara is symbolic of the change in the Goddess from Winter’s crone to Spring’s maiden The holiday calls to the youthful spirit within us all, no matter what our age, and celebrates the land’s slow rebirth after the deathlike sleep of winter.

Witches observe the holiday with rituals and feasts, and decorate their altars with the traditional tional fertility symbols of rabbits, chicks, and eggs (no, not actual rabbits and chicks, although you are welcome to try it if you’re feeling brave and don’t mind cleaning up poop).

And if those symbols sound a bit familiar to those of you raised in one of the Christian religions, gions, it is because many of the traditions of Easter were adopted from Ostara. Even the name Easter was taken from a Pagan goddess: Eostre, a Saxon goddess of spring. Think about it: the symbols of Easter all represent fertility (those same eggs, chicks, and rabbits)-much more suitable able for a Pagan holiday than a Christian one. Oh, the things they didn’t tell you in Sunday school …

So adorn your altar with a few beautiful early spring flowers, draw some Pagan symbols on eggs before you dye them, and prepare a feast of traditional spring foods like asparagus and lamb. If you want, you can even plant a few seeds. Then, alone or with other Witches, plant the seeds for the changes you wish to occur in your life during the coming year.

Source

Deborah Blake, Everyday Witch A to Z: An Amusing, Inspiring & Informative Guide to the Wonderful World of Witchcraft

A Little History – The Vernal Equinox

March Hare

A Little History

The Vernal Equinox

In some magickal traditions, this is the start of the new year. The Roman year, for example, began the fifteenth of March (the Ides of March). Also, the astrological year begins on the vernal equinox, when the sun enters the astrological sign of Aries the Ram.

The word vernal is Latin and means “spring,” while the word equinox actually comes from the Latin word aequinoctium, which means “equal night.” Once again, our daylight and nighttime hours are fairly equal. When the sun crosses over the earth’s equator, this moment is known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. At the spring equinox we celebrate the midpoint of winter changeably. The Anglo-Saxons hailed Eostre as the Maiden Goddess of spring. Some say that her name means “moving with the waxing sun.” Eostre (Old English) and Ostara (Old High German) are both the names of this goddess of the dawn and spring.

Her name was taken for the Christian celebration of Easter, probably due to the fact that in Germanic traditions, the month of April is called Eostur monath (Eostre’s month). Back in 1882, Jacob Grimm had this to say about the goddess Ostara. Check out this interesting quote from his book Teutonic Mythology:

This Ostarâ, like the [Anglo-Saxon] Eástre, must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries.

Eostre, the goddess of spring, was once offered cakes and colored eggs at the equinox. The hare was sacred to her, as is the white rabbit. In many other mythologies, a white animal such as a deer or a horse is often considered a sign of divinity, and it is sacred. Some scholars consider Eostre to be a Maiden Goddess of the east and the dawn, similar to the goddess Eos, who is the Greek Maiden Goddess of the sunrise. Isn’t it interesting how these different deities from different cultures have so many similarities? Also, in my opinion, having Eostre associated with both the spring and the sunrise makes sense, as on the day of the vernal equinox the sun rises at true east.

This sabbat honors the fecundity of the land, the sprouting of the seeds within the earth, and the coming of spring’s warmth and light from the sun. This time of year is all about balance, renewal, and rebirth. It’s a fantastic occasion for new beginnings, starting new projects, clearing out the old to make room for the new, and embracing a fresh start.

Eventually the snow and ice will thaw and melt, and things will be muddy and sloppy for a while. This, too, passes as nature puts all that moisture to good use and it nourishes the plants. To survive the thaw and reblooming of spring, all plants and wildlife have to be hardy and strong. Spring is a season of dramatic change. Even though folks like to romanticize it and say how soft and pretty it is, often the fiercest winter storms happen now. Spring is a brutal season. Only the hardiest of early spring plants endure the wild weather, temperature swings, and severe storms. It is both a challenge and a test of faith to thrive in this season, but spring is all about faith, strength, birth, and growth.

