Alban Eilir: the spring equinox

The above image, ‘Vernal Equinox’, is one of my old mixed media paintings/prints. If you look closely, there is a Green Man in the top right.

Spring Equinox 2024: Hawk Dokusan

Once again, the exuberance of the pink peach blossom
delivers its surprise. The tree by the house has been 
unburdened of its cargo of honeysuckle, wisteria; piggybacking
for so long, they have left it spindly, straggling. Still
spring after spring it pushes towards the birds, bees, the sky.

In the beginnings of our food forest the mirabelle 
and the new peach have taken; they too risk blossom.
Above a pair of ravens, several times larger than their target, 
harry the local sparrowhawk; their voices reverberate. The hawk
merely flips away. Such an easy lesson, to yield. So hard to do.

© Roselle Angwin

(‘Dokusan’ is a one-to-one interaction transmitted by a Zen teacher to a practitioner. I have often written of how my teachers are other species; some of my poetry collections include these dokusan, notably Bardo.)

Today in the northern hemisphere it’s the spring equinox. I would go on to say it’s the first of only two times in the solar year where day and night are of equal length; but I’ve learned something recently. There is another word, ‘equilux’, which I assumed meant the same as equinox, except using day, (lux, light) instead of night (nox).

Not so. Astronomers among you may know that the equilux, the actual date of equal day and night and the point at which the sun rises exactly due east and sets due west, occurs a few days before the equinox.

The equinoxes, unlike the solstices, vary a little each year. This is because basically the earth’s orbit around the sun takes 365¼ days. This is why we have a leap year every four years, otherwise there would be a gradual drift of date through the seasons. Generally, the equinox occurs about six hours later each year for four years, when it will then ‘jump’ backwards by a day to create a leap year. This year, the equilux – when day and night were actually equal in length – was on March 17th. Today is, though, the equinox. Now, the sun is already rising fractionally further north of east, and setting fractionally north of west.

My path involves the Zen practice of what is known as mindfulness; because that is so over-used, and often rather trivially, I prefer the (clunky) term ‘present-moment awareness’. The second strand though is an ancient British shamanic practice; and in common with other pagan practices it involves an attending to the eight festivals of the year, which gives a delightful sacred ritual focus approximately every 6 weeks.

In the Wheel of the Year that I use, spring is quite literally ‘a breath of fresh air’: the element of air is associated with the east, from where the sun will rise; implementing now ideas and inspiration, new life, creativity, beginnings, after the inwardness of winter in the north.

I wish you all a beautiful stepping-forward as you attune yourself to these burgeoning and blossoming energies.