Spring Equinox
/ Ostara / Vernal Equinox
Now comes the Spring Equinox / Ostara / Vernal Equinox, and
the season of Spring reaches it's apex, halfway through its
journey from Candlemas to Beltane. Once again, night and day
stand in perfect balance, with the powers of light on the
ascendancy. The god of light now wins a victory over his twin,
the god of darkness. In the Mabinogion myth reconstruction
which I have proposed, this is the day on which the restored
Llew takes his vengeance on Goronwy by piercing him with the
sunlight spear. For Llew was restored/reborn at the Winter
Solstice and is now well/old enough to vanquish his rival/twin
and mate with his lover/mother. And the great Mother Goddess,
who has returned to her Virgin aspect at Candlemas, welcomes
the young sun god's embraces and conceives a child. The child
will be born nine months from now, at the next Winter Solstice.
And so the cycle closes at last.
We think that the customs
surrounding the celebration of the spring equinox were imported
from Mediterranean lands, although there can be no doubt that
the first inhabitants of the British Isles observed it, as
evidence from megalithic sites shows. But it was certainly
more popular to the south, where people celebrated the holiday
as New Year's Day, and claimed it as the first day of the
first sign of the Zodiac, Aries. However you look at it, it
is certainly a time of new beginnings, as a simple glance
at Nature will prove.
In the Roman Catholic Church,
there are two holidays which get mixed up with the Vernal
Equinox. The first, occurring on the fixed calendar day of
March 25th in the old liturgical calendar, is called the Feast
of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (or B.V.M.,
as she was typically abbreviated in Catholic Missals). 'Annunciation'
means an announcement. This is the day that the angel Gabriel
announced to Mary that she was 'in the family way'. Naturally,
this had to be announced since Mary, being still a virgin,
would have no other means of knowing it. (Quit scoffing, O
ye of little faith!) Why did the Church pick the Vernal Equinox
for the commemoration of this event? Because it was necessary
to have Mary conceive the child Jesus a full nine months before
his birth at the Winter Solstice (i.e., Christmas, celebrated
on the fixed calendar date of December 25). Mary's pregnancy
would take the natural nine months to complete, even if the
conception was a bit unorthodox.
As mentioned before, the
older Pagan equivalent of this scene focuses on the joyous
process of natural conception, when the young virgin Goddess
(in this case, 'virgin' in the original sense of meaning 'unmarried')
mates with the young solar God, who has just displaced his
rival. This is probably not their first mating, however. In
the mythical sense, the couple may have been lovers since
Candlemas, when the young God reached puberty. But the young
Goddess was recently a mother (at the Winter Solstice) and
is probably still nursing her new child. Therefore, conception
is naturally delayed for six weeks or so and, despite earlier
matings with the God, She does not conceive until (surprise!)
the Vernal Equinox. This may also be their Hand-fasting, a
sacred marriage between God and Goddess called a Hierogamy,
the ultimate Great Rite. Probably the nicest study of this
theme occurs in M. Esther Harding's book, 'Woman's Mysteries'.
Probably the nicest description of it occurs in M. Z. Bradley's
'Mists of Avalon', in the scene where Morgan and Arthur assume
the sacred roles. (Bradley follows the British custom of transferring
the episode to Beltane, when the climate is more suited to
its outdoor celebration.)
The other Christian holiday
which gets mixed up in this is Easter. Easter, too, celebrates
the victory of a god of light (Jesus) over darkness (death),
so it makes sense to place it at this season. Ironically,
the name 'Easter' was taken from the name of a Teutonic lunar
Goddess, Eostre (from whence we also get the name of the female
hormone, estrogen). Her chief symbols were the bunny (both
for fertility and because her worshipers saw a hare in the
full moon) and the egg (symbolic of the cosmic egg of creation),
images which Christians have been hard pressed to explain.
Her holiday, the Eostara, was held on the Vernal Equinox Full
Moon. Of course, the Church doesn't celebrate full moons,
even if they do calculate by them, so they planted their Easter
on the following Sunday. Thus, Easter is always the first
Sunday, after the first Full Moon, after the Vernal Equinox.
If you've ever wondered why Easter moved all around the calendar,
now you know. (By the way, the Catholic Church was so adamant
about NOT incorporating lunar Goddess symbolism that they
added a further calculation: if Easter Sunday were to fall
on the Full Moon itself, then Easter was postponed to the
following Sunday instead.)
