Seasons of Moon and Flame. Danielle Dulsky

runs in your blood. Face the east, the direction of new beginnings and the spring season; then begin to mold two egg-shaped sculptures from clay by hand, honoring this season of renewed opportunities and endless chances, pondering the infinite potential found in nature, the sheer resilience of wild agency, and the peace that comes from knowing that all dies to begin again. What you failed to hatch last year, what stayed hidden behind your fragile eggshell walls, surely will emerge from the cosmic egg this go-around, vibrant, full of wonder, and poised for timely action.

      Take care with these new creations, humble in appearance as they may be. Hold an egg in each hand, naming the one in your right the Egg of Morning, the one in your left the Egg of Evening. Begin to move now, as you feel called; these movements might be subtle and slow gestures or emphatic leaps and rhythmic pulses. Pray with your body. Become an embodied expression of possibility. Honor both the expanding light and the dwindling dark here, on the equinox. Imagine your beloved ancestors dancing with you, holding their own eggs and welcoming what comes. Invite your primal and long-gone dead, those who hold the deepest treasures, those who can initiate you better and more meaningfully into your Craft than any living human.

      These delights are what our best times are made of, after all. These small revelries remind us why we have been born to flesh. Stay with this for as much time as you have, permitting your movements to perhaps find repetition; here is where we meet the body electric, when our dance becomes a sacred limb-and-spine offering. If you can stay in the dance until that blessed slightly altered state of consciousness comes, when the dance swallows the thoughts whole and there’s little left but heartbeat and movement, you will encounter there a small piece of the Holy Wild sensual.

      Your dance has charged your eggs with memory and feeling. Seal this ceremony by decorating them in whatever way seems right, perhaps with rose thorns penetrating the Egg of Evening or intricate symbols of blossom and root carved on the Egg of Morning. Drink something cool and sweet, and welcome all that comes, returning your eggs to your altar and thanking the ancestors in spirit who joined you in your celebration.

       Adaptation for Families, Coven Groups, and Other Wild Circles: A Dance of Light and Shadow

      Communal celebration of our kinship with those quickening seeds and searching sprouts warms us when the chill in the air is persistent past its time. Consider adapting the aforementioned ritual to a wild circle of revelers by inviting everyone to dance and move. You might place a basket of premade eggs in the center, with all moving to bless these timeless symbols of gestation and new beginnings. You might have half the group represent the Egg of Evening, the waning darkness, and half represent the Egg of Morning, the expanding light of day, with each group moving through their own body prayer of becoming. Beat the drums. Howl. One of the greatest mottoes for spring witchery is this: We must have joy in our Craft. Resist taking yourself too seriously now — there’s plenty of time for that later, after all — and honor what tribulations have come and gone during the winter season, what a welcome victory it is to have made it through to spring.

      If you feel called, you might also make and decorate egg-shaped cookies or place small wishes and blessings inside eggs and hide them in that time-honored tradition with quite Pagan roots; the egg is hidden as a symbol of gestating the new, and uncovering it is a symbol of birth. With your wild circle, wear vine-wrapped flower crowns and call the days to swell toward fruition. Share stories of lineage healing and sweet remembrance, knowing that every belly laugh is as holy as any incantation could ever be.

       Season of Tender Roots: New Moon

      Grandmother Speaks: Let’s Get Some of This Blood in the Dirt

      At long last, you have arrived. Something about this place sparks childhood memories of dewy forest floors and visitations by those mythic fair-folk, those thin-limbed creatures made of lightning that you were so sure were real — that is, until you were told you were dreaming. The Garden Hag’s house is surrounded by blooms so bright they seem to hum, unable to live as such beauty and stay silent. You believe the house is made of stone, but those creeping ivy vines have wrapped every wall in deep emerald curls, and the door eludes you.

      For a fleeting moment, you wonder if you are still alive, if perhaps you did indeed die on that winter mountain, and this is your afterlife, a lush place that has never known chill or famine. Even so, your heart beats loudly, and you smell the sweetness of wet dirt. Surely, in the ethers, the gods would never allow flowers to hold such potency, to be more glorious than the deities themselves.

      “What are you waiting for, child?” Her voice startles you, and you can see nothing now but tall-growing sunflowers and rosy thickets. “Come, you must be hungry, and I daresay you look a fright.” The garden becomes less forgiving now as you move thorny stems out of your path and make your way toward her voice, struggling to choose the right path. “That’s it. Keep going; it will be worth it, I promise.”

      You’re in the briars and brambles now. You question whether you took the hardest path, or perhaps all ways were fraught with such sharp-toothed obstacles. Your flesh is carved up by these wilds.

      “You’re nearly there. Just a little farther. Stay on the path you chose; don’t second-guess yourself,” she urges, and you think her voice sounds far too optimistic to belong to a hag. Blood runs in rivulets down your arms, and you taste iron on your tongue. She’s really there now, though. You can see her thick gray curls through the brush, and you make one final push beyond these angry grasses and bladed branches. Erupting from the thicket, an aged blackthorn with low branches pierces the flesh of your legs and soft of your belly. You fall, bloodied but free, at the feet of the Garden Hag.

      “You didn’t think such beauty came without a price, did you?” She reaches to help you stand, and you blink the red from your eyelashes to see her better. She’s a raw one, for sure, and the sun has loved her well for many years, but her rose-and-pentagram tattoo is still clear on her cracked-skin chest. She’s dressed in sheer pastels, and you can see every sharp curve, every thick and raised scar, of her wise-woman body through her clothes. “Come, before you eat, let’s get some of this blood in the dirt; the roots love it, and I have just the story to welcome you to my humble haunt.”

      The Garden Hag helps you to her bountiful table, lushly blanketed with all manner of homegrown fruit and root vegetable. Hiking her skirt between her legs, she sits at the garden’s edge and leans close, smirking. When a hag such as this twists her mouth in that sly way before she tells a story, you can trust the tale will be a doozy. When the roses themselves seem to bend a bit closer to hear her words, you know you are about to learn much from this old one with a child’s heart.

       The Chicken-Witch of the Grove: A Ceremonial Equinox Tale

      To participate in this story ceremony, collect a single basket and eleven objects that can represent the passions, wounds, joys, art, memories, and great loves of your foremothers. These might be eggs, as they are in the story; crystals; flowers; or any other symbol of forgotten stories and hidden secrets. Scatter them around the room or in a natural setting, tucking them away as if you are hiding treasures for a curious babe, then begin to read aloud, setting the intention to symbolically recover lost pieces of your lineage.

      Oh, child, you might want to cover your ears, for I’m about to tell you something that’s sure to shock even the likes of you. Take a breath. Are you ready?

      In all parts of the world, even that humble piece of green beauty you inhabit so well and with such grace, there exists a creature so wild, so beastly, no one dare speak her name. In truth, though, there are many reasons to go searching for her, this long-tongued mistress of all monsters, but only the bravest hearts ever do. They never have to look far, either; she’s in the house around the corner, pushing the cart in the corner shop, and rocking the grandbaby on the park bench. Yes, she’s fearsome, but she’s hardly rare.

      Do you know what she is yet? Can you tell by the lilt in my tone? My smirk? The spark in my eyes?

      She’s the lusty grandmother, low-breasted and sharp-tongued, compassionate in deed but obscene in humor. You might seek her out for advice; she’s got years of wisdom tucked under her tunic. You might seek her out for a listening ear; she’ll