The Vernal Equinox: Shamanic Rituals and ceremonies to celebrate Shamanic Celebration of Ostara.
As the wheel of the year turns once more, we find ourselves at one of the most magical and revered points on the Wheel – the Spring Equinox, known to modern Pagans and Wiccans as Ostara.
In Spring’s tender embrace,Ostara’s magic finds its place,Equinox whispers, nature’s grace.
This is a time of profound balance, when day and night are equal lengths, light and dark in perfect equilibrium. But it is also a moment ripe with the potential of rebirth and renewal as the Earth itself seems to shake off the slumber of winter.
For witches, shamans, and nature-based practionists, Ostara is one of the most jubilant celebrations of the year. It represents the return of Spring’s lush abundance after the barren cold months.
The first shoots are breaking through the soil, trees are budding with fresh green life, and flowers are beginning to bloom once more, their bright colors and sweet scents perfuming the air.
My daffodils just popped open in a burst of golden yellow overnight. I’m pretty jaded about some things but this never gets old.
Ostara is a festival of fertility in its highest form. From the Pagan belief that the Earth Mother has been impregnated and now gives birth to the new season, to more corporeal forms of new life springing forth, the themes of creation and procreation are everywhere to be found.
Rabbits, being one of the most fertile creatures, have long been sacred symbols of this time, as have eggs – those magical tiny ovoid universes bursting with potential for new life. Rituals and magic surrounding Ostara often involve seeds – planting them in the earth, wearing or decorating with them, using them as ritual objects on the altar.
- Wiccans celebrate the return of the Goddess after giving birth to the Sun God at Yule.
- Colors of green, yellow, and pale wood browns are fitting for holiday decor and garb.
- Feasting on seasonal foods like dairy, first greens and flowers, and hot cross buns is traditional.
The Equinox point itself is seen as a powerful and auspicious time for spell-work of all kinds. As a witch or shaman honoring this time, you may feel called to perform rites reawakening and welcoming the fertile energies of Nature’s cycles.
However you choose to venerate this most sacred turning of the seasons, open your heart to its green and blossoming promise. For Spring has returned once more, and the Earth renews itself. Perform your rituals outdoors as the weather allows, facing the morning sunrise.
Greet the dawn with chants and songs welcoming the new season. Dance the spiral of creation around a seedling planted in the earth.
- If you can’t get outdoors, open all the windows to let the fresh, air circulate. Let your magical workings mirror the burgeoning growth unfolding all around you.
- Fill your home with the scents and colors of Ostara through spring flowers, greenery, and herbs like rosemary, mint, and clover.
- Braid flowers into your hair or weave them into crowns and garlands worn for ritual.
- Bake hot cross buns, cakes and cookies using egg and dairy to honor the Earth Mother’s bounty.
- Decorate them with spring flowers, colors, symbols and shapes like circles for the sun, eggs for fertility, bunnies for reproduction.
- Share your bounty with friends and family and leave some outside as an offering for the fairies, nature spirits and wildlife.
- Sow seeds along with prayers for their growth and abundance in the coming months. Pet some bunnies or other spring animals if you can.
- Go foraging for wild edibles like dandelion greens, sting nettles, clover and other early spring edibles.
- Capture the morning dew to use in baths or added to ritual incense, for its purification properties.
It’s a powerful time to connect with the Earth energies with ceremony or ritual. To me, ceremony is personal, intuitive and often spontaneous.
Here are a few more shamanic/witchy rituals but please feel free to improvise.
It’s a powerful time to connect with the Earth energies with ceremony or ritual. To me, ceremony is personal, intuitive and often spontaneous.
Here are a few more shamanic/witchy rituals but please feel free to improvise.
- Celestial Equinox Rites
As day and night are in perfect balance at the equinox, this can be seen as an auspicious time for star lore, cosmological rituals, and ceremony. Observe the sun’s equidistant rising/setting positions, chart astrological events, or make offerings to the celestial bodies. It’s a perfect time to consult the tarot or Oracle decks.
- Equinox Egg Ritual
One of the most delightful traditions for honoring Ostara’s abundance is blessing and decorating eggs with intention: not just dyeing them, but using beeswax, flowers, symbols, runes, sigils, and other embellishments to transform them into magical talismans.
Bury these eggs at the four cardinal directions around your home or sacred ground to instill that fertile energy into the land. Bury some blessed eggs in your garden to nourish the soil and coming plants. An egg on your altar serves as a potent icon of fertility and rebirth. It’s a great time to perform a limpia egg cleansing on yourself or others.Limpia Egg Cleansing
- Green Middle World Journey
If you know how to journey, enter the lush, verdant realms of the archetypal Green World – home of the nature spirits, devas, and forest beings. Here you offer gratitude and receive their blessings for the new growing season. You can journey to the spirits of the dawn, the spring rains, the sprouting seeds – to give thanks and seek blessings. You may be tasked with rituals or lessons to bring their wisdom back for an abundant new season.
- Sun Rebirth Ceremony
Welcome the return of the Sun’s strength by painting or chalking sun symbols on your ritual space. Light a fire (fireplace or candles indoors, bonfire outdoors) and rededicate your practices to the sun’s energy. Include chants, dances, drumming – anything to raise energy for this solar rebirth.
- Sap Blessing Ritual
As the trees begin awakening, collect sap from any fruit or nut trees. Mix some into your ceremony’s ritual waters, cakes, or ales as a way of partaking in the trees’ reawakening life force. Sap can also be used to anoint spell artifacts or talismans.
- Return of the Green Man
Craft a human effigy from woven branches, vines, leaves, moss, flowers and other natural materials. This sculpture serves as an embodiment of the Green Man – the vegetation spirit and energy of Spring’s virility. It can be paraded, danced around, or set as a centerpiece for rituals.
- Journey to the Underworld
Some traditions view the spring equinox as a time to symbolically travel to the unseen realm of the old Earth Goddess. There you gain her blessings before her return to this world, ascending from the Underworld in her rejuvenated aspect. These are intense, profound journeys and not advised unless you are an experienced journeyer.
The Equinox is an opportunity to deepen one’s connection with the natural world and spiritual realms. By engaging in rituals that honor the cycles of nature, working with plant medicines, journeying into the spirit realms, and offering gratitude to the spirits of the land, we can embrace the energies of renewal and growth that accompany the arrival of spring.
Through these practices, Ostara becomes not only a celebration of the changing seasons but also a sacred journey of healing, transformation, and spiritual awakening.
Have a merry and blessed Ostara!
Layla
A delightful Spring Equinox post from my archives Spring Equinox:The Real Easter and No Dance With The Devil