Incidentally, this raises
another point: recently, some Pagan traditions began referring
to the Vernal Equinox as Eostara. Historically, this is incorrect.
Eostara is a lunar holiday, honoring a lunar Goddess, at the
Vernal Full Moon. Hence, the name 'Eostara' is best reserved
to the nearest Esbat, rather than the Sabbat itself. How this
happened is difficult to say. However, it is notable that
some of the same groups misappropriated the term 'Lady Day'
for Beltane, which left no good folk name for the Equinox.
Thus, Eostara was misappropriated for it, completing a chain-reaction
of displacement. Needless to say, the old and accepted folk
name for the Vernal Equinox is 'Lady Day'. Christians sometimes
insist that the title is in honor of Mary and her Annunciation,
but Pagans will smile knowingly.
Another mythological motif
which must surely arrest our attention at this time of year
is that of the descent of the God or Goddess into the Underworld.
Perhaps we see this most clearly in the Christian tradition.
Beginning with his death on the cross on Good Friday, it is
said that Jesus 'descended into hell' for the three days that
his body lay entombed. But on the third day (that is, Easter
Sunday), his body and soul rejoined, he arose from the dead
and ascended into heaven. By a strange 'coincidence', most
ancient Pagan religions speak of the Goddess descending into
the Underworld, also for a period of three days.
Why three days? If we remember
that we are here dealing with the lunar aspect of the Goddess,
the reason should be obvious. As the text of one Book of Shadows
gives it, '...as the moon waxes and wanes, and walks three
nights in darkness, so the Goddess once spent three nights
in the Kingdom of Death.' In our modern world, alienated as
it is from nature, we tend to mark the time of the New Moon
(when no moon is visible) as a single date on a calendar.
We tend to forget that the moon is also hidden from our view
on the day before and the day after our calendar date. But
this did not go unnoticed by our ancestors, who always speak
of the Goddess's sojourn into the land of Death as lasting
for three days. Is it any wonder then, that we celebrate the
next Full Moon (the Eostara) as the return of the Goddess
from chthonic regions?
Naturally, this is the season
to celebrate the victory of life over death, as any nature-lover
will affirm. And the Christian religion was not misguided
by celebrating Christ's victory over death at this same season.
Nor is Christ the only solar hero to journey into the underworld.
King Arthur, for example, does the same thing when he sets
sail in his magical ship, Prydwen, to bring back precious
gifts (i.e. the gifts of life) from the Land of the Dead,
as we are told in the 'Mabinogi'. Welsh triads allude to Gwydion
and Amaethon doing much the same thing. In fact, this theme
is so universal that mythologists refer to it by a common
phrase, 'the harrowing of hell'.
However, one might conjecture
that the descent into hell, or the land of the dead, was originally
accomplished, not by a solar male deity, but by a lunar female
deity. It is Nature Herself who, in Spring, returns from the
Underworld with her gift of abundant life. Solar heroes may
have laid claim to this theme much later. The very fact that
we are dealing with a three-day period of absence should tell
us we are dealing with a lunar, not solar, theme. (Although
one must make exception for those occasional MALE lunar deities,
such as the Assyrian god, Sin.) At any rate, one of the nicest
modern renditions of the harrowing of hell appears in many
Books of Shadows as 'The Descent of the Goddess'. Lady Day
may be especially appropriate for the celebration of this
theme, whether by storytelling, reading, or dramatic re-enactment.
For modern Witches, Lady
Day is one of the Lesser Sabbats or Low Holidays of the year,
one of the four quarter-days. And what date will Witches choose
to celebrate? They may choose the traditional folk 'fixed'
date of March 25th, starting on its Eve. Or they may choose
the actual equinox point, when the Sun crosses the Equator
and enters the astrological sign of Aries. This year (1988),
that will occur at 3:39 am CST on March 20th.
| Authors Details: Spring Equinox / Ostara
/ Vernal Equinox - Mike Nichols - Unknown Web Site |
More Articles On The Wiccan Sabbats
(The Eight
Wiccan Sabbats)
(Winter Solstice - Yule)
(Imbolc)
(Ostara)
(Beltane)
(Summer
Solstice)
(Lammas)
(Mabon)
(Halloween
/ Samhain) |
