Quick things to do to celebrate Imbolc

Okay since my Yule post was popular I made an Imbolc one since most of us are still going to be locked down lol.

1. Clean and Cleanse your space I know BOO right?? But this is the holiday for cleaning and cleansing. (Even if you hate doing this, this is like the one time a year you have a reason to do it). Time for deep cleaning!! You know that layer of snowy dust behind your bookshelf? Time to open windows and tackle every corner. Scrub off that spot of dirt you have been putting off scrubbing. Time to steam and vacuum your carpets. Wash your bedsheets and add rosemary or juniper oil to the soap. Smoke cleanse your room with Juniper (or Rosemary). Sweep out old energy, old habits, unwanted spirits. Throw out things that do not spark joy. The time is upon us!

2. Bath Magic Along with cleansing your space, it's also the time to cleanse yourself! This is the day to have a ritual bath, the type that looks instagram worthy where you have a bunch of candles and you sit in a hot tub full of colorful soap very pleased and covered in bubbles. If you don't have a tub you can make a special scrub to anoint your entire body with and rinse it off in a shower. This is the time for face masks, feet soaks, those things you glue on your nose to painfully peel off later and fill you with a sense of relief/disgust of what was dwelling in your pores all this time, skin exfoliants, bath jellies and body creams.

Tip: I like to celebrate the eves of sabbats, so I tend to do the cleaning and cleansing stuff the evening before so there’s less of an overwhelming pressure to do everything at once. Especially since cleaning can get draining sometimes. On the day is usually spellwork, nature walks and feasting.

3. Candle Magic This is the sabbat for candles. Not just to look at how pretty they are burning on your altar rejoicing that the winter days are probably like 1 hour longer than before, but to set intentions for your dreams and aspirations!! First take a moment to meditate and ground yourself, then focus on your goals or anything you would really like to accomplish this year, big or small. When you visualizing it coming to be, then light your candle! This is also a great time for candle scrying. You can read your candle flame which can dance fiery omens of the obstacles ahead of you. Here is a helpful but general page for candle scrying.

4. Burning Bayleaves and Barrier Breaking Often when our candle spells keep going out or we receive omens that the obstacles before us are a little more difficult than anticipated, then it's time for Barrier Breaking! Write down anything you feel is holding you back on a small piece of paper. Make sure to get a fire proof dish ready. With that paper think about the obstacles before you or anything holding you back and visualize the sensation of those obstacles coming undone or you being free from it's chains. Make sure you hold on to that feeling as you light it on fire with your spell candle then set it aside on the fire dish to burn completely.

Sometimes this step may call for shadow work as the obstacles that can be holding us back isn't external but internal issues. You can divine with tarot cards to figure out the nature of this obstacle if you aren't aware of it consciously.

Lastly, Burning Bayleaves helps with wishes. You can burn them to help overcome obstacles or to bring luck and set intentions in your life. Just write what you need on the leaves, burn it with your spell candle and set it aside on the dish. Beware as some bayleaves have natural oil in them so they can ignite in a fiery whoosh!! That is usually good luck and shows that your intentions will have no problem being manifested, however, if you are not in the most fire safe area I would not recommend this activity. If you are comfortable doing fire magic and have a safe set up then you can partake in this tradition.

6. Cleansing ALL of your magical tools As this sabbat feels like a gentle awakening and fresh start, you can lay out all of your magical tools and give them a serious cleanse. You can play a cleansing frequency on youtube which could help or ring bells over to disperse any energy hanging on. If you have a smoke bundle or incense you can clease with that and bless your items.

7. Play some Music! Listening to music always helps to set the mood of the day. Here is a playlist for this sabbat!

8. Make a Feast So for a Feast for 1 it's usually just like a festive dish with a side of veggies and a nice dessert. Think about what you'd like as your main dish. For this sabbat I’ve always made an Imbolc Shepards Pie recipe. Reasons being is that I lived someplace where this time of the year was blizzard season though we were halfway done with Winter. So the pie represented the top being the potato mashed "snow" and the meat/beans layer underneath was spicy and represented the earth stirring. (Plus its cute that it's called Shepards pie cause there is a sheep/lamb theme going on but I digress..) Anyway I moved to England and this time of year feels like... very early Spring.. Like it's not really spring spring but it's like.. early pre-spring. (Seasons here in this climate are weird haha but the sabbats make sense here since the traditions were founded in this climate). So the symbolism of the Shepards Pie is a bit lost. However there are a lot of other options such as Cauliflower or Celeriac soup with cheese (or cheese less if you are vegan), winter onion soup, if you are a meat eater than lamb and sage stew (I feel like stews are a big theme here but it fits as it's winter and there is that 'fire in the belly' symbolism that fits with getting sustenance and warmth from a chalice-bowl object). Side dish can be roasted parsnips or stuffed white cabbage (it depends on the main dish). Dessert depends on if you are into cake or tarts but I always either have cheesecake or a milk sponge cake like tres leches. If you live in a snowy area a dessert I used to make would be a warm brownie with vanilla icecream as it's like "snow melt" on earth with life stirring within. Etc.

I know with lockdown and such no one is going to be seeing anyone extra in their lives anytime soon and no one may have the energy to cook a lot, but here is a list of recipes with a feast mood board to check out for ideas.

Have a lovely luminous Imbolc!!

#imbolc #lockdown #quarantine #solitary witch #witch tips #ideas #rituals #magic #witchcraft #candle scrying #spells #imbolc ritual #winter crossquarter

ofcloudsandstars

aspiritualseeker asked:

🌹, I wanna do a mini ritual for Beltane, what do you do recommend?

Sorry if I saw this late! Today has already been wild as fuck for me even though we are all locked down.

I am going to do one soon myself! I guess what I should ask you is which elements do you resonate the most with?

For rituals I really love working with fire and candles. There is a lot of power they can command and even have the ability to shift the mood in the space. Plus I love anointing them and adding herbs and other toppings to the spell.

Otherwise working with the earth is great for Beltane cause it’s the point of the year where things are blooming/growing and it’s a celebration of fertility. If you are interested in growing food or even a plant you can start by sprouting seeds and charging them with your spell so that as you nurture them the reality you’d like to manifest will also bloom. If you don’t have the time or materials to grow anything or do that type of work, doing magic with a tree is fantastic. You can find a tree to ask for magical help. Trees can be really helpful and love connection (I mean connection is their whole being haha) and I find that often a tree will call to you when you are in need of help. You can exchange energy with them, do energy work to open up your heart energy pool and ask them to help with spell manifestation since they are like.. a giant living wand lol. I mean that’s where witches gets their wands from but going to the source some trees are happy to help. As a thanks I leave them moon water, fresh water, sing a song (I can’t stress enough how vibrational and energy based trees are they love good energy and music!) or leave positive energy to give to the tree. Some trees are great for different spells, you have like willow that is ruled by the moon and water that can help with emotional based things and shadow work. Oak is great for growth, prosperity and manifestation. Pine is very fiery and grounding but I find it also very paternal? I think that may be a very personal thing haha. Birch is super fiery but in another way. Where as Pine is more mature and grounding, Birch is excitable, flexible and has an energy to ignite (plus it’s bark is a great fire starter if you ever need some just pull off an already peeling piece. OHH and then for Beltane specifically THE tree would be Hawthorne. Here they are all blooming!! They are the tree of fairies and help with matters of love and unity. Hawthorne tea also helps with the heart’s physical health and energetic power. There are so many trees and magic behind them (plus the ones I listed I know through european lenses but there are magical trees all over the world in different communities so if you ever see a tree that catches your eye just google it and see what it is!) Plus setting up a ritual by a tree is nice and you can feel like a dryad haha.

Then there is water based magic like if you want to have a ritual bath which would be nice for Beltane with flower petals. Beltane is about fertility and unity and it can easily also be about love and self love or the energy around the heart. You can do a self-honoring love magic bath ritual! Speaking of water it’s been raining ALL TYPES of rain here and catching rain water on Beltane can be used for cleansing matters of the heart or helping with break up. (At one point it was also hailing!! And then a lot of sunshowers. Every type of rain has it’s own energy so you can collect that for spells and add some to your bath).

There is also Air magic like burning incense or making herb bundles to burn. If you have access to non-pesticided flower petals adding rose or tulip petals to a smoke bundle would be super nice and very aesthetic. In addition I find really setting the space for any celebration or ritual, the scents are so important. For me Beltane incense is rose, lavender, jasmine and violets. (I also collect random ass incense when I travel so I have this sakura one I got in Japan and this fairy mist + unicorn tears one I bought in Amsterdam in this fairy shop lol) It’s super smokey and floral (my room smells like fairies have been smoking in it). Other than incense you can use oils in an oil burner or just add a little bit of oil in a water spray (maybe with charged water!) to cleanse your air!

Ok I gave a lot of elements but nothing too specific haha. Sorry I have been in such a rambly mood and a bit scattered. Some ideas to focus the ritual around:

Self Love and Heart healing magic
Areas in your life that you’d like to bloom, nurture and grow
Attraction Magic! (May be really hard to do since things are getting wild in the world but it’s a good time for attracting things your way)

So last advice I’ll give is look at what you enjoy doing on the regular (whether it be cooking! Cause its fun to add food into ritual, dancing since ecstatic dance is def appropriate for this sabbat, making art etc.) think of something you’d like to focus on like a theme for the ritual, think of elements you enjoy working with (fire, air, earth, water are very basic and there are a lot more of course but its the first that came to mind), and then build that into a ritual! Important parts to a ritual are 1) setting the space (your room, burning incense, the altar). 2) getting yourself ready (whether it be a magical bath, a meditation or energy work, or having a feast to fuel you), 3) Doing the spell! 4) very optional but I like divining after to reflect or gain more clarity.

I hope this was insightful! Sorry it was so long haha.

#beltane #aspiritualseeker #rituals

ofcloudsandstars reblogged

ofcloudsandstars

✧ .🐇Ostara Solitary Rituals🐇✧

As fresh green sprouts spring from the earth and crocuses bloom, the Vernal Equinox is arriving! Melodic sounds of birds whistle in the air, buns emerge from their burrows, the earth is awake and life resumes again! It’s time to celebrate the start of a new cycle and sow seeds of personal growth for the cycle to come! The symbolism of the beginning and child is strong with this sabbat for it’s also the start of the Zodiac season where Aries the Ram charges into the new season ready to begin again!

