Colored Eggs

Spring Equinox is the mid-point of the waxing year, the nights and days are balanced.  Decorated eggs have always been symbols of fertility.  In Europe in the past, gifts of decorated eggs were given to new brides, in hopes they would bear many children or bowls full of eggs were given to the field-workers by the farmer’s wife, to insure a rich harvest.  Many cultures see the egg as a symbol of Life, or the actual home of the soul.  The egg is the symbol of all good fortune in Russia and decorated eggs are still given as gifts to loved ones and buried in graves to insure rebirth. 

In the Ukraine each color applied to the decorated eggs had meaning to villagers. 

White	Purity
Yellow	Wisdom, a successful Harvest, or Spirituality
Green	Spring, rebirth, wealth, youth, growth, happiness
Blue	Good health, clear skies
Orange	Power, endurance, ambition
Red	Happiness, hope, passion, nobility, bravery, enthusiasm, love
Brown	Enrichment, good harvest, happiness
Purple	Faith, trust, power
Pink	Success
Black	Remembrance

 

Start with cool hard-boiled eggs.  Whether you use store dye or natural dye - it is dye.  Use newspaper to protect your table, gloves to protect skin or other items for easy cleanup later.  If you’re using a store-bought kit, simply follow the instructions on the package.   

The kids can color their eggs with crayons while the adults chopped, juiced and prepped the dye.  Stickers or rubber bands could also be used to create a fun design.

Some all natural options for dyeing eggs include: red, purple or yellow onion skins, red cabbage, blueberries, yellow apples peels, paprika, carrots and grape juice. 

If you’re using a dark-colored juice like grape or blueberry, simply add a splash of white or apple cider vinegar, perhaps some water if you need a larger quantity of dye and soak the eggs in it.

To Make Blue

Ingredients
1 pound frozen blueberries (about 3½ cups)
2 cups water
1 tablespoon vinegar

Directions
1. On the stovetop, bring frozen blueberries and water to a boil in a pot. Boil for 5 minutes.
2. Pour colored liquid into a cup or bowl, straining out the blueberries with a strainer.
3. Stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice.

Other options like the onion skins, cabbage, apple peels or carrots need to be boiled for 20 minutes with 1-2 cups of water to concentrate the color, then add vinegar after mixture is removed from heat.

To Make Orange

Ingredients
2 tablespoons paprika
2 cups water
1 tablespoon vinegar

Directions
1. On the stovetop, bring paprika and water to a boil in a pot. Boil for 5 minutes.
2. Pour colored liquid into a cup or bowl.
3. Stir in 1 tablespoon vinegar.

 

The eggs are left to soak for about an hour, but 30 minutes should be good.  Gently rinse the eggs to remove excess dye and film.

 

Lavender    Small Quantity of Purple Grape Juice, Violet Blossoms plus 2 tsp Lemon Juice, Red Zinger Tea   

 

Blue    Canned Blueberries, Red Cabbage Leaves (boiled), Purple Grape Juice

Yellow    Orange or Lemon Peels (boiled), Carrot Tops (boiled), Celery Seed (boiled), Ground, Cumin (boiled), Ground Turmeric (boiled), Chamomile Tea, Green Tea

 
Brown    Strong Coffee, Instant Coffee, Black Walnut Shells (boiled), Black Tea

Orange    Yellow Onion Skins (boiled), Cooked Carrots, Chili Powder, Paprika

Green    Spinach Leaves (boiled), Liquid Chlorophyll

Red    Red Onions Skins (boiled), Canned Cherries with Juice, Pomegranate Juice, Raspberries
 

Have Fun!

Colored Eggs

Earth Day

Spring Blessed

Spring Equinox

 

Spring Equinox

Spring has finally arrived! March has roared in like a lion, and if we're really lucky, it will roll out like a lamb.  Meanwhile, on or around the 21st of the month, we have Ostara to celebrate. It's the time of the Spring Equinox if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, and it's a true marker that Spring has come.

