Imbolc is a sabbat which some celebrate to welcome the Celtic goddess Brighid, a deity of fire and fertility. Imbolc can also be celebrated as winter gradually coming to a close with the days getting longer, and the seasonal and agricultural implications of that. Either way, it is a festival of light and new beginnings, and is celebrated with fire and joy.
Before Imbolc – A time for resting
Do not make new plans
Sleep as much as possible
Take care of your body
Take hot baths and moisturize your skin
Arts & Crafts
Brighid rules art and creativity – do anything artistic! Your creative skills are at a peak this time of year. If you’ve been in a rut, now is a good time to do some self-cleansing and bring yourself out of it.
Decorate a candle with spring leaves and flowers
Make a Brighid’s bed
Make a Brighid’s cross
Make a Brighid mantle out of a green cloth long enough to wrap around your shoulders. Leave it on your doorstep on the night of Imbolc and Brighid will bless it for you. In the morning, wrap yourself in the mantle to feel her healing energy.
Make Brighid wheels and hang them on or above your door
Make a corn doll
Make a priapic (acorn-tipped) wand
Make a sun-catcher
Make ice candles
Make paper snowflakes and hang them around your home
Write a poem about spring
Cleaning & Cleansing
Clean off your altar and redo it
Clean your home
Consecrate tools that will be consumed throughout the year (candles, incense, ritual tools, etc. that you plant to use for spell casting)
Consecrate your agricultural tools
If you do not feel ready to charge or consecrate your own tools, leave them with an offering in a windowsill to be blessed by your deity overnight
Rearrange the furniture in your home.
Refresh any crystal grids or salt lines around your home.
Cooking
Make braided bread
Make your own butter
Use milk in your cooking to represent spring lambing
Decorating
Place a besom at the front door to symbolize purification and cleansing
Put a grain effigy and a phallic wand in a basket next to the hearth or candles at night to welcome Brighid
Remove Yuletide greens and burn or dispose of them (make sure your greens are safe to burn and always practice fire safety)
Spell-casting & Divination
Dip a ribbon into a natural body of water (or moon water, if there is no natural water near you) and tie it to a branch in your yard to welcome hope and healing
Dismantle old spells (jars, talismans, etc) and use what remains to charge new spells. The recycled energy will make the new spells even stronger.
Explore some love or fertility magic
Healing spells are extra powerful this month. Before or during Imbolc when the moon is waning, take time to banish or release any illnesses affecting your or your loved ones. Afterwards, when the moon is waxing, perform spells to draw in healing energies.
Practice lithomancy
Take time to focus on divination and increasing your own magical abilities
Use your priapic wand in your garden to awaken trees and plants from their winter slumber
Other Activities
Go out to a local park or forest and pick up litter to help make way for new spring growth
Light candles in your garden to purify and invigorate them for the coming growing season
Pour some milk onto the earth as an offering and ask that the coming year brings you what you need
Prepare homemade remedies to use through the rest of the year
Put out bread, milk, grains and/or seeds for Brighid on Her eve
Visit a lake, stream or other body of water and go for a swim (or meditate if it’s too cold for that!)
Welcome the sun by lighting a candle (or all your candles!) at sunrise and/or sunset
Yule is celebrated on the Winter Solstice and celebrates the return of the sun!
☃️ Bake and cook for friends and family! Bless (with consent) the baked goods with the intent of prosperity and happiness and give your loved ones a delicious treat! You can try out wassail or mini Yule log cakes if you really want to get festive.
☃️ Decorate the home or an altar with mistletoe, holly, fairy lights, a Yule log, and a lovely homemade wreath! It will give your home or altar a touch of festivity.
☃️ Divine your future to see what the next year holds for you! Gather some advice from your tarot cards, stones, bones, ravioli, and whatnot to see how bright the next year can be for you!
☃️ Take some time to do spells of peace, introspection, wishing, and new beginnings. If you know other witches, you can all try to do a spell together!
☃️ Write in your grimoire or book and reflect on the past year and its magical happenings. Write down goals that you want to achieve by the end of the year and for the upcoming year. Bless the page with motivation and love!
☃️ Volunteer and give back! If you have the time and energy, give back to your community. You can volunteer at a soup kitchen and bless food, donate old and unnecessary items and bless them, and so much more!
☃️ Create a Yule log and burn it in honor of the sun! Keep it around as a decoration for a while though since Yule logs are really pretty. You can keep it on an altar or dining room table!
☃️ Give gifts to your loved ones! Gifts don’t have to be extravagant. They can be as simple as blessed cookies, a spell bottle, or even a sigil. Of course, if you want to give someone a TV, then go ahead!
