 Hello people! I'm Ginny Metherill and I am a fourth generation witch. Very exciting, I know! Today I want to look at the wonderful Neo-Pagan Wiccan Festival of Ostara, how you might celebrate it, its rites, its traditions and its rituals. So what exactly is Ostara? This is simply the spring equinox when day and night are an equal length and the world is in balance. It happens this year on Monday the 20th of March. Take note, should you wish to do some veneration at that time. And it's especially auspicious because the vernal equinox brings this moon phase to its fruition and we start with the new moon on the 21st. It also happens on a Monday which is a moon day anyway and I'm pretty sure that adds a little more oh my god this is brilliant to the whole affair. I have received several messages from varying viewers saying that Ostara is just an invention of the great Gerald Gardner who created the Neo-Paganism form of Wiccan. However they are wrong. What Gerald Gardner did was simply formalize the date of Ostara. Ostara was always a movable feast which was celebrated on the first full moon after the vernal equinox which this year as I have said happens on the 20th of March. So it was a movable feast and you'll find that the Christian religion have given the name Easter to this festival. Now he did not invent the term Ostara. The first written text that mentions Ostara that we have was produced in the very late 600s AD. Now this is in the veritable dark ages when we were quite pagan still. The venerable lead who was a monk wrote down that the Anglo-Saxon Easter is simply their version of the Germanic goddess Ostara and there are many festivals celebrated in the spring for her. So this is definitely a goddess festival. What Gerald Gardner did was simply formalize the festival of Ostara onto the spring equinox. The written information and the knowledge that we have about the festival of Ostara or Easter is very scant because this is traditional worship folklore and it was an oral tradition or a let's do it tradition you know they just got on with it there was no need to write it down. The next source of information that we have of this comes from some text from Germany. Jacob Grimm wrote about this in his German mythology of the late 1800s in the Victorian area that there was still festivals of Ostara. So we don't know but it certainly wasn't an invention of Gerald Gardner. So now I've addressed that historical note let's move on to what it actually is. The vernal equinox itself is and has been celebrated throughout our known history. For example if you check out Stonehenge it's aligned with the vernal equinox they don't build this massive temple which took them probably generations to do and align it to the vernal equinox without the vernal equinox meaning something. So traditional English folklore have Ostara as a hair-headed goddess and the tale goes as follows on the mourn of the vernal equinox a farmer walked out across his land and as he was crossing his field he saw a hair start up and dash across in front of him. When he reached the place where the hair had started up from he found a clutch of eggs. This was believed Ostara the hair-headed goddess had laid us eggs which are a symbol of spring and Easter are they not and hence we have the Easter bunny. Modern day astrologers think that the vernal equinox is actually the first day of spring however we witches know the first day of spring to be way back in the beginning of February and actually the vernal equinox is the spring high point. This is when everything is in full spring flow the green man that god of spring is stalking across the land pulling forth the prana or the vitality of the earth to produce the spring that we know and love. The sun is directly above the equator and it spreads its rays across from pole to pole. This means that the earth is balanced and in harmony with the sun so one of the traditional witchcraft pagan rituals will be to go out and witness the dawn on the morning of the vernal equinox. Open your face to the sun and let its rays bathe you understanding that the sun is bringing this dawn equally across the world from pole to pole. It is a wonderful ritual to do and I thoroughly recommend it. You can also cast some pretty powerful spells using earth magic at this time with the vernal equinox to help you. I keep repeating this word balance and this is the most important thing about the equinox. It is also about abundance and you can tip the world into your favour to bring about your fertility and if you haven't seen my fertility spell I'll put it up here for you. Do have a go at it on the 20th. It will bring about some fine results and I do know lots of people who've emailed me saying oh yeah I did your fertility spell and it was marvellous so I've now got a blur blur blur blur probably do many children now but they've got them. So have a go. How else do you celebrate Ostara? Well in the Wiccan tradition of course you have an altar, you would have a feast and you might do some sun salutation on the morning of the equinox itself. Otherwise the traditional witchcraft ways of doing this was if you were a fisherman you would walk a labyrinth. Fishmen are starting up their trade again at this time of year and so one of their traditional crafts was to go and walk a labyrinth. This is an order to ask the sea and there is a sea spirit that you can placate as the wrong word but you can ask for help form to keep their ship safe and return home with a good catch. So if you happen to be near one of these labyrinths it's a great way to celebrate Ostara by walking about its nine rounds and using it to bring yourself into balance. The other way to celebrate Ostara is of course with flowers and although I've got daffodils here because the primaries aren't out quite yet it is actually snowing and we're covered in snow at the moment because obviously I'm doing this before Ostara so it's a bit chill and I'm not even sure that I can show you the primroses that I wanted to show you because it's too cold and I don't like the cold. I'm a bit wet really when it comes to cold. I like to huddle up by the fire with a good book. Summer on the other hand has me outdoors practically at dawn. Primroses are one of the honoured flowers of spring and Ostara but if you pick primroses to bring into your house you must pick 13. If you lay 13 primroses underneath your broody hen she will lay 13 eggs which is the apparent ultimate clutch of eggs and they will all hatch. If you only put six primroses only six will hatch so you know it's worth doing the extra of 13 I think. When you bring primroses inside also make sure you bring them in increments of 13 because this is the traditional number for luck with primroses. Planting primroses and pots just outside your doorway will also help with the fay. Should you require the fay to come into your house this will let them know that you are a fay friendly house and they will enter and only bring blessings. Likewise if you hang up a bunch of them above your stock animals your cows and your sheep and your goats but a bunch above and this will protect your animals throughout the rest of the year. Primroses are most beloved by the fay and so there's all sorts of stories about if you hold primroses and look over their flower heads and you'll see the fay they are an entrance to the fairy realm and I think my March video goes into this in a bit more detail and if you haven't seen it I'll put that up here for you because it's quite interesting and there's lots of other bits of detail in fact about Ostara which I don't think I've done in this one. I can't remember. Forgive me you'll have to go and look at it. Another great way to celebrate Ostara is of course a spell for balance. Ostara is also a great day to get any relationships back into balance. You might have a relationship which is out of kilter with each other. Now I'm very concerned about the Americans work life balance. They seem to work all the time and not have enough time off for their families and this concerns me and so to take stock of this and write down what you would like that relationship to be or how you want your life work to be. Write it down on a piece of paper and then you can cast a circle. Place the piece of paper in the cast of circle and use four candles at the four directions. Light the candles and using a wand ask the sun because this is a sun spell to let these wishes come to you. It'll work. Ostara is not one of the big glamorous festivals but it is important to mark these times in our life so that we can step back and realise the blessings and the wonder that we already have. I would love to know what you think about Ostara and whether you are going to celebrate it in any way. My celebrations will mainly be having a lot to eat with my friends and family and will also be involving. Welcoming the sun at dawn with a sun salutation and realise that everybody else in the world when they greet their dawn is seeing that same point lovely. What do you think? Leave me a comment below. In the meantime don't forget my cover meeting is coming up next week just after Ostara. I think about the 22nd which is the Wednesday so if you are interested in joining that we will be doing some Ostara related witchcraft and learning a bit about how to control that for our own benefit I think. I haven't written it yet so bear with me but you can go to patreon.com forward slash a journey meryl for all the details otherwise please give me a like and subscribe because it really helps my channel and I will see you in a few days.