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Ares Offerings

"Ares is the Olympian God of war, battlelust, courage, and civil order."

Large Altars:

Strong, dark red wine

Strong whiskey

Pure water

Black coffee

Black tea

Olive oil

Beef

Red meats in general

Cooked fat from meats

Blood from cut meats

Heavy spices

Spicy foods

Garlic

Frankensince

Sandalwood incense

Red, black, and dark purple candles

Art or statues of Him

Statues of horses or dogs

Weapons, armor, and shields (art, statues, toys, handmade, etc.)

Trophies

Small/Hidden Altars:

Spicy jerky

Sport drinks / protein shakes

Hand drawn or printed art of Him

Art or images of dogs, horses, and vultures

Feathers from vultures, woodpeckers, or barn owls

Red crystals such as garnets, rubies, bloodstone, etc.

Iron or steel jewelry

Red flowers, like roses

Thorns

Miniature or toy weapons and armor, especially helmets

Snake skin

Animal teeth

Write down your fears or successes and give them to Him

Medals and ribbons you've earned

Antiques

Photos of riots or past wars

Devotional Acts:

Create a playlist and listen to music that makes you feel brave/empowered

Donate to the Rape Crisis Center or other similar programs

Donate and support victims of war

Cook with garlic or heavy spices that you haven't tried before

Try new things and don't feel ashamed about doing so

Tell Him about your accomplishments

Tell Him about your fears

Learn about shadow work and try it for yourself

Learn about history, past wars, and past riots. Learn what they accomplished or failed to accomplish

Learn and educate yourself about the downsides of war and what can happen to the people affected by wars

Take care of your mental health by going to therapy, eating, drinking enough water, and remembering to take your medication

Partake in combat sports like martial arts, fencing, etc.

Exercise, find some fun workouts to do!

Play some strategy games like chess, Risk, Civilization, etc.

Stand up for yourself and what you believe in, write to your governor/mayor for things you want to see changed, attend riots, etc.

At the same time, don't push yourself if your physical or mental health isn't well, He doesn't want His devotees injured

A good place for His altar would be at the front door of your house or bedroom as He was considered to be the frontline of protection.

Pray to Him for strength, ability to fight and defeat enemies, courage, to keep others safe, and help in a battle.

Sources:

Artwork from the game Hades by Supergiant Games

https://occult-world.com/ares/

https://vocal.media/futurism/ways-of-worship-ares

https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Ares.html

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I love the variety of ways to dye egg. In the reference image they are using onion peel and I leave you a small list of ingredients with which they can dye not only eggs, but also cotton garments and fabrics.

Green Tea

Red tea

Hibiscus infusion

Oregano infusion

Beetroot infusion

Infusion of red fruit pulps

Blueberry pulp infusion

Infusion of walnut shells.

Calendula infusion

Coffee infusion

Pepper infusion

Avocado peel

Onnion peel

Notes: the infusions have to be concentrated to achieve a good color and a good effect

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Secular Celebrations - Spring Equinox

Next on the calendar is the Vernal Equinox, which marks the beginning of spring and the start of the growing season. In the northern hemisphere, this usually happens right around March 20th to March 22nd, depending on the year, while in the Southern Hemisphere, this occurs around September 20th - 23rd.

This is the time to start shaking off the winter and those cold weather blues. And as someone who is firmly on that Seasonal Affective Disorder train, believe me when I tell you that this is IMPORTANT. So when you think about what you’re going to do for the spring equinox, make sure you include self-care and a continuation of that cleaning kick you hopefully started back around Imbolc. Actually, every holiday observance should include a little bit of both of these things. Not just because they’re important, but because holidays are easy to remember, and even if you don’t always have time to fit these things into your schedule, it might be more feasible to work them into your holiday observances.

If the weather allows it, try cracking a window, even for a few minutes, and get some light and fresh air into your home. Even if it’s still chilly outside, sometimes it helps alleviate that dry, stuffy feeling we all get from being stuck inside with the heat on for months at a time. Open up those shades, let some sun in, turn on a sun lamp or one of those little antidepressant desk lights if you have one. Like the musical says, “Let the sunshine in.”

Or, if you can, get outside for a little while. Hopefully there will be a nice clear day that allows this. Look for signs of spring in your neighborhood - birds, flowers, buds on the trees, maybe some snowmelt if you live in a place that still has snow in late winter. If you have children, this might be a fun spring bingo type activity. The birds will be coming back, so scatter some seeds for them while you’re out and about. And speaking of snowmelt, melted snow and icicles can be used as a base for moonwater. Just make sure you select...er...CLEAN material to work with, and strain the meltwater through some paper towels before you store it for magical use.

