 Hello people, I'm Ginny Metherill and I'm a fourth generation traditional witch. Today I want to look at that Wheel of the Year celebration that falls upon the equinox and that pagans and wiccans alike know as Ostara. What exactly is Ostara? Ostara is a pagan, neo-pagan or wiccan festival celebrated on the equinox. So I'm just going to delve very briefly into what that actually is. The equinox is when the earth in its yearly cycle around the sun has the sun pointing directly at its meridian, at its central belt. So neither the northern hemisphere nor the southern hemisphere are favoured and it is a singular point in time. After that the northern hemisphere tips over into summer and the southern hemisphere tips over into the six months for winter and this happens in the UK at 307 precisely and I think it's 1007 in the US eastern time zone. This was celebrated by our pagan forebears and ancestors with many celebrations of spring and fertility. And what do we know with a spring? Well it's when the hens start laying and so we get eggs and so this is one of the main celebrations that we have with Ostara. The wiccans in the 1950s came up with the name Ostara for this festival based upon ancient Germanic festivals of the same name. There is no real history towards them. Nobody really knows where Ostara came from. Did it come from us worshipping and there is evidence to show that the ancient Brits did worship the goddess Easter, which is where Easter obviously comes from. Easter is not a Christian festival. It is very much a pagan one. And as I've said Easter is always celebrated with eggs because it is at this time of year that literally every bird in the world pretty much is laying and so eggs are a symbol of the spring. So one of the easiest ways of course to celebrate Easter is to celebrate it with eggs. You can cook with them, you can eat them, you can decorate them, you can throw them down a hill. They do that around us actually, a bit of egg rolling. And if you have any Chinese eggs this is a great time to use them because this is a festival of fertility. We are celebrating the product of the new world coming forth. It shoots the spring, the green man himself, that great god of the spring is stalking through the land and pulling forth the energy from the earth in order to create the crops, the trees, the flowers, the leafs and the babies. This is one of the lesser festivals of the wheel of the year, so to speak. You know our ancestors would be celebrating this just because it's spring, we've got some eggs, the sun's coming out. After all that mud of winter we're finally getting some flowers and that is our spring. So second way to celebrate Ostarra is to use flowers. It sounds so obvious doesn't it? But we are simply doing as our ancestors did many many years before us. Ostarra, the German word, comes from the English word Easter. I think they are one and the same thing really. Easter was the personification of spring. She was a goddess who was known as a hair-headed goddess because hairs are about and hairs are very magical creatures at this time of year. They possibly are our sister brethren in that animal form so never ever ever hurt or harm a hair because you could be harming one of your own. Easter is obviously comes from the name East and she is a goddess associated with the East, the springtime of the dawn. These are great ways to celebrate her. I mean the dawn's quite early at the moment and I think it's dawn at about seven-ish in the morning in the UK so it's a great time to celebrate her with a little sun salute. Who knew that a bit of morning yoga can be part of your pagan practice? This time of year was often celebrated by walking a labyrinth. Now there is lots of famous labyrinths especially in Scandinavia on the coast which are these minor tour labyrinth. There is a very famous one in the UK on the Silly Isles and as you can see it's not really a maze because you don't get lost in it. There's only one entrance in and one entrance out but it is a meditative walk and one of the things that you should do at this time of year is meditation. It's very good to take stock to step back and see what you're going to do in the future. These labyrinths are incredibly old. There's neolithic remains of these types of labyrinths throughout the whole of the Northern Europe and you'll recognise this symbol of labyrinths from any witchcraft or spiritual shop. One of my favourite things to do with the labyrinths is to walk it because what you're doing is you're winding in your power. You're calling your power and as you walk round and round and back and forth you're winding it and weaving it into the central point. That's where you put your intent into this spell and then as you walk back out of the labyrinths that's you releasing it. These were thought to ask the sea to be calm for the sailors so they could you know go out and fish. However it's the same spell that they're using you know they're winding in their intent to a central point there then releasing that intent out into the world to cast their spell. I do believe that people have set up labyrinths all over the place so if you get the opportunity do you have a go? It's not a complicated pattern you can just make it yourself with a stick in the sand. A star as one of the Wheel of the Year festivals is always celebrated with a feast and so of course you get your children, your family, your friends, your everyone together. It was always lamb on the menu with the fresh greens that were growing so wild garlic and rosemary. This is all the sort of stuff that you would have and as well as a multitude of eggs in every way or form. Souffle, sweet or savoury omelettes you name it you can have them or cake let's just have cake. As I mentioned before the equinox is about balance the world is in balance with each other and this is a great time for you to explore that balance within yourselves. Now what I mean by this is that if you are a witch who normally does active magic for example being part of a coven, casting circles, so now is the time to bring the balance back to it so you would now look at the dreamlike and the spirit world a bit more spend some time in your mind's eye studying where those spirits are and how you communicate with them. Being part of that ancient world is really important in witchcraft and therefore I can't stress enough how you should practice this side of your craft. Lightwise if you're one of those witches who's got their foot permanently in the world of spirit it's a slightly like me. Now is my time to realise I need to bring balance to this and get out into the actual world and one of my final ways to celebrate Ostara is it is the time for the fey. The fey go into hibernation sort of in the winter you know like us we're all getting into hibernation mode sitting by our firesides not doing very much but in the spring they start to come out and the greatest way to see the fey is using flowers. Flowers such as primroses were known as gateway flowers and these you could peer over the tops of their petals and look into the fey's homes through them. However that obviously might be slightly difficult so why not do a flower essence and I'm going to show you how. This is really easy and although you might not see the fey because they might not be around you will certainly open your third eye with this. So here is my primrose flower essence in order to see the fey. So first of all you must find your primroses they are abundant in the head rows at this time and primroses have the added advantage of being completely edible. Pick 13 of them 13 is the number associated with the fey and especially with primroses so it always helps to go by the traditions. Pick over your flower heads and add them to a super clean bowl the cleaner the better in this instance. Use some clean spring water I've actually got moon water here and you simply pour this over the flower heads and you leave them to steep for three or four hours preferably in the sun but it's pouring with rain with us at the moment so they're just here. After a couple of hours they look much the same now you need to take a clean and sterilized bottle I've got a dark blue glass one because this will help the essence keep for longer. I'm now going to fill this bottle half full with some alcohol I've got gin here but you could use brandy whiskey vodka it just must be 40% proof and this helps with sterilization and of course preservation. And then I'm going to fill it up with the liquid that has been steeping with the flowers this will last for a couple of months you can add it to foodstuffs as long as you have been utterly sterile whilst making this or you can use it as a droplet on your tongue and that's why I've used one of these dropper bottles whenever you wish to see with them. I'd love to know how you celebrate Ostara so please you know drop me a comment below and tell me. I have got several videos that I've done about Ostara all of them do have slightly different information in them I'll put last year's Ostara video up here for you so do go and have a look at that if you think that you need some more help in how to celebrate this rather glorious festival. Please don't forget to go and have a look at Patreon. 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