I don’t intend to delve too deeply into any one culture or beliefs on the rites of spring, and really it isn’t very necessary. Even in the most common view of orthodox religion, spring still means the same thing. The year is sort of intuitively perceived as a cycle of life and death, and it’s been this way in literally ever culture. But in this day and age, we don’t perceive it quite so clearly.
It used to be that winter always held a very real risk of death, and the change of seasons kept us busy. They mattered quite a lot. Now, everything is pretty much the same year round, and we have lost elements of our awareness that would still help us today. With our ancestors the spring festivals were a rejoicing, but also an awareness of what passed away, and they didn’t deny either aspect of the cycle. We tend to not let things die, and very often this poisons our new endeavours. For our ancestors taking a fresh view was necessary. They couldn’t count on anything being stored up, or that any resource was going to still be available. This is why most rites in the celebration of spring were related to fertility, feeding the potential of renewal.
Is this where the human need to hoard comes from? I wouldn’t describe it as a human need, but it is an artifact from our psychic environment. It’s in our societal mind. Without permitting elimination there can be no renewal. Without functional biological renewal you would die of sepsis, and how much of our current society is functionally brain dead?
What inspired our current technology and science was simply necessity. This is why they say necessity is the mother of invention, and even religion arose from a sense of necessity. Now our sense of necessity is distorted. Our sense of the still very real cycles of creation and destruction are warped. We perceived the world and understood it to house powers greater than us, and we saw showing respect for the greater powers as necessity. Though the perception may have been wanting, it wasn’t actually wrong.
It sounds like ‘spring cleaning’ is an important ritual to keep on many levels? Yes, and thus the spring rites tend to be symbolized by fire. Fires were seen as a spiritual force that was keeping the role of clearing away. Humans imitated fire in part to avoid there being a need for actual fire.
Compost heaps can actually catch fire. I’m sure this was seen as a sign? It was, yes. Much of today’s contamination issues arise from a rejection of the destruction cycle. A refusal to destroy is just as destructive, and is unguided, without purpose.
That is why the egg is an Easter symbol, for renewal or rebirth? Yes, eggs being symbols of rebirth, and the favour of whatever God you felt governed things.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~