Lady Day Sabbat

Lady Day

On the Vernal/Spring Equinox, the amount of day and night is in perfect balance, with the power of light on the ascent. In the witches’ wheel of the year, the God-child born at Yule on the Winter Solstice is now full-grown. The young sun God embraces the maiden Goddess. Together they conceive the child who, in nine month’s time, will be born at the next Winter Solstice, completing and renewing the circle of life.

Modern witches refer to this lesser sabbat or low holiday as Lady Day in celebration of the joyous process of creation and conception. On Lady Day, the young Goddess is virginal (i.e., “unmarried) when she mythically mates with the young sun God. However, at the Winter Solstice she was a new mother and assumed her virginal aspect at Candlemas (February 2nd), at which time the young sun God reached puberty. He and the maiden Goddess at that time become lovers. However, since the Goddess as mother had been nursing the new-born God between Yule and Candlemas, conception would naturally be delayed approximately six weeks and the Goddess as maiden would not be able to conceive until the equinox. This is also when the God and Goddess are joined in sacred marriage, called hand-fasting or hierogamy, the ultimate Great Rite. Some traditions have moved this rite to Beltane, when the outdoors’ climate is more conducive to this type of celebration.

Lady Day is celebrated on one of two dates:

• The actual equinox, when the sun crosses the equator and enters the astrological sign of Aries; this year (2008), that will occur at 7:01 p.m. on the 20th of March in the northern hemisphere
• The traditional folk date of the 25th of March, starting on its eve

The Feast of the Annunciation of the BVM

The first of two Christian holidays that are often confused with the witches’ Lady Day sabbat is the Roman Catholic Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). This occurs on the fixed calendar day of the 25th of March in the old liturgical calendar and is the day that the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was would give birth to the son of God. Since there is no factual data for when this event actually occur, the Church picked the Vernal Equinox because it was necessary to have Mary conceive the child Jesus a full nine months before his birth on the 25th of December. If you wish to explore why, since there is no factual data available to support the 25th of December as the birth date of Jesus, this date was chosen, read Part One of this post.

Easter

The other Christian holiday that is usually mixed up with this witches’ sabbat is Easter. Easter, too, celebrates the victory of a god of light (Jesus) over darkness (death), so it made perfect sense to the Christians to date the resurrection of Jesus during this season. Ironically, the name Easter derives from the name of the Teutonic lunar Goddess, Eostre (from whence we also get the name of the female hormone, estrogen), whose primary symbols were the hare (both for fertility and because her worshipers saw a hare in the full moon) and the egg (symbolic of the cosmic egg of creation). Christians have been hard-pressed to explain how these images relate to their religion. The Eostara, Eostre’s holiday, was held on the vernal equinox full moon. Of course, Christians don’t celebrate full moons, so they designated the following Sunday as Easter. If you’ve ever wondered why Easter seemed to move all around the calendar, this is why: Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. In face, if Easter Sunday were to fall on the Full Moon itself, Easter would be postponed to the following Sunday!

Eostara

In recent years, some pagan traditions began referring to the spring equinox as Eostara. Historically, this is incorrect. Eostara is a lunar holiday, honoring a lunar Goddess, at the vernal equinox full moon. Therefore, the name Eostara is best reserved to the nearest esbat rather than the sabbat itself. Some of the same groups also misappropriated the term Lady Day for Beltane, which left no good folk name for the spring equinox. When Eostara was misappropriated for the spring equinox, a chain-reaction of displacement was completed. Needless to say, the old and accepted folk name for the vernal/spring equinox is Lady Day. Christians sometimes insist that the title is in honor of Mary and her Annunciation, but pagans and witches will smile knowingly.

Rituals

I love what my friend at The Ramblings of a Kitchen Witch posted. Especially wonderful for those of you who have children.

For a beautiful and simple ritual, visit Lady Rose and Mama Kelly’s 2 Witches Blog.

Here is BurntPageFilms “Ostara” video celebrating the Spring/Vernal Equinox and sabbat: