The snow is melting and the days are sunny and warm. We all feel it and urged by the stirrings of new ideas, fresh beginnings and the birth of new projects and plans. Within these pages, Gaia’s Wheel community has shared, heartfelt, this season’s energy of renewal.
Ostara is a celebration of new life, fertility and birth. Our farm is a hustle and bustle of new arrivals with calving, newly hatched chicks, turkeys and puppies. Maple sapping is off to a good start and necessary equipment pulled out of the shed to start seeds for this years garden. Melting snow brings mud...lots of it…deep mud! Knee high mud boots are a necessity as well changes of clothes throughout the day. But the exuberance we feel with the sun shining warm on our faces is welcomed reminder of the Turning of the Wheel and the promise of the warmer season ahead.
Now that my boys are grown and the Easter baskets are a thing of the past, I have taken up decorating eggs. It’s another avenue I’ve found to express my creativity. This is my third year making pysanky (better known as Ukranian Easter) eggs. By placing bees wax in a funnel called a kitska, and melting it over a candle flame, designs are drawn on the eggshell and then dye is applied in layers of color. The process is soothing and trance-like and is a relaxing project done alone or as a group activity. www.pysankyshowcase.com/
The Modern Christian holiday of Easter is named from this ancient celebration. It’s names are many; Ostara/Germanic, Eostre/Saxon, Eos/Greek, after the Goddess of Dawn. Ostara is the celebration of the Spring Equinox. This is when one of the two days during the year where day and night are exactly even and brings the world to balance. This is a time of the Storm Moon. With the energies of Spring and the imagery of new plants breaking through the soil, use this energy to work through breaking old habits and blocks that prevent you from moving forward….to new beginnings.
I consider myself very fortunate to live in the country and on a farm where our lives and activities revolve around the seasons and the Wheel of the Year. Many neo-pagans find themselves within the constraints of town or city life. You don’t have to live in the country to be connected to our Mother Earth. Cultivating mindfulness of the Wheel of the Year celebrations or in everyday life for that fact, can be expressed in simple ritual or in a new activity or project.
I want to share a simple and effective ritual suggested by Nancy Brady Cunningham in Feeding the Spirit. Each person choose a seed that is meaningful to them. By choosing seeds that represent aspects of wisdom, patience, understanding, etc.; these qualities can be visualized to full bloom in your life. Bless the seed with this prayer; “Now is the dark half of the year passing. Now do the days grow light and the Earth grows warm. I summon the spirit of these seeds which have slept in darkness. Awaken, stir and swell. Soon you will be planted in the Earth to grow and bring new fruit. Blessed Be! Sit and visualize your plant in full bloom. Invoke each of the four elements necessary for the plants growth. Place the seeds in a pot of soil, pat down the earth, pour water over it, breath on it to represent air and hold the pot up to the sunlight to represent fire.
Whichever way you choose to celebrate the Spring Equinox, embrace this season of change and new beginnings!.
W E A R E T H E W E A V E R S W E A R E T H E W E B
Ostara is the Maiden Goddess in every culture. She is the Goddess of fertility and new beginnings. Lets embrace Eostre’s passion for new life and direct our own towards what we have wanted for so long.
Suggested Mantra: Fresh Beginnings
Suggested Affirmations:
~ I live life without fear
~ My creativity is energized
~ I feel absolutely supercharged
~ Today is my chance to be healthy ~ My vital energy resurfaces naturally ~ I embrace life in its absolute fullness ~ I find my path following my inclinations ~ My whole being reaches for the new dawn
Eostre (pron East-ra) was the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the dawn, from whom "East" (where the sun rises) and "Easter" got its name - as the fertility goddess of the Northern European peoples, her legend was manipulated by the invading Romans - newly Christianized, they merged Eostre's spring legend to coincide with the time of Christ's resurrection.
She is also goddess Ostara, the maiden, in German mythology, celebrated when night and day are equal and balanced (the spring equinox for the northern hemisphere). Interestingly, the word "estrus" (referring to an animal in heat) is also derived from Eostra as her consort was a rabbit with an extraordinarily high libido!
According to legend, Eostre became angry with the rabbit and cast it into the heavens. Today we can see the "Lepus" (the hare) constellation at the feet of Orion.
Eostre gave Lepus the gift of laying eggs once a year, which, combined with the symbolism of new life (Christ's resurrection), is why we have a modern day myth of "Easter Bunny" delivering Easter eggs to children.
HER MODERN ENERGY
No matter whether it is Spring or Autumn (Samhain on 1 May is the traditional new year for southern hemisphere pagans), we can always use this time to embrace Eostre's energy and look forward to new ideas, new jobs, new goals.
DO THIS
Working with a clear intent during the next New Moon window, plant seeds together with your magick wishes for wholeness, healing, harmony, balance, peace, and so on. As the crescent Moon increases in light, growing bigger each night, it symbolizes and reflects the growth of the seeds planted at the New Moon.
Planning Ahead
As we survived another snowstorm, I was thinking ahead to gardening and the promise of spring. This had been especially encouraging when shoveling the driveway. Yesterday I bought seeds for the garden and thought about what to plant and where. I always seem to buy too many seeds for my small garden.
