Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Dawn of the Year
We're getting our dawns back.
At the latitude at which I live—44.9798º N—we lose our dawns during the winter. The Sun goes down; it's dark. The Sun comes up; it's light. But the rich, varied colors of Dawn—the roses, the ambers, the saffrons, the teals—go down into the Dark of the Year and are gone.
But now they're returning. Into the colorless world of winter, color comes flooding back.
The Dawn of the Seasons, the Dawn of the Year, approaches. For 6000 years and more, spring has been the special season of Dawn, ever-young goddess, and the many and varied dawn goddesses of the Indo-European-speaking world are known wherever those languages are spoken. In English we call her Easter.
Some have postulated a myth in which, through the dark winter, Dawn is held captive in the Underworld. And now she's coming back to us again, free at last.
Soon we'll be dyeing eggs with which to greet the Goddess' Return. Onion skins, tumeric, birch leaves, purple cabbage will go into the steaming dye-pots, and the eggs will emerge in splendid colors: rose, amber, saffron, teal.
The colors of Dawn.
The Latvian drum-and-bagpipe band Auli plays a traditional tune of Dawn-greeting,
Austras Koks, “Dawn's Tree.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj3DsuQBH48
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