Equinox thoughts

Simonthepilgrim

Those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere have just entered the Spring. In the South, the Sutumn is beginning.

For us, 'up' here (ever wondered why north is up? but that's another story), this is the time we celebrate fertility. It is all around us as the plants grow and the tadpoles fill my pond. The birds are nesting and our local swans are territorial and possessive - I saw one get off the lake and menace a baby buggy yesterday (he hates buggies).

Christians celebrate on the 25th, which is the first day you can notice, with the naked eye, that the days are getting longer than the nights. It will be the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of saying "YES" to life - and only 9 months till Christmas.

The old, pre-Christian name for this time is still in use in the English legal tradition: it is a Quarter Day and called "Lady Day".

May all our best plans come to bear fruit in due time and may the Lady hold us in her arms to give us comfort.

Palzang

It wasn't always so that north is "up". To the Ancient Egyptians South was "up" because that was where the source of the Nile was, and the Nile was the source of all life and benefit to the Egyptians (and still is, in many ways). When viewed in this way, the entire geography of Egypt makes sense in relationship to Ancient Egyptian religion. The Nile corresponds to the Milky Way, and the pyramids at Giza correspond to the stars which make up the Duat - the great celestial realm where the human soul (if it survives the judgment of Osiris) travels through on its journey to eternal life. The Duat is located in the area of the outstretched arm of the constellation Orion (called Osiris by the Ancient Egyptians) and corresponds, interestingly, to the exact location of the sunrise on the vernal equinox in 4493 BCE, prior to the time when the pyramids were built.

Your lesson in archaeoastronomy for the day!

Palzang

Brigid

Wonderful, Palzang!

Simonthepilgrim

As above, so below!

Palzang

And the Egyptians took that to its logical, literal conclusion!

Palzang

Nirvana

Palzang wrote:

It wasn't always so that north is "up"...

Your lesson in archaeoastronomy for the day!

Palzang

YOU PEOPLE in Sedona think you know Everything.


EDIT: oops, was THAT rude?

Magwang

Palzang

Nirvana wrote:

YOU PEOPLE in Sedona think you know Everything.


EDIT: oops, was THAT rude?

Not correct! I'm the only one that does... :rolleyesc

Palzang the Persnickety

Simonthepilgrim

There's an interesting thing to do: take a globe and look at it with the Antarctic towards you. Suddenly the Atlantic and the Pacific become a single ocean!

And the great pyramid complex at Giza was the original suggestion for Prime Meridian. It would have made a great deal of sense. If the P.M. had passed there instead of through Greenwich, it would have passed over the major landmasses rather than being essentially at sea.

And, of course, the copying of the maps of the heavens into monumental buildings on the earth can be detected in South East Asia (Ankhor Wat) and in the Meso and South American cultures. In Europe, apart from the celestial clock calendars of the Mesolithic, there is an interesting example in the seven great abbeys of Normandy which trace out the Great Bear on the map: geomancy is all around us.

To my eye, it suggests that ancestral cultures, including our own, were profoundly aware of the interdependence of the whole cosmos. The telescope changed all that for us, sending the universe away into unimaginable distance. We imagine that we are disconnected from this vastness. What is more, since the discoveries of the geologists, time itself has stretched so far that we feel marooned. I think that our ancestors were aware of this risk and, by modelling their monuments according to patterns copied from skies that anchor in a single moment of a single year, they attempted to stabilise humanity.

And, who knows, they may have been right.

Nirvana

Magwang, it's interesting that:
When you cut off Quebec from your map, the general outline of North America looks a lot like South America (from up north). Now, if you can just help Mr. Bush change the climate a little bit more rapidly, the people in real estate will have a field day.

Happy Spring! Lady Day will have to wait til March 26 this year, as the church will celebrate The Fifth Sunday In Lent tomorrow, the 25th.

Simonthepilgrim

Nirvana wrote:

.................Lady Day will have to wait til March 26 this year, as the church will celebrate The Fifth Sunday In Lent tomorrow, the 25th.

An d ius this same church going to delay the birthday to the 26th? The date was chosen to be 9 months ahead of the birth. IMO, as a liturgist, the Sunday should give way to the Annunciation which is tied to a specific date in the solar calendar, whereas Lent depends on a lunar one: why wish for the sun when we have the moon and stars?

Nirvana

Pilgrim, you can do whatever you like. Party two days or just one. Sundays in Lent are not for fasting, anyway. It's just that the church can't do away with a Sunday in Lent.*

On a different note, if Ash Wednesday were ever to fall on February 14, there would really be no Valentines Day that year.

As to your question as to whether the church would delay the birthday in December to the 26th, the American Book of Common Prayer, page 15, lists Christmas Day, along with Easter Day, Ascension Day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, All Saints' and the Epiphany as taking precedence over any other day. However, on page 16, it states that ALL SUNDAYS of the year are feasts of "our Lord Jesus Christ." There are exceptions when collects and readings can be changed for special occasions, but Not from the Last Sunday after Pentecost through the First Sunday after the Epiphany, or *from the Last Sunday after the Epiphany through Trinity Sunday.*

But I say, go ahead and party anyway. You deserve it!

Fondly,

Nirvana

--

Simonthepilgrim

As you say, Nirv., Sundays have never been part of the Lenten fast, otherwise it would be 45 days and not 40. The Annunciation is a 'red letter day' in the Rituale. Despite being a Double of the First Class, it does not replace a Sunday in Lent. That is all true, at the level of ritual. But, if we look at the Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday (John 7:14-31 in the old Missal), it could be argued that Jesus himself spoke out against slavish observance of Law over Spirit.