Naturalistic Paganism

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Vernal Equinox is celebrated as Ostara (also spelled Eostar, Eostre, or Eastre), deriving from the name of a Germanic goddess to whom the month of the same name was holy.  It is the same word from which we get Easter.  This time of year is a moment of bursting forth, of life emerging from darkness out into the light.

Nature333 by Annika Garratt

Glenys Livingstone of Pagaian recommends discovering the balance of light and dark in your own breath:

Feel the balance in this moment – Earth as She is poised in relationship with the Sun.  Feel for your own balance of light and dark within – this fertile balance of tensions.  Breathe into it.  Breathe in the light, swell with it, let your breath go into the dark, stay with it.  Shift on your feet, from left to right, feel your centre…breathe it in.

In our part of the Earth, the balance is about to tip into the light.  Feel the shift within you, see in your mind’s eye the energy ahead, the light expanding.  Feel the warmth of it.  Breathe it in.  (Livingstone, 2008)

She also suggests representing the Spring Equinox with a daffodil with bulb and roots exposed, “signifying the full story of Spring Equinox, which is, emergence from the dark: the joy of this blossoming is rooted in the journey through the dark.”

See also John H. Halstead’s Spring Equinox ritual script, which is especially useful for those with children.

Those in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Mabon at this time.

Today is Einstein’s birthday, as well as Pi Day.

Albert Einstein’s birthday as well as Pi Day is March 14.  Einstein, born in 1879, was the celebrated mind that gave us the theory of relativity and E = mc².

The mathematical constant π or pi expresses the ratio of any Euclidean circle’s circumference to its diameter.  Its decimal representation never ends and never repeats (though it is commonly abbreviated to 3.14).

Princeton has celebrated the 14th with pie and an Einstein look-alike contest.