April’s History
The Fourth Month of the Ancient Celtic and Roman Calendars
April is the fourth month of the year and elegantly ushers in spring, dancing it toward the full bloom and warmth of summer. The Anglo-Saxons called April Eostur-monath, a time that is sacred to the Saxon goddess of spring, Ostara. It is from her name that we have derived the modern Christian term Easter and also the term estruus that denotes female fertility and the divine gift to all female life forms of having the capacity and the power to co-create and carry life within our own fragile bodies, bringing it forth in myriad species forms into this glorious created universe.
In ancient Rome this month was called aperire which means, ‘to open,’ thus mirroring the season when trees and flowers begin