MARCH, 2008

March 13 - 21:

3/13 (Thu):

Some Mahayana Buddhists celebrate the birthday of the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion variously known as Tara, Kwan Yin, Kwan Zen, Kannon and many others.

In the Mayan calendar systems, this day begins the Uinal of Rain, the eighth of the 20-day Uinals in the current cycle of the Tzolkin, or 260-day calendar (11 Imix, Tzolkin 141). The symbolic bird for this uinal is the Eagle.

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 3/23.

In the later Greco-Roman solar calendar, this day and the next were what the Romans called the Liberalia: the festival of Dionysos or Bacchus, god of wine and the ecstatic experiences that are about to burst forth again in a few days with the coming of Spring at the Equinox. In the older Greek lunar calendar, the Dionyseia was observed at the same time as the Anthesteria, over the four days culminating at the Pisces New Moon (see 3/4 - 7).

 3/17 (Mon):  

In the Roman Catholic calendar, feast of St. Patrick, who is said to have driven all the snakes out of Ireland--yet another symbolic instance of spirit rising into ascendancy over matter -- at least for those who have bought into the fear paradigm, and have forgotten that there must have been a reason why Jesus said, "Be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

This Christian feast largely, but not completely, superseded the old Celtic and Britannic festivals in honor of the Green Man, Green George and many other Osiris counterparts at the other end of Europe from Egypt. This day is important to ancient Europeans because it means that Spring is only a few days away, and now is the time for asking the Green God for his favor and blessing.

3/19 (Wed): 

In the Roman Catholic calendar, the Feast of St. Joseph, also known for a century now as the feast of "St. Joseph the Worker." While it is more likely that Joseph was something more akin to the president of a construction firm -- as the gospel says he travelled to work in other towns, likely to do jobs local carpenters couldn't handle -- his image as a humble carpenter persists.

One of the year's many Green Man festivals comes now, just before the Spring Equinox, as the Yoruba and Santeria peoples of Africa celebrate Osanyin, the Orisha of the Green Leaves.

In ancient Athens, the Lesser Panathenaea, the shorter and less solemn and elaborate of two annual festivals honoring Athene as the source of creative inspiration. The crucial importance of the Goddess in the city's life is evident in the placement of her festival right on the Spring Equinox. Athene's Festival of the Arts includes exhibitions of painting and sculpture, performances of music, dance and theatre, and games and feasts in which the goal is beauty.

The ancient Romans celebrate on these same says the parallel festival of the Quinquatrus of Minerva, honoring the goddess as the source of inspiration and protector of beauty.

Spring Equinox, one of the four great cardinal festivals of the solar year. The spring season begins as the Sun enters Aries, and as James Joyce put it, the Ram has power. The festival period that begins now, and lasts for nearly a week, marks the return of Light, and of Mother Earth's vitality, from winter's long darkness and cold. From this point on the solar wheel, the days grow longer until the Summer Solstice and the "white nights" of late June. Spiritual traditions all over the planet celebrate this festival with hunts for eggs, rabbits and other symbols of birth.

The ancient Celtic and other central European peoples called the Spring Equinox Alban Eilir, or Ostara (source of "Easter"). It marks the day when the Earth goddess Bride, who had married the sky god at Imbolc time in early February, conceives the Sun Child who will be born nine months later at the Winter Solstice.

Like the Winter Solstice festival cycle that runs from Dec. 21 - 25, the Spring Equinox festival cycle extends over a few days, March 21 to 25. The reason for this is simply that in very ancient times, millennia before the rise of Ur and Egypt, the Spring Equinox could not yet be verified to happen as early as March 20, and so was celebrated on March 25. Thus the closer the equinox festival is to March 20, the newer it is; the closer it is to March 25, the more ancient; or, as in the case of Christian festivals, superseded an older "pagan" festival. Among the many festivals of this season:

In Japan this day is Shubun, the Buddhist day of contemplation on hakanai, the impermanence of things. This day is ideally placed, not long before the start of one of nature's most glorious spectacles of impermanence, the Japanese cherry blossom season.

This day begins the annual Taoist festival honoring the Shen, or deity of Spring, the Water element, and the East, with all that these imply as principles of origin and growth.

The ancient peoples of Mesopotamia, from the time of the ancient proto-city of Ur through Babylon and Nineveh, celebrate the return of Dumuzi -- later Baal -- from the underworld to reunite in marriage with the Goddess Astarte. The Greek counterpart of this rite, the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries, also falls during the month when the Sun is in Pisces, balancing the major Mysteries of August - September, when the Sun is across the zodiac wheel, in Virgo.

In many Native American calendars, Month of the Hawk begins.