☃️ Build a fire with your loved ones and do some storytelling! This is especially great with kids. You can roast marshmallows over the fire and share stories, fiction or not, with your friends and family!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! For many Witches, that is… Samhain is the holiday which follows Mabon (another wonderfully welcoming Autumn Sabbat)! It is during this time in which the veil is thinnest, sparking an aura of mystery in the air. The atmosphere is filled with exciting and potent energies; invoking inspiration, gratitude, and the desire for deep inner change. Honor those who have passed by creating an altar dedicated to Samhain!
Ideas for Objects:
✨ Colors: Oranges, reds, golds, blacks, yellows, and browns. Incorporate these colors into the candles, leaves, statues, stones, photos, fabrics, or flowers you use!
✨ Candles: Try scents that go with the season; like pumpkin spice, apple, and cinnamon, just to name a few. ~ 🙂
✨ Incense: Choose scents that invoke mysterious and warming vibes, such an Myrhh, Frankincense, or Potchouli. Oils work just as well, too!
✨ Crystals: Smoky quartz, black obsidian, amber, clear quartz, and ruby are just a few wonderful options to consider for stones!
✨ Divination Objects: Acknowledge the cycle of life and death by displaying your most loved divination tools/photos of these tools! This may include pendulums, ouija boards or planchettes, tarot cards or decks, a scrying mirror, or runes.
✨ Imagery: Skulls and skeletons should be the obvious choices! Many Witches like to decorate for their Samhain celebrations by displaying them and other Halloween staples – ghosts, witches, and black cats! Try also to incorporate feathers and/or bones/horns (if real, than gathered humanely/from beings who died of natural causes).
✨ Nature: Bring the outside, inside! Gather fallen leaves and sticks, and put together or purchase a bouquet filled with colors of the season. (Fake plants and leaves work perfectly, also)!
✨ Food: Leave offerings for those who have passed. A basket of apples, gourds, corn, nuts, and pumpkins is a wonderful idea, as is a special goblet of wine or freshly-baked bread.
✨ Deities: If you worship dieties, why not incorporate them into your sacred space? Add statues or photos of Gods and Goddesses such as Hecate, Hades, Anubis, and Freya!
✨ Sentimental Things: If you choose to honor specific fallen family members or friends, think about getting a little sentimental! Include photos of them, notes or letters, special objects they loved, or their favourite foods. If you do not have any of these things, consider playing some of their favourite music or writing them a letter and placing it somewhere special in your altar. 💛
Hoping that this guide is useful to those who plan on celebrating! Have a wonderful Halloween/Dia De Los Muertos/Samhain, and stay witchy! 🍂
Carve a pumpkin and empower it to repel negativity or to protect the home
Build a shrine to your ancestors
Add divination to your ritual
Drink apple cider warmed and spiced with cinnamon to honor the dead
Research your family history and write a tribute to them to include in your ritual
Set a place at the dinner table for the recently deceased
Place small carved pumpkins at the four quarters
Visit cemetery and place flowers on the graves of your loved ones
Make a spirit candle.(White candle anointed with patchouli oil. Say:”with this candle and by its light, I welcome you spirits this Samhain night.” Place it inside jack o’lantern. This may be included in Ritual, or done separately.)
Make resolutions and burn in a candle flame. This is not the same as ridding yourself of bad habits, but is more like New Years resolutions, as for many Samhain is the New Year.
With the happy, chaotic vibes of summer coming to a close, we welcome in the more introspective part of the year. It is a time to withdraw, to cleanse, to give thanks for what we have grown in the year and prepare that which we are ready to discard on the Feast of Ashes in October.
Often this is a time to gather with those you care about, or simply revel in your love of self and reflect on the dropping temperatures and changing leaves. The bounty of the late summer garden gives way to roots and gourds and the last of the herb garden offerings.
Like the Spring Equinox, this period marks a time of equal day and night, making it a good time for magic that relates to reining in bad habits, finding peace in a busy lifestyle, or bringing harmony to a household in strife. Unlike the Spring Equinox, however, which focuses on bringing balance to restore energy and vigor for growth the Autumnal Equinox welcomes you to bring balance for a proper rest. It’s energy asks you to appreciate everything you have done, big or small, and prepare for the darker half of the year by gathering up all of your grief, fear, anxiety and exhaustion in bundles before you so you can be ready to let them go. For we cannot release what we do not need if you don’’t first examine what we have and who we are.
I will share with you some of my traditions for this time of year, to give you an idea of the kind of productive magical and mundane work you can do to prepare yourself for the waning light. As someone with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), I find that my transition into Fall is very important to my mental health as it reminds me to let go of what I cannot control.
