I Had To Paint This Gorgeous Beast! Look How Cute! Look How Fluffy! Look At That Sun Devouring Lion!

IC 2118, Witch Nebula

☀️ Sunburst Oil Recipe ☀️

Essential oil free!

sun·burst-

1. A sudden burst of sunlight, as through broken clouds

I just made my batch for this winter and I thought I'd share this recipe with you!

Good for: Physical Healing, Protection, Divination, Happiness, Love, Creativity, Prophesy, Truth, Solar Deities

Medically: cools and softens skin, helps heal small cuts, burns, irritations, SAD, breaking fever, purifying, anti bacterial, helps relieve anxiety and depression

Ingredients:

Grapeseed or sunflower oil

Dried hibiscus

Dried juniper berries

Dried Bay leaves

Dried citrus peel

Dried dandelion root

Rosemary

A cinnamon stick

If you want to add essential oils you can, I didnt for this batch but In the past I've used frankincense, lemon, orange, cinnamon, vetiver, black pepper, sandalwood, and juniper

Best to grind the ingredients before adding them to the oil (except the cinnamon stick)

Makes a great offering for any solar deity like apollo, sol, helios, sekhmet

Let infuse in the sunshine for a few weeks-months depending on how much oil you're making, or if you want it faster & stronger you can heat it up until it turns red from the hibiscus

It smells so good so it's an excellent natural perfume, and it's great for your skin!

I tend to go heavy on the hibiscus and juniper in this but the amounts used are up to you.

Crystal infusions: citrine, garnet, carnelian

A small graphic about the sun and her phases!

Affirmation, Sun Day

I am fierce and warm and untameable.

Don’t expect me to shine only for you.

🔥Fire & Sun☀️ witch bottle

My take on a witch bottle, for sun and fire witches (or any witch who’d like to use the element of fire and the sun for protection!)

Things to put in it:

🌵Cactus needles- protection

🍋Lemon tree thorns -protection, banishment of negativity

🌹Yellow or red rose thorns- protection, banishment of past lovers, banishment of negativity

🖼Mirror (broken pieces or a really tiny one)- protection, reflection of energies, sun magic

🥢Cinnamon- protection

🌶Pepper (black or chili)- protection, warding, banishment, cursing

🍷Blood or wine- protection, personal energy, health

💥Red glitter- protection, energy boost, manifestation, health

🌟Rusty or gold colored nails- warding, protection

🔥Ash or burnt wood- fire, banishment

♠️Black sand or salt- fire, banishment, absorbing negative energy

🍃Bay leaves- protection

☀️Charge in the noon sun (when the sun is at its strongest) -protection, curses

♥️Seal with a red ribbon or red wax - energy boost, health, manifestation, fire

☀️Sun water☀️

🌞Used for:

Protection, healing (especially physical), happiness, truth, clairvoyance, courage, strength, prosperity, luck, self-love, cleansing, confidence, leadership, justice, gardening, growth, warmth, comfort, fertility, and creativity

🌞How to make it:

Leave the water on a sunny windowsill or outside, preferably in direct sunlight. Sunrise, 9 am, 12 pm, and 3 pm are perfect times for this, or you can leave it from sunrise to sunset. You can also add herbs and flowers to it as well (lemon peels, orange peels, marigolds, chamomile, cinnamon, sunflower, etc.) Or charge it with some stones (like sunstone, orange calcite, citrine, tigers eye, goldstone or carnelian), but please don’t put these stones in the water. You can also make a sun tea with sun water for a very potent solar spell.

Galactic Ghouls and Stellar Screams

A quiet, starry night sky might not seem like a very eerie spectacle, but space can be a creepy place! Monsters lurk in the shadowy depths of the universe, sometimes hidden in plain sight. Many of them are invisible to our eyes, so we have to use special telescopes to see them. Read on to discover some of these strange cosmic beasts, but beware — sometimes fact is scarier than fiction.

Monster Black Holes ⚫

You know those nightmares where no matter how fast you try to run you never seem to get anywhere? Black holes are a sinister possible version of that dream — especially because they’re real! If you get too close to a black hole, there is no possibility of escape.