 

–Seasons of Witchery: Celebrating the Sabbats with the Garden Witch
Ellen Dugan

Ostara to Beltane

Pagan
Ostara to Beltane

The advent of Spring marks the turning of the year, when hours of daylight begins to outnumber the hours of darkness again. New growth emerges around us and we experience renewed energy and hope, while fertility becomes the focus of the animal and human world and is also seen in the reawakening of the Earth and the flora it sustains. Because the Sun returns to our lives at the Spring Equinox, it is associated with the color yellow.

Does the equinox sun really rise due east and set due west?

Does the equinox sun really rise due east and set due west?

By

The March 2019 equinox happens on March 20 at 21:58 Universal Time, which is 4:58 p.m. Central Daylight Time for us in the central U.S. Translate to your time zone. What’s more, the March 2019 full moon comes less than four hours later, to stage the closest coincidence of the March equinox with the full moon since March 20, 2000.

The March equinox heralds the arrival of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. On this day, the sun rises due east and sets due west.

It may seem counterintuitive. But it’s true no matter where you live on Earth (except the North and South Poles, where there is no east or west).

To understand the due-east and due-west rising and setting of an equinox sun, you have to think of the reality of Earth in space. First think of why the sun’s path across our sky shifts from season to season. It’s because our world is tilted on its axis with respect to its orbit around the sun.

The seasons result from the Earth’s rotational axis tilting 23.5 degrees out of perpendicular to the ecliptic – or Earth’s orbital plane.

Now think about what an equinox is. It’s an event that happens on the imaginary dome of Earth’s sky. It marks that special moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator going from south to north. And it also, of course, represents a point on Earth’s orbit.

The celestial equator is a great circle dividing the imaginary celestial sphere into its northern and southern hemispheres. The celestial equator wraps the sky directly above Earth’s equator. At the March equinox, the sun crosses the celestial equator to enter the sky’s Northern Hemisphere.

The celestial equator is a circle drawn around the sky, above Earth’s equator. The ecliptic is the sun’s apparent yearly path in front of the constellations of the zodiac. The ecliptic and celestial equator intersect at the spring and autumn equinox points.

All these components are imaginary, yet what happens at every equinox is very real – as real as the sun’s passage across the sky each day and as real as the change of the seasons.

No matter where you are on Earth (except for the North and South Poles), you have a due east and due west point on your horizon. That point marks the intersection of your horizon with the celestial equator, the imaginary great circle above the true equator of the Earth.

And that’s why the sun rises due east and sets due west, for all of us, at the equinox. The equinox sun is on the celestial equator. No matter where you are on Earth, the celestial equator intersects your horizon at due east and due west.

Where does the celestial equator intersect your horizon? No matter what your latitude is, it intersects your horizon at points due east and due west.

This fact makes the day of an equinox a good day for finding due east and due west from your yard or other favorite site for watching the sky. Just go outside around sunset or sunrise and notice the location of the sun on the horizon with respect to familiar landmarks.

If you do this, you’ll be able to use those landmarks to find those cardinal directions in the weeks and months ahead, long after Earth has moved on in its orbit around the sun, carrying the sunrise and sunset points northward.

Our ancestors may not have understood the equinoxes and solstices as events that occur in the course of Earth’s yearly orbit around the sun. But if they were observant – and some were very observant indeed – they surely marked the day of the equinox as being midway between the sun’s lowest path across the sky in winter and highest path across the sky in summer.

If they thought in terms of four directions, they might also have learned a fact of nature that occurs whenever there’s an equinox: each midway point between the sun’s lowest and highest path.

That is, the sun rises due east and sets due west on the day of the equinox, as seen from everywhere on the globe.

The day arc of the sun, every hour, during the equinox as seen on the celestial dome, from the pole. Image via Tau’olunga at Wikimedia Commons.

Bottom line: The 2019 March equinox comes on March 20 at 21:58 UTC (4:58 p.m. CDT; translate to your time zone). At the equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west.

A Chinese perspective on the spring equinox

Everything you need to know: Vernal or spring equinox 2019

Hamal: Ancient equinox star

Read more: Understanding celestial coordinates

Bruce McClure

Bruce McClure has served as lead writer for EarthSky’s popular Tonight pages since 2004. He’s a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also writes and hosts public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York.

