How to Celebrate the Spring Equinox
In this blog, I’ll be exploring what the Spring Equinox is, its spiritual significance, how we may experience its energy at this time, and how to celebrate the Spring Equinox.
I’ll also be looking at how we can connect with ourselves, our communities, the divine and the nature in the world around us at this time, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
As we all live in different climates, some ideas shared here will resonate more than others, depending on your location. Adapt these suggestions to your own environment and use them as a starting point for connecting more deeply to the energy of the natural world around you.
WHAT IS THE SPRING EQUINOX?
Equinoxes occur twice a year; one in the Spring and one in the Autumn. You can check out my blog about the Autumn Equinox here.
The word ‘Equinox’ is derived from Latin, meaning ‘equal night’. The equinoxes are solar festivals in the Wheel of the Year, and happen at the times of the year when day and night have become approximately equal length all over the world, with roughly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.
THE WHEEL OF THE YEAR
The Wheel of the Year is celebrated by many spiritual seekers all over the world, including pagans, Wiccans, witches of all kinds, and also nature-lovers who do not follow a specific spiritual tradition. It celebrates the turning of the seasons, and those who follow its rhythms mark its seasonal festival days or ‘Sabbats’. The Spring Equinox (also known as Ostara) and the Autumn/ Fall Equinox (also known as Mabon) are two of these days. The Spring Equinox falls between the 20-23 March in the Northern Hemisphere and between the 20-23 September in the Southern Hemisphere. The Autumn / Fall Equinox occurs between the 20-23 September in the Northern Hemisphere and the 20-23 March in the Southern Hemisphere.
For more information about and rituals to honour the Wheel of the Year, you can join my membership here.
WHAT DOES THE SPRING EQUINOX MEAN SPIRITUALLY?
At the Spring Equinox, we are surrounded by new life. The earth is covered in a blanket of greenery and the rising of life force that began at Imbolc has now manifested as daffodils, primroses and perhaps even cherry blossoms. Spring is now truly here.
With this bubbling up of energy and blossoming of new life, we experience a renewal within ourselves too. We feel lighter than we did throughout the darker winter months and have a sense of excitement about what is to come. We can see fresh possibilities and sense the creative potential in new ideas.
This is the perfect time of year to set intentions for the six months ahead. What are you excited about? What do you want to draw more of into your life? What do you want to create and experience? This could be anything from improved health or more quality time with your loved ones to a creative project or the realisation of a long-held dream.
At this time of year it’s also important that we allow ourselves to experience the joy of the season, basking in the warmer days and the buzzing of potential all around us.
SACRED SITES
We know that the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes were of great importance to our ancestors because there are ancient monuments all over the world that were created with special alignments to mark sunrise and sunset on these days.
I have visited some of these sites on my travels in Ireland and England and when I visited the Great Sphinx in Giza, Egypt, I was fascinated to learn that it, too, was built to align with these solar events.
WAYS TO CELEBRATE THE SPRING EQUINOX
1. SPRING EQUINOX SOUL INQUIRY
Your soul is always calling, every moment of every day. One way to hear its whispers is to do a practice called Soul Inquiry. Soul Inquiry is a form of intuitive writing or voicing out loud that involves asking your soul a question and writing down the answer that comes. Below are my Soul Inquiry prompts for the Spring Equinox:
Soul Inquiry:
What feels balanced and harmonious in your life?
What doesn’t feel balanced or harmonious?
How are you being called to bring more balance and harmony into your life?
What energy has been developing in the void of winter?
What is your soul calling you to do now with the Spring energy?
How can you allow nature’s balance of light & dark filter into your month ahead?
2. CREATE A SPRING EQUINOX ALTAR
The Spring Equinox is a wonderful time to create an altar to honour the season. All you need is somewhere to create your altar and some meaningful symbolic items to place on it.
When I’m creating seasonal altars, I like to gather items from nature and build them into beautiful arrangements that celebrate the shifts that are happening in the natural world at this time.
When creating your Spring Equinox altar, you may like to use spring colours like green, yellow, and white. Spring flowers and foliage can be used to make beautiful decorations. Work with the nature around you; take note of what is growing in abundance on the land where you live right now.
Here are some ideas for what you can use – but allow yourself to be led:
- Items that have personal significance for you and represent what new buds are wanting to bloom within you
- Flowers or plants that are abundant at this time of year where you live
- Candles, pictures or colours that reflect the energy of spring to you
- Statues of gods or goddesses that are connected to the springtime, such as the goddess Eostre
3. INTENTION-SETTING RITUAL
As the Spring Equinox is the perfect time to tune into your wishes and intentions for the months ahead and what you want to create in your life, you may like to do an intention-setting ritual to celebrate the Spring Equinox at this time. You can do an intention-setting ritual alone or with others, and it can be as simple or as complex as you like.
- Put on some inspiring music
- Spend some time thinking about what you are wanting to call in over the next six months, and write down everything that comes to mind.
- Circle the thing that feels the strongest
- Write one baby step you can take in that direction in the coming days
- If you are doing the ritual as a group, you can take turns sharing your intentions and baby steps with each other, or if you are on your own, you may like to read your list out loud and then place it on your altar.
- Safely place a candle (a tea light or a candle in a protected candle holder) near your list and light the candle while setting your intentions.
4. CREATE A SPRING EQUINOX MANDALA
With flowers bursting forth everywhere at this time of year, this is a great time to create a beautiful Spring Equinox flower mandala.
The creation of mandalas is a sacred ritual practiced by devotees of many different spiritual traditions. In my experience, this kind of devotional practice opens the portal for us to step into ‘the Beauty Way’.
This softening into beauty allows us to step into Kairos time, where all healing happens and the veil between the worlds is lifted, so that we can really step into the space of the soul.
As the Spring Equinox is all about new beginnings, you may wish to dedicate your mandala to what you wish to call in over the next six months.
In the Tibetan tradition, mandalas are created using grains of sand. Monks train from a very early age, dedicating hours, months, sometimes even years to creating the most exquisite, detailed creations, only to then gather all of the sand up in a jar and release it into nature.
Because it is eventually dismantled, the practice of making a mandala is a practice of impermanence, showing us that life is transient, not permanent, inconstant. This acknowledgment aligns perfectly with the shifting energies of the Equinoxes.
5. SPRING EQUINOX PLANT YOUR PRAYERS RITUAL
This is the perfect time of year to sow summer-flowering bulbs, and you can make this into a simple but powerful nature ritual by imbuing them with your intentions for the six months ahead. This simple ritual to celebrate the Spring Equinox harnesses the power of prayer and the incredible power of nature to take your prayers out into the world. By grounding your prayers in the physical you are giving them life and energy so that they too can grow roots, bud, bloom and manifest in the here and now.
- Hold the bulbs or seeds you are planting at your heart and focus on your heart’s deepest prayer.
- Bring the bulbs or seeds up to your mouth and whisper your prayer into the flower bulb three times e.g. ‘I call in a job that only I can do that fulfills me deeply.’
- Bury the bulb and water it.
- Continue tending to your garden and acting on your prayer as it grows.
6. CONNECT WITH THE GODDESS OSTARA
Ostara is the pagan Germanic goddess of spring, dawn and Easter. She represents new growth; the life force shooting up from the ground at this time of year, all that is budding in the world around us, and all that is budding within us too. In my membership we have a special New Beginnings with Ostara Meditation where you can embrace the energy of this special time of year and receive guidance on what is wanting to bud and bloom within you. You can join the membership here.