A lot of us witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and treat the wheel of the year I celebrate as more of an agrarian cycle and celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice! Here is my personal correspondences post and my personal Ostara tag!

When I am alone and casting spells a lot of it is visualization/intent so my solitary rituals are more like activities I like to do then specifically casting a spell. If I am doing a spell with an activity based on it a lot would be listening to music to get in the mood and focusing on a candle while visualizing for a period of time! Eves are also important to my celebration as I like to stay up until midnight and cast a spell then!

Spring Equinox’s Eve

Monday, March 19th 2018

Rain Cleansing Rain water is a common magic ingredient in some witches spell and especially with the passing Pisces season and winter’s end bringing a lot of rain, often this time of year there is no shortage of rain water. Use some collected rain water in a spray bottle and spray the air and yourself visualizing the spring rains washing away what’s left of winter. Open your window to let in fresh spring air and use the rainwater spray to energetically cleanse the space inside. Optional but you can add drops of eucalyptus fragrance or lily of the valley in it. (I prefer to have it plain since rain smells plain).
Spring Cleaning Clear the last of what you don’t want in your space. Dump old things you’ve been holding on to but don’t necessarily need. Refresh your home. Light incense like rain, green tea or sweet grass as you clean.
Eggshells Save eggshells and clean them out. Make a quiche for Ostara and save all the eggshells as much as possible. Try to make a small hole on one side (preferably the narrow side) to extract the yolk and clean the eggs to keep them handy. With cleaned eggshells you can:
Make eggshell candles You can assign each candle an aspect you’d want to grow or something positive you’d like to manifest by ‘hatching’ into your life such as: prosperity, new friends or new connections. Examples: 1 , 2
Make seed starters By sprouting some seeds in the eggshells you can cultivate herbs/plants you’d like to have for the year. Herbs for the kitchen are probably the easiest and once the plant exceeds the space of the shell, it can use the nutrients of the shell as food. It’s a personal tradition of mine where I enjoy repotting plants or planting things in general for Beltane so by Beltane the sprout would have grown large enough to be planted in it’s own pot or into the ground! Here’s a link on how to make seed eggshell starters.
Spring themed snacks Enjoy some snacks while doing crafts such as pepita seeds, candy eggs, jelly beans, wasabi or snap peas, edamame, sour cream and onion chips and rice krispy treats or rice krispy bird nests if you want to be very festive lol.
Decorate Cleanse and redecorate your altar and space with moss art, (they sell fake moss mats too at craft stores which make pretty centerpieces), egg candles, pussywillow, bulbs, crocus and sprouts. Use images of the march hare to invite energy of vitality, motivation and drive to inspire you to reach your goals for the upcoming cycle!
Egg Tree Create an ostara tree by getting a vase and collecting any branches you find on the ground. Thank the trees for their offerings. Decorate eggs with symbols or whatever has meaning to you and what you’d like to attract to your life and tie them to the branches. Here is a DIY.

Midnight:

Ostara is the ideal time to focus on what you’d like to grow in your life. Focus on what you’d like to nurture for the cycle to come. Prioritize things that will help you reach your goals.

Hatching and Manifesting You can write spells on your saved eggshells symbolizing things you’d want to grow and plant seeds in them. A lot of green witches do magic by tending to sprouts and plants as a link to their manifesting spell to help bring it to life! If planting seeds is not an option then make an eggshell candle and light it while visualizing your intent.
Seeking a new direction Ostara is about life beginning again. If you feel like you need a fresh start, use a tarot deck and shuffle it a few times concentration on a new path. Once you are satisfied, look through it for the fool card. On the card next to it should be the direction you should go towards. If the fool is reversed and looking at the card behind it then it might symbolize you are on the wrong path and focused perhaps on something in your past. The one next to it (technically the one that comes after it in the deck) should be the direction you should focus on.
Birds of a feather! Spring is definitely a time for finding your match whether it be new friends, new connections, new network or a new lover! People are more out and about. An animal that marks spring time to me and also socializing are spring birds especially like the robin or bluebirds. Use feathers in your spells to attract your kind or your mate. (March hare symbolism works too with attraction spells but in my opinion it’s way more sexual than it is about socializing or romance/friendship). Some ideas could be making a charm with a feather to keep on your person that you’ll use when you go out to meet people. The ideas for attraction glamours and spells are endless so I won’t ramble on here lol.

Ostara Day

March 20th 2018

Wear bright greens!! (it’s funny cause it also kind of coincides with the green theme of march cause of st patricks day but I don’t really celebrate st patrick yet I wear bright greens for spring equinox to symbolize plants sprouting and reviving!) If green isn’t your thing wear pastels! A lot of my witchy friends and I LOVE the color Robin Egg Blue for Ostara so that soft blue is my second go to!
Food ‘Growth’ Spell You can prepare a ‘Dragon’s Egg’ bless it with the intent that you’d want it to give you power of determination, courage and drive for the season to come and eat it (like consuming it’s power). I like to make these eggs by hardboiling a regular egg, preparing a sandwich bag of food coloring of your choice (reddish gold is great), add some chili powder and peppers and put the egg in (still with it’s hardshell on) and crush it up while it’s in there. Let the egg soak in the coloring and spices and once you peel it it’ll look like this. If you don’t eat eggs, a great alternative are lima beans. They are big green seeds! I also like to use pepita seeds in a food spell to manifest self growth. You can take a seed and put intention into it then swallow it after.
Green Tea Such as the way pumpkin is the season-long flavor of autumn for me the seasonal flavor is green tea. I think it’s the combination of the color, it’s herbal earthy freshness and it’s ability to wake you up and energize you. Especially if you are on the go today and don’t have time for anything enjoy a matcha latte or a green tea. Savor it’s earthy flavor and feel it making you more awake and alert for the new season!
Whistle to bring in good energy I find the sounds of light flutes and whistling to be the preferred music and or instrument of Ostara. To me it symbolizes the return of the birds and the lightness of spring and also the soft breeziness of the season (also in Wiccanism it’s ruled by Air which is interesting). If you are familiar with intoning you can try to cleanse your space with a light and powerful whistle.
Ostara Music I have a few music links on my digital grimoire for each sabbat and some playlists. Flutes is the primary instrument I associate with this sabbat. I like to pick one of the flute sound tracks and open one of the white noise sound tracks and let them play together.
I made a coherent music post here with instructions on how I listen to the music. (I like to layer sounds ontop of each other- usually a natural white noise soundtrack- in this case singing birds for Spring, and then play instrumental music over it).
Connecting with your inner child Ostara is a playful holiday that also honors children. Be extra kind to children close to you today and also get in touch with your own inner child. Make art to welcome spring like watercolor outside or use crayons and don’t judge whatever you create. Or treat yourself with things your childself loves such as candy, cookies, blowing bubbles, swinging on swings, jumping on a trampoline. If it’s raining or too cold to be outside make a magical pillow fort to do magic in. Make a cream soda float, watch ghibli films. Do shadow work to connect with your inner child. Focus on this next cycle to come by satisfying your inner child’s dreams.
Be Outdoors If the day is nice take yourself out for a bike ride or a picnic! Go on an ostara scavenger hunt for magical items for your craft such as a stone you might find and like that you could paint or a four leaf clover, a fresh bird’s feather or a blossom. Remember to ask the plants permission before you take and to leave offerings for gratitude. Seeds edible to animals or local wildflower seeds would be the nicest!
Spring Showers Usually spring equinox has been gorgeous for the past few years but if the day is rainy collect the first spring’s showers! It has it’s own magical significance! Spring Showers brings growth for spring blossoms and plants and it is very reviving. If it happens to snow, spring’s first snow/frost is magical too but for curses.
Flower Channeling It’s been way too cold for a while to be outside but if it’s nice take yourself to a park or your back yard, find a patch of crocuses or snowdrops and spend a moment to be barefoot on the earth. Feel their gentle energy pushing through the earth to start with fresh optimism. Find that energy within yourself to begin this new cycle.
Rain Channeling If the weather is too unfavorable to do that then find a space in your home by a window and take a moment to channel the energy of Spring’s Shower to your body. You can either put your back against the window if possible or even open the window and let your palms out upright to capture the rain. (Bonus if you want to be that dramatic witch bitch and stand under the rain to really let it cleanse you but I don’t want to give advice that might get people sick if they aren’t careful lol.)

Evening

Feast!! I love making food for Ostara! I always go for spring produce like onions, chives, spinach, butter lettuce, asparagus, carrots, parsnips, peas, sugar snap peas, sprouts and turnips. If I’m making food for myself I go for a nice quiche with a butter lettuce salad and simple dijon vinaigrette. Some dishes I love making are like the cucumber dill yogurt salad, split pea soup, chicken with spring onions and pastel colored deviled eggs. Even if you don’t feel motivated to make anything too complicated for yourself you can make something easily spring themed like ostara ramen lol. [Get a ramen packet and boil and egg in another pot. Top your finished ramen with chopped chives and sesame seeds and a boiled egg. Bam. (Bonus if its green tea ramen noodles).] For desserts I love things that are matcha, praline, pistachio or almond based. I love floral nutty flavors for spring. Getting a simple carrot cake to enjoy should be easy or you could enjoy a simple custard! Years ago I made an Ostara fantasy feast you can check out if you’d like some ideas!
Leave offerings for the Spirits of Spring!
Spring Birds are also always wonderful to work with and fun to leave offerings of food like seeds for! They will help you with socializing and making connections!
It’s always lucky to befriend some stirring plants and leave them something as well. Especially if you whisper to them your secret wishes they’ll try to help them grow!

#ostara #solitary witch #rituals #spells #witchblr #witchcraft #spring equinox #it's nice that years ago I did everything alone and now I have a crew #I have to plan for Friday

ofcloudsandstars reblogged

ofcloudsandstars

✧ .🎄Yule Solitary Rituals🎄✧

As the days grow darker to the shortest day of the year and the frost creeps on the skeletons of dead leaves and flurries seep into the streams of howling winds, we know we are reaching Winter Solstice. Though this is the darkest point of the year filled with frost and shadows, it is the time to fill the night with thousands of lights and celebrate unity, blessings and rebirth since the days will extend slowly as we enter the new year. To celebrate life and longevity in a moment of darkness we decorate the home with plants that keep its prosperous green and red colors. Pine, cedar, holy, mistletoe, rose hips, cinnamon, chestnuts, pine cones and winter fruits. (Interestingly enough plants like pine and rose hips are packed with vitamin C and can be used in healing teas!) This is also a time to gather together with loved ones and share what you have in a time of rest and stagnancy. Though it would be ideal to gather with a circle of intimate people this post shall focus on solitary practices of course!

