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Image
courtesy of Enchanted Art©
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Lady
Day: The Vernal Equinox
by Mike Nichols
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Now comes the vernal equinox, and the season of spring
reaches its 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 that 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.
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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 that
get mixed up with the vernal equinox. The first, occurring on the fixed
calendar day of March 25 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 archangel 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
handfasting, 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 Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The 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 that 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 worshippers saw a hare in
the full moon) and the egg (symbolic of the Cosmic Egg of Creation), images
that 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 that 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 reenactment.
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 25, 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.
Document Copyright © 1986, 1995, 2005 by Mike
Nichols.
This document can be re-published only as long as no information is
lost or changed, credit is given to the author, and it is provided or
used without cost to others. Other uses of this document must be
approved in writing by Mike
Nichols. Revised: Tuesday, May 3, 2005 c.e. Please
click here to go to Mike Nichols home page.
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