A Spell for Summoning Spring

Feature Image:
Photography by MARTIN PODT @martinpodt

Spring does not need to be summoned.
It will come in its own time and its own way to grace the land around us. It always does. For me, in my area, I know spring is well and truly on the way in early March, when the mesquite trees are heavy with their delicate yellow blooms and the wildflowers begin showing off all over the place. The first to arrive is pink primrose, and that is followed by bluebonnet, Mexican hats, and paintbrush, and last are the wild white poppies with a shock of hot pink at their center. This is how spring settles itself into the land where I live.

But sometimes spring and the energy it carries with it do need to be invited to grace our inner landscapes and the situations we hold in our hearts and minds.

Sometimes what a relationship needs is the enchantment of pulsing, verdant life.

Sometimes what a cold heart longs for is the spell of sunlight and warm breezes running across your face.

Sometimes we need to dance and pray and make love to the sound of birdsong and the sight of bare tree limbs budding out with promise.

Sometimes our inner lands, our soul soil, have been encased in the winter—of heartbreak, of mourning, of grief, of anxiety, of fear—for too long, and it is time for something else, a new kind of magic, time to invite in spring in.

And so, I give you, a spell to do exactly that:

Hold in your heart and mind the places that feel barren and cold.
Touch with your hands, your breath, hallowed dreams that once were bold.
Feel your beating heart of muscle, oxygen, and light.
Draw its energy into your palms until you feel them shining bright.

Go out into wood, into field, into street. Gather up paperwhite, rose, crocus, and new oak leaf.
Gather seeds, a pot, a cup of water, some good black earth.
Take your goods, go home, spread them out, prepare your work.
Place paperwhite in the north, rose in the south, circle with bloom and leaf. Crocus kisses the west, while little oak leaf calls in the warmth of east.

Light your candles, pray your prayers, let sacred smoke fill the air.
Fill your pot with half the earth, enfolding within your seeds with care.
Place the pot in the center so it is the eye of the circlet of leaf and flower.
Root your feet down onto the earth, into the earth, calling on spring’s power. To fill your body from toe to tip, to unfurl its green vines in hair and in hip.

Know that each balmy breath summons into your life spring sweet.
And feel it warm your bones, those frozen places, with its new gentle heat. Calling back to life all that you feared was frozen, gone, or dead.
Shaking and swaying you gently until that old, winter skin is shed.
Now, pulsing as you are with light, life, warmth, and all that is new,
fill the pot with earth until it is full, then water it so that it is sweet with dew.

Say then these words over earth and seed:
Spring, sweet spring, it is your time to lead.
Make yourself a nest in my heart, belly, and head.
Call back to life what had been foresworn as dead.
As these seeds push through earth seeking the light, restore energy, vitality, verdancy, and bloom to my life.
As these seeds unfurl, preparing to flower and fruit,
cover me with your warm breezes from crown to root.
Spring, sweet spring, wash your wild wonder over me.
As I ask, so it is, has been, and shall now be.

Thank your allies in the north, the east, west, and south.
With prayers, blown kisses, or sweet thank-yous from your mouth.
Blow your candles’ good work forward, gather up leaf and bloom.
Set your pot of seeds and life where it’s kissed by the sun, graced by moon. Offer up rose and crocus, oak leaf, and paperwhite,
under the dark velvet sky of a new moon night.
Snuggle down, under blanket, under downy bird wing.
Your spell has been spoken, now await the arrival of spring.