The word Ostara is just one of the names applied to the celebration of the spring equinox on March 21.  The Venerable Bede said the origin of the word is actually from Eostre, a Germanic goddess of spring. Of course, it's also the same time as the Christian Easter celebration, and in the Jewish faith, Passover takes place as well.  For early Pagans in the Germanic countries, this was a time to celebrate planting and the new crop season.

Beltane and Spring Equinox honor the God as Man, holding His rightful place in the sky as the waxing Sun.  He is King among the deer herds, and the Goddess has taken Him as Her rightful consort once more.  Seeds have been planted and the Goddess is becoming a Mother once again. 

Today many honor Frigg, Freya and Nerthus. Libations of mead are poured onto the Earth.  Ostara celebrates the coming of spring and return of life after the dead of winter.  Many Americans follow the tradition of coloring hard-boiled eggs and giving baskets of candy.  The Easter Bunny is a popular legendary anthropomorphic Easter gift-giving character analogous to Santa Claus in American culture.

Depending on your particular tradition, there are many different ways you can celebrate Ostara, but typically it is observed as a time to mark the coming of Spring and the fertility of the land.  By watching agricultural changes - such as the ground becoming warmer, and the emergence of plants from the ground - you'll know exactly how you should welcome the season.  To celebrate Spring Equinox some Pagans carry out particular rituals. For instance a woman and a man are chosen to act out the roles of Spring God and Goddess, playing out courtship and symbolically planting seeds.  Egg races, egg hunts, egg eating and egg painting are also traditional activities at this time of year.

Eggs

Eggs represent new life and new potential, thus they are often used as symbols of Spring festivals.  According to folklore, eggs easily balance on their ends during equinox.  Eggs are often colored and covered with symbols that represent wisdom, strength, and fertility.  Eggs are often given as gifts or charms to children or other loved ones during the festivals.

 

Get Outside

Get outside for a walk and picnic.  This is the time to run wild like the March Hare!  Gather together a group of friends to celebrate the first signs of spring.  You could even nurture Mother Earth by organizing a litter-pick.  Then settle down on a grassy knoll somewhere to enjoy a delicious picnic of joyful spring food: green leaves, devilled eggs, seeds/grains like couscous or quinoa, and pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

 

Honor the Birds

On Ostara, you might want to clean the hair out of the family hairbrushes and put it out for the birds to use as nesting material.  When you do, send loving thoughts to the birds that will use your hair to make their homes.

 

Garden Blessing for Ostara

The earth is cool and dark,
and far below, new life begins.
May the soil be blessed with fertility and abundance,
with rains of life-giving water,
with the heat of the sun,
with the energy of the raw earth.
May the soil be blessed
as the womb of the land becomes full and fruitful
to bring forth the garden anew.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Kl5tfsFT4

Colored Eggs

Earth Day

Spring Blessed

Spring Equinox

 

The inherent worth and Dignity of every being.

 

Sage God

Many Pagans prefer to use a gender free word such as 'Spirit', but they do have a worship of God.  For me, I use 'Divine Friends'.  To Wiccans, the God is only half of the Divine.  The other half is the Goddess.  And like the Goddess, the God also goes through stages: Warrior, Father and Sage.

The Sage represents discretion and reasoning.  The status of the sage was traditionally achieved in a man's later years and/or when he became a grandfather.  He has gone through a long passage and he no longer has the ego-based needs of recognition through performance and success.  He is free to accomplish and contribute for the sake of beauty and inner purpose.  He advises and loves all his children and will retaliate quickly if they are harmed.  He oversees the underworld, destiny, death, resurrection, and justice. 

The wisdom and understanding that is garnered from a lifetime of experience helps him understand that things always change.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.  Life is a cycle and what he has changed for the better will remain, but a short while. 

Like the Crone, his concerns extend beyond the physical world and involve the process of transformation, assimilation of knowledge, and movement between the various levels of existence.  The sage holds his wisdom in the gentle way that honors all life.

This is man at his wisest and calmest.  Long gone are the days of do first think later that were the keystone to Youth, instead the God has become a thinker, a philosopher, and often a magician.  This is the Grandfather of the World, The Old Man in the Mountain, Owen ap Urien, Horus, Thoth.

