Tag: garden

Garden Blessing for Ostara


Ostara Comments

Garden Blessing for Ostara

 

Say a blessing over your garden as you prepare it for spring.

The earth is cool and dark,
and far below, new life begins.
May the soil be blessed with fertility and abundance,
with rains of life-giving water,
with the heat of the sun,
with the energy of the raw earth.
May the soil be blessed
as the womb of the land becomes full and fruitful
to bring forth the garden anew.

 

Author: By Patti Wigington, Pagan/Wicca Expert

Article found on & owned by About.com

Let’s Talk Witch – Time to Start Those Gardens

Let’s Talk Witch – Time to Start Those Gardens

 

In some areas, it is getting time to start planning and hoeing those gardens up. For those of us blessed with land attached to our homes, a mystic garden is an excellent addition to the magickal household. A garden brings beauty and ensures a steady supply of fresh and dried herbs. It also spreads an aura of protection around your home, shielding it from the outside world. When people approach, even before they have steppped over the threshold. they will have been enchanted by the garden’s subtle powers.

Not everyone has the space to plant a garden, but even apartment dwellers can grow herbs and flowers on window sills or porches in pots and planter. Indeed a garden can be maintained indoor with house plants.

Still, an outdoor garden is worth creating if you have the time, space and inclination. In fact, it is an ideal setting in which to perform magick. Spells cast in gardens are more powerful than those done indoors, for the forces of nature resident in the plants around you and the solid earth beneath your bare feet align with your own powers to produce the needed results.

Magical Herbalism describes one method of creating a magick garden. There are countless others–in fact, you should let your imagination run wild when fashioning your mystic green corner.

Your garden need not advertise its powers. It can be your secret with the Earth. Since no one seems to think twice about herbs or fruit trees growing in a garden, on the stairs or in window boxes, why not pick plants that will bring wealth, protection and love to your home?

Your garden can also be a source of help in fulfilling your personal magical goals. If you wish to improve your psychic powers, for instance, plant a bay tree, common celery, honeysuckle, marigolds, roses or thyme. While thriving in the garden, the plants will help attune your home to psychic vibrations. Plus, their flowers, leaves and seeds can be used in magick rites to further accentuate their effects.

Those desiring a loving household may wish to include such common plants and flowers as the gardenia, primrose, spearmint, tomato, pansy, jasmine and catnip, and (if space is no problem) a few trees such as cherry, apple orange, mape and willow.

To ensure happiness in a home, you might wish to fill a window box or ranks of flowerpots with hyacinth, lavender, marjoram, catnip and morning glory (care–it creeps everywhere).

If money is a problem, you could choose mint, onion, snapdragon, camellia, chamomile, clover, dill, basil and perhaps even a small section of what. Pine, oak, ash and apple trees planted near the house also help direct prosperity your way, as will a banana plant

To ward off thefts in your home, plant a “fence” of ti (ki) around its perimeter or be sure to include garlic, cumin, vetivert, a clump of thistlees, an aspen, catcus or a juniper tree.

Bamboo and hydrangea near the home offer it general luck, as does a sunflower, which is sometimes considered a prerequisite for a garden in Mexico. Myrtle-filled widow boxes, if planted by a woman are lucky too.

When all is growing greenly, no one will be the wiser concerning your garden’s powers, although every plant is virtually a spell in and of itself.

 

Source:
“The Magical Household” Book

Scott Cunningham & David Harrington

Indoor Herbs

Indoor Herbs

Indoor plants need a lot of light; most of them will prefer a good 6-8 hours of
natural sunlight per day, so try to position them near windows or under skylights. If you can’t get enough natural light for them, consider installing a
grow-light. Most herbs prefer humid surroundings, so if the air in your house is
dry, keep a little mister nearby and use it regularly. They like it warm, but
keeping them right near a heater, stove or heating duct will be far too dry for
them. One of the best places for culinary herbs is your kitchen windowsill,
where they’ll get some sunlight and will be near the tap to be watered
regularly.

