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 (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.