The mythological elder God, known as the Holly King, who battles with the Oak King is one version of the sage archetype.  Truthfully, the sage could win this battle with his wits if he so chooses.  Nonetheless, he allows himself to lose so that the Wheel of Life will keep turning. 

 

Buri is the God formed by the cow Audumla licking the ice which collected within Ginnungagap.  He is the father of Bor, and thus the Grandfather of Odin, Ve and Vili.  Buri is the progenitor of all the Race of Gods.  Buri was formed out of the solidification of primal matter, potential and energy.

 

Mimir, being a particularly wise deity, was the counselor of the Gods.  He owned a well, the Mimisbrunnr, the water of which granted wisdom and the power to see into the future. Odin sacrificed one of his eyes for a drink from the Mimisbrunnr.

 

·        Holly, mandrake, pine, juniper, mistletoe, nightshade, nuts, oak, moss, wintergreen, ginseng; also dried or withered plants

·        The hours from sunset to dawn

·        Autumn into winter

·        The waning moon

 

I, the sage, speaks to you from my soul.  I live the truth, which the warrior conquered.  My power is balanced by my wisdom and love.  I am the alpha and the omega.  Join me.  Together we can know truth!

 

http://www.pagannews.com/cgi-bin/articles1.pl?40

http://www.mysticmooncoven.org/wicca.htm

Divine Friends

 

Father God

There are literally hundreds of Goddesses and just as many Gods from a multitude of pantheons; each has a different name and a different specialty associated with them. They are called by many generic names, Earth Mother and Sky Father, the Lord and the Lady, or just the God and Goddess, but whatever names you choose to call them by, they are equally important.  Each is as necessary as the other and together, they create the balance and energy essential for all living things.  It is often said that all Gods are one God and all Goddesses are one Goddess and, together, the God & Goddess are One.

Like the Goddess, the God also goes through stages, The Triple God: Warrior, Father and Sage.

The Father represents security and wisdom, devotion and Spirit, and growth.  He is usually mated and is virile and productive.  It is the time when men are taking on the responsibilities of adulthood.  They are gathering experiences and gaining wisdom from the lessons of life.  Historically, a man entered the father phase when he had a child, became a leader in the community, or gave birth to new concepts or ideas.  This aspect of the Divine Masculine represents strength, power, authority, leadership ability, protection, responsibility, and courage.  He is viewed as the warrior king in some cultures, the wise ruler in others.  In modern Western society, he could be seen as the capable corporate executive.

With middle age comes responsibility and with responsibility comes duty.  Now the man understands many things the youth did not.  He still desires to change it for the better, but will work from his own house, his own family - making things better for the ones he loves and cares for.

The Father God in some early cultures oversaw the crafts, such as those of the smiths who were regarded as magic workers in their own right.  Hephaestus, originally a fire God in Lycia and Asia Minor, eventually became the God of craftspeople in Greece.  He earned this reputation by constructing palaces for the Gods and fashioning Zeus's thunderbolts.  This creative aspect of the Father can also be seen in the figure of Bahloo, the Australian aborigine All-Father, whose job was to create all animals and people with his consort.
 

He is the Green Man, The Son God, Lord of the Hunt or Oak King.  The God becomes Man.  He takes a wife.  He grows up and sheds a good portion of his youthful way.  His arrogance is honed into self confidence and he becomes what he was meant to be.  The face of the Lord is in the face of every man and each of them has a different craft.  Bel, Apollo, Mithra, Kai, Hymen, Odin and many others.  It is in this aspect that the Lord is worshiped most.

 

Njord is one of the Vanir and the God of seamanship and sailing.  He is the father of Freyr and Freya.  The King of the Vanir Gods, Njord was directly responsible for bringing the primeval war between the Gods to an end, and in establishing peace between the two tribes.  Down through the ages, Heathens have remembered him for this monumental feat, and to this day, still call upon him for peace.

