March and the Things That Come With It: Being a Synchronicity of Hare, Rabbits and the Moon.

While exploring a very interesting blog which I've recently discovered, I learned it is a British custom to say "rabbits" at the end of a month and "hare" at the morning of the first day of the beginning month. So, perhaps,my little white rabbit, from February 27, (who's doppelganger lives in the Lady Chapel of St. David's Cathedral in Pembrokeshire Wales) was pointing to an even earlier and more "earthy" connection to the changing of the seasons than my narrow focus on carnival and Mardi Gras warranted. They did give me a day's warning though so I was able to cast about for the actual message they were sending.

Then on the 11th of March, the full moon rose a breathtaking shade of harvest orange and turned quickly to white light .... five minutes later, there was most
definitely a "hare in the moon." In Celtic mythology, Eostre was the goddess associated with the moon, and with mythic stories of death, redemption, and resurrection during the turning of winter to spring. Eostre was also said to be a shape–shifter, taking the shape of a hare at each full moon. There was also a sacred connection between hares and various goddesses, warrior queens, and female faeries, and the belief that old "wise women" could shape–shift into hares by moonlight. The Celts used rabbits and hares for divination and other shamanic practices by studying the patterns of their tracks, the rituals of their mating dances, and mystic signs within their entrails. It was believed that rabbits burrowed underground in order to better commune with the spirit world, and so that they could carry messages from the living to the dead and from humankind to the faeries.

The stories of the hare as a sacred symbol, and sacred to the goddess appear to be universal .... the earliest depiction of three chasing hares is found as ceiling paintings in Buddhist cave temples in China dating to the fifth and sixth centuries CE. Other examples are
found on Iranian and Jewish coins, caskets and Syrian and Egyptian
pottery shards.




It has often been belived that rabbits burrowed undergroud to be closer to the realm of the fairie folk, for Hare can also be a trickster, and in modern day myths he is found in the guise of Bugs Bunny, or "Brer Rabbit. Long ago in Syria, Fairuz the Hare held court while addressing other hares as displayed in this 14th Century manuscrip.


Not much left to say here, except that the Hare and the Rabbits and the moon have lead me right into the realization that today is indeed the Vernal Equinox and that tomorrow the daylight will last longer than it does today .... I believe that the Greenman, who actually never sleeps, but probably does indulge in tiny cat naps from time to time is indeed waking up for the duration and will be getting on with his work on the chartreuse weather and the deep lush green of summer. He's been about surely, the birds and the buds and the bunnies (we call them that in Indiana) have all been out and about for a good while now








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