LADY
DAY
The Vernal Equinox
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
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.
Document Copyright © 1986,
2000 by Mike Nichols
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