 

Odin ('All-father') was a shape shifter and frequently roamed the world in disguise.  One of his favorite manifestations was that of a one-eyed old man; in the Norse Eddas, the one-eyed man appears regularly as a bringer of wisdom and knowledge to heroes.  He pops up in everything from the saga of the Volsungs to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.  He was typically accompanied by a pack of wolves and ravens and rode on a magic horse named Sleipnir.

 

·        Apple, pomegranate, peach, raspberry, strawberry, red clover, red rose, mint, iris, jasmine, cinnamon, parsley, daisy, myrtle, orchid, saffron

·        The afternoon hours, from noon to sunset

·        Summer through the harvest season

·        The full moon

 

I, the father, speaks to you from my heart.  I support and protect the children of the Earth and the child within myself.  I seek the love of a woman to open my heart and embrace my seed.  Join me.  Together we can create a new world!

 

http://www.angelfire.com/nc/5s/gods.html

http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/godsandgoddesses/a/Celebrating-The-Sacred-Masculine.htm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyjiXfvikWk

 

Divine Friends

Odin

Father's Day

Warrior God

Most belief systems encourage their followers to believe in God, but only God and only one (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism).  Even some of the Pagan traditions lean so heavily toward the God that a Goddess is almost never mentioned (Asatru) and some Pagan traditions follow strictly Goddess worship so the God is hardly ever mentioned (Wicca). 

As Pagans, our belief in a God and a Goddess is part of what separates us from other Spiritual paths.  One of the other things that sets us apart is the way we view our relationship to our deities.  We do not grovel to them, tell them we are unworthy of their attention, and then ask them to fix all the problems in our lives.  Instead, we work with them, as partners, to improve the parts of our lives that need improving. We honor and love them, of course, but we are not required to sacrifice our dignity simply to gain their attention.

Like the Goddess, the God also goes through stages: Warrior, Father and Sage.

The Warrior represents youth and vigor, hope and vitality, and the thrill of the hunt.  The warrior phase usually begins at puberty and can extend physiologically into adulthood.  Historically, the warrior was considered to be the son until he left the home and could stand on his own.  He is not mated yet and is at the peak of his sexual drive.  He signifies naiveté, daring, a sense of adventure, vitality, action, exuberance, and freedom.  The ancient Egyptians expressed this archetype as Horus, who flies through the sky freely, with the sun in one eye and the moon in the other.

Full of the impetuosity and arrogance of youth, this one seeks to strike out upon their path and nothing will stand in their way.  They are unstoppable.  Life will open up before them and bow down in their wake.  They are the soldiers of destiny that will hold the previous generations accountable for their misdeeds.

The Horned God that witches honor also symbolizes this facet of the Divine Masculine.  His wildness, sensuality, and passion make him brashly attractive.  This deity expresses the connection to nature as well, and to all the primal magic therein.  He is the God of the police officer, the military, security guards, and those who protect.  He teaches us the importance of responsibility and self-respect.

 

In Germanic mythology and religion, Thor is the God of thunder. He is typically portrayed as red-headed and bearded, and carrying Mjolnir, a magical hammer. Depictions of Mjolnir became popular adornment for warriors during the age of the Vikings, and it is still seen today among adherents of some forms of Norse Paganism.

 

In Norse legend, Tyr (Tiw) is the God of one-on-one combat. He is a warrior, and a God of heroic victory and triumph. Interestingly, he is portrayed as having only one hand. He appears in the Prose Edda as the son of Odin, but as Hymir's child in the Poetic Edda.

 

·        The chaste tree, meadowsweet, lemongrass, white rose, hyacinth, narcissus, crocus, apple blossoms, peach blossoms, lilac, gardenia

·        The morning hours of the day, from dawn until noon

·        The spring months

·        The waxing moon

 

I, the warrior, speaks to you from my Spirit.  I hold the sword of truth and wear the crown of courage.  I fight the dragons of the world and within myself to find the treasures of life.  Join me.  Together we will conquer fear!

 

 

http://www.angelfire.com/nc/5s/gods.html

http://thewiccalife.blogspot.com/2011/05/honoring-triple-god.html

Divine Friends

Tyr

Thor