EarthSky.org

Earth Sky News for March 19: Full supermoon at March 2019 equinox

Full supermoon at March 2019 equinox

By

The March 20-21, 2019, full moon ushers in the first full moon of spring for the Northern Hemisphere, and the first full moon of autumn for the Southern Hemisphere. This full moon is also a supermoon, particularly close to Earth. It comes less than four hours after the arrival of the March 20 equinox.

This is the closest coincidence of a full moon with the March equinox since March 2000 – 19 years ago. The full moon and March equinox won’t happen less than one day apart again for another 11 years, until March 2030.

March 2000 full Moon: March 20 at 4:44 UTC
March 2000 equinox: March 20 at 7:35 UTC

March 2030 full moon: March 19 at 17:56 UTC
March 2030 equinox: March 20 at 13:51 UTC

This month’s full moon also presents the third and final supermoon of 2019. Will it appear bigger in your sky? No, not unless you happen to catch the moon just after it has risen in the east, around sunset. Then its larger-than-usual size has less to do with the supermoon, but more from a psychological effect known as the moon illusion.

Supermoons don’t look bigger to the eye to most people, but they do look significantly brighter. If you’re in the suburbs or a rural area, notice the bright moonlight cast on the landscape at this full moon.

Also, supermoons have a stronger-than-usual effect on Earth’s oceans. Watch for higher-than-usual tides to follow the supermoon by a day or so, especially if a coastal storm is happening in your part of the world.

This March supermoon isn’t 2019’s closest supermoon, by the way. That happened last month.

The Virtual Telescope Project will show the March 20 supermoon live, as it rises above the skyline of Rome.

At U.S. time zones, the equinox arrives on March 20, at 5:58 p.m. EDT, 4:58 p.m. CDT, 3:58 p.m. MDT, 2:58 p.m. PDT, 1:58 p.m. AKDT and 11:58 a.m. HST.

At U.S. time zones, the full moon falls on March 20, at 9:43 p.m. EDT, 8:43 p.m. CDT, 7:43 p.m. MDT, 6:43 p.m. PDT, 5:43 p.m. AKDT and 3:43 p.m. HST.

In Universal Time, the equinox arrives on March 20, at 21:58 UTC, and the full moon comes on March 21, at 1:43 UTC. Here’s how to convert Universal Time to your local time.

At the equinox, the sun is at zenith (straight overhead) at the Earth’s equator. Because the Earth’s atmosphere refracts (bends) sunlight, a tiny bit more than half of the globe is covered over in daylight.

Generally, the first full moon of a Northern Hemisphere spring heralds the imminent coming of the Christian celebration of Easter. Since Easter Sunday – by proclamation – occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring, some of us might expect the upcoming Sunday on March 24 to be Easter Sunday. However, by ecclesiastical rules, the equinox is fixed on March 21, so that places this year’s Easter Sunday (for Western Christendom) on April 21, 2019.

By the Gregorian calendar, the last time that an ecclesiastical Easter and an astronomical Easter didn’t occur on the same date was 38 years ago, in 1981. The next time won’t be until 19 years from now, in 2038.

(Easter Sunday for Eastern or Orthodox Christendom actually falls on April 28, 2019. That’s because the Eastern Church bases Easter on the old style Julian calendar, instead of the revised Gregorian calendar used by Western Christianity and most of the world.)

For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, this March full moon counts as your Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon is the full moon occurring closest to the autumnal equinox. On the average, the moon rises about 50 minutes later with each passing day. But for several days around the time of the Harvest Moon, the lag time between successive moonrises is reduced to a yearly minimum. For instance, at 40 degrees south latitude, the moon now rises some 30 to 35 minutes later (instead of the average 50 minutes later) each day for the next several days.

Like Earth, Saturn has equinoxes too! The ringed planet last had an equinox in 2009, and will have its next equinox in 2025. From Earth, Saturn’s rings disappear from view at a Saturn equinox, because these rings are then edge-on from our vantage point. But this near-equinox view of Saturn’s rings is readily visible from the Cassini spacecraft, because it’s 20 degrees above the ring plane. Image via NASA.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, where it’s the closest full moon to the spring equinox, the lag time between successive moonrises is at a yearly maximum. At 40 degrees north latitude, the moon now rises around 70 to 75 minutes later daily. In the Northern Hemisphere, we ‘ll have to wait for the September full moon to bring forth our procession of early evening moonrises.

