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Here is a simple spell to welcome back the sun and celebrate the spring equinox. You can light a yellow candle, and simply say (or chant) the spell. Or you can do a little extra magic and etch the candle with runes or symbols for the season, and use focus on the things you want to achieve in the season ahead.

Greetings all, readers! It is finally the Spring Equinox, also known in Germanic traditions as Ostara (from which the name Easter derives, though not the holiday). Either regarded as the start of spring or its midpoint, the Spring Equinox is widely regarded around the world as an important occasion for when the days begin to grow longer than the nights and the natural world begins to blossom in full.

As we always do we’ve gathered all of our related posts as well as those from around the internet we thought you might enjoy . We hope you have a great time this spring!

-Aryós Héngwis

            I am home. It is Wednesday and I should be at work, but a migraine has commanded otherwise. I felt the first uneasy stirrings last night while hiding candy-filled eggs and overstuffed baskets for my sons, but I thought a good night’s sleep would set me to rights. Nope. Instead of working I am in bed, notebook propped on a pillow, a cool cloth on my forehead, listening to birds outside my window. I suppose there are worse ways to welcome Ostara.

Every Spring Equinox, I have to admit I feel lucky. The sun has officially entered my astrological sign of Aries, and I feel a surge of newfound energy and confidence. Technically I wasn’t due to make an appearance until early April, closer to my dad’s birthday. But eager little me, I couldn’t wait. I got a kick out of my mom later telling me that she nibbled on jellybeans as she started to go into labor early at my grandmother’s house in Oshkosh. Because of all of these things, this time of year fills me with a renewed sense of hope and strong purpose. I start to review personal goals for the year and make notes about what can be realistically accomplished. It’s also a perfect opportunity to try something out that I’ve been meaning to, in celebration of new beginnings and my birthday on March 23^rd. Here are some samplings of adventures I’ve embarked on that I would highly encourage for anyone restless with those first stirrings of spring:

Go to one of those paint/wine studios. Whether you’re artistically inclined, curious, or been meaning to get back to it, this is a great experience. Leave your inhibitions at the door and give yourself permission to indulge your creative side. Lots of these places play fun music in the background while you paint and are pretty informal. Grab a like-minded pal and share a bottle of wine as you aspire to be the next Dali or Picasso.

Here is a little video that I made regarding the upcoming Sabbat of Ostara. Blessings of the Spring Equinox to you all!

I often see transparent gossamer threads emanating from each person, connecting us together and binding us and our ancestral traditions together. Our Akashic memories from the past form patterns for the future. 

We are now between the time of Imbolc, when the fires in the belly quicken and hint at the coming rebirth, and Ostara, when that new birth of Spring occurs and the hibernating potential bursts forth in colorful blossoms and familiar bunnies and chicks.

Then there is the most familiar Egg: the supreme symbol of Ostara, Spring, new life and fertility. Yet it is so much more than that. Eggs have been painted, decorated, preserved, carved, crafted, offered, venerated and used as symbols and in rituals probably from the earliest days of humankind, certainly millennia before they came to be associated with the “borrowed” Easter of modern Christianity.

Eggs are the perfect symbol of life. They are literally life! All creatures begin as eggs in some form or another and all are composed of all four elements, which are perfectly represented by the parts of the egg: the shell is Earth, the membrane is Air, the white is Water, and the yolk is Fire.

It is easy to understand why so many different cosmologies and creation stories feature one or more “cosmic eggs” from which all beings, the world, indeed the whole universe are created. Several deities, such as Atargatis, are also believed to have been born from sacred eggs. Certain magical creatures are born from eggs under strange circumstances, such as the basilisk, which is hatched by a cockerel from a serpent’s egg.

There is the Greek Orphic Egg which hatched the first primordial being who created all the other gods, the Egyptian cosmic egg which birthed the sun god Ra, and the seven duck eggs hatched on the knee of the Finnish goddess Ilmatar, thus creating the various parts of the world.

Interestingly enough, the theory of the cosmic egg has a place in modern cosmological science. Current models suggest that over 13 billion years ago, the mass of all the universe was compressed into a singularity from which it expanded into its current state after the “Big Bang”. Could the Big Bang have been the moment of fertilization for the singular “egg”? The sparking action all life requires to ignite the potential contained in the seed which then expands and grows and even creates subsequent life?

More and more do quantum physics and other cutting-edge “modern” sciences begin to reflect, accept and even prove ideas that have existed in spirituality and mysticism since time immemorial; concepts that have been believed and perhaps truly known long before the advent of the tools and measuring devices mandated by science to verify the existence of anything.  

So how could the egg not be supremely sacred, and how could it not hold the key to the mysteries of all life and creation? Eggs contain life, potential for life, and they contain all the elements. So too then are the elements, from which everything is created, the keys to truth and understanding.

My kitchen altar is very simple and consists of a single candle, a very cute little plush cow with a tiny porcelain teacup and saucer, and a polished, egg-shaped onyx crystal resting in an egg cup. It serves as a focal point and constant reminder of all I have already said about eggs and then some. I can’t sing their praises enough! Particularly in the kitchen, where they are obviously most common. They are delicious, nutritious and wildly versatile.