A lot of us witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and I treat the wheel of the year as a an argrarian cycle celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice! Here is my personal correspondences post and my personal Yule tag!

Winter Solstice’s Eve

Wednesday December 20th 2017

Make a Pot Pourri ESPECIALLY if you have a cauldron, fill it up with all kinds of winter magic! Pot Pourris could make a great base for a spell! You can add all sorts of ingredients and maybe slip a paper with written wishes to be manifested inside. If you are very sneaky and a closeted witch it would be a great activity to do in the home! Add orange zest and rose petals for vitality and energy in winter! Put Rosemary and Rose hips for health. Add Pine or Cedar for prosperity! Put in mint and cloves for purity and keeping the space cleansed. Maybe don’t add all the pairings I’ve mentioned in this bullet point, yet consider that each ingredient has it’s own magical correspondence! There are great pot pourri recipes online. I like this article for some simple ideas!
Decorate your Altar This is a great activity especially if you live in a house hold where you can’t express your spirituality throughout the home and have to confine it to your space. Decorate your altar with the plants of the season! It will smell incredible if you add cedar, pine or cinnamon and look beautiful with holy, rose hips, mistletoe and pine cones. Add peppermint for joy and luck and buy a little string of LED lights to wrap around it or make yule tea lights if you want something non electric. Burn peppermint, cedar, cinnamon or sandalwood incense and make your space jolly and merry!
Grow (borax) Crystals Borax is super fun and non toxic and you can grow crystals overnight! What you will need is a box of borax, a pot you can use for crafts and some white pipe cleaners. You can make a pipe cleaner ‘skeleton’ for a tea light holder or make snowflake pipe cleaners for the borax solution. Here is a great tutorial on borax crystals. If you add food coloring you can change the color (it will nearly always come out as light pastel unless you add a lot but I like the white color for this sabbat anyway).
Make Sigil Snowflakes Design spell snowflakes by drawing a thin sigil, then folding a paper up into triangles and drawing your sigil on the final triangle. You will have beautiful snowflake designs with amplified energy to hang in your windowsill! (I like this quick tutorial for ideas).
Bake! Winter is the ultimate baking season and it makes the home smell great and you can indulge for the winter! Create delicious treats like ginger bread cookies, cinnamon rolls, red velvet cupcakes or even a mini yule log! You can also make poppets in the form of cookies or spell cookies in shapes of Yule trees (prosperity), ginger bread men or animals (if animals to maybe acquire some kind of quality that animal has to help you in your journey), or stars for joy!
Offerings to Nature In this dark part of the year when you give back it can make an impact. Make pinecone bird feeders (of pine cones you’ve collected in nature please don’t use the craft store scented ones), Orange bird feeder, or treats for the fae. You can make beautiful sun catcher ice sculptures to decorate your balcony or garden with (1 , 2 ). Leave meringue mushrooms or holiday sweets for the spirits!
Spell Baubles Make some spell baubles! Like the way there are spell jars, you can fill these baubles with certain desires and decorate your altar with them. Also as a tip, if you buy the large baubles, keep the ingredients dry so you can add an electric tea light inside and make them spell bauble lanterns! It will be a wonderful decoration in your space when the night is so long.
Smoke Bundles for Cleansing Many of the seasonal fir plants can help cleanse the air! I’d suggest cedar, cinnamon, rosemary, sage and pine. Yew is toxic though I have absolutely NO IDEA who would even decorate their home with yew?? Why? But I could see the confusion occuring only if someone was harvesting pine in the wild and confused it with Yew. It’s good to be able to tell apart the difference between Yew and other pines and make sure to avoid it!
Make Scented Candles I made this post years ago and I believe some links are broken (but also my instructions are sketchy cause this was when I was just learning how to make candles so don’t pay attention to my instructions anyway haha the ingredients are what matters), but you can be creative with scented candles! Winter solstice is a great time to make the home smell jolly and be creative plus you can add spells in it! Here are some of my favorite candles that you can find inspiration from! 1- spell pillar with things ontop 2- frosty pillars 3-Pillar with things around it (also my own when they are lit).
Make blessed crafts for friends! If you have witchy friends or friends that respect your practice you can make them cute charms for gifts in the winter! This can be a combination of things above like a scented votive candle, a smoke bundle or a crystal tea light or:
Make a Magical Ugly Winter Witch Sweater: We all need sweaters this time of year but also simple stitching, beading and embroidery is much easier than I thought and I ended up having an idea to embroider some cute tacky witch things on sweaters and make some enchanted sweaters! Michaels and other bead shops in the city sell crystal beads and you can sow stitch magic into it! I am making some for some witchy friends with flourite, amethyst and rose quartz beads as a gift for the winter solstice. If you have some sweaters you’d like to magic-afy but not ruin with kitschy-ness, you can still sew some crystal beads on the inside or in a place that it will not scratch you.
Fill the home with Music! This is definitely the time of year we need cheer within the home! Some music I love for the winter solstice is the Nut Cracker. I also love ambient winter sound tracks like this one that’s very meditative or more mysterious like this one. There’s a lot of winter fairy music on youtube. Look up any Gothic Winter instrumental music and you will find a lot of tracks. There is also Katrina Skye who is super cheesy but she is so cheesy it’s charming. Her music tends to be very wiccan though.

Midnight Spell: Winter Solstice is wonderful to do a spell focusing on reviving something for the new year. If there is something you want to bring to life again, an old hobby, an old connection, an old project or goal or dream, you can focus your spell on that!

An activity could be lighting a sparkler envisioning it to ignite the spirit of life and revive you. Pass it around your head, around your body and between each leg (like how you would cleanse yourself with sage or palo santo). Pass it over your magical items and crystals to charge (make sure it’s not near anything that’s very flammable though). Sparklers can give off a lot of smoke so I would not recommend this if you live in a smoke free environment.
Put to rest As we descend into the slower restful part of the year it would be wise to use this time to focus on goals we want to accomplish for the next year and slow down or halt other issues we want to put to rest in order to focus on ourselves, whether it be bad habits, people that won’t allow us to grow, or locations we keep finding ourselves that are unhealthy. Write down these obstacles on a piece of paper or cardboard, put it in a container full of water and place it in the freezer in order to 'freeze’ these things.

Yule Day

Thursday, December 21st 2017

Ice skating Even if you are alone, ice skating on the first day of winter is pretty magical! Set up your favorite magical winter playlist on your ipod or invite a friend and glide away on the ice! The best is if it’s an outdoor rink!
Setting up lights It is the shortest day of the year therefore being the darkest. To elevate your space, set up many colorful lights for a magical experience! If you have a space you can have open flame then:
Burn Scented Candles Either the magical ones you’ve made on the eve or some that you’ve bought! Winter scented candles really add charm to the space!
Sing! Song worship is a wonderful form of magic. You can sing spells or devote a song to your guides. Even if you don’t have a song to sing then intoning is a great way to elevate the space. Intoning would be wonderful to warm up your vocal chords and energy with then you could pick a devotional song or even a carol to sing!
Offerings Your guides have been with you all year and the year (or sun) is going through it’s period of rebirth. You can set aside offerings in gratitude for them. If you want to make it in theme with the holidays you can set aside something like milk and cookies! If your guides like something specific then of course offer that to them.
Winter Grounding Do some energy work on the first day of winter to center yourself and go within. Stand in the snow or on the cold hard ground and feel the cold electrify your senses as you ground with the earth. If cold is very much not your thing you can do energy work in your room with a sound bath using white noise tracks or meditative winter music. Put tumbled crystals like quartz, blue lace agate or angel aura quartz in the freezer until they’re cold and make a grid on your body by placing one on your third eye, throat, chest, navel etc and meditate. Focus on taking in as much energy to reserve for the season.
Make a Merry Potion! As it’s the darkest time of the year the mood can plummet. A personal potion of mine is a wonderful potpourri-like tea that can help boost your mood. It has dried rose hips , hibiscus petals and anise and Rhodiola rosea or rhodiola tincture. I would suggest getting a rhodiola tincture (you can purchase from wholefoods or online) and putting it in there. I swear by this plant and tincture, rhodiola has been a great plant ally to me especially to help cope with depression (it helps increase serotonin) but since I don’t know all the medical specifics you should consult it with your doctor if you are on something like antidepressants. It’s a semi known thing so your doctor would probably have good advice whether its safe for you to take it or not. Otherwise I have literally been spreading this tincture at work and have been seeing changes with my coworkers and my own mental health like it has helped me survive this far so I will be using it to survive winter.
TREAT YOSELF Winter is the season of resting. Make a potpourri-like hot bath with clementine slices, rose petals, epsom salt and anise stars. Be careful to not add something like cinnamon cause the oil can burn the nether regions. Also be careful with peppermint oil cause that can leave icy burns in the nether regions. If diluted properly the two could work but if you are not familiar with working with those oils I’d suggest leaving them out!

Evening

Celebratory Feast If you are alone you can make yourself a delicious winter stew! It will be fun to slow cook something meaty or rich and make the whole home smell great and bring anticipation for dinner! If you are looking for more elaborate dishes I love to use seasonal ingredients for every sabbat. Pine is an excellent flavor that pairs well with fish like salmon. Chestnut is divine either sweet or savory. Roots like potatoes, turnips and ginger are a must!
Blessings Since Yule to me is about generosity and unity I like to use the day to do helpful spells and send blessings to loved ones. Tip when you do a spell for someone: make sure it’s something they ask for and truly need. For example if you know your friend has been struggling to find a job or money you can do a money spell for them. If your friend has wished in front of you to be able to move out into a safer place, you can put energy out towards that. However a bad example would be if you think your friend is miserable cause they are single and you do a love spell. That can end up in a disaster! Only do a spell on something you know they need. Otherwise just send a blessing of good energy towards your loved ones!