Herbs which can be grown indoors include mint, basil, lavender, scented
geranium, sage, rosemary, chives, sage, lemon verbena, thyme, parsley, marjoram.

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Friday Is Ruled by Venus

Celtic Comments & Graphics

Friday Is Ruled by Venus

Archangel: Anael

Candle colour: Green or pink

Incenses: Rose or geranium

Crystals: Jade or rose quartz

Use Fridays for spells for love, fidelity, healing, for anything to do with beauty, the arts and crafts and for all spells concerning the environment.

Where possible, work in any enclosed beautiful place outdoors, for example a botanical garden, a field, park or your own garden – even in a circle of plants indoors.

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Tools Necessary for Herbalism

Tools Necessary for Herbalism

The first step in herbalism is to gather the tools you will need, and that is the main point of this first message. I have found the following useful and in many cases vital to learn and practice the use of herbs.

1) A Good mortar and Pestile, one of stone or metal is prefered. If wood is used you will need two, one for inedibles and one for edibles – make sure they do not look identical, as you do not want to accidentally poison anyone!!!

2) Containers. Although you can buy dried herbs over the counter in many places these days, do not store them in the plastic bags they come in, as these are usually
neither reuseable nor perfectly airtight. Rubbermaid style plastic containers are good, but expensive. I have used glass coffee and spice jars/bottles to good effect, as well as some medicine bottles. The more you recycle the better ecologically, just make sure they
have been thoroughly washed and dried before placing anything inside them.

3) Labels. This is vital! None of us in this day and age can possibly recognize each herb in its various forms simply by sight. Always label your containers as you fill them, and if possible date them when they were filled so you don’t keep spoiled stock on the shelf.

4) Tea Ball. A good metal teaball of the single cup size can be very useful in the longrun when your are experimenting, and when you are making single person doses of teas and tonics.

5) CheeseCloth : Useful for straining a partially liquid mixture and occasionnally for the making of sachets.

6) A Good sized teakettle. Preferably one that will hold at least a quart of water.
7) A Good teapot for simmering mixtures. I use one from a chinese import store that has done me well

.
8) A good cutting board and a SHARP cutting knife for just herbal work.

9) A notebook of some sort to record the information in as you go, both successes and failures. Always record anything new you try that may or may not work, and also and research information you get from various sources (like this echo!)

10) An eyedropper.

11) White linen-style bandages. Some ace bandages are also useful in the long run.

12) A metal brazier of some sort, or a metal container that can withstand heavy useage and heat from within or without, useful for several things including the making of your own incenses.

13) Reference sources. Shortly you should see a list of books that I have read from in the past that I consider useful, build from this as a starting point to others and to your teachers help.

Thats it to start, you’ll pick the rest up as you go. Take your time studying, take lots of notes, compare your sources and your own personal results on each herb and on herbal mixtures of any kind.

November 15 – Daily Feast

November 15 – Daily Feast

Walking in a garden is little different from walking into a room full of people. Color, shape, size, all play a part – and the more varied, the greater the interest. Only a few dominate the garden, and they are not always the prettiest. Some are herbs and serve as good medicine, while others stand in pretty little groups and dance in the breezes. Each of us is a part of the garden. Do we add or detract? Are we fragrant and do we require sunlight or can we survive in the shade? Do we need constant attention or are we perennial – faithful to our place and doing our best to bloom?

~ Two branches of the ancient Cherokee family….it has become essential to the general welfare that a union should be formed. ~

SEQUOYAH – CHEROKEE TALKING LEAVES

‘A Cherokee Feast of Days, Volume II’ by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Calendar of the Sun for November 10th

Calendar of the Sun

Ancestor Day

Color: Black and grey
Element: Earth
Altar: Spread a black cloth, and lay it with photographs, paintings, and other depictions of our ancestors. Add also symbols of their old tools, and statues of ancestral deities, a bowl of seeds for the future garden, pots of soil, a pitcher of water, and many candles of black and white and grey.
Offerings: Things they would have liked to eat, drink, smoke, or smell. Tend a cemetery and clean up the graves.
Daily Meal: Food from an earlier era, using authentic recipes.