Some good Autumnal Equinox traditions:
🍁 Just like Spring Cleaning, you can do some Fall Cleaning and prepping your house for the colder months. Put out your cold weather clothes (if appropriate for the time) and go through your warm weather things to bag up what doesn’t fit anymore or is unwanted anymore to give to secondhand stores or repurpose into other things (old t-shirts make nice dusting clothes~!), check windows for drafts, clean the fireplace and chimney if you have one, polish up your kitchen and pantry, sweep and mop floors and reset any wards or protection magics you have on your space.
🍁 If you are so inclined, the first day of Fall is a perfect day to decorate for Halloween and for the season! You can make a ritual out of it like I do by sipping hot apple cider and playing some spooky or seasonally associated music (I tend to gravitate toward richer, warmer folk music around this time of year!)
🍁 This is the second harvest holiday, and I personally strongly link this time of year to apples, so you could go apple picking and afterwards make an apple ie charmed to bring peace and happiness to those who eat it! Or if you picked a lot of apples make a happiness applesauce! You can also slice up apples and cook them in the oven to make apple chips for teas or just to snack on.
🍁 If you are looking to bring balance into some aspect of your life, consider setting up a white candle and a black candle on your altar (or perhaps a yellow/gold and blue/silver set would work too!) As you work your magic for the day, the candles will invoke the equinox spirit into your working! If you cannot have candles, you can use a sunstone and a moonstone, or you could use clay or paper colored with your desired hues depicting balance.
🍁 If the weather is fair and you have one near you, I find that visiting a river or stream is particularly nice as they are a body of Water, which is linked to emotions and also to the properties of motion and overcoming obstacles. If you find that you are having trouble coming to terms with some aspect of yourself or an event in your life, spending time near a river or placing a river stone on your altar might help you.
These are just a few ideas of how to bring the Equinox energies into your home and to use them in your practice. Other popular activities include feasting, offering appropriate gifts to spirits of the land and home, having a bon fire, and tying natural strings to trees as a form of wish making.
Mabon is the beginning of the Autumn Equinox. A time when the leaves will change and the air will crisp. The mid harvest festival where the days grow shorter, and the sound of the wind grows louder, the fields lay bare as the crops have been harvested, and the wildlife has settled down for a rest. This time of year is one of relaxation and growth. It is a time for new beginnings, and fresh starts. Mabon marks the reset of the Earth’s natural gifts and the changing of the seasons. Beginning around September 21-23, Mabon is celebrated with nuts, wines and teas. Music is played and dancing is plentiful, fires crackle and festivities pay tribute to the Earth’s cycle. So brew that tea and share that wine. Celebrate this coming Autumn in the coziest way possible ﻬ
Mabon is the second harvest festival in the Wheel of the Year that is celebrated on the autumnal equinox.
🍎Make apples into bowls! Carve out an apple so that the filling is gone and all that is left is a thick bowl-shaped apple shell. You can put small plants in these, offerings to spirits or deities, or you can place a candle inside. Put it on an altar or windowsill and it’s complete!
🍎Donate food! If you have food to spare, donate some to a local food pantry. Also, if you have pet food or toys to spare, donate to those to a local animal shelter! Mabon is a great holiday to give back and donating what you can is a wonderful way to celebrate the equinox!
🍎Burn bad habits! Literally. If you have a fireplace or somewhere where you can safely burn things, write down your bad habits and throw them in the fire. Then write down good habits you wish to have and hang it near the fireplace or on the fridge if you don’t have a fireplace. This season is all about change, so burn away the bad and work towards positive change!
🍎Spend time with friends and family! Surround yourself with good company and have a fun time! You can visit an apple orchard, watch a movie and eat sweet treats, spend time in the living room together, enjoy a meal with each other, and more.
🍎Bake and share! Apples are an ideal ingredient for homemade goods this time of year. Share your homemade treats with friends, family, or share them with a deity or spirit as an offering. Not only will you get to enjoy your goodies, but your loved ones will, too!
🍎Visit the deceased. Gather some fallen leaves (or flowers if you prefer), acorns, and pine cones and adorn the deceased’s grave with them. You can also light a candle for them and pray or talk to them. Take time to remember them on this holiday.
🍎Harvest and take care of your plants! Gather your herbs or take extra special care of your plants. You can use your harvested materials right away, dry them out, and/or store them away for later use! If your plant is not ready to be harvested, treat it to some new soil or fresh water!
🍎Make or buy wine! Unless you’re underage or an alcoholic. Otherwise, get or make some wine and celebrate! Who doesn’t like to get a little drunk on holidays?
🍎Take time to bask in nature! Winter is coming soon and those walks in the park won’t be as pleasant. Spend some time in the woods, an apple orchard, a lake, or just in your backyard and embrace what nature has to offer!
🍎Meditate or do some spells for balance! Mabon is an ideal time to perform spells that help balance your life. You can also meditate to relieve stress or whatever it is you like to do to relieve stress. Take time to relax and take care of yourself this holiday!
Water Witches 