Just last year our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope traced an otherworldly ghost particle back to one of these monster black holes, providing additional insight into the many signals we’re picking up from some of the most feared creatures in the cosmic deep.

But it gets worse. Our Hubble Space Telescope revealed that these things are hidden in the hearts of nearly every galaxy in the universe. That means supermassive black holes lurk in the shadows of the night sky in every direction you look!

A Hazy Specter 👻

This fiendish specter lives in the center of the Milky Way, haunting our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. But it’s not as scary as it looks! Our SOFIA observatory captured streamlines tracing a magnetic field that appears to be luring most of the material quietly into orbit around the black hole. In other galaxies, magnetic fields seem to be feeding material into hungry black holes — beware! Magnetic fields might be the answer to why some black holes are starving while others are feasting.

Bats in the Belfry 🦇

The universe has bats in the attic! Hubble spotted the shadow of a giant cosmic bat in the Serpens Nebula. Newborn stars like the one at the center of the bat, called HBC 672, are surrounded by disks of material, which are hard to study directly. The shadows they cast, like the bat, can clue scientists in on things like the disk’s size and density. Our solar system formed from the same type of disk of material, but we can only see the end result of planet building here — we want to learn more about the process!

Jack-o-lantern Sun 🎃

A jack-o-lantern in space?! Our Solar Dynamics Observatory watches the Sun at all times, keeping a close eye on space weather. In October 2014, the observatory captured a chilling image of the Sun with a Halloweenish face!

Skull Comet 💀

On Halloween a few years ago, an eerie-looking object known as 2015 TB145 sped across the night sky. Scientists observing it with our Infrared Telescope Facility determined that it was most likely a dead comet. It’s important to study objects like comets and asteroids because they’re dangerous if they cross Earth’s path — just ask the dinosaurs!

Halloween Treat 🍬

Trick-or-treat! Add a piece of glowing cosmic candy to your Halloween haul, courtesy of Hubble! This image shows the Saturn Nebula, formed from the outer layers ejected by a dying star, destined to be recycled into later generations of stars and planets. Our Sun will experience a similar fate in around five billion years.

Witch’s Broom Nebula 🧹

Massive stars are in for a more fiery fate, as the Witch’s Broom Nebula shows. Hubble’s close-up look reveals wisps of gas — shrapnel leftover from a supernova explosion. Astronomers believe that a couple of supernovae occur each century in galaxies like our own Milky Way.

Zombie Stars 🧟

Supernovae usually herald the death of a star, but on a few occasions astronomers have found “zombie stars” left behind after unusually weak supernovae. Our Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has even spotted a mysterious glow of high-energy X-rays that could be the “howls” of dead stars as they feed on their neighbors.

Intergalactic Ghost Towns 🏚️

The universe is brimming with galaxies, but it’s also speckled with some enormous empty pockets of space, too. These giant ghost towns, called voids, may be some of the largest things in the cosmos, and since the universe is expanding, galaxies are racing even farther away from each other all the time! Be grateful for your place in space — the shadowy patches of the universe are dreadful lonely scenes.

Mysterious Invisible Force 🕵️‍♀️

Some forces are a lot creepier than floorboards creaking or a door slamming shut unexpectedly when you’re home alone. Dark energy is a mysterious antigravity pressure that our Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is going to help us understand. All we know so far is that it’s present everywhere in the cosmos (even in the room with you as you read this) and it controls the fate of the universe, but WFIRST will study hundreds of millions of galaxies to figure out just what dark energy is up to.