#omg I forgot about some of these ideas #annually I just go ice skating and do the blessings for others ritual #and eat some yum winter food #winter solstice #solitary #rituals #magic

ofcloudsandstars reblogged

ofcloudsandstars

✧ .🎃Samhain Solitary Rituals🎃✧

As the air grows cooler and the winds begin to howl and rip the dead leaves from trees, we know the veil is thin and Samhain is near! After the equinox, which was equal parts night and day, Samhain marks the time of the wheel that we descend into the darker half of the year. It’s this time of the year that communication and connection to the spirit world is a lot easier and we’ve grown accustomed to making wards to protect the home from malevolent energy in the form of jack o lanterns and lights. On a positive note it is a time to leave out treats and foods for passed away loved ones and to remember them. It’s the final harvest full of well spiced comfort autumn foods as well as a ‘New Year’ since it’s a sabbat that honors the natural cycle of death and sees it as a form of transformation.

A lot of us witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and treat the wheel of the year I celebrate as more of an argrarian cycle and celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice! Here is my personal correspondences post and my personal samhain tag!

Hallow’s Eve

Tuesday October 31st 2017

Dressing up in your most witchiest Ok every year I’m a witch, whether it’s just a lazy witch in my black clothing or an over the top kitschy witch with colorful hair and electric colored make up, but I just like to have these looks casually on Halloween day cause its amazing and a chance for me to be myself!
Pumpkin Carving! If you haven’t already tonight is definitely the night for pumpkin carving! Write sigils inside your pumpkin for protective magic. I love this DIY for a pumpkin indoor lantern cause it shows how to rub spices like cinnamon and nutmeg inside to achieve that sent of pumpkin pie in the home. Use electric candles instead of flame if you want it to last the night since the flame’s heat will cook the pumpkin.
Mini Pumpkin Tea lights Also an easier alternative to carving if you don’t have much time. Even gutting the mini pumpkins takes a lot of time for me but doing so and filling them with a black tea light will make an excellent centerpiece either for your altar or feast table!
Making Candy Apples I associate candy coated sweet red apples with halloween (and caramel/maple sugar on granny smith for mabon) and I love how you can make the candy various colors like a poisonous black or vibrant blood red!
Setting sweets aside for spirits So everyone has spirits that chill with them and it would be great to show appreciation for the positive spirits that surround you. Set some sweets on a dish and make a tiny altar for them in your space.
Enjoying sweets while doing crafts! Enjoy some of that halloween candy for yourself! My favorite treats on this night are chocolate coated donuts, reeses cups, cider sugar donuts, red licorice and apple cider.
Watching a spooky or Halloween themed movie Or halloween themed film. My favorite will always be the 80s halloween special The Worst Witch with Tim curry. I watch it religiously.
Spirit Contact I wouldn’t suggest using an Ouija board or doing any communication with spirits if you have never had experience. They can be rude and harass you, YET if you are experienced and know how to guard yourself, then this is a great night to play with an ouija board! (PS I think Ouija Girl has a great informative blog about working with ouija boards. Here is her FAQ page. But still, it’s always better to do work with a medium or someone with experience than trying to figure it out alone). A safer experience for someone with no spirit communication experience is attending a seance! In NYC there are a few mediums that hold seances monthly. I love the one at Catland in Brooklyn, the mediums that host the event there are fantastic. It might be hard to attend an authentic one on Halloween night since a lot of people will want to just try to cash in on creating a 'spooky’ experience, but if you really want, try to get in contact with mediums and ask if they host any seance events. Important to know: usually the spirits that chill around you are guides and family and they might have more info to give you then you might be ready for. My first seance I really don’t know what to do with the info given to me but I really hope I make the best of it and don’t mess anything up.
Witches Flight This is like an extension of the previous point where if you have never done this before just completely disregard this suggestion cause flying is dangerous. For many years witches have flown on Halloween night to other realms using flying ointments.
Protective Magic: Finally, protect yourself from the high spirit activity with crystals like black tourmaline, obsidian and spirit quartz. Do protective spells for any cats you see or live with especially black cats since they tend to be targets.

Midnight Spell:

This sabbat honors the natural cycle of death and transformation. Focus on what you want to transform in your life. Magic on this night is very powerful so think about it before hand and make sure it is what you want for if you ask to transform something, you might find a lot of endings that suddenly occur in your life to lead to the transformations that you want. (There was a conversation on here I can no longer find but it was put really nicely that death is not just some simple 'transformative’ process it can be very drastic, often very uncomfortable and if you are not ready though you ask for something to change, you might not be ready for the new obstacles that will be thrown at you. Just know that you will be ready for what you ask for.)
Some spell activities can be shuffling the deck visualizing what you want to change and then finding the death card and seeing the card that follows will be your answer to seek how you can further bring that transformation closer.
I’m a mixologist and enjoy working with liquor for rituals. I find fire to be a great transformer yet instead of burning something I prefer blessing a shot of whiskey or absinthe with my intent then taking it like liquid fire to transform me within. If you do not like alcohol or can not drink it for whatever reason you can perform this with hot apple cider instead!

Samhain Day

Wednesday, November 1st 2017

Upon the day I like to dress in complete black. My makeup is very dark and I wear long black dresses and veils. Depending on how you want to honor the dead, dress how you wish.
Gravesweeping Visit your loved ones on this day and leave flowers and gifts on their grave! If you want you can also visit any cemetery, yet make sure to practice good graveyard etiquette. Leave a penny by the gate, do not sit or lean on any tomb stones, of course don’t take anything from a grave. Be respectful of those whom are resting.
Close Your Garden This is a time to close the garden for the winter to come. Harvest the last fruits and herbs and bring in any delicate potted plants within the home.
Shadow Work Especially if you are looking to transform some aspect of your life this is a great time to do shadow work and look within if you are creating any obstacles for yourself. Get to know your shadow self, get to solve problems together. This is also an excellent day for divination and scrying.
Meditation and Energy Work by the base of a tree I love to do energy work on the days of the sabbats yet as the earth grows colder, the roots dig deeper and the world goes into hibernation. Sit at the base of a tree preferably with thick roots and feel it’s connection to the cold earth beneath you. Dig into yourself and see what needs to rest and what needs to be healed.

Evening Celebratory Feast

So in many practices people like to host a dumb supper but instead I like to have a lively feast where everyone will share a story about someone they loved that passed away or a story of an ancestor in their family. At the end of each tale we toast our glasses to them! (And pour a little bit of drink to them or set aside a snack if they are not into alcohol.)
Hold a feast of rich comfort foods that are spiced and sweet like sweet potato mash, candied brown beans, pumpkin bread, smokey bourbon pulled pork or maple glazed beef brisket, roasted carrots and beets and (I personally love to make baked mac and cheese but its a fall comfort soul food for me). My Samhain feast is abundant with fall soul foods and sweet roots and spices. (here is a fantasy feast post and my personal feast post from last year)
If you are alone (as this is a solitary post), make a few fall dishes you deeply enjoy or cook the favorites of loved relatives that have passed away, eat some sweets and set out some offerings to passed away loved ones.

#samhain #solitary #rituals #pagan #wheel of the year #halloween

ofcloudsandstars

✧ . 🌸Beltane Solitary Rituals🌸 *✧

Bluebells are popping through the freshly sprouted glass, blossom petals litter the streets and flowers burst open to bloom on every lawn and ceramic pot as we approach the pinnacle of Spring. The time of the Spring Crossquarter, Beltane, is upon us! It's time to re-pot house plants and give them plant food, sow seeds in the garden, sow seeds of intention and give back to nature. Beltane is nested perfectly within the earthly season of Taurus and near Earth Day and I feel like it's a second earth day for pagans and witches.

Beltane is the sabbat that mirrors Samhain, though it's celebration is completely opposite (fertility and life vs death and the end) it has the same intensity of the Halloween festival. Instead of spirits, it's the fae that is out and about, mad with excitement at the stirring earth, causing pranks, confusion, hayfever and mischief to their victims as pre festival activities as they prepare for their grand fairy queen ball. With other witches I've celebrated this by dressing up as a fairy or spirit of nature which felt a lot like a halloween yet more etheral and mysterious than spooky, yet this post is for solitary witches that don't have their own community to do a whole fairy ball with.

A lot of witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and treat the wheel of the year I celebrate as more of an agrarian cycle and celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice! Here is my personal correspondences post and my personal Beltane tag!

Spring Crossquarter’s Eve

Monday, April 30th 2018

Clean litter around your area This is a great excuse to go on a nature walk and enjoy the wonderful spring weather, yet also please the spirits of nature and make our green spaces more enjoyable and safe for the beings that live in it. Wear some gloves and help clean up!
Enjoy snacks while doing crafts like green pepita seeds, red radishes, gummy worms, pixie sticks, chocoshrooms, unicorn inspired anything, fairy floss, kale chips etc!
Watch Fairy Films while doing crafts There are some movies I hardcore associate with this sabbat. Those being: Strange Magic, Thumbelina, LABYRINTH, fern gully and stardust. They help to get you in the spirit!
Make LED flower lights If you are feeling creative and want to cover your space in glowing flowers you should try this craft! If you can get fabric tulips I think the process would be easier and quicker since you wouldn't have to layer.
Flower tealight bowl If you still want flowers but don't have too much time for crafts, get a bouquet of flowers and cut their stems off. In a wide glass bowl, fill it half way with water, and float the flowers on top. Add tealight candles to light up the piece.
Make paper flowers I have so many of these DIYs saved and they are super pretty. You can add LED's inside too and have large paper flowers glowing in your space! ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 )
attach them to a branch! ( 1 , 2 )
make garland
Hang chimes! Enjoy the fairy festivity by hanging twinkling chimes! It’s a low energy activity that can make the space feel wonderful. Open the windows to let in some sweet spring air and have the chimes twinkle.
Make Flower Water! Simmer lavender petals or rose petals in a pot of water. If it's edible you can use the water in cooking but if not you can use the water as a cleansing wash and to elevate the energy! Get a perfume bottle to put rose water in and mist the air in your space.