Now there are those who will give you much better advice in our group. But in general, don’t plant your seeds too early. Although the rest of the United States is busy selling garden plants in the next few months, last freeze in generally the last week of May around here. That means that whatever you plant that is not cold tolerant, you need to be prepared to cover every night till then. For starting seeds indoors, (such as tomatoes, peppers, watermelon and the like) look ahead to when you want to put them outside. Plan the date! Mark the day on your calendar. Then work backwards and figure out your inside planting days. Add a few days to that and then plant. Too many times I have gotten caught planting at the end of March or early April and discovering my plants have all died from ‘damp-off’ or something before mid-May. Inside plantings need lots of light. When plants come up they need to be turned every day if they are in a window. I won’t go into details about how to plant them; there are enough great articles and information on this already. The big thing is to make sure your plants don’t either get to dry or to wet. To dry and they shrivel up…to wet and they get damp off. So what is this damp off? Damp off is a fungus that turns your pour baby plants to an icky green-goop. Normally it only affects the stems of small plants, but in a bad infestation, the whole plant will often turn to slime. Once you have it (and it hides in the soil) it is hard to get rid of and will attack every plant it can reach. Older plants (with thicker stems) are immune as are plants that have lots of air flow around them. Usually plants that are planted outside become immune.
Now another bit of advice for those folks who are new to gardening. Cut worms. Cut worms are these nasty little larvae that eat your tender plant off at ground level. If a healthy tomato plant suddenly looks like it just fell over, the culprit was most likely a cut worm. If this happens, feel around in the soil to you find the worm and then get rid of it. If you don’t it will keep mowing through your plants till there is nothing left. My Mom used to use paper cups to trick them. What you do is take the bottom out of the cup and then slide your transplant into it to create a sleeve for your transplant. You plant this so that the edge of the bottomless cup sticks up a couple of inches. This creates a barrier between the tender plant and the cutworms.
Back to indoor planting…A good way to encourage growth on your seedlings is to create willow water. This is a great project for all the budding kitchen witches and green-witches out there….and best yet…it’s at my skill level J Willow water is made by going out and picking tender young branches and sprigs of willow. Any living willow will do. You then get yourself a big glass jar or a bucket. You break up the willow into small pieces (2-4 inches or less.) You can break the willow by bending it instead of breaking it or you can cut it with a knife. If you find your willow doesn’t want to break, just bend it into small shapes so it fits into your jar or pail. Now fill up the container with water and wait for at least 24 hours and better to wait 3 days. Discard your willow to the compost pile and use your willow water to help your plants to grow. The willow water has natural growth hormones from the willow. In the wild, willows put out these hormones to stimulate plant growth around them. If you want, you can also plant your willow pieces and there is a good chance they will sprout and start new willows for you. Willow water can be used on house plants to encourage spring growth.
Now, other advice for budget gardeners. Don’t plant potatoes you buy to eat. Unless they are certified organic, most potatoes you buy to eat have been sprayed with a growth retardant. That means they may sprout but they probably won’t grow. Stinky big onions usually go to seed and don’t make good onions. However coop dill seed can be used to grow dill. Sunflower seed that you use for bird seed also grows great sunflowers. Good sweet corn seed is worth the price and budget zucchini seed grows as well as the expensive seed. Pumpkins, melons, cucumbers and summer squash don’t like to be disturbed once they are planted. This means if you grow them inside, make sure that you don’t break apart the plants to grow each individual plant. (You normally plant three or four seeds together.)
Some plants like parsley can take a long time to grow from seed. Parsley often will take 2 to 3 weeks to sprout. This plant is a good one to start early. Cilantro will often complete its entire life cycle in less than 45 days so this should be one of the last plants to seed. I usually end up planting cilantro every 2 weeks throughout the summer because otherwise it has all gone to seed by the time the tomatoes are ready to harvest.
Promise of Spring by WyldRose
New beginnings...a time of rebirth, a new light and new influences. Generally speaking, this is Ostara. As the days grow longer and warmer, we are shedding our old skin and entering this new world stretching and yawning.
Lets begin with a bit of history. What is Ostara for those of you unfamiliar? For Wiccans, such as myself, it is a time of reflection and respect for the Vernal Equinox; when day and night are balanced and equal. This typically lands somewhere between March 19th –March 22nd, though most calendars put it on the 21st, regardless. It is a time when we see the long winter’s influence coming to an end and summer days right around the corner. Metaphorically speaking it is the resurrection of the “sun.” A coincidence for those who are Christian? Probably not.
For me, this journey into the new year has been one of great struggle and stress in trying to move into the future. So much so, that I sometimes begin to lose contact with the spirit inside me that makes my journey, my life, so beautiful. As I sit here trying to put my story into words, it occurs to me that this very moment is a part of my personal Ostara for this year. Remembering my place in this world; that which is bigger than myself and what it is that moves my soul.
