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L A D Y D A Y: The Vernal Equinox
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by Mike Nichols
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
Mediterranian 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, occuring 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 mythlogical 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 froom
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 absense 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.