You can also note the progress of seasonal changes in your journal or your planner, if you have one. This doesn’t always have a magical application, but it’s important to mental health to be able to track the passage of time through changes in your environment. If you have trouble with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or if you just hate winter, noting when the weather starts warming and the sun comes out and the early bulbs start to come up can be very encouraging.

Getting back to the subject of children’s activities, this is a great time for spring-related crafts, fingerpainting (you are NEVER too old for fingerpainting), and a discussion about why the seasons change and what it means in your household as far as traditions go. Your kids may be seeing their peers going on Easter egg hunts and getting baskets of candy, so if you’d like to do something similar but secular, maybe have a “signs of spring” scavenger hunt. If you want to decorate some eggs, go right ahead! Make some special witchy equinox eggs, why not.

If you want to make a special meal to celebrate the change in seasons, I suggest a breakfast. It’s the beginning of the yearly planting cycle, so why not mark it with the first meal of the day? Appropriate foods include bread, eggs, cheese, cured meats, preserves, sprouts, sweets, and pastries. So bust out that french toast casserole recipe, the good jams, and your best quiche lorraine and go to town!

Once you’ve recovered from the food coma, get cracking on that spring cleaning you started back on Imbolc. There’s always more to do! If you’ve finished decluttering one area, start on another. If you’ve finished one project, pick another one. Keep yourself motivated and moving as much as you can. If you’ve been meaning to start a new self care routine or exercise program, go for it. The world is waking up and coming back to life after a long winter’s nap; you can do the same.

Freshen up your household wards and protections while you’re tidying. This can be as simple as “cleaning with intent,” whereby you banish negativity or bad luck or sickness along with the dirt and grime, or as complex as a full casting to patch whatever needs patching, or anything in between. Get rid of any lingering stale energy from the winter. You’ll know best what needs to be done. It never hurts to have a freshly-cleansed home.

If you’re planning to plant a garden, the Vernal Equinox is a great time to start. Whether you’re buying seeds, filling starter trays, or just sketching out what you want to plant when the ground thaws, get a jump start on your green witchery. Housewares stores should begin stocking seeds around this time, or you can order free catalogs from places like Burpee, Seed Savers, or Baker Creek to help you plan.

Of course, not all of us have green thumbs. If you’d like a garden but can’t seem to keep your sprouts going, try putting together a succulent patch. These hardy little plants are easy to care for and harder to kill than the mutant offspring of a rabid zombie and the T-1000. (I can personally speak to this - I have two sprouts of aloe that are actively growing in trays that have no dirt or water in them. It’s a little bit freaky.)

For those who are more inclined to crafty activities, you can create a fairy garden with a couple of flowerpots, some moss or lichen, and whimsical miniature decorations like fairy gardens.

You can also bring fresh flowers into your home. Give yourself a bouquet or a potted plant for a splash of color and scent. Swap that wintry pine bunting for early blooms like forsythia, dogwood, pussy willow, and cherry blossoms. Some traditions call for a bonfire in March or April, on which the old bunting will be burned, but obviously, please only do this if you’re using actual pine boughs, not plastic and silk.

And silk flowers ARE valid seasonal decorations for the witchy home, by the by. If you don’t have access to fresh foliage or can’t keep houseplants for whatever reason, go with silk ones. They can stay up for months on your walls or on your altar with just a little dusting, and provide ambience and magical symbolism with comparatively little effort. Plus, you can save them from year to year to be reused. I have a set of seasonal garlands that I hang over my altar that is entirely composed of silk flowers and leaves, and they provide a really nice aesthetic without too much worry about dead flowers or crumbling leaves catching on fire from the candles.

We experienced the promise of spring on Imbolc, and now we see that promise fulfilled at the vernal equinox. Sketch out your goals for the upcoming season. Think about the positive changes you wish to make and how you intend to grow. Meditate on the importance of keeping promises, both to yourself and to others, and on making only those promises you know you can keep.

And remember - you’ll reap what you sow later in the year, so sow ever so carefully.

-from Hex Positive, Ep. 011 - Secular Celebrations (Nov 01, 2020)

Other Posts In This Series:

Imbolc

Spring Equinox

Beltane

Midsummer

Lughnasadh

Autumn Equinox

Samhain

Yule

If you’re enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar or check out my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop.

