Spring Equinox, Alban Elfed, Eostar Sabbat:
FACTS AND MISINFORMATION
The Spring season of the Spring Equinox each year is
unique. It includes:
- A Pagan Sabbat: Lady Day, usually celebrated on or near
the evening when the Sun crosses the Equator and enters the astrological sign of
Aries. Mainly celebrated by Neo-Pagans
- Two Christian holy days: Feast of the Annunciation
of the Blessed Virgin and Easter
- A secular celebration.
- A Welsh festival: Gwyl Canol Gwenwynol. Begins
sundown, (March 20th or 21st or the day before the Equinox) Day of the Gorse. Festival of
the Goddess Eostar, to whom the hare and the scarlet egg are sacred. Fertility Rites for
the early sowing. The Goddess Arianrhod names and arms the Sun God, Llew. The Sun God,
Llew, rides forth in splendor.
- Georgia
Pagans -Witches & Druids celebrate the Spring Equinox
in different ways.
- See a Basic Sabbat Ritual
There is a great deal of misinformation being circulated
about this festival. Read the following information and then go to the links to arm
yourself with true information researched by Christians and Pagans.
GWYL CANOL GWENWYNOL - SPRING
EQUINOX
Gwyl Canol GwenWynol or Eostre:
(pronounced E-ostra, also known as Ostara, Spring Equinox etc.), March 21-23. Time of
equal day and equal night. This is often celebrated with eggs (beginnings) and rabbits
(fertiity) ... see the theme? It is now time to lay the seeds of new projects and new
directions that you have meditated on throughout the cold months. Now is the time to start
taking action. (A lot of traditions use this particular sabbat for initiations. New roads,
a new breath.) Colours for this sabbat: Purple and Yellow
The Spring Equinox defines the season where
Spring reaches it's apex, halfway through its journey from Candlemas to Beltane.
Night and day are 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 Welsh
Mabinogion, 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 to
begin anew.
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.
There are two holidays of Christianity which get mixed up with the Vernal Equinox. The
first, occurrs on the fixed calendar day of March 25th in the old liturgical calendar, and
is called the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. '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. The Church picked the
Vernal Equinox for the 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.
The older Pagan Festival 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. What date is appropriate
to celebrate the Spring Equinox? You may choose the traditional 'fixed' date of
March 25th, starting on its Eve. Or you may choose the actual equinox point, when
the Sun crosses the Equator and enters the astrological sign of Aries.
GO TO A BASIC SABBAT RITUAL
ON-LINE RESOURCES
Y Tylwyth Teg - Welsh Tradition in America
P.O. Box 674884, Marietta, GA 30006-0006
(770) 516-8500
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