Archive for sacred days

New Products!

October 12, 2011 Catriona business, pagan, rituals, sacred days, special

Just in time for Halloween we’ve added a lot of new ritual supplies to our store!.
We now have incense burners, smudge sticks, athame, brooms, mortar & pestles and the all important CAULDRONS!

We have several new teas in the shop as well: Arthritis Fibro Relief made with damiana and feverfew, and the eagerly awaited and very yummy Signature Blend Black tea which has pomegranate and hibiscus flower in it. Hibiscus is great in teas at this time of year given it’s chock full of vitamin C to help stave off those fall colds. Soon we’ll be adding a new relaxing tea blend of chamomile and mint and a new take on our Calendula tea which also involves that wonderful hibiscus flower.

Stop by the store and get what you need! Remember to use the coupon code SAMHAIN to get 12% off your order valid only through Samhain itself!

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Ostara: Goddess and Festival

March 25, 2010 Catriona green things, sacred days

Ostara as a festival has just passed, it celebrates the Spring Equinox, the 21st of March and secularly is known as Easter which is this year on April 4th.

It is a time to celebrate the changing of the seasons, the fresh warmth of spring and a time to begin planting crops and thus celebrate new life.

Ostara’s month is considered to be April, so I feel it is appropriate to write about her as April is coming soon. She is primarily connected to fertility, prosperity and growth. So, the idea of preparing our garden for fresh herbs has definite appeal. However there is a great amount of dispute as to whether Ostara or Eostre as a Goddess truly exists there are lots of similar tales about her as is written here but she does not appear in the Eddas so is not technically a Norse Goddess, however her origins are said to be Germanic Pagan.

Looking more deeply into the Edda and Norse mythology Idun, wife of Bragi might be considered as a Goddess of spring. Her areas are credited as spring and rejuvenation. She is keeper of the magic apples of immortality which the gods must eat to preserve their youth.

Many consider Ostara to be a good time of year to rededicate yourself to the Gods and Goddesses, which is definitely something that I’m planning to do once the timing feels appropriate.

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Blessed Imbolc

February 2, 2010 Catriona green things, health and wellness, home blessings, sacred days

I hope everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is having a great Imbolc.

So far we don’t have any great plans for the festival, but I have a feeling that it will be a good time to light our protection totem in the house for the first time given it’s been too damp over the past few days for us to be able to do a fire outside and have some ‘ceremonial’ marshmallows. We do have some sparklers left from New Year perhaps we can use those.

Imbolc is traditionally a festival of light, symbolizing the warming of the weather and the greater power of the sun over the next few months. For many, particularly the Celts the festival is associated with Brigid who is the goddess of poetry and healing. She’s also associated with holy wells and scared flames.

She has several traditions associated with her, in many homes girls and young, unmarried women would create a corn dolly in Brigid’s honor and adorn it with ribbons and other trinkets. Then they would lay her in a special bed and stay up all night with her. It’s also a tradition to lay out a piece of clothing or strip of cloth outside of the house for Brigid to bless so that they would have powers of healing and protection.

So, look forward to the nurturing warmth of the sun in coming months, and plan what you’re going to plant once the season is right. We have a lot of seeds we bought last year that weren’t at the appropriate season for planting when we bought them but which should still be good, so we’ll be working out where we can plant those this year in the hopes we can have a strong harvest. We lost a lot of our lettuce because we didn’t have enough space to plant it and it quickly ran out of nutrients in the small soil dots that we got as a ‘starter tray’ so we best have better plans for this year. I’m looking forward to a lot of fresh produce from our own garden.

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Lammas Approaches

August 5, 2009 Catriona sacred days

Lammas was technically August 1st but is astrologically this Saturday and we’re going to celebrate a little then. We don’t have any handfastings to do but if anyone is getting married this is an auspicious time because Lammas (or Lughnasadh) is associated with the bounty of harvest.

It’s a harvest festival which celebrates the sun’s reign over the summer, yet at the same time the urgency of preparation for the winter months when the harvest is done and the fields are in hibernation until the next spring.

One of the main celebrations for Lammas is making corn dollies. We’ve just recently cut our grass so I think I may make some “grass” dollies that we can burn on a fire this weekend and have a cook out, and invite some friends over.

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