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APRIL, 2012
April
1 - 12
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4/1 - 2 (2 days):
In the ancient Greek calendar, the Veneralia, the annual rites of Peace, celebrating the power of love by which Aphrodite (her name is the source of "April") overcomes the physical power of Ares, god of war. Festivals of the lady of love abound this month, beginning weeks before the Sun enters the Venus-ruled sign of Taurus on April 20.
The famous expression "Amor Vincit Omnia" (Love Conquers All) is a relic of this festival.
Venus is powerfully positioned for most of this month in Pisces, where she is said to be "exalted," until April 21.
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In the ancient Khemitian calendar, this day begins a major four-day festival cycle honoring the neteru -- not "gods" -- as keepers of cosmic order. The main feasts and ceremonies:
4/1 Festival Day of Het-Hor, aka Hathor, as sky divinity whose cow horns embrace the Sun. Het-Hor, whose name literally means "house of Hor" (Het-Hor is, along with Aset ("Isis"), one of two netert (the "t" after neter identifies the divine emanation as female) who were honored as mother of the solar deity and divine hero Hor. Het-Hor is also identified in this spring festival with Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of love. (Month of Pachons, day 17)
4/2 Festival of the Ennead--the nine "old neters" and the boat of Ra, which maintains order in heaven and earth by sailing each day through the sky and the duat, or underworld. (Pachons, day 18).
4/2 Festival of the union of Djehuti ("Thoth"), neter of letters and learning, with Ma'at, neter of Truth. It is said that Djehuti's understanding of numbers, and of mathematics as a principle of civil and universal order, is born of the inspiration he received from Ma'at. (Pachons, day 19)
4/3 Feast of Ma'at as merciful intermediary in the judgment of souls. (Pachons, day 20)
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In most Christian calendars, this is Palm Sunday, celebrating the day on which Jesus fulfilled the ancient prophecy that the Messiah would ride an ass into Jerusalem in the days just before Passover, and be welcomed in triumph by adoring crowds waving palm fronds, the symbol of nourishment and new life. This day begins Christian Holy Week, culminating in Easter on 4/8.
4/2 (Mon):
In the Mayan calendar systems, this day begins the Uinal of Love, the fifth of the 20-day Uinals in the current cycle of the Tzolkin, or 260-day calendar (3 Imix, Tzolkin 81). The principles that rule this Uinal are Anchoring and Sprouting. The symbolic bird is the Hawk.
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Venus enters Gemini. Though it is not exactly true that in Gemini Venus is more talker than lover -- spending herself in everything from elegant conversation to the silliest gossip, depending on who's playing Venus at the time -- it is true that words from and to her will be persuasive now. She is likelier to enter short, frenetic love unions that are more mouth than heart. |
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4/4 (Wed):
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In ancient Rome, 4/4 is the first day of the week-long Megalesia, in honor of Cybele, the Magna Mater (Great Mother) worshipped throughout the Roman Empire. Megalesia marked the arrival in Rome of Cybele's image, sent from her home temple in Phrygia (in the western region of modern Turkey) in 204 BC, in response to a prophecy from the Sibylline Books that Hannibal and the army of Carthage would leave Italy only if Cybele's sacred black stone were brought to Rome. The Senate and people of Rome soon learned to their acute discomfort that worship of the Magna Mater included such alarming austerities as self-flagellation and the emasculation of her priests. Thus, for more than two centuries, Cybele's priesthood was limited to non-Romans.
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On this day Mercury "goes direct," reversing the retrograde path he has traveled from Aries and back into Pisces since March 12. The delays, blockages, confusions and various mysteries of mechanical and human weirdness that we have experienced in recent weeks now begin to lift, though not all at once. Mercury will not re-enter Aries until 4/16, and it will not be until until the 23rd that he "clears the shadow" of Mercury retrograde by returning to the point he had reached when his backward movement began. |
| 4/5 (Thu): |
This day is the Roman festival of Fortuna, honoring the goddess of luck and chance, symbolized by wings, the Moon, a cornucopia and a ship's rudder. |
| 4/6 (Fri), 9:20am HT; 7:20 pm UT: |
The Full Moon in Libra, opposite Sun in Aries. This tends to be one of the less harmonious oppositions on the wheel, as it's the time when kings go forth to war at precisely the moment in early spring when queens are most in need of reassurance and affection, and the Aries desire for action outside the home clashes most abruptly with the Libra objective to settle down in marriage. This Full Moon is bumpier than usual this year because of Neptune's conflictive position in Pisces now, on the Sun and opposite the Moon. While the Moon-Sun pair are not connected to other planets in any angles of relationship, there is a conflictive T-cross now among Venus in Gemini, Mars in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces. Tempers are likely to flare among lovers, especially those who have been economical with the truth. |
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In the Hindu calendar, this Full Moon is Hanuman Jayanti, birthday of the beloved nature guide and trickster Hanuman, the monkey god whose craft helps many heroes who cannot escape danger and win their ends on muscle and heart alone.
In the Jain calendar, this Full Moon is Mahavir Jayanti, celebrating the birthday of Mahavira, founder of the Jain faith.
In the Celtic/Druidic and Wiccan calendars, this Full Moon is called Seed Moon. Also Budding Moon, Planter’s Moon, Pink Moon and the Green Grass Moon, when Nature revives.
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| 4/6 - 9 (four days): |
For the Theravadin Buddhists of Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos and Cambodia, the days following the first Full Moon in April are the New Year festival. What may make various Buddhist New Years less bewildering to sort out is that Mahayana Buddhists celebrate the New Year at the first Full Moon in January; for most others it aligns with the Chinese New Year at the New Moon in Aquarius month (Jan. 20 - Feb. 18), while Tibetans prefer to time their New Year a month later than the Chinese calendar. |
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4/7 - 14 (eight days):
Pesach, the Jewish feast of Passover, begins at sunset this day and continues for the next eight days. These holy days commemorate the night on which the Jews of Egypt painted the door posts of their homes with lamb's blood, as a sign that the Angel of Death was to spare the family from the death of their firstborn. This was the last and most terrible of the seven plagues visited upon Pharaoh, and the one that convinced him to release the Hebrews from bondage.
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4/8 (Sun):
Celebrated in some Buddhist communities, by the solar calendar, as the birthday (563 BC) of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. This date is most observed in cultures which attribute to the Buddha the physical and psychic qualities of Aries, the Ram (visible in the eyebrow and nose lines of this image). The Chinese, Tibetan and other Asian lunar calendars, on the other hand, place the Buddha's birthday on the Full Moon of the 4th lunar month, known in the West as the "Full Moon in Taurus" -- that is, the Full Moon in Taurus month. See 5/17.
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Among those who observe the Buddha's birthday with rare beauty on this day are the Japanese, for whom this is the Hana Matsuri, or flower festival, when children dressed in their best kimono chant in gorgeous processions with floral floats that must be seen -- and smelled -- to be believed.
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In most Christian calendars, this is Easter Sunday, the most joyous of all Christian feasts, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus, and symbolically the victory over death that is now available for all of humankind. Ever since Christianity became the state religion of the late Roman empire, the timing of Easter has been reckoned as the Sunday after the first Full Moon following the Spring Equinox. This means that Easter must always fall between March 22 and April 20, while the Sun is in the sign of Aries, here the sacrificial Ram, the Lamb of God whose suffering will bring, in the view of Christian believers, the redemption of all human beings.
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4/9 (Mon):
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In some annual Christian saints' day calendars, this is the feast of St. Mary of Egypt, unofficial patron saint of runaways and children who are born to be wild. At 12 she ran away to Alexandria, where she lived as a party animal and prostitute until, at 29, she pulled the stunning outrage of traveling with a caravan of pilgrims to Jerusalem, entertaining along the way as many men as she could lure into her tent. In the holy city she experienced a life-cleansing vision of the Virgin Mary, who told her to "cross over Jordan" to find peace. Mary wandered in the desert for the next 47 years until she met the abbot Zosimus, who brought her holy communion on Holy Thursday and agreed to come and administer the sacrament again a year later. When Zosimus returned, he found Mary lifeless on the sand, with an inscription that read, "Here lies the body of Mary the sinner." Her story has been dramatized in a beautiful "icon in music and dance" by John Tavener.
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April 9 is also the Baha'i feast honoring the Deity as Jalal (Glory).
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4/11 (Wed):
In the Roman Catholic calendar, this is the feast of Pope Leo I, also called St. Leo the Great, who is celebrated for his courage in having gone unescorted to persuade Attila the Hun to spare Rome from the destruction that the Huns had already visited on northern Italy. It is reported that when Attila's generals asked him why he had chosen to march his host back to the Danube, instead of taking the empire's richest prize when it was within his grasp, Attila replied that he had seen two radiant beings, whom he took to be Sts. Peter and Paul, standing behind Leo, symbolizing the spiritual forces allied with him.
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4/12 - 19 (8 days):
Roman festival of Cerealia, honoring Ceres (Greek Demeter) and her blessings of abundant harvest, peace and good government. Feminine relationships of sisterhood, parenthood and mentorship between wise women and girls, and for that matter all ceremonies of female spirituality, are emphasized now.
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