The spring equinox is the best time to start something new. Our sacred sun has returned to bring new beginnings and balance. This time used to be considered the new year in many parts of Europe until the middle of the 18th century. And what other peculiar facts can we find about spring equinox?
Millennia ago the Lakota people of the U.S. Midwest noticed that every spring, the sun rises in the constellation known as the Dried Willow. Those stars look like nubs on the branch, and the branch represents the red willow. The inner bark of that red willow is the main ingredient used to make tobacco for the equinoctial Sacred Pipe ceremony, which is meant to rekindle the sacred fire of life on Earth…
The equinox is a day with light and dark of nearly equal length, with the Sun rising precisely in the east and setting precisely in the west. Equinox literally means “equal night.”
The spring and fall equinoxes are also the only days of the year when a person standing on the Equator can see the sun passing directly overhead.
Spring is the time of the year when the cycle of life, death, and rebirth is complete. The light and the darkness meet at equal footing…
An ancient method of tracing the Sun’s meanderings through the sky involves using light and shadow to paint particular images…
That day upon a portion of useful information, I went watching Nature’s equinox installations on a stormy sea shore and collecting fragments and bits to create a new beginning for something beautiful.
Finding treasures of this equinox – drops of solidified sunshine on the beach – is so inspiring!
Memory, Mystery and Magic… Amber is a window to the past. The most attractive quality of amber is that it possesses very old energy. With this old energy comes the acquired wisdom of the earth.
Amber belongs to a small class of organic gems, neither a crystal nor a mineral, but a biological product of nature, a protective resin that oozed from living trees in dense, prehistoric forests and fossilized over millions of years. Sap is the liquid and Resin is the solid parts of the life essence of a tree. This Life Essence carries the trees Immune system, nutrients and healing properties like blood circulating throughout the body of the tree.
Amber was used medicinally for thousands of years for headaches, heartaches, and pains of all kinds. Amber is a mixture of hydrocarbons, composed of several tree resins (mostly of an extinct Pine genus, or in some areas extinct Hymenaea species), plant materials, a volatile oil and succinic acid.
My friend Mara can turn “Gold of the Sea” into intricate talismans of beauty, protection and renewal.
Meanwhile, on the beach Nature kept playing with light and shade creating incredible structures of ice and willow branches on the sand.
And when all equinox legends and myths read, “catch” of the day collected, I got down to translating elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.
“And suddenly you know… It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”