Green Rain and Red Braid: the arrival of Spring
‘March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.’
Robustness, energy and action are the watchwords of March, moving us from blustery chill to the more gentle opening of spring, over the balance of the equinox. With green rain, fiery dogwood and red ribbons, the world awakes!
And every year as the vernal equinox approaches it will occur to someone, somewhere, to wonder why Aries, after two full months of actual new year, starts the astrological year… As a Druid, my frequent question to most conundra (and, in passing, do admire that classy word!) is, ‘What would the ancestors have done?’ and when we apply it to placing March as a beginning time, the answer is obvious. After all, would anyone start the year and celebrate new beginnings when none is visible around them, the January landscape land appearing cold and dead? No – it’s jolly March and the equinox that has always meant the start – of signs of life in the wild, and of the agricultural year - in the Northern Hemisphere.
So, who’s to blame for our bizarre inheritance – that of celebrating each New Year’s Eve in freezing January? Not hard to answer, as the Celtic bards would say; it’s the pesky Romans, back in the BCEs. To control a huge empire, you need an army of civil servants, who favoured pen-pushing-systematising over what people could see with their own eyes to a new level. They inserted January and February into the start of their ten-month calendar, thereby relegating the traditional start, March, to the third month; and incidentally making a nonsense of the month names Sept (7Th) Oct (8th) Nov (9th) and Dec (10th). Well done those ancient office bods; I’m sure they dream in the Elysian fields of our own 21st century middle management systems and sleep more soundly knowing that some things never change.
So, March: for energy, signs of growth the land and, astrologically, the year’s start.
It is the sign of the Ram – bullet headed, going for it, unstoppable; and the ruler of both Aries and March is Mars, the god of war, as the weather allowed the start of the bellicose Roman’s new campaigns. Bright sunshine and Mars and a bull-headed Ram might seem a little in your face, but maybe that’s the energy we need to kickstart us – especially after the year of pandemic – into whatever we decide our ‘new normality’ will be.
But, back to the land, and looking its agricultural and wild awakening; when our ancestors in the UK were building long barrows such as West Kennet and preparing for the sowing of the barley - annoyingly leaving no documentary evidence of their practices - we know that middle Eastern civilisations celebrated around the time of the equinox with festivals. Akitu from ancient Mesopotamia, 4,000 years ago, had around ten days of celebration, which included prayers, petitions for protection and puppets – not a bad template for modern Druids. So we combined puppetry and a Mad March Hare for one ceremony, and s/he ran boxing and racing through our ritual, as fast - on wet grass - as her human relay team could manage.
To tune into the hare’s exultant energy, view real hares boxing and racing without strings and poles, in all their fluid, super-speed glory – and in slow motion - just take a look here.
The wheel of the year, having no beginning or end, gives us eight opportunities to review and restart, but the changing of the Cosmic Tide at the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes, is regarded as both perilous and potent by Western magicians. We tune in to the cosmic relationship of Sun and Living Earth, and the energy of the Sun over the equator, added to that pull of the Moon contributes to the highest tides of the year: evidence of just how powerful this time is! Spring tells us that nature is unstoppable energy, and occultists – who, unlike Roman pen-pushers, do closely observe their world – agree. The nature current gives power.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
So wrote Dylan Thomas, and it’s a salutary reminder. The green force that drives life is also the servant of time, propelling us into old age: unstoppable. But spring is a time to forget linear time and chronological age and connect, through the solar-powered tide of life, to all that is youthful and spring-like within us. We need it to fill us to the brim whilst we can; with the energy to race into the field with the ram and tackle life head-on; to gird ourselves like the god Mars and face the new year with courage and strategy.
Now, coming back – as those civil servants didn’t! – to what we see around us, the catkins hang on the hazel branches, as every year, like green rain. No photo will do them justice; they are an annual wonder that, in a gentle constant way, carries spring’s impetus. And, if we have eyes to see, the dogwoods grow crimson, leaping with Earth’s fire, energising the high Pines: all is life reviving!
Grounding the energy that pours through us.
The invisible forms whose energy rejuvenates our world constantly seem to love and respond to gestures that ground our intent. So let’s borrow a custom from the ancient March lore of Bulgaria. Their ‘Grandmother March’, Baba Marta, is a grumpy lady whose mood, like the March weather, changes frequently. Bulgarians honour her and celebrate the beginning of spring by exchanging Martenitsa, red and white braids ending in a tiny red (female) and white (male) doll, to pin on or wear as a bracelet. Those who love the Matter of Britain will remember Merlin’s red and white dragons, and look forward to the red and white hawthorn blossoms to come. The adornments bring health, love and happiness, and are worn until the recipient sees a sign of spring. In Bulgaria, a stork or tree blossom: perhaps for us the hazel or pussy willows, wild garlic sprouting in the woods, or birds displaying and nest building. After you’ve witnessed your own spring-signs, your Martenitsa can be hung in fruit trees.
…and time to go and plant more beans -
At the time of writing, we can get out into the garden or countryside, and the covid restrictions are due to be relaxed soon, so we can anticipate joyful meetings. Giving a Martenitsa might be a lovely way to honour our personal celebrations and the joyful renewal of the year.
March loves dirty fingernails -evidence of our gardening! And let’s really appreciate the trickster energy of the Mad March hare this year. After all, for millennia, this time has been celebrated as the beginning of the year, with attendant delight, and that giddiness is enshrined in our cultural calendar courtesy of the Easter Bunny (surely a hare! Who else could run fast enough to deliver all those eggs round the world??) So hard boil eggs and paint with food colours, have the first picnics and hide things for the kids to find: the world is made anew, and the bird song is shouting that message to us!
Amaze your family as you celebrate the surreal and miraculous in nature. I’ve found out today that butterflies, like snowdrops, have a component of antifreeze that keeps them alive during winter; and that bees, those welcome harbingers of new life, affect the hive mind with noises – piping, whining, tooting, quacking and whoop, whooping, no less, and all carrying meaning. I’m much inclined to follow their lead, and affect the hive mind at Billington Villas with my own joyous sounds (various). After all, spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’