The Vernal Equinox marks the day exactly between the Winter and Summer solstices, when day and night are in perfect balance and last an equal amount of time. It was a time of celebration for our ancient ancestors, signifying that they had made it through the harsh limits of the winter. While today we may live very different lives, we still feel a collective, electric buzz as the days begin to get longer and we sense the aliveness of spring creeping back into our bones and hearts. Winter has always been a time of darkness and introspection, and even with modern luxuries to shield our bodies from frost, our cells remember the way the dark and cold brought the miracle spark of our mortality to our psyches.
In the Celtic Wheel of the Year, the Vernal Equinox, or first day of spring, is called Ostara. This word itself is brimming with hope and renewal, a replenishing of the balance that offers us new growth and possibility. Color will begin popping up against the slate background of winter, and food will begin growing. The color and fire we’ve been holding safe inside through winter will begin to spill into the landscape, surrounding us again. We can relax. We can breathe. Our ancestors knew that they could begin planting food, that the natural world would be waking up to nourish them, that they would no longer have to rely on stores and moderation. Scarcity would return to abundance. The dream seeds planted in the deep winter ground would be warmed and watered and begin reaching for the sun. It’s a time that offers relief and lightheartedness. We have survived the long night.
With this celebration of renewal, there’s also a violence and ferocity to Ostara that’s often overlooked. The first crocuses to bloom must burst through frozen soil. There is a threshold of the impossible that has to be crossed through sheer will and devotion in order for the color and fire to re-emerge earthside. Like the flora and fauna, we’ve been in the Underworld, burrowing and lighting candles, exploring our inner landscape and engaging with the death-aspect of many of our patterns and cycles. To emerge topside again, claws and teeth are often needed. The liminal threshold is the keeper of the magic, the secret sauce, and we’ll return to it with amnesiac devotion again next year as we celebrate earth’s return to aliveness again.
Persephone is both the Queen of the Underworld and the Goddess of Spring, the embodiment of the fruition of lush natural beauty, as well as the bare bones and dried flowers that carry us through the winter. She also embodies the birth and death rites between these two states. Celebrations of spring honor her return from the Underworld, signifying the return of agriculture and softness, but also they honor the immense power required to shift between the two. To be a goddess of Spring is to be a goddess of birth, which is not for the faint of heart.
This year, the Vernal Equinox falls on March 20. Leading up to it on March 14, we have a full moon that is also a total lunar eclipse. This will coincide with the nodal shift into the Pisces/Virgo axis, initiating us into a new direction of collective destiny for the next year and a half. With the north node in Pisces, we are all learning how to dream more deeply and remembering that the only thing necessary for our dreams to take root in this reality is our vision and our embodiment. Dreams aren’t seeded based on external circumstances, but based on the quantum energy in our own hearts, and our devotion and faith in their actualization. Springtime fulfills her promises, but not without the wild and violent initiation of birth. What dreams are worth shaking your foundation? What desires crack open your winter walls and offer you new life? Sometimes we have to enter the whirlwind in order to wake up. Spring is the start of it all, the miracle of being. May we meet her – and in turn, ourselves – with the simple gratitude and open-heartedness she asks of us. •