Invocation to the Ancestors

Our ancestors got up at dawn,
Slaved in the dirt,
Sweated in the sun,
Chilled in the cold,
Numbed in the snow,
Scattering each seed with a prayer:
Pray that there be enough,
That no one starve this winter.
Pray that no bird nor beast
Steal the food I have struggled for.
And most of all,
Pray that each seed I save
Of this harvest
Shall next year
Bring forth a hundred more.
We live today
Because they worked
Because they sowed
Because they harvested
Because they prayed.

Chant:
Those who came before
We are your children
Those who came before
We honor your names

(Each person takes seeds from the bowl and plants them in the pots of soil, speaking the name of one of their ancestors as they do so, as in: “In honor of _______.” The pots are watered, and the candles put out one by one.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for October 17th

Calendar of the Sun

Aequinoctium Autumnale

Colors: Brown and Orange
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of brown and orange, patterned with autumn leaves, place a basket of fallen leaves, barrels of straw, shovels, spades, a bowl of rainwater, and seeds for cover crops.
Offerings: Turn under and mulch the used land.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Aequinoctium Autumnale Invocation

Earth, we have eaten of your bounty!
You have fed us, and we are content.
We have worked you hard, and you have responded
With generosity and fruitfulness.
Now, as the year draws on, and the Sun
Shortens its days and counts the moons
Until its chilly death and incandescent rebirth,
We gift you as you have gifted us,
We care for you as you have cared for us,
We give back that we may continue to take,
Year after year, cycle after cycle.
Do not think, O Mother, that we are merely selfish,
And would only rape you of your bounty.
Our hands shall toil that you may have,
If only in this one small place,
Richness to take back for yourself.
For we know the hard secrets of the cycle,
And we will someday give ourselves
Back to your quiet embrace.

Chant:
Leaves falling
To our hands
Autumn calling
Cover all the land

(All take up the buckets of leaves and straw, and the spades, and go out to the garden. Some will turn over the soil, and others shall follow with cover crop seeds and rainwater, or with mulch to cover the ground. This shall be done throughout the Aequinoctium Autumnale days until all the ground from this year’s crops are covered.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for October 10th

Calendar of the Sun

Aequinoctium Autumnale

Colors: Brown and Orange
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of brown and orange, patterned with autumn leaves, place a basket of fallen leaves, barrels of straw, shovels, spades, a bowl of rainwater, and seeds for cover crops.
Offerings: Turn under and mulch the used land.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Aequinoctium Autumnale Invocation

Earth, we have eaten of your bounty!
You have fed us, and we are content.
We have worked you hard, and you have responded
With generosity and fruitfulness.
Now, as the year draws on, and the Sun
Shortens its days and counts the moons
Until its chilly death and incandescent rebirth,
We gift you as you have gifted us,
We care for you as you have cared for us,
We give back that we may continue to take,
Year after year, cycle after cycle.
Do not think, O Mother, that we are merely selfish,
And would only rape you of your bounty.
Our hands shall toil that you may have,
If only in this one small place,
Richness to take back for yourself.
For we know the hard secrets of the cycle,
And we will someday give ourselves
Back to your quiet embrace.

