Now comes the 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 (thatis, 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, thisis 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 'Mabinogion'. 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.