Midnight

This night is known as witches night and often has been an evening for ritual dancing and witches flight. It's also a good night to do attraction magic

Bloom Focus on what you'd want to bloom and grow further in your life. Whisper your wishes to the flowers outside and sprinkle full moon water on them as an offering.
Attraction Magic This time of the year things start to speed up and it's easier to get certain outcomes, people or resources to come to you. Use this evening to do spells to attract what you need to create an ideal summer. Candle magic (Bonus if it's floral ) would make a great attraction charm especially for the element of fire on this festival and that you can carve your wishes onto it.
Sex Magic This is a festival of fertility and deep fiery creative manifesting energy. It can pull on the lower energy pools of the body. If you are comfortable with that part of yourself you can tap into that energy and the energy of the stirring earth with masturbation and using it to manifest what you want. Before hand meditate and visualize what you want to manifest. While climaxing focus your energy on that and you will release powerful energy towards that spell while orgasming. You can also charge charms and sigils this way. You can use safe tumbled crystal eggs and 'massage' wands (I always stick to quartz based minerals or glass products since those don't dissolve in water), anoint yourself with oils, burn rose incense, take a self indulging floral bath with flower petals to seduce yourself before hand, light candles, there's a lot of magical tools and magic in general to incorporate into this ritual. It's very self indulging and all about making yourself comfortable and using your own unique energy (plus orgasming on the midnight of Beltane is a great way to bring in the festivity while alone haha).

Spring Crossquarter's Day

May 1st

Dress like a fairy or in florals I love to dress in florals or in flowery lace on this day. If possible you should dress up like a fairy or spirit of nature but if you have to be a functioning human in modern society not many places might accept that so a quieter way would be to dress floral. Wear a flower crown! Make a ribbon wand. Use your own colorology/color correspondences for the ribbons you pick. Tie ribbons in a braid in your hair for knot magic. Wear rose oil or any floral fragrance oil that is your favorite (I am obsessed with hyacinth).
Flower Essences A wonderful form of flower magic is flower essences. It's a gentle way to heal and transform your energetic and emotional body. Is there something you want to let go or manifest within yourself? You can look that up like (thing I want to do + flower essence) and the internet can give you a thorough list. (Examples can be resentment, anger issues, responsibility, courage, feeling loved etc). There are a lot of books on it but flower essence knowledge can be expensive to obtain which I personally find unfair since they can be helpful. A good book if you’d want to invest in it would be the flower essence repertory but google (for now) is free and you can just keep track of flower essence powers in your grimoire and google the ones you need. Find the flower ally that speaks to you the most, order that essence (Bach is the best company) and start today as the first day to take it and note your journey in your book of shadows.
Play fairy-like music I have instruments and music I associate with each sabbat and for Beltane it's harps. They sound graceful like fluttering wings and falling blossom petals. Here are a few soundtracks ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ), fill your space with ethereal music!
Repot plants It's easy to get caught up in life and forget about your green best friends but I like to remember this day as a day to repot your house plants. They will love you and grow bigger and leafier due to it, it definitely honors the spirit of nature within the home and it's helpful to take time to remember to do this!
Make a butterfly feeder Butterflies have come out and about! Make butterfly feedersso they have get a tasty treat!
Make seed bombs Make bombs of local wild flowers (especially the kinds butterflies and bees need) and throw them around in empty grassy lots!
Do fun fairy inspired activities Such as making enchanted bubbles (add a teeny pinch of mica to make them sparkle but not too much or else they won’t hold and add floral fragrance to them) and blow them in a park, play pranks on people you don’t like such as stealing their shit and hiding it in some obscure place, eat sweets (bonus if it’s floral like rose, jasmine or lavender), read poetry and riddles.
Make delicious floral treats The easiest would be to make teas like rose, lavender, hibiscus or jasmine, you can make rose lattes as well (with a milk wand and hot milk with a dash of rose water) or steamed floral milk (pairs best with plant based milk like coconut, macademia or almond). Make floral buttercream to sandwich between cookies or decorate flowery cupcakes with. Enjoy flowery macarons if you don't have time to bake or add gelatin to floral teas on the eve (bonus if you have flowery cake molds to pour it into) to enjoy today.
Have a picnic under a flowering tree The weather is finally wonderful which makes this day a perfect day to celebrate under a blooming tree in a park. Bring spring picnic foods with you like cucumber sandwiches, radish salads, kale chips. Connect with the blossoming trees and do energy work with them. Charge yourself on a carpet of fallen petals on the ground laced with tree roots. Leave some food as offerings to the spirits of nature as well. Let bees and butterflies drink from your bottle cap.
Venture into the realm of nature and plants Massive disclaimer about psychadelics, if you don't know yourself well or don't trust yourself you should avoid them at all costs, but shrooms is incredible and the most wonderful experience if you use them only for sacred and spiritual practices. It attunes you to the realm of plants and the fae, trees will have messages to give you, you can see the earth breathing, the world is alive and we are all connected to this planet. You will remember people you love and you will feel loved, your ancestors will be surrounding you, you can hear the gossip among the fungi, you can feel the stars and planet's gravitational movements in the heavens. As wonderful as it can be, it can be dangerous though to people unfamiliar with it which leads me to say I'm only making this suggestion to the witches that have experience with it and understand it. Beltane is a day a lot of witches "travel" and often sometimes with the use of more intense tools way more complex and dangerous than mushrooms, but anyway on a day to honor blooming nature and the thriving earth, shrooms is an ideal tool to help you access that realm if you have a day off so you can be in a park under a flowering tree and cry over how beautiful tulips and moss are.
Walk barefoot on the earth If the weather is nice, take a walk in a grassy park or in your yard barefoot. Feel the fertile ground charging your body with energy. Do a grounding ritual and some energy work!
Flower magic Like all plants, flowers are also kind and our allies and are wonderful to do magic with. Learn about the various flowers and what magic they are good in helping you with. Make friends with them, offer them water and sing to them. I made a post a while ago about flowers for love and friendship spells. You don't have to pick the flowers, it's best if they are kept alive or if you grow them. But if you happen to pass a florist or have them already picked, then you can use them in your physical spells as well!

Evening

Feast Cook yourself something lovely to celebrate the pinnacle of spring! A great and simple dish is artichokes since they are a lot to pick apart and eat and are a beautiful savory flower that pairs well with delicious salad dressings and vinaigrettes to dip into. Other wonderful dishes can be beet soup, roasted beet hummus with radish + cucumber and asparagus to dip, white asparagus, literally anything with black truffle on it, chive bread rolls, oyster mushrooms, snails with chive and garlic butter, chopped red cabbage salad, adirondack blue mashed potatoes, truffle risotto, something simple and leafy like a tossed spring salad with radishes and purple lettuce. Endives with chopped boiled eggs and roasted beets nested inside, duck with sugar glaze and fresh edible blossoms. Most countries don't have a midspring feast holiday so many people might not be familiar with midspring food ideas but there are a lot of beautiful and flowery dishes in season this time of year to enjoy alone! Not to mention the desserts! Lemon and lavender pound cake, rose meringues, floral parfaits, rose buttercream cakes, violet and chocolate brownies, lilac sugar dusted cookies, candied rose petals, sakura jellies etc. Bake yourself something wonderful and magical for dessert! Also if you like to drink while celebrating, try creme de violette mixed with anything whether it be rose prosecco, plain soda water or a light wheat beer. There are other wonderful cordials too such as elderflower (St. Germain) that you can mix with a white iced tea (or an elderflower iced tea), and rose and lavender syrups you can mix with soju and sodawater. If you love wines you should try a dandelion or rose wine or steep edible flowers in a light wine over the day to infuse!
Leave offerings to nature Leave a bowl of flower water outside, sprinkle native wild flower seeds, mist the plants or sing to the trees. Let earth know you still love and honor her. Leave any extra food you made to your guides that care about you.

ofcloudsandstars

✧ . 🕯️Imbolc Solitary Rituals 🕯️✧

As the wintery days starts stretching a little longer and signs of life starts peeping about in nature, we are reaching the zenith of the season. The Winter crossquarter is a time of returning light and returning life that marks the end of the cold hibernating season. Candles are lit to welcome the returning light, animals are stirring from hibernation, snow is beginning to thaw leaving behind slush and snowdrops. It is time to look forward to spring, cleanse the home, the self and prepare for the brighter half of the year!

I see the three sabbats: Samhain, Yule and Imbolc all as new year-ish celebrations, samhain being the death of the year and entering the cold hibernating phase, yule being the rebirth of the year- the longest night which marks the point where we will be returning to the lighter half and Imbolc being the true start to the year after the hibernating/resting period has ended. As the first half of winter is dedicated to resting this period I deem it as cleansing/shedding. I made a transitional wheel here that has gained some traction on this site over the past year. A lot of us witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and treat the wheel of the year I celebrate as more of an agrarian cycle and celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice! Here is my personal correspondences post and my personal Imbolc tag!

Imbolc's Eve

January 31st, (Wednesday 2018)

Cleaning AND CLEANSING This crossquarter has a lot of emphasis on cleansing and preparing for spring to come, and has a tradition of ‘spring cleaning’ (though it’s not quite spring yet), but even if you are in the deep winter months it’s good to get the air within the home flowing since it tends to be bottled up and stagnating to keep the warmth in. This might not sound like much fun, but when you make it into a magical ritual, this can be a very purifying and elevating experience!
Use fragrances like juniper, peppermint, wintergreen while cleaning. Juniper is my preferred scent as it’s cleansing, airy, cool and sharp!
Sweeping Use a besom to symbolically sweep away the unwanted energy and or patterns you want to rid yourself or your space of. This is an old tradition!
Shedding As the days get longer and the air warmer, it’s time to shed! Get rid of old stuff you no longer need and should part with. Donate old ugly clothes, toss old things, maybe give new life to things you haven’t used in a while. It’s time to purge!
Hang chimes I love the sound of metal chimes as the instrument of choice for this sabbat. It reminds me of melting icicles and wintery air. Chimes makes a great cleansing and peaceful sound for your space!
Make Candles!!! Unless if you’re in a space where you can’t have candles, it would be great to create some candles for the sabbat! Candles are very easy to make and you can make them in pretty glass votives instead of trying to find a mold for them. You can even get some tea lights and infuse herbs, fragrances and glitter on the top instead of making a whole candle if you don’t have time. I enjoy using warm plain wintery fragrances for this sabbat such as vanilla or sugar. Having refreshing candles like eucalyptus and mint is nice too! But I’d probably want to make those in a creation like:
Ice cube Candles! Here is the DIY link!
Beautiful herbal pressed candles
Make Ice Lanterns! Wonderful alternative if you can’t have open flames indoors, if you have a spot outside where a lantern would be safe to burn, then this makes a beautiful midwinter decoration! (If open flame isn’t ok anywhere for you, having electric candles works great for this cause candles outside tend to not stay lit due to winds and falling snow/water.) Here’s option one with water balloons and here is option two with a carton!
Body Scrubs Make some enchanted body scrubs to exfoliate away the old and bring energy for the new! Here are a few favorites for the sabbat! (honey sugar scrub, coconut oil sugar scrub, lavender vanilla sugar scrub)
Milk Bath Spell As this sabbat is about cleaning and renewing the home and the self, I love to have a ritual bath each year. This sabbat also has symbolism of motherhood, nurturing and overall milk and dairy and a milk bath is a way to incorporate the symbolism into your solitary practice! They aren’t too hard to make in advance and here are a few simple recipes you can build off of! If you make it in a jar you can charge it overnight with a quartz crystal on top of the lid! (Plain milk bath, chamomille lavender oatmeal milk bath, pink salt milk bath, milk and honey bath melts, almond milk bath, rosemary chamomille detox bath)
Enjoy snacks while doing crafts such as: yogurt pretzels, buttermints, grilled cheese bites, cheese puffs, white chocolate wafers, bread sticks and cheese dip, and if you are not a fan of dairy then animal crackers (in honor of hibernating animals!), or rosemary crackers, dark toasted bread (like pumpernickel), sliced apples, parsnip fries!
Cleanse and Decorate the altar! Wipe down all the incense ash and the surfaces with refreshing essential oils, purify the space, and decorate it with wintery elements, eucalyptus garland, silver mound, lambs ear and white candles!

