By Fire Well and Tree

And not a moment too soon!  Technically, there is an hour and ten minutes before the sun and earth and relevant celestial bodies are in the right spot for the Vernal Equinox to occur.  And the sun just finally came out for a bit...but not for long. The temperature does not exactly scream spring, but it is also not freezing for a change.  I am also on spring break from my day job, and have spent the last two days preparing for a home Spring Equinox rite. I prefer to refer to almost all of the solar days by their astronomical names, with the exception of Yule. I have no idea why this is. Druidry, as ADF practices it, is a religion of action.  The central concept is one of hospitality with the spirits (called by us the Three Kindreds).  We give offerings (or sacrifices....a topic for another post is the difference between the two) at nearly all rites, and ask for blessings in return. In my own practice, this happens at my daily devotionals, our weekly hearth ...

I am actually sharing this from my friend Ian Corrigan, who's blog Into the Mound you can link to at the right there.  I highly encourage you to check this out.  In the meantime... Attention Pagans - repeating this bullshit makes us look stupid. This stuff comes from half-wit anti-Catholic literature of the 19th century - it is worthless in light of modern scholarship. Let's do this in detail: 1: Ishtar is not pronounced 'eester' - silly. 2: Ishtar was a goddess of fertility and sex, also war and sovereignty. While the Spring equinox season was important, it was not her par ticular feast. 3: There are no depictions of her with eggs or rabbits. 4: Constantine did not Christianize the Roman empire, he only made Christianity legal.I can't say whether Ishtar was still in business during Constantine's time. Most specifically, "Ishtar" has nothing to do with 'Easter' Easter was said by the early medieval scholar, Bede (and only by him) to be derived ...