32. SPRING EQUINOX

                                                           Faerie Art by Brian Froud

     Spring is afoot! celebrations center along flowing ley lines, charmed founts of pagan energy. Early shoots nestle in an aural glow, as a rare snow graces this most westerly zone of coastal rainforest. On the vernal focal point, with Faerie Queen rapture, we are poised to dance with the Great God Pan. Our coven, the Elfinstone Faerie Tribe, marks the day at Fat Fish Creek, jumping over bonfires on the rocky beach, where the inland sea meets the freshwater creek. Amid dithyrambs extolled by our native ecstatic poet, Joe L., we dance, naked in our Mind's Eye, forming Cones of Power, titillating buds to open and pillars to rise!

  We appear at the Unveiling of the Great Slab, as artist M. Spira dubs the 7 ft. high obelisk erected on a geomantic, synchronic line in the forest near his cabin, by community mason R. Pope. Freestanding stones ring the temple site, aye, and doesn't the capstone's flecked vein of crystal rock dust, on its pyramid apex, resemble Dionysian Spawn?! Dusk approaching, a crescent moon waxing high, to honor the occasion of my lunar cycle on this auspicious holiday, I splash a toasted offering of red wine atop the Stone Cone Lingam! In the parting shadows, we encounter a sky clad Peter Pan, honoring God and Goddess with wild abandon and spontaneous joy, tattooed skin and family jewels shining in the equinoxial light. Io Pan! Io Pan! Io PAN!

                                                            Faerie Art by Brian Froud
     We do well to touch lightly upon the Earth, grateful for the yearly Awakened Return of Her-Beauty-in-Divine-Balance. We intuitively understand how deeply She is loved and cared for, by Her Devas and Elemental Spirits : dwarves, satyrs, fauns, maenads, sileni, faeries, pixies, elves, sylphs, nymphs and undines. We bless the Great Work these Merry Mythmakers have undertaken for Aeons, with Due Devotion, ever-intending Her Faithful Restoration. We ponder the miracle of our Mothership's survival, tolerating the onslaught of Mankind's unnecessary abuse and harm. "An' It Harm None, Do What Ye Will"1. She suffers  sores and blights, yeast infections, acid Ph and indigestion at our hands, from nuclear blasts, strip-mining, slash-burning, clearcut logging and fracking. We marvel, akin with sorrowful regret, however fair She endures our ignorance, greed and ineptitude (and can only wonder how much longer we'll deny our role in climate change).

     The saying "Keep the Sabbath Holy" was a reminder to the ancient Babylonians to honor the full moon. The Lunar Sabbath, marked by ceremonies of peace, prayer and renewal, is still practiced by diverse cultures, religions and indigenous peoples  around the Earth. "Carrying the moon to term" signifies a monthly, spiritual "heart's rest" of the people, in order to cleanse and purify, with gratitude and forgiveness, the completed lunar cycle (29.3 days) and to intentionally prepare for the next. Meeting in fields and meadows, in Moon lodges and inipis, it's in our blood's design (as inheritors of Matrilineal descent) to celebrate equinoxes and solstices, full and new moons, planetary alignments, orbiting comets and astrological confluences; collectively, we have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years.

                                                     Caravaggio, Bacchus (1596)
     1985. A snow-blanketed month of March in Montréal inspires us to create a Happening! We collage a poster depicting Pan / Dionysus, wearing a twined-grape-leaf crown and offering the Blood Mystery / communion sacrament, with the message "Meet at the top of Mt. Royal on Spring Equinox". At dawn that vernal day, M and I catch a bus to the peak, on whose outskirts lies a winter chalet and a 400-year-old cemetery. Between snow-blinding snow rays, we witness the arrival of an incarnation of the Great Goat God.........a daring dervish steps up to greet us, sporting fiery-red long-hair and mutton-chops. A handlebar mustache curls like a dragons-tail around his sly grin. We pass a lovely time walking, smoking puffs of the sacred herb in his Gandalfian pipe. In silence, we share an occulted awareness of the intimations of the Light......glancing off the tombstone pillars.

     ARISE! ALL HAIL THE GOD OF PANIC! In sublime hysteria of Spring's unearthing, in joyful arousal and anticipation of Persephone rising, goat kids kick their heels mid-air, cuddling foxes in yin-yangs lick their sexes and frolicking horned-rams butt skulls. WAKE UP! Spring reigns over the first and the last (as Pisces turns to Aries). Baby hares snuggle in the undergrowth, purple, pink and white heathers tinkle faerie bells, and the marbled murrelet (native name Spipiyus - endangered members of the Auk family) nest in old-growth trees, warming their marbled eggs.....Shhhhhh!  the SPIPIYUS ARE HATCHING!!!

1 The Wiccan Rede