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Equinox thoughts
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
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.
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.
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Comments
Your lesson in archaeoastronomy for the day!
Palzang
Palzang
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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