Last but hardly least, this March 2019 full moon gives us the first of four full moons in one season (between the March equinox and June solstice). Most of the time, a season – the time period between an equinox and a solstice, or vice versa – only harbors three full moons. But since this March full moon comes very early in the season, that allows for a fourth full moon to take place before the season’s end.

March 2019 equinox: March 20 at 21:58 UTC

March 2019 full moon: March 21 at 1:43 UTC
April 2019 full moon: April 19 at 11:12 UTC
May 2019 full moon: May 18 at 21:11 UTC
June 2019 full moon: June 17 at 8:31 UTC

June 2019 solstice: June 21 at 15:54 UTC

Some people call the third of four full moons in one season a Blue Moon. So our next Blue Moon (by the seasonal definition of the term) will fall on May 18, 2019.

The next Blue Moon by the monthly definition – second of two full moons in one calendar month – will come on October 31, 2020.

Resources:

Astronomical and Gregorian Easter Sunday
Phases of the moon: 1901 to 2000
Phases of the moon: 2001 to 2100
Solstices and equinoxes: 2001 to 2100
Equinox and solstice calculator

Bottom line: Enjoy the equinox full moon on March 20-21, 2019. It’s the third and final full supermoon of 2019, and the first of four full moons in the upcoming season (spring for the Northern Hemisphere, autumn for the Southern Hemisphere).

Bruce McClure

Bruce McClure has served as lead writer for EarthSky’s popular Tonight pages since 2004. He’s a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also writes and hosts public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York.

EarthSky.org

Your Daily Rune for March 19, 2019 is Nauthiz

Your Daily Rune for March 19, 2019

Nauthiz

“Not-this” – Literally: “Need-fire” or “Necessity” – Esoteric: Constraint, Friction

Key Concepts: Need, resistance, constraint, conflict, drama, effort, necessity, urgency, hard work, need-fire, life lessons, creative friction, distress, force of growth, the consequence of past action, short term pain for long term gain

Psi: resistance, need, effort

Energy: necessity, coming forth into being, urgency

Mundane: doing what must be done, chores, hard work

Divinations: Resistance (leading to strength), recognition of örlög (ultimate law, primal truth), innovation, need-fire (self-reliance), personal development and life lessons, achievement through effort; or constraint of freedom, distress, toil, drudgery, laxity, warnings, worry, guilt, moral cowardice, unfulfilled or unrecognized needs.

 

Your Influences for Tuesday, March 19th

Your Influences for Tuesday, March 19th

Element Influence

Earth Reversed

Earth reversed denotes a lack of positive connection with the life spirit–a lost soul. If you are not careful you may miss much of what life has to offer you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Astrological Influence

Pisces Reversed

Pisces reversed signifies a lack of positive thinking and creativity at this time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Element Influence

Earth Reversed

Earth reversed denotes a lack of positive connection with the life spirit–a lost soul. If you are not careful you may miss much of what life has to offer you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your Erotic Tarot Card for March 19th is The Chariot

Erotic Tarot Card of the Day

The Chariot

March 19, 2019
The Chariot shows that you’re rolling toward a major sexual goal today, willing to forego just about anything and everything else to have that one big O! The thing is, who are you willing to trample over to get there? This card can be a sign to slow down just a bit, because while sex is fun, it shouldn’t be your number one focus right now. You don’t have to come to a complete stop, but pulling back on the reins just a bit will give you the clarity you need to make sure you’re making wise sexual decisions.

Your Daily Tarot Love Card for March 19th is The Wheel of Fortune

Your Daily Love Tarot Card of the Day

The Wheel of Fortune

March 19, 2019
Today, the truth is told and clears up a situation that has hung on and on. Take direct action now to clear up something that should have been handled long ago. The Wheel of Fortune selected you because you need to know that some parts of the conditions were out of your control. Some events are not the result of something you did. You do have control over how you deal with matters now.