The Hex Positive podcast is a proud member of the Nerd and Tie Podcast Network.😊

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I feel very strongly about mushrooms. They are important. They can be food, they can be medicine, they can be poison - that’s pretty magical. Just the duality alone - mushrooms can give life and nourish the spirit, and also destroy and kill you. If witches worship sex and death (as the old saying goes), I think it’s safe to say that mushrooms are not just useful for witches. I think, in a way, they are witches. They are highly spiritual beings and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

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Tea and Village Plant Witch Aesthetic requested by anon

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Simple Chicken Soup Recipe for a Kitchen Witch on a Budget

Because I love food and I'm also cheap. This is basically just my regular easy chicken soup recipe but with the magical associations included. It'll feed you for days.

The Long (But Tastier) Way

What You'll Need:

One of those discount whole chickens from the grocery store (my boyfriend calls it a "used chicken")

Whatever veggies in your kitchen are starting to look sad and need to be used before they go bad (I recommend having carrots and celery in that mix tho)

Some extra celery/carrots for the final product (can come from the Sads if you need... pick the healthiest-looking parts.)

Pasta of your choice (I like penne)

A stockpot and strainer (another big pot should work too, but stockpots are best for holding everything/making the most at once.)

Salt, pepper, preferably dill as well + whatever other seasonings you want.

What to Do:

Take your used chicken, strip all of the meat from it, and put the meat aside. Put the carcass in the pot.

Add all of your sad vegetables to the pot. No need to be fancy with it, no need to peel anything. Shop an old onion into 4ths and add it skins and all. Leaves can stay on any celery. Chuck in some garlic, why not. I've added an old sweet potato before. Leeks. Rosemary. Whatever. Go be free.

Add some salt + pepper, cover the entire thing with water, bring it to a boil and then immediately turn the heat to low. Cover it most of the way.

Go do something else. Forget about it for at least four hours. If you want, you can occasionally go up to it and skim any foam off. Everything is steeping and blending, so the longer it goes the better it gets. (Remember the water will cook down though, so don't leave it forever.)

Cook your pasta al dente and set it aside at some point.

Once you're ready, strain the broth into another vessel and discard your sad broth vegetables. Thank them for their service.

Put the broth back in the empty stockpot and bring to a boil. Chop your happy vegetables to whatever size you want to eat them at. Add any vegetables like chopped carrots that need to cook longer than other veggies. After a few minutes add the rest. Once everything is at a good level of This Won't Feel Weird to Eat, put it on way low again!

Add everything else. That means salt, pepper, dill (I like dill. Add too much dill.) seasoning powders, chicken meat, and cooked pasta. Steep it for a little so the broth flavor can soak in, but you don't have to do it for as long as before.

EAT IT! You have soup now! Yay! Eat a bowl now and save the rest for later. It'll last you a while. (Pasta will get bigger/softer over time but that's fine, it's still good.)

Faster Broth

Boil some water. Add chicken bouillon cubes, salt, pepper, dill/whatever seasonings, and a tiny splash of oil. The oil helps it look/feel more authentic without needing to steep the chicken carcass.

For even faster broth, you can even use boxed chicken stock and skip the bouillon. I find chicken broth tastes kinda different and gross, but it'll work in a pinch and you might not mind it as much as me.

Magical Associations

Naturally, whatever unique vegetables you add will have their own correspondences, so I'll just list the recommended base ingredients:

Chicken: Lasting love, household harmony, abundance, luck, prosperity and general well-being

Celery: Lust, mental/psychic abilities, clear-headedness/focus (especially for decision making)

Carrot: Lust again, abundance, creativity and psychic awareness

Dill: Luck, money/employment, protection, knowledge and decision making.

Chicken Soup Itself: Health and vitality is the big one (probably obviously.) It's basically folk penicillin. I think it also carries associations with love (especially familial) and household harmony for exactly this reason. Based on the other associations, I could also see it being good for helping make important decisions with a sound mind.

Enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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I don’t really know what people generally call this method of sigil making, so I’m just calling it “Letter Shaping” because you’re using the basic shapes from certain letters. EDIT: It’s one of many variations of the ‘Spare Method’ created by Austin Oswald Spare in the early 1900s This is the most common form of sigil making, and it allows the most creative influence. As you see above the sigils are for nearly the same thing, yet the sigils came out completely different. Not because the purpose was different, but because I approached them both a different creative way, and that’s what I like so much about this method. There’s a lot of freedom and personalization involved.

(UPDATE: Here’s a link to a guide on how to deconstruct letters down to basic shapes)

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💜How to make a lavender wand 💜

These can be used in rituals and on your altar, and they make a great gift. :)

1) first collect an odd number (15) of lavender stocks and try make the length of the flowers match.

