If the Winter Solstice signals the birth of the sun, then the Spring Equinox exclaims the birth of the earth -- the resurrection of nature from the dark death of winter. The life, which has stayed hidden, in exile or underground, during the long deep sleep of the cold season, now shifts and starts to stir. Poking and peeking, it seeks the surface. The space. The air. The light. Striving, stretching skyward, life breaks new ground. Bulbs, shoots and buds burst forth from the earth, exploding open, exposing their tender green growth. The sweet sap rises.
The birth waters break. The snow melts. The skies open. It rains, it pours, it mists, it drips fertilizing fluids from the heavens. The air is damp like a baby's bottom. The land is soaked. The mud, like mucous, like after-birth. The defrosting sodden soil is teeming, churning with every creepy crawly thing that ever slithered out of a swamp. Hordes of birds descend, drawn by the juicy feast. Animals awaken from their pregnant hibernations, skinny and starving and suckling their young. Birds and beasts, alike, set out on a concerted feeding frenzy, gorging themselves and their ravenous, insatiable, mouths-ever-open offspring.
It is as if the great egg of the whole world has hatched.
And so it has in the collective imagination and symbolism of many cultures. The myths of the peoples of Polynesia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Greece, Phoenicia, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Central and parts of South America and Africa all describe an original cosmic egg from which the universe is born. The Latin proverb, Omne vivum ex ovo, proclaims "All life comes from an egg." It is only natural and not so subtle to assign the birth of the world to a Great Mother Goddess who laid the egg of life. All of nature, after all, is a constant cyclical reminder of just such a fertile female force, the seed source of all generation. All life does, indeed, come from an egg.
The Egyptian goddess Hathor took the form of the Nile goose, the Great Cackler in order to lay the golden egg, which was the sun. The Egyptian hieroglyphic notation for the World Egg is the same as for that of an embryo in the womb of a woman. The Celts, too, had a Mother Goose who laid the egg of all existence. According to the Hawaiians, the Big Island was produced from the egg of a huge water bird. She was known as the Great Midwife, the Egg Mother. Knosuano was the Moon Egg of Ghana. The Druids honored the Egg of the World. In Greek Orphic tradition, The Great Goddess of womb-like darkness, Mother Night, was impregnated by the Wind, and she gives forth with the silver egg from which the earth emerges.
According to the Chinese, the first human being sprang from an egg dropped from the heaven into the primordial waters. The Chimu Indians of Peru are descended, ordinary people and heroes alike, from the original egg -- the moon. The Samoan Heavenly One, hatched from an egg whose shell pieces became the earth. Prajapati, the creator of all living things in Indian mythology, was born of a great golden egg, which was first incubated in the uterine waters of eternity. The god, Brahma burst forth from a gold egg.
In time, the egg, the symbol of life, of birth, came to signify the season of spring. For it is then that the aspect of fertility and rebirth within the cycle is so overwhelmingly evident. Clearly, the egg stands for spring. The egg, in fact, stands at spring. Actually stands up on its end at the moment of the Vernal Equinox. Stands at attention as the sun crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere. Stands in salute to spring.
Soon after I started producing urban celebrations of the seasons in 1975, a friend returned from Asia with an odd bit of equinoctial information for my interest. Apparently, in prerevolutionary China it was customary for peasants to stand eggs on their ends on the first day of spring. To do so would guarantee good luck for the entire year. I have since had people tell me that their Scandinavian grandparents, too, balanced eggs at the equinox in their home countries.
Tantalized, I immediately set out to prove it on American soil. Of course they stood. That was 35 years ago, and I have initiated the public balancing of many thousands of eggs on every Spring Equinox since. There is something extraordinarily powerful in the image, in the experience, of an egg standing upright without any support that elicits ancient and rarely accessed emotions. Stood at the first moment of spring, the egg becomes the symbol of a new season, the birth of new life. The regeneration of hope.
Let us stand, too, on the Spring Eqquinox, in celebration of all life and living.
Join Urban Shaman, Donna Henes
35th Annual Vernal Equinox Celebration
Eggs on End: Standing on Ceremony
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Pier 16, South Street Seaport, Manhattan
Follow Donna Henes on Twitter: www.twitter.com/queenmamadonna
Grove Harris: International Nowruz: Spring Equinox Celebrated at the United Nations
Donna Henes: Counting Down to the Winter Solstice
As a matter of fact, why are there almost exclusively posts about the big 3 (Christianity, Jewish, Islam) in the Religion section, aside from a couple post about Buddhism, and none about pagan religions? At first I thought it was because the HuffPo didn't have a blogger on pagan matters but here's a post not only explaining the Vernal Equinox but also advertising where she's having her ceremony this weekend.
C'mon HuffPo, you can do so much better than this...
Enchanted Blessings ~
Daina (Dinah) Puodziunas - aka Midlife Fairy Godmother
You do know there's a Southern hemisphere, don't you?
I was just wondering how the "Earth" can be born in the Spring when half of it is entering into Winter.
You do make a good point in general. It is always good to watch our ethnocentric and Northern "hemispheric" assumptions. In this articles case, I don't have much of a problem with the reminders of the Western Worlds traditional spring rituals. It IS the beginning of spring for MOST of the Huffington readers I imagine. Poor Australians, New Zealanders and some South Afrikaners might be some readers who are watching leaves turn brown rather than budding, but I think they might forgive us for celebrating springs return. "The earths being reborn" generally speaks to the vegetation returning and the promise of the potential bounty of the earths fertility that keeps us alive. Spring traditions, along with other seasonal traditions generally remind us to celebrate nature as it is.
May you and all of us (In the Northern hemisphere) celebrate and enjoy the quickening of life around us!
Years ago, I prepared a large seminar presentation for a course as part of my M.A. on behalf of my acedemic adviser on Celtic spirituality and Celtic Christianity. It was an hour and a half in length, and my essay for the course was on the same topic. My academic adviser had been offered the leadership of a Druidic community, although he was an ordained minister and had asked that I do my seminar presentation on the Celts. As I was working on my essay, my adviser took a trip to the UK to talk to an author of a book on Celtic culture. The title of the book was somewhat mysterious and my adviser wanted me to come up with an answer to the question posed by the mysterious title. He would ask the author what it meant and then see how I responded. I got it right .
Why am I writing this? Because after doing my research, I lost patience with neo-paganism. All these ancient rituals and celebrations being performed by modern-day people is little more than play acting. It is pointless.
Margaret W, Preston, UK