Ostara has been a central part, in many ways, of how this year is shaping up. My husband and I decided in December to relocate our family closer to Brainerd. In turn, this puts us closer to those we love and closer to the things that interest us. But, as in all things, it hasn’t been easy (though some in my life would argue that point!). We have worked long and hard trying to get our house ready to sell in the while I have been going to school full time and my husband works. Our 1 1/2 year old son keeps us busy and trying to just find time seems to be one of our greatest hurdles.
After only 8 days on the market, our house sold (the first person who looked at it, bought it! Behold the power of a witch! HA!) and now we are in a countdown to finding our new house and moving in. We have a couple of houses that have interested us, but none have been “the” house. Though, as early as yesterday, I realized that I had been trying to force a house that wasn’t right into being “the” house. The more I forced that puzzle piece into place, the weirder the puzzle was looking and feeling.
My initial intuition kept haunting me (I had even spoken to my husband, “I fear that if we buy this house, we will regret it.”) and yet I kept trying. A funny thing happened when I woke up this morning...I felt I no longer needed to try. That wasn’t the house. It shouldn’t be THIS hard. And I don’t want our new house to have so much drama and negative emotion attached to it. (Can you imagine the smudging that would need to go on in THAT house!) As soon as I let go, I began to see where I was being led. Whether or not it will pan out for sure, I don’t know yet. But I DO know that I feel calmer, more at peace with myself and the decision. And that speaks volumes. I had told my husband that my goal for our new home is in a word: serenity. If this calmer feeling is any indication, then our house hunting is coming to an end.
As we come upon the Vernal Equinox, I feel that there IS light at the end of the tunnel and new beginnings are unfolding...if we can just be patient and let the sun rise.
Spring Is In The Air! by Teralyn
A person can by choice set goals for themselves. Sometimes a person is forced to set new goals. A challenge you say, isn’t that why we chose to be here? You’ve heard the story of the person going into the hills to find themselves, as if a person has the time to do that. like, right, "honey, ill be back in a month, I’m going to the wilderness to connect." When you are inspired to set a goal, that’s what it is, an inspiration. Don’t sit there and think about it, because when that happens your intellect takes over and we all know what can happen when we try to be intellectual. Either we make the wrong decision or make an ass of ourselves. Age has no bearing on setting goals, Sure you could die next week, but you could live another 20 years, and then you’ll always regret not doing what you were inspired to do in the end. for myself, I do in a way, go off into the wilderness. I change my old habits so I can focus on the new habit of working on my goal. Your friends will always be there, so when they ask you, "where have you been", you can say, "I’ve been putting my energy into a new goal I’ve set, but I still love you". A lot of people will advise, "don’t set your goals too high", I say “bull.! If you’re going to do something, don’t do it halfway, make it a part of your life.” Like exercise for instance; you get up in the morning, have a smoke or cup of coffee, that’s ok, it gives you time to put yourself in the mode. Do a few push-ups to get your blood flowing and before you know it you actually FEEL like doing more. When I was incarcerated for 9 months I was running 2 miles every day and lost 30 pounds. It took 3 months to get to the point where I wasn’t afraid of afraid of having a heart attack. And my feet were sore at the start each time, but when I was done I felt great, because I accomplished something, I achieved my goal. While I was locked up, it was like going off into the wilderness, I had no distractions, or old habits. In a way it was a new beginning.
Every day is a new beginning, just think of the person with no legs, or no arms, they have to tell themselves each day that its a new beginning, living in a world meant for people with all their limbs.
Don’t take life for granted, try to evolve as much as you can in this life, because you’ll have just all that much more make-up work to do the next time around. get it out of the way now so you can screw around even more in the next life. besides, some of the stuff on TV isn’t worth sitting on you butt for anyway, RIGHT ?
New Beginnings…
BEGIN! Editorial by Kaleesto
The first Earth Day was proclaimed in 1969 by John McConnell on the Vernal Equinox in San Francisco. This was a day when all people were asked to become conscious of how their actions affected the Earth, and it is appropriate that the holiday began in the city named for St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology. The next year the United Nations declared it the 1st international holiday and began celebrating it by ringing the Peace Bell and sanctioning two minutes of silence. Although the holiday has been moved to April 22, many people still observe it on the equinox. The Vernal Equinox is the preferred time for the holiday on the official Earth Day website, and it is symbolic of the ancient magical tradition that is at the heart of Earth Day.
Although it is a very modern holidays, John McConnell hoped Earth Day Would reaffirm our ancient connection to the Earth and the cycles of nature that are at the root of all holidays.
It is a modern celebration of the movement from darkness to light that is celebrated in all holidays at this time of the year. For Neo-pagans this is a time to honor our divine mother Gaia, and to thank her and protect her.
My family’s Earth Day ritual is to clean up the gravel roads near and around our farm. Our 4-H Club and Boy Scout Troop has adopted this yearly project as well.
The Pelican Lake Conservation Club in Breezy Point will be sponsoring a lake shore clean up on Saturday, April 21st. This is a community project and volunteering is welcomed. Meet up time is 8:00 a.m at the Club House. Email: gaiamusings@mlecmn.net for more information.
Your Earth Day Ritual can be something as simple as starting seeds for your vegetable garden, planting a tree, or taking a walk instead of a drive. Start a family tradition this year and honor Mother Earth in a nurturing and caring tribute.
