Spring Equinox

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Mark: Welcome to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark,

Yucca: And I'm Yucca,

Mark: and it's equinox time again. Time for that holiday that's at the midpoint between the dark of the, the dark side of the year and the light side of the year and for many, the coming of spring or the height of spring. And we're going to talk about all that stuff and how you practice rituals around it and what it means to us.

Yucca: that's right. So, happy spring! Or autumn, depending on where you're listening from.

Mark: Depending on where you're listening from, and as I understand it, Yucca, it is snowing where you are.

Yucca: It happens to be snowing today, yep.

Mark: happy hope of spring.

Yucca: Yes, it has sounded like spring, and it has felt like spring. It's just today it decided it was not. Not quite there. So, but it's a wet snow too, so it's not, it's not gonna stick around. It's

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: as soon as there's any sun, it'll be gone. But yeah, how about for you?

Mark: Oh, it's a beautiful day. It's going to be in the mid 70s today. And clear skies with some nice puffy clouds. We, here, the daffodils are already finished.

Yucca: Oh, mine are just poking up there a few inches, starting to grow out of the ground right now. Okay,

Mark: different, different climates we're in. Yeah, so it's been, you know, we have a number of fruit trees around the neighborhood that are blooming right now, and

Yucca: no more frosts for you at this

Mark: no, I don't think so. I'd be very surprised if we had any more frosts.

Yucca: Okay, so it's, it's spring for you. You're into spring. It's not hints of spring, it's spring itself.

Mark: Right, well, that's why on my Wheel of the Year, I call this holiday High Spring. Because spring, where I am, because we have a climate so moderated by the Pacific Ocean it, we get the earliest wildflowers around the end of January. And, you know, acacia trees bloom in the, in February, and that's when daffodils start coming up.

And tulips, which never bloom unless you take them out and put them in the freezer and then put them in. Again and hyacinths and all those kinds of nice things. We have a hyacinth bulb blooming in our living room right now, making the whole house smell delicious.

Yucca: Oh, lovely.

Mark: yeah. Yeah, that was a score from Trader Joe's, amazingly.

They had these little, little jars that had a receptacle in the top to hold a bulb. And the, the bottom part is filled with water, and so the roots grow down into there. So, You know, you take it home and a day later or something, because they've just removed it from refrigeration, it sprouts a big spike and leaves and blooms and it makes a beautiful smell.

Yucca: Do you get to see the roots?

Mark: Yes, yeah, it's a clear glass, yeah, it's a clear glass container, so you see the roots going down. Yeah, yeah.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, this year, the, the Equinox is early. Now, of course, it's not that it's actually early, it's just that our calendar doesn't quite line up with the actual orbit of our planet, but it's, in my time zone, it'll be on the 19th,

Mark: Ours too,

Yucca: in the, yeah, so for folks who are in Europe and further east, it'll be the early morning of the 20th, but for those of us in North America, it'll It's the evening of the 19th already, so,

Mark: right.

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: and I mean obviously the main reason for that is the leap year. The ex the extra day that got inserted into the calendar in order to make things work out. But I mean, sometimes the Equinox is as late as the 21st.

Yucca: 22nd

Mark: yeah, sometimes the early, early hours of the 22nd as well. So this is an early one that lands on Tuesday.

But as with all things, I just tend to celebrate about a week of the season.

Yucca: around, yeah, and it interestingly is not technically the day of equal daytime and nighttime.

Mark: right.

Yucca: There's actually another word, which is equilux, Which is great, all of these fun words, right? Equinox is equal night, right? Nox, noche, but lux is for light. And that's going to depend on your latitude, but that's usually a few days before.

I actually haven't looked up when it is for, for, okay.

Mark: where I am.

Yucca: Okay, so Paddy's day then.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: All right. Yeah.

Mark: record this

Yucca: so, and that's gonna depend on, and there's, you can look up some of the cool reasons for why that is, it's based on, you know, sunrise starts at the moment that the disk of the sun starts to appear above the horizon, where a sunset isn't until it's all the way, and then your latitude and the curving of the light as it goes through our atmosphere.

So. It's not perfect, but what the equinox itself is, when the ecliptic and the equatorial planes, this is the moment that they overlap. So that's why we can have an actual, say that it's night, I don't remember exactly, it was 9. 07 or 9. 08 or something like that, PM.

Mark: yeah, I think 9 0 7. Where you are in 8 0 7. Where I am.

Yucca: Yeah, where there's an actual moment that we say, ah, This is the moment.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: And my family will set, I haven't set it yet, but we'll set the alarm and when it goes off, we'll all put our hands in the air and go, woo! And then go back to what we're doing. So I'm pleased that it's not two in the morning because then it's wake everyone up at two in the morning and go, woo!

That happens sometimes with solstices or equinoxes, so, yeah.

Yeah, go ahead.

Mark: yeah, let's, for sure, let's, let's dive into it. What does it mean to us? What are the sort of metaphorical meanings that we apply to this time of year? What are the rituals that we, that we use? What do we call it? I think is a good place to start. What do you call this holiday, Yucca?

Yucca: So normally just the equinox for us or its first spring because that's kind of, I mean, that's what it is, right? So we don't have another name for it other than, yeah, it's the equinox, it's first spring. I know that in some, some traditions people use Ostara or things like that, but that name has never really clicked for me.

Mark: It's, it's a completely mythical name. It was mentioned by the, the Christian monk Bede in the 9th century, and that is the entire evidence for even the existence of a goddess named Ostara. Much certainly nothing associated with this holiday particularly, so the whole thing is really pretty sketchy.

Yucca: hmm. And

Mark: So,

Yucca: what is it for you?

Mark: I call it High Spring

Yucca: High spring. That's right.

Mark: because for us that's what it is here. You know, what'll happen now, the hills are a really deep emerald green right now. that will lighten up and then eventually all fade to a gold color by about June ish. We had a really wet winter this year, so it may take a little bit longer, but typically by by the, the solstice, it's all gone yellow and it's time for summer.

Yucca: And for your wheel or arc of the year, what is this holiday?

Mark: Oh, where I map a human life?

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: cycle on to the, the wheel of the year. This is grade school kids. It's not infants and toddlers, but children, you know, prepubescent children.

Yucca: childhood, kind

Mark: childhood.

Yucca: right? Because when you get into teens, they're, they're not grown ups yet, but it's not childhood anymore at that

Mark: No, they're closer to young adults, really. They're, they're, they're adults in apprenticeship doing, making lots of changes and, and learning how to be adults. and hopefully their brains develop. Vast enough that they don't kill themselves in the process.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Yeah, so, so this holiday is typically associated with childhood.

And there are a lot of sort of kids activity things that we've done for celebrations of this holiday before. We've had gatherings where we invited people to come and play …