Want to learn some fun ways to celebrate Halloween in (NASA) style? Check out this link!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

🍋☀️Winter Sun Lemon Tea☀️🍋

I wanted to make a winter lemonade recipe but then I realized most people dont live in a sub-tropical environment and are freezing cold. So i changed it to a warm lemon tea instead. Even though technically its warm lemonade. It makes 1 cup! 🌟

It's perfect for the winter because yule/winter solstice is a time to focus on solar energies, warmth, and happiness☀️🎄

Uses:

to bring warmth, happiness, love, cleansing, protection, positivity, and friendship

To purify, anti-bacterial, immune boost, anti-nausea, digestion aid, vitamin C, helps with SAD

Ingredients:

1 lemon

Half a teaspoon of any of the following: juniper berries, rosemary, chamomile, mint, rose, hibiscus, dandelion, cinnamon, other citrus or berries (this is a list of possibilities not nessisary items, so dont worry if you only have 1 or 2 of these, they all combine well so you can get creative with the combos!) My personal favorite combo is lemon tea with chamomile, juniper, rose, hibiscus, and a fresh spring of rosemary from my garden. Sometimes I add a little cinnamon to give it an extra warm kick

Hot water

Honey or sugar to sweeten

Your favorite mug

Drink whenever you need a mood boost, cleansing, warmth, etc.

Enjoy it DURING the winter solstice/yule to connect with the days' energies

Share it with a friend, family member, or partner to help bring a closer bond, love, and positive energy

I like to drink mine while holding my favorite citrine or yellow crystal

Because of the strong flavors, I wouldnt let it brew for longer than 10 minutes unless you're sure youd like the strong taste

Use as much of the lemon as you can but I like to just squeeze the halves till it's all juice and then I might add a slice or 2 I saved after

🌄Sunrise Witchcraft🌄

☀️sunrise is the best time for: healing, positivity, happiness, anti-anxiety/depression, spirituality, self care/love, air magic, cleansing, soft energy/ positive energy amplifier, truth spells, protection, and peace

☀️sunrise associations: citrine, lemon, peaches, ginger, orange, morning dew, orange calcite, coffee, bergamot, lime, earl grey, mint, sage, cinnamon, grapefruit, morning glory, marigold, saffron, calendula, daylily, daisy, black tea, and frankincense

☀️tips and things to try:

🌞yoga (especially sun salutations!)

🌻sunbathe in the sunrise to cleanse and charge with positive energy

🌞if you can’t wake up before/during sunrise, just leave your window blinds open to help you wake up naturally and/or to charge in the sunlight while you’re sleeping

🌻this is a great time for tea and coffee magic

🌞this is a great time to charge stones, especially sun-sensitive stones. (Here’s a post on solar stones)

🌻listen to and charge with soft or acoustic music

🌞 spend some time outside, take some deep breaths of fresh air, enjoy the birds chirping, flowers, dew, fog, and the beautiful colors in the sky that sunrise brings

🌻charge some lemon juice in the sunrise for extra boost of cleansing, positivity, and happiness properties (to make it stronger you can infuse it with mint or grapefruit, which both have similar properties and correspond with sunrise)

🌞if you’re comfortable with it, leave an offering out for sunrise deities and dawn sprites & other sun fae

🌻sunrise is a spiritual time, it’s the perfect time for meditation, exploring spirituality, astral travel, etc.

🌞here’s my post on how to connect to the elements in the morning/dawn

☀️My sunrise recipes:

🍋Sunrise tea: (has cleansing, happiness, positivity, energy boost, and protection properties)

1 part grapefruit (be careful if you’re on medication) optional

1 part sage or basil (whichever you prefer, both work)

1 part lemon

1 part orange

1 part mint

1 part hibiscus

🍊Sunrise oil/diffuser blend: (helps you connect to the sunrise, and it’s energy. It has positivity, happiness, anti-depression/anxiety, glamour, cleansing, and love properties)

Bergamot

Grapefruit

Rosemary

Lime

🍑Dawn faeries/spirtes:

☀️What they’re like- human looking, lots of pinks (their skin as well as ‘clothes’), they love dancing during sunrise, waking up the animals and plants sweetly, happy attitude, gentle, they love dew, pink clouds, they have a soft yet sparkly pink glow (it feels warm but not hot), and can bring about peaceful and positive feelings

☀️Offerings- rose quartz!!!, grapefruit, pink chyroprase, pink roses, peaches, peach roses, peony, geranium, hibiscus, marigold

☀️Deities associated with sunrise- Eos, Aurora, Hemera, Alectrona, Neaera, Mitra, Saranyu