Midnight Spell:

The Crossquarter is a time to focus on what you would want to initiate or manifest for the new year. This time is ideal for road opening spells if you need something to open up for you by the time spring arrives. Set goals for yourself, clear paths for yourself, and focus on achieving them by manifesting it on this night!

An activity for road opening could be writing down your goals and sealing it in a plastic bag. Take a bowl and put your goals on the bottom then fill it with a thin layer of ice cubes. Light a white candle on top (preferably a floating candle) symbolizing you in your path to reach your goals. As the last of winter’s snows thaw, the barrier of ice between your candle and your goals will be melted away.
A quicker and simpler task would be to burn bayleaves which is something I do annually (and also is a common tradition). You burn bayleaves to manifest desires into reality yet also it can be a divinatory practice as the way the bayleaf burns will show you if it’s a task that’s being blocked, if you have to work harder at it or if it’s something that will happen right away.
Banishing the old and unwanted This should preferably be done first but think about the qualities that you are not fond of or habits that you’d like to break for the new cycle to come. Light a bundle of juniper or eucalyptus/wintergreen incense and smoke cleanse yourself to start anew. Think about the qualities you’d like to replace the negative ones. Instead of thinking of things like “I want to be less lazy” focus on it more like “I’m productive, I’m motivated, I’m energetic” etc.

Imbolc Day

February 1st

Wear all white! It’s midwinter and a time of cleansing! Wear white to either honor winter or to celebrate the fresh start of the new year to come! (Bonus if you want to wear sparkly makeup like glittery eyeshadow, nail polish, lip gloss)
Fresh Air Open up the windows for a few minutes to let the air in and get the stagnant air flowing! It might be very cold but its good for the air flow for at least a few minutes!
Soundbath Use chimes or a singing bowl to cleanse your space and bring in good energy. This would be great to do while you have the windows open for a moment!
Day of Light! Fill the home with AS MUCH LIGHT as possible. Open all curtains! Light lanterns and electric candles! Put on white fairylights. Welcome the return to light!
Ritual Bath Have a magical ritual spa day! Have some special scrub that you never use cause you don't have time? Today is the day for it! Have a colorful bath bomb you still haven’t used? Make a bath ritual with it! If you had made the milky bath jar from the night before, have a rejuvenating magical experience and maybe channel your bath witchery to do some energy work in the bath. You can do some tub “grounding” by getting well connected with your physical form and energy surrounded by the magic of the bath you’ve created. Also light some white candles and play some relaxing meditative music. For this sabbat I have a few sound tracks I enjoy listening to! ( 1 , 2 , 3 )
Visit a Sauna House Especially if you don’t have a bath and you’d like to get out of the house, going to a sauna house is a wonderful outing and perfect for this sabbat. Especially with symbolism such as fire stirring in the earth, a great way to celebrate that is to sweat it out instead of being out in the cold! The sauna houses by me are all Korean bath houses and they are INCREDIBLE because not only do they have wonderful hot tubs but they also have saunas made out of salt bricks, clay, quartz and jade and it’s a wonderful place to do energy work in or meditate.
Eat seasonal winter roots Not a lot is available in the middle of winter but I love white hardy roots like potatoes, rutabaga, parsnips (they make amazing fries!) and turnips. There was this amazing dish a chef made called rootatouille which was a wintery version of ratatouille (which is such a summer harvest dish). Rootatouille is made with roots and covered with a delicious cream sauce instead of tomato sauce. (Skip to 3:33 for the rootatouille part)
Enjoy a nice creamy drink like a milky tea or frothy latte! Especially if you don’t have time to make yourself a whole dinner then just having a pleasant milky tea or a frothy creamy latte is enough to get festive! Here’s a recipe I love to do sometimes on this sabbat:
Whole Milk or Oat Milk
Kava (Like two tsp to a cup of milk?)
Nutmeg
vanilla bean or extract
cardamom simmer the milk (do not boil) with the spices. Mix until well infused and blended. Enjoy! (Also if you never had kava before, it’s something that makes you feel very very chill and some people use it as an alternative to alcohol. Don’t operate any machinery or do any of the things you shouldn’t do while drunk. It has different effects on different people but if you don’t know how it makes you feel yet then don’t plan on doing anything for the rest of the day).

Evening:

Light a bunch of candles!! Make sure that your space is still filled with many lights as the evening rolls in! If you don’t have a lot of candles or don’t want a lot of open flames, I love the look of white fairy lights and white electric candles. It’s mysterious and icy and less worrisome!
Feast! This feast is usually dairy-centric as it’s a very wintery and also maternal feast. Most animals are lactating this time of year and it was a time people had access to something in the middle of winter to eat. Therefore, other than grain, roots and dried meats, dairy has symbolic importance but there are other things available if dairy is not your thing! However a dish I like to make for myself is spicy shepherds pie because the top mashed potatoes is like the snow and the bottom meaty part is like the thawing earth. I put a lot of spices in the meaty bottom so it symbolizes the life stirring in the earth and the warmer days to come. Shepards pie is also easy to make a vegetarian/vegan version of. If you do love dairy a great dessert to enjoy would be a slice of cheese cake or even better- tres leches, but if you are not a fan of either, another dessert I love to make is essentially a brownie sundae where the brownie once again symbolizes the stirring earth and the vanilla icecream (which you can get a non dairy version of) is like the thawing snow. When the two fuse together it might create a light brownish slush which is kind of the sign of winter's end that everyone dislikes cause they think it looks dirty but I love to celebrate it in the form of a tasty melting dessert. Bonus if you want to make a snowdrop topper to garnish it with.
Here’s a link for a fantasy feast I made ages ago with some recipes!

Happy mid winter everyone! Happy Imbolc and I hope everyone has a wonderful transition into spring!

#LONG POST #solitary witch #imbolc #midwinter #winter crossquarter #sabbat #witches sabbat #pagan #rituals #solitary #witchcraft*#witches of tumblr #witchcraft #recipes #spells #activities #blog imbolc

ofcloudsandstars

✧ .🎄Yule Solitary Rituals🎄✧

A lot of us witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and I treat the wheel of the year as a an argrarian cycle celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice! Here is my personal correspondences post and my personal Yule tag!

Winter Solstice's Eve

Wednesday December 20th 2017

Make a Pot Pourri ESPECIALLY if you have a cauldron, fill it up with all kinds of winter magic! Pot Pourris could make a great base for a spell! You can add all sorts of ingredients and maybe slip a paper with written wishes to be manifested inside. If you are very sneaky and a closeted witch it would be a great activity to do in the home! Add orange zest and rose petals for vitality and energy in winter! Put Rosemary and Rose hips for health. Add Pine or Cedar for prosperity! Put in mint and cloves for purity and keeping the space cleansed. Maybe don't add all the pairings I've mentioned in this bullet point, yet consider that each ingredient has it's own magical correspondence! There are great pot pourri recipes online. I like this article for some simple ideas!
Decorate your Altar This is a great activity especially if you live in a house hold where you can't express your spirituality throughout the home and have to confine it to your space. Decorate your altar with the plants of the season! It will smell incredible if you add cedar, pine or cinnamon and look beautiful with holy, rose hips, mistletoe and pine cones. Add peppermint for joy and luck and buy a little string of LED lights to wrap around it or make yule tea lights if you want something non electric. Burn peppermint, cedar, cinnamon or sandalwood incense and make your space jolly and merry!
Grow (borax) Crystals Borax is super fun and non toxic and you can grow crystals overnight! What you will need is a box of borax, a pot you can use for crafts and some white pipe cleaners. You can make a pipe cleaner 'skeleton' for a tea light holder or make snowflake pipe cleaners for the borax solution. Here is a great tutorial on borax crystals. If you add food coloring you can change the color (it will nearly always come out as light pastel unless you add a lot but I like the white color for this sabbat anyway).
Make Sigil Snowflakes Design spell snowflakes by drawing a thin sigil, then folding a paper up into triangles and drawing your sigil on the final triangle. You will have beautiful snowflake designs with amplified energy to hang in your windowsill! (I like this quick tutorial for ideas).
Bake! Winter is the ultimate baking season and it makes the home smell great and you can indulge for the winter! Create delicious treats like ginger bread cookies, cinnamon rolls, red velvet cupcakes or even a mini yule log! You can also make poppets in the form of cookies or spell cookies in shapes of Yule trees (prosperity), ginger bread men or animals (if animals to maybe acquire some kind of quality that animal has to help you in your journey), or stars for joy!
Offerings to Nature In this dark part of the year when you give back it can make an impact. Make pinecone bird feeders (of pine cones you've collected in nature please don't use the craft store scented ones), Orange bird feeder, or treats for the fae. You can make beautiful sun catcher ice sculptures to decorate your balcony or garden with (1 , 2 ). Leave meringue mushrooms or holiday sweets for the spirits!
Spell Baubles Make some spell baubles! Like the way there are spell jars, you can fill these baubles with certain desires and decorate your altar with them. Also as a tip, if you buy the large baubles, keep the ingredients dry so you can add an electric tea light inside and make them spell bauble lanterns! It will be a wonderful decoration in your space when the night is so long.
Smoke Bundles for Cleansing Many of the seasonal fir plants can help cleanse the air! I'd suggest cedar, cinnamon, rosemary, sage and pine. Yew is toxic though I have absolutely NO IDEA who would even decorate their home with yew?? Why? But I could see the confusion occuring only if someone was harvesting pine in the wild and confused it with Yew. It's good to be able to tell apart the difference between Yew and other pines and make sure to avoid it!
Make Scented Candles I made this post years ago and I believe some links are broken (but also my instructions are sketchy cause this was when I was just learning how to make candles so don’t pay attention to my instructions anyway haha the ingredients are what matters), but you can be creative with scented candles! Winter solstice is a great time to make the home smell jolly and be creative plus you can add spells in it! Here are some of my favorite candles that you can find inspiration from! 1- spell pillar with things ontop 2- frosty pillars 3-Pillar with things around it (also my own when they are lit).
Make blessed crafts for friends! If you have witchy friends or friends that respect your practice you can make them cute charms for gifts in the winter! This can be a combination of things above like a scented votive candle, a smoke bundle or a crystal tea light or:
Make a Magical Ugly Winter Witch Sweater: We all need sweaters this time of year but also simple stitching, beading and embroidery is much easier than I thought and I ended up having an idea to embroider some cute tacky witch things on sweaters and make some enchanted sweaters! Michaels and other bead shops in the city sell crystal beads and you can sow stitch magic into it! I am making some for some witchy friends with flourite, amethyst and rose quartz beads as a gift for the winter solstice. If you have some sweaters you'd like to magic-afy but not ruin with kitschy-ness, you can still sew some crystal beads on the inside or in a place that it will not scratch you.
Fill the home with Music! This is definitely the time of year we need cheer within the home! Some music I love for the winter solstice is the Nut Cracker. I also love ambient winter sound tracks like this one that’s very meditative or more mysterious like this one. There’s a lot of winter fairy music on youtube. Look up any Gothic Winter instrumental music and you will find a lot of tracks. There is also Katrina Skye who is super cheesy but she is so cheesy it's charming. Her music tends to be very wiccan though.