Chant:
Leaves falling
To our hands
Autumn calling
Cover all the land

(All take up the buckets of leaves and straw, and the spades, and go out to the garden. Some will turn over the soil, and others shall follow with cover crop seeds and rainwater, or with mulch to cover the ground. This shall be done throughout the Aequinoctium Autumnale days until all the ground from this year’s crops are covered.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for October 8th

Calendar of the Sun

Aequinoctium Autumnale

Colors: Brown and Orange
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of brown and orange, patterned with autumn leaves, place a basket of fallen leaves, barrels of straw, shovels, spades, a bowl of rainwater, and seeds for cover crops.
Offerings: Turn under and mulch the used land.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Aequinoctium Autumnale Invocation

Earth, we have eaten of your bounty!
You have fed us, and we are content.
We have worked you hard, and you have responded
With generosity and fruitfulness.
Now, as the year draws on, and the Sun
Shortens its days and counts the moons
Until its chilly death and incandescent rebirth,
We gift you as you have gifted us,
We care for you as you have cared for us,
We give back that we may continue to take,
Year after year, cycle after cycle.
Do not think, O Mother, that we are merely selfish,
And would only rape you of your bounty.
Our hands shall toil that you may have,
If only in this one small place,
Richness to take back for yourself.
For we know the hard secrets of the cycle,
And we will someday give ourselves
Back to your quiet embrace.

Chant:
Leaves falling
To our hands
Autumn calling
Cover all the land

(All take up the buckets of leaves and straw, and the spades, and go out to the garden. Some will turn over the soil, and others shall follow with cover crop seeds and rainwater, or with mulch to cover the ground. This shall be done throughout the Aequinoctium Autumnale days until all the ground from this year’s crops are covered.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for Monday, September 30th

Calendar of the Sun

Aequinoctium Autumnale

Colors: Brown and Orange
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of brown and orange, patterned with autumn leaves, place a basket of fallen leaves, barrels of straw, shovels, spades, a bowl of rainwater, and seeds for cover crops.
Offerings: Turn under and mulch the used land.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Aequinoctium Autumnale Invocation

Earth, we have eaten of your bounty!
You have fed us, and we are content.
We have worked you hard, and you have responded
With generosity and fruitfulness.
Now, as the year draws on, and the Sun
Shortens its days and counts the moons
Until its chilly death and incandescent rebirth,
We gift you as you have gifted us,
We care for you as you have cared for us,
We give back that we may continue to take,
Year after year, cycle after cycle.
Do not think, O Mother, that we are merely selfish,
And would only rape you of your bounty.
Our hands shall toil that you may have,
If only in this one small place,
Richness to take back for yourself.
For we know the hard secrets of the cycle,
And we will someday give ourselves
Back to your quiet embrace.

Chant:
Leaves falling
To our hands
Autumn calling
Cover all the land

(All take up the buckets of leaves and straw, and the spades, and go out to the garden. Some will turn over the soil, and others shall follow with cover crop seeds and rainwater, or with mulch to cover the ground. This shall be done throughout the Aequinoctium Autumnale days until all the ground from this year’s crops are covered.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for August 28th

Calendar of the Sun

Media Aestas

Colors: Gold and blue
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon a golden cloth set a single blue candle, a bunch of herbs from the garden, lengths of twine, a bowl of rainwater, a bucket of manure tea, and several empty baskets.
Offering: Water and fertilizer, to be added to the garden.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian

Media Aestas Invocation

Earth, your bounty is showered upon us!
We walk amid your green leaves
And cut down what you give us,
And the harvest begins in earnest.
Bless us with a full pantry
As the Sun begins to wane,
Let us eat his light in the food
You gift to our table.
We now enter the time of year
When we do take more than is given,
Yet even now we will water and feed you,
For this is the dance of giving.
And we shall do the sacred act of cultivation,
Weeding that which hinders our harvest,
Bringing the first death that Life may go on.

