Happy Spring Equinox, or Ostara!  What a cool shot! This is the Earth from the firefly moonlander, taken a few days ago during the eclipse – because a lunar eclipse is a solar eclipse if you are looking from the Moon’s surface!  Or is it?

A “solar eclipse” is when you are on the Earth and the Moon comes between  you and the Sun, blocking it out.  A “Lunar Eclipse” is when you are on the Earth and you can see your own shadow (and the shadow of the rest of the Earth) block sunlight from hitting the Moon.  So maybe the situation seen in the picture above should be properly called a “Gaian Eclipse”?  I like it.

As a modern society, I’ve long thought that back in the 70s or 80’s or so, we should have installed a Mooncam on the moon, looking at us, beaming back images. Power is not an issue – it could be solar powered, and starting in the 90’s, the images could be on a webpage, updated every hour or whatever.

Just after our near-Ostara lunar eclipse, our spirituality (and the Earth herself!) brings us Ostara, the Spring Equinox today – a great reminder that life returns after challenges, as well as a reminder of that every cool thing has to start, and it’s a great time to start new things.  Of course, our spherical planet also gives us the beautiful symmetry of the  Fall Equinox (& Mabon) being celebrated now by our Southern Hemisphere friends.  The moment of the Equinox is at 5:01 am  (EDT), Thursday, March 20th, which means that for most of the planet, it’ll be on the 20th.  Life will return!  Some of the online celebrations haven’t happened yet.  Check out the links here to join any of them.

Celebrations

Some of the ways many of us are celebrating were published a few weeks ago. My family will celebrate the Equinox Saturday, with the egg coloring and other traditions mentioned in the post just linked to.  We have found that leaving them in the dye in the cold garage over night deepens their color.  In whatever way you are celebrating, Happy Equinox!

This is an  updated version of the yearly Spring Equinox announcement.   An overview of the eight holidays of the Wheel of the Year, from a naturalistic perspective, is here.