An activity could be lighting a sparkler envisioning it to ignite the spirit of life and revive you. Pass it around your head, around your body and between each leg (like how you would cleanse yourself with sage or palo santo). Pass it over your magical items and crystals to charge (make sure it's not near anything that's very flammable though). Sparklers can give off a lot of smoke so I would not recommend this if you live in a smoke free environment.
Put to rest As we descend into the slower restful part of the year it would be wise to use this time to focus on goals we want to accomplish for the next year and slow down or halt other issues we want to put to rest in order to focus on ourselves, whether it be bad habits, people that won’t allow us to grow, or locations we keep finding ourselves that are unhealthy. Write down these obstacles on a piece of paper or cardboard, put it in a container full of water and place it in the freezer in order to 'freeze' these things.

Yule Day

Thursday, December 21st 2017

Ice skating Even if you are alone, ice skating on the first day of winter is pretty magical! Set up your favorite magical winter playlist on your ipod or invite a friend and glide away on the ice! The best is if it's an outdoor rink!
Setting up lights It is the shortest day of the year therefore being the darkest. To elevate your space, set up many colorful lights for a magical experience! If you have a space you can have open flame then:
Burn Scented Candles Either the magical ones you've made on the eve or some that you've bought! Winter scented candles really add charm to the space!
Sing! Song worship is a wonderful form of magic. You can sing spells or devote a song to your guides. Even if you don't have a song to sing then intoning is a great way to elevate the space. Intoning would be wonderful to warm up your vocal chords and energy with then you could pick a devotional song or even a carol to sing!
Offerings Your guides have been with you all year and the year (or sun) is going through it's period of rebirth. You can set aside offerings in gratitude for them. If you want to make it in theme with the holidays you can set aside something like milk and cookies! If your guides like something specific then of course offer that to them.
Winter Grounding Do some energy work on the first day of winter to center yourself and go within. Stand in the snow or on the cold hard ground and feel the cold electrify your senses as you ground with the earth. If cold is very much not your thing you can do energy work in your room with a sound bath using white noise tracks or meditative winter music. Put tumbled crystals like quartz, blue lace agate or angel aura quartz in the freezer until they're cold and make a grid on your body by placing one on your third eye, throat, chest, navel etc and meditate. Focus on taking in as much energy to reserve for the season.
Make a Merry Potion! As it's the darkest time of the year the mood can plummet. A personal potion of mine is a wonderful potpourri-like tea that can help boost your mood. It has dried rose hips , hibiscus petals and anise and Rhodiola rosea or rhodiola tincture. I would suggest getting a rhodiola tincture (you can purchase from wholefoods or online) and putting it in there. I swear by this plant and tincture, rhodiola has been a great plant ally to me especially to help cope with depression (it helps increase serotonin) but since I don’t know all the medical specifics you should consult it with your doctor if you are on something like antidepressants. It’s a semi known thing so your doctor would probably have good advice whether its safe for you to take it or not. Otherwise I have literally been spreading this tincture at work and have been seeing changes with my coworkers and my own mental health like it has helped me survive this far so I will be using it to survive winter.
TREAT YOSELF Winter is the season of resting. Make a potpourri-like hot bath with clementine slices, rose petals, epsom salt and anise stars. Be careful to not add something like cinnamon cause the oil can burn the nether regions. Also be careful with peppermint oil cause that can leave icy burns in the nether regions. If diluted properly the two could work but if you are not familiar with working with those oils I'd suggest leaving them out!

Evening

Celebratory Feast If you are alone you can make yourself a delicious winter stew! It will be fun to slow cook something meaty or rich and make the whole home smell great and bring anticipation for dinner! If you are looking for more elaborate dishes I love to use seasonal ingredients for every sabbat. Pine is an excellent flavor that pairs well with fish like salmon. Chestnut is divine either sweet or savory. Roots like potatoes, turnips and ginger are a must!
Blessings Since Yule to me is about generosity and unity I like to use the day to do helpful spells and send blessings to loved ones. Tip when you do a spell for someone: make sure it's something they ask for and truly need. For example if you know your friend has been struggling to find a job or money you can do a money spell for them. If your friend has wished in front of you to be able to move out into a safer place, you can put energy out towards that. However a bad example would be if you think your friend is miserable cause they are single and you do a love spell. That can end up in a disaster! Only do a spell on something you know they need. Otherwise just send a blessing of good energy towards your loved ones!

#Yule #solitary witch #witchcraft*#witches of tumblr #winter solstice #winter #magic #rituals #ritual #spell #spells #yuletide #solstice #witches #witchy #winter witch #pagan #solitary #blog yule

ofcloudsandstars

✧ .🍂Mabon Solitary Rituals🍂*✧

The Autumn equinox is near! As it's the equinox the day will be equal parts light and dark (perfect for the beginning of Libra season,) and as it's autumn in the northern hemisphere there will be leaves that are beginning to change and squirrels scurrying about. Autumn is such an important season of mine, it begins Libra season (I am a libra) and also according to the French Revolutionary Calendar, the season of wine. Libra season is one of fun, balance and harmony and that combined with autumn and the celebration of wine makes this the start to my favorite part of the year.

Autumn Equinox is not only the time to be grateful for all that you've earned during your hard work of the summer, and be grateful in general for the good that has occurred to you this year, but it's also a time of letting go. As we inch closer to Samhain, the time of death and transformation that leads to the new year, we should take time to reflect and see what needs to be shedded like falling leaves. The keyword to my rituals are Reflection. Reflect on what makes you grateful and reflect on what needs to be let go. I do have a personal correspondences post that might help explain why I also chose certain things listed below! (Also here is my personal tag.)

A lot of us witches practice alone and have our own solitary rituals for each sabbat that we observe (or the ones we’ve created just for ourselves that we observe alone!) Like any solitary eclectic witch I do things my own different way but some of these things might line up with others practices. I do refer to some of the equinoxes/solstices/crossquarters by their celtic sabbat names but I celebrate them in a secular animist way and treat the wheel of the year I celebrate as more of an argrarian cycle and celebrating nature. I use sabbat names as a point of reference and also people that do celebrate these witches sabbats more traditionally might find value in my personal practice!

Mabon Eve

Thursday September 21st 2017

Autumn Tea lights! First we all know autumn scented candles are the best, but for the autumn equinox festivities, making special autumn tealights is a must! Make Apple tealights, acorn tealights or squash tea lights (x) and decorate your altar with them or save them for the feast table tomorrow. Bonus: use scented autumn wax or natural beeswax and maybe top it with cinnamon or nutmeg!
Acorn charms for good luck! I would make these annually for my friends. Acorns represent prosperity and everytime the bell jingles its to hope it will bring you more prosperity for the rest of the remaining year!
Swap wardrobe clothing for your autumn clothes and put a sack of nice smelling herbs like cinnamon sticks in the corner of your warddrobe to make them smell nice.
If you enjoy wearing makeup take out all of your autumn shades of lipstick and eye make up and charge them with your tools of glamour like rose quartz, carnelian and good energy.
Dry fruits and herbs in an oven or dehydrator! Annually I love to make apple chips this time of year.
Enjoy snacks while doing crafts! Eat caramels, dried apple chips, nuts (like peanuts if you are not allergic. I like nuts to honor the squirrel and acorn season), maple sugar candies, sugar candied nuts, sweet corn bread, butterscotch candies. Also if you don't like nuts/can't eat them but want something acorn-like, make these donut acorns! Bonus if they are cinnamon sugar! (Or you can coat them in maple sugar glaze!)
If you love knitting this is a great time to begin a knitting project! Use knot magic to bind intent into your scarf to keep you warm in the cold seasons!
Celebrate the eve of Autumn with great fall beers and apple sausages at a local beer hall.
Preparing dishes Since tomorrow is a great autumn feast day, the evening would be fantastic to just cook autumn magic into the food of tomorrow. That also being said, Make Caramel Apples! I associate caramel apples with this holiday and candied coated apples with Halloween. Make a nice maple sugar caramel and top with sprinkles, cookie crumbles or enjoy on it’s own!
Decorate your Altar! Wipe your altar down with oils like cinnamon and cedar. Cover it in chrysanthemums, beautiful fallen leaves, carnival squash, mini pumpkins, and anything fall colored. Burn cinnamon and apple incense!
Go Star Gazing This time of the year is the best for star gazing. It probably has to do with the temperature at night being pleasantly cool and there being far less bugs. Spend a night under the stars especially since it will be the last night possible to do so before the weather cools!
Midnight Spell: Focus on what you would like to shed away from your life. This is a time that's great for letting go of what is no longer working for you in the previous year. As an activity I do like to collect dead and colorful leaves that have fallen and write in gold pen the things I want gone from my life. Over a flame I burn it to a crisp. If you can't have fire, this is equally as great if you can toss it out of a high window to let it 'fall away' (I'd suggest not writing anything on it though, just put the energy into it), or crushing it into powder and letting it blow away in the fall winds. Another spell I like to do is road opening. If you feel blocked and don't know what to shed away, this helps instead. I always like lighting a candle for road opening spells as it's similar to lighting a lantern on a path shrouded with darkness, but this can be understood as a leaf blower spell. Take a pile of leaves as clean as you can find them. (at least 10-20 is good enough). Take your favorite stack of tarot cards and shuffle them thinking about the obstacle that you can not overcome. Once you are done, the top card is what you must do. (Or any that jump out randomly). Take that advice card and put it under the pile of leaves. Envision the leaves as the many things that are cluttering your path. When you are ready, take a mighty blow and blow them away off the card! Acorn Spell I like to pick an acorn I am drawn to and think about the things I want to prosper. I use them as wealth spells. As I charge my things and do magic for the ritual, I also charge my acorns with positive intent. That night or the next morning I go to a nearby park (usually the same where I got the acorn) and bury it into the earth. As the acorn is a seed that will grow, so will what you wish to prosper in your life.

Mabon Day

Friday, September 22nd 2017

When you pick your clothes for this day, Either wear the most fall-tastic witchy outfit or wear the dark veil witchy outfit. Fall is officially the Season of the Witch sorry I don't make the rules. (I mean 365 days of the year is the season of the witch to me but like, fall is goth witch time). It's time for burgundy, brown and black lipsticks, heavy eyeshadow, black veils, velvets, boots, flocks of crows following you around as you shop for mini pumpkins. Little kids watching you in awe and believing in magic as you and your Raven companion go pick up Halloween candy.
Go Apple Picking! If you have the great privilege and opportunity to, this would be the most blessed day for apple picking. Being in the country side and picking apples is the most ideal way to spend Mabon Day. Make a tart with those apples for the feast or save them to make autumn apple cider for Samhain!
Take a Bike Ride or a Fall Hike! Autumn is an airy season for me and the winds are playful, give life to dead leaves and howl wildly in the night. I love to spend autumn biking and feeling one with the streams of air. Go on a ride and collect the beautiful leaves you see! If you don’t have a bike, taking a hike would be just as rewarding especially in a trail in the mountains!
Drink spiced autumn drinks and be grateful for the past year and the season to come! Enjoy a nice hot apple cider, spiced autumn mulled wine, a spiced chai tea or even a pumpkin spiced Latte (YEAH I SAID IT) don’t let anyone take your autumn festiveness away from you!
Eat seasonal fruits and vegetables! APPLES! Plums! Grapes! Squash! Yams! Offer some back to nature to show gratitude!
Plant bulbs in the garden for next spring! You should try to harvest what you can from your garden and pickle your produce and dry your herbs but if you want some things to pop up in the spring, now is the time to plan before your garden goes to rest!
Make Apple bird feeders!
If you have the opportunity to, tour a winery or a beer garden! Not all of us might have the time to go on a hike or apple picking, yet it is wine and autumn beer season so a nice outing to a brewery will be equally as festive!
Charge yourself in the cool autumn winds! Whistle with the whispering winds, release intentions into them. Find a cool and clean place where you won’t be disturbed to center yourself and allow their energy to flow around you. Feel free as the birds flying south.

Evening

Celebratory Dinner The feast is the most important part. This holiday is often compared to Thanksgiving because its an autumn feast that has a focus on gratitude yet this is gratitude for what the earth has given for the harvest and your hard work (and not stealing land from other people) and if you are lucky enough to celebrate it with those that share your practice, you should go around the table to say the things that you are blessed for this year passed and toast each one to hot spiced cider. Let the loving warmth engulf you as you drink it and reflect on the good that has become of you this year. One year I made a fantasy feast for each sabbat and this is a recipe post for Mabon.
Make sure to remember to make a plate for any entities you like to work with. Leave something nice for your ancestors, or the spirits of nature outside. Anything you have left over like organic waste, apple peels, squash string, put it in compost to give back to the earth when the time comes.
For your friends and loved ones that you are grateful for in life, make sure to leave them a little message by text, phone call or social media to let them know how much you appreciate them.

#mabon #autumn equinox #solitary witch #solitary mabon #autumn #fall #magic #witchcraft*#witches of tumblr #blog mabon #long post #rituals #spells

ofcloudsandstars reblogged

Valfré

#this makes me laugh for some reason #I love it #rituals #vday queue

ofcloudsandstars

Transitions between the Wheel (For the four seasons)

This is from my personal practice with observing the wheel of the year and my focus on each transition between the sabbats. I honor the current seasons in between. Each transition has it's importance to self care and managing the home and garden. I will probably add to this later cause some paragraphs I wrote I feel like are a bit vague. Some of these transitions are not meant to be 100% literal and static but I feel like they are good areas to focus on for that moment in the year.

Yule->Imbolc Resting

During the thick of winter when it's too cold to do anything and always dark, it's the perfect moment in the year to rest. The focus is on relaxing, taking extra time to sleep and care for the body especially to not get sick. Winter is also 'spa' season because the air is so dry and harsh it's a good time to soak in hot baths and scrub away dead skin and moisturize with protective lotion. Do not try to make new plans, yet sit home, rest and reflect.

Imbolc -> Ostara Cleansing

When winter thaws it’s a great time to clean the home and prepare for spring. Personally, I also like to do a body cleanse since I tend to eat a lot of processed (yet delicious ;-;) foods all year round. This also makes up for all the heavy foods I've been eating since Summer (all the BBQs) to Winter comfort foods. As I clean the home and get rid of stuff that has accumulated over the year, I clean the body. Also the focus is on cleaning the home as well. Breathing in the same air, especially if its full of dust, is really unhealthy and it's good as the days are getting a little warmer to open up the windows for a few minutes to allow in fresh air to circulate. This is also the time of year I throw out old furniture, accumulated things and rearrange furniture in the room as well.

Ostara -> Beltane Sowing

Spring is a great time to germinate sprouts along with other seeds and clean the backyard or garden to grow plants. If you like to compost it's a time to start mixing in the vegetable/fruit/plant scraps with the soil. Spring is also a great time to sow bigger changes in life as well. Something about the warm new season brings an air of flirtatiousness and ‘socialness’ that makes it perfect for making new friends or finding a partner. (Probably because people can finally come out of hibernation). It's also a fantastic time to work on your image and portfolio and apply for long term jobs that begin in the summer or fall. Spring is the season for new beginnings and putting long term plans into action.

Beltane -> Litha Growing

A tradition I like to do on Beltane is repotting of plants and gardening. Repotting plants is a tradition I try to focus on every year because it's very easy for house plants to die due to dead soil. Plus it makes the inside of the house super vibrant and lively to have fresh new soil in pots. From this point to summer solstice is the point of growth. Growth in the garden but also growth of personal goals. May and June feel like hectic months where there are so many events and opportunities to advance your work or change your social scene, that if I am not personally progressing, I focus all of my attention on my growth.

Litha -> Lughnasadh Thriving

Its the heat of summer! It's time to get out and feel the intense hot energy and use its power to focus on goals and networking! Where I am there's usually an exciting event every week where it's an opportunity to make more connections and meet more friends but also since its warm and nature is so vibrant it's time to take some days to relax and get away to enjoy the heat and life of nature. Go to the beach, go hiking, swim in a lake, sleep under the stars. Be active since the efforts will pay off.

Lughnasadh -> Mabon Reaping

This is the time you earn what you've sowed both literally and metaphorically. If you have a garden its the time it will start giving back. If you are an active goer of a farmers market you will notice how beautifully abundant the stands are. If in Spring you've sent out tons of job applications, and in Summer got the job you've wanted and worked hard, then by now you should start seeing some results. If there are no results being seen it's a time for reflection and re-strategizing. There is a second chance in this time to start again before the cold and the holiday season bulldozes through.

Mabon -> Samhain Harvesting/Gathering

This is the time to gather and harvest. Usually family tends to gather now since it's the holiday season. There’s not much other than gathering to be done since family and holidays are bombarding you from all sides. Also there is an abundance of food. This is great to store for the next transition which is

Samhain -> Yule Preparation

This is the moment to prepare for winter. My warddrobe completely changes here, I take up knitting projects that were abandoned last Imbolc, and I store food and herbs for the winter to use. Also making preserves from things in the garden or hand knitting clothes make great presents for the winter holidays. This is also a time to prepare the garden for hibernation. Take in potted plants, harvest the last of the herbs and food (that are not potted). Make sure plants you do not want to die have a place to chill in the house.

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Quick things to do to celebrate Imbolc

✧ *.🐇Ostara Solitary Rituals🐇*✧

Spring Equinox’s Eve

Ostara Day

✧ *.🎄Yule Solitary Rituals🎄*✧

Winter Solstice’s Eve

Yule Day

✧ *.🎃Samhain Solitary Rituals🎃*✧

Hallow’s Eve

Samhain Day

✧ . 🌸Beltane Solitary Rituals🌸 *✧

Spring Crossquarter’s Eve

Spring Crossquarter's Day

✧ *. 🕯️Imbolc Solitary Rituals 🕯️*✧

Imbolc's Eve

Imbolc Day

✧ *.🎄Yule Solitary Rituals🎄*✧

Winter Solstice's Eve

Yule Day

✧ .🍂Mabon Solitary Rituals🍂*✧

Mabon Eve

Mabon Day

Evening

✧ .🐇Ostara Solitary Rituals🐇✧

✧ .🎄Yule Solitary Rituals🎄✧

✧ .🎃Samhain Solitary Rituals🎃✧

✧ . 🕯️Imbolc Solitary Rituals 🕯️✧

✧ .🎄Yule Solitary Rituals🎄✧