LADY DAY
The Vernal Equinox
by Mike Nichols
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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.
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