Chant: Gift given
Hands receive you
Earth’s bounty
Brings the sheaf to you

(Two who have been chosen to do the work of the ritual take up the rainwater and the manure tea, and carry them out tot he garden, where they are ceremonially poured around the roots of the herbs and vegetables, and especially into any plots of land where everything has been harvested. All others follow with empty baskets to harvest some thing from the garden, or twine to cut herbs and hang them to dry. After this, each should do some weeding, as weeding is the sacred cultivation work of this season. The weeds should be placed in a compost heap with all due reverence; we take their perfectly legitimate lives that our own plants may grow.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for July 26th

Calendar of the Sun

Solstitium

Colors: Green and gold
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of green and gold set flowers and herbs in pots, a bowl of rainwater, a large pitcher of manure tea, and several empty baskets.
Offerings: Water and fertilizer, to be added to the garden.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Solstitium Invocation

Earth, you begin to give forth your bounty!
Like the maiden blossoming into the mother,
Like the youth growing into the father,
You yield your children up to us
For our sustenance and health,
As we are also your children.
We will not waste your gifts!
We will nurture what you bring forth
With the labor of our hands,
That those gifts shall be sustained
Year after year, and that you shall
Never be exhausted.
We will not be ungrateful, O Earth whose life is ours,
But we will give back as much as we take,
For this is the way of balance.

Chant:
Life harnessed
Call the sun to us
Sacred harvest
You are one with us

(Two who have been chosen to do the work of the ritual take up the rainwater and the manure tea, and carry them out to the garden, where they are ceremonially poured around the roots of the herbs and vegetables. All others follow with the empty baskets, and harvest some thing from the garden, whether a token or a main part of the next meal. After this, each should do some part of the work of further watering, or fertilizing, or mulching, to give back to the earth as much as is taken away.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for July 17th

Calendar of the Sun

Solstitium

Colors: Green and gold
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of green and gold set flowers and herbs in pots, a bowl of rainwater, a large pitcher of manure tea, and several empty baskets.
Offerings: Water and fertilizer, to be added to the garden.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Solstitium Invocation

Earth, you begin to give forth your bounty!
Like the maiden blossoming into the mother,
Like the youth growing into the father,
You yield your children up to us
For our sustenance and health,
As we are also your children.
We will not waste your gifts!
We will nurture what you bring forth
With the labor of our hands,
That those gifts shall be sustained
Year after year, and that you shall
Never be exhausted.
We will not be ungrateful, O Earth whose life is ours,
But we will give back as much as we take,
For this is the way of balance.

Chant:
Life harnessed
Call the sun to us
Sacred harvest
You are one with us

(Two who have been chosen to do the work of the ritual take up the rainwater and the manure tea, and carry them out to the garden, where they are ceremonially poured around the roots of the herbs and vegetables. All others follow with the empty baskets, and harvest some thing from the garden, whether a token or a main part of the next meal. After this, each should do some part of the work of further watering, or fertilizing, or mulching, to give back to the earth as much as is taken away.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Calendar of the Sun for January 25th

Calendar of the Sun

 

25 Wolfmonath

Sementivae Feria: Seed Blessing

Colors:  and brown
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of green and brown set all the seeds for the next year, with the seeds saved from last year’s garden in  the center.
Offerings: Give seeds to poor  and gardeners.
Daily Meal: Vegan.

Sementivae Feria Invocation

Hear us, Ceres, Mother of the Grain,
You whose breath stirs the seed in the ground,
Though Earth sleeps now in her bed of stone,
We ask for her blessing on these seeds
Which will soon be sowed.
These are our hopes, our dreams,
Our aspirations, all promise and possibilities,
Waiting dry and dormant to be awoken.
Though we will not wake them today,
Soon the time will approach when they shall
Come into the embrace of the warm soil
And blossom into manifestation.
Bless our seeds, Great Ceres,
Mother of the Corn, Spark of the Plowed Earth,
Bless their promise, and ours as well.

(All cry, “Hail Ceres!” Then all surround the seeds and hold their hands over them, and together sing Ohm and Ah in harmonies, to carry Ceres’ blessing. The seeds are then placed in a special basket shaped like a cradle, and covered with a cloth, and sung to.)

Chant: Carry our wishes
Carry our hoping
Carry our blessing
Till you be awoken

 

[Pagan Book of Hours]