Ostara

March 21st/22nd

A point of perfect balance on the journey through the wheel of the year.
The natural world is coming alive, thanks to the growing days, and warming sun.
Ostara's energy is expansive and exuberant, the first real day of Spring.

Ostaras name comes from the Germanic Goddess, Eostre or Ostara - a goddess traditionally honoured in April with festivals to celebrate the cycle of rebirth and fertility. (Fun Fact it's where the name for the female hormone oestrogen comes from.)

Ostaras symbols are all revolving around the idea of fertility; both the hare and the egg.
Flowers are used a lot on Ostara altars, and are wonderful to have throughout the house to mark this sabbat - daffodils, pussy willow, crocuses, primroses, violets to name a few.

Ostaras colours are; bright green, yellow, and purple.

This is the festival of new life.

It is also the Spring Equinox - a time of harmony, a time of balance between light and dark, day and night.
As we move into this time of new life, and beginnings, a wonderful way to bring things into being involved planting in your garden.

Find a type of flower or plant that really calls to you.
Buy a packet of seeds for this type of plant.

Getting a new pot, which you can paint sigils or runes on to aid your magic, fill it with soil.

On a piece of paper write down a wish.
A dream for yourself.
Something you want to manifest into your life with spring.

Using your bare hands, hold the paper after folding it, and dig deep into the soil you've just potted. Place your paper about a third of the way up from the base of the pot.
Cover it back up, before planting your seeds above it, as instructed by the packet.

Take some time in nature with your pot, and meditate on the thing you want to bring forth.
You could say something like; 

"Lord and Lady, with the turning of the wheel new beginnings come.
Sewn with the seed, I ask my wish be done.
As it grows, green and true;
May my dream grow too."

Water, love and tend to your growing seeds.
As your plant grows, it will manifest your desire into being. 

Witches Bottle

This bottle of protection for the home, and your loved ones inside it, is some essential magical working.
These bottles work in the reverse of voodoo dolls. So like a voodoo doll, you need bodily fluids, hair, nail clippings, from yourself, and those who live with you. This represents your beings, and attracts unwanted attention, negativity, and bad magic cast your way. But then the other things you place in the bottle ensnare that negativity or magic, and they stop it from reaching you and doing harm.

(image found on google)

To create your own bottle, first find a suitable container with a lid. It can be a jam jar, a pretty glass perfume bottle, a glass water bottle, whatever you have available.
Although be warned your final result, will not look pretty. This is not pretty magic. This is raw magic at it's core, and you are essentially creating a trap to contain bad things you do not want to come into your household.

So once you have this container gather parts of your family.
Nail clippings, hair, spit, blood.
The use of blood is the most potent way to protect your home. My witches protection bottle, has period blood in, directly from my womb and the core of my power - if this option is available to you whilst creating this bottle, do it!!
Also in my bottle are nail clippings from my partner and myself, and hair from us both, and our cat (don't forget your furry familiars, they need protection to)

Once you've got these stored in your bottle, you need to go and hunt for jagged nails, rusty barbed wire, broken glass, knotted twine - all visualisations of things that will trap and contain negative things, and protect you.
 As you place these things inside your bottle, visualise them trapping invisible thoughts that are coming to you, and spells cast in your direction.

Now, having everything in your bottle, put on the lid, and now using a black candle, seal the lid on with the wax. Black is for banishment, so as you are sealing your witches bottle, visualise a force field of light coming from the ground beneath your house and gardens, and stretching up and out to create a dome, over your dwellings.
 Thank the gods and goddesses for their protection, and to finalise the magic, the witches bottle needs to be buried near your front door.
If this is not possible, in the back of a fire place or hearth. And as a last resort buried in a pot near the front door. As long as it is near an entrance/way of entry to the home it should work.

This is mine, in it's hidey place, within our boarded up fire place.

Blessed be,

Jade xoxox