2) remove all excess leaves and flowers from the lower part of the stock to create uniformity.

3) get two yards of thin ribbon in any color. Fold the ribbon in half, so that when you tie it onto the flowers at the half way point. Then pinch the bunch under the flowers and tie a slip knot or any knot would work as long as its tight.

4) next hold the bundle upside down pinching the knot. Then make a cage like structure around the flowers by twisting each stock and folding them down gently over the bundle.

5) now that you have it set up you first move one of the stands of ribbon inside the flower bundle under The cage and pull the other out over the top of the cage. With the ribbon that is above the cage you will begin weaving the ribbon over and under each stalk, and continue until you reach the end of the flower cage.

6) now that you reached the end of the cage you will pull out the other ribbon that was under the cage and pull it aside for now. Then with the weaving ribbon you will tie another knot at the bottom keeping the tension of the bundle tight. Now you can wrap the handle of the stalk and once you reached the bottom tie another knot at the bottom of the handle then twist the extra ribbon back up the handle creating a lattice pattern.

7) once you reached the top of the handle again you will use the other half of the ribbon to tie one last knot then a bow at the base of the flower head.

8) now that you have finished making your first lavender wand you can roll the head of the wand between your palms to release the lavender fragrance.

Happy crafting!

Photos by Samantha Piña

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Lammas/ Lughnasadh

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Happy Lughnasadh!

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Blessed yule

May the coming year be full of light and love

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Winter Solstice Tarot Spread

Happy Solstice everyone! I thought I’d put together a little spread for the day. It can be done with three cards, one card for each section; or if you’d prefer a more in depth spread, you can use multiple cards for each section.

One - Darkness: This card represents what you can learn from the past year. On this longest night, there is plenty of time to look back on the year that has just been.

Two - Stasis: This card represents what you can reflect upon in this moment. Solstice is a time of transformation, and as you wait in this liminal time between the two halves of the year, what does this teach you?

Three - Light: This card represents what the new year may bring to you. As you look forward to the lighter days that come, what energies can you bring in for in the new year?

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Butternut Squash Loaf for Deepening Relationships and Influencing Others to Your Side

Butternut squash is associated (magically speaking) with resolving interpersonal conflict and helping others to see your side of the story, but it also helps resolve your own internal conflict. It’s also known as the “sustaining sister” of the 3 sisters crops (corn, beans, and squash) so this loaf is a great avenue for a bit of self care for surviving the winter.

Gather:

For the butternut squash puree

1 butter nut squash (healing, protection, strengthening bonds, resolving conflict)

6 tbs butter

3 tbs brown sugar

For the Loaf

1 cup butternut squash purée

2 eggs

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup of water

1 cup of white sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 3/4 cups all purpose white flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp of kosher salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon (excellent at amplifying spells, and protection)

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg (persuasion)

1/2 tsp ground cardamom (love, lust, clarity, protection)

Butternut Squash Purée

Preheat oven to 350F. Slice squash longways and scoop the seeds out. Do so with intention while you enchant your squash with regenerative energy. Place on a baking sheet cut side up.

Cut 6 tbs butter into smallish cubes and sprinkle onto the squash. Sprinkle on your brown sugar. Bake for 60 minutes.

When fully cooked, remove from oven, remove skin of the squash, and squash and remaining liquid to a blender (or a cup for use with an immersion blender) and blitz it up until very smooth. Store in the fridge for up to 10 days.

Butternut Squash Loaf

Preheat oven to 350F and oil and flour a loaf pan (and put some parchment down too if you have it.)

Add your flour, salt, baking soda, and spices to a bowl. Whisk to combine and set aside.

Add your squash purée, eggs, water, oil, and sugars to a large bowl. Wisk until very well combined.

Add the flour mixture into the mix in 3 parts, being careful to mix until just combined.

Pour into loaf pan and bake for 60-75 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in loaf pan, then remove and finish cooling on a wire rack.

All of the ingredients in this loaf have magical properties but I’m an herbalist so I generally only work with the botanical elements. Feel free to give it your own spin :) This loaf is a really tasty and powerful way to start the day, especially if you have a big presentation, or you work in retail or sales, or if you just have someone in your life who you wish would listen just a bit more when you share your thoughts.

Okay my darlings, please enjoy <3

Edit: Since most of you have probably never had a butternut squash loaf before, I should probably inform you that it is ACTUALLY delicious and not just magic. Very much worth making. Like pumpkin bread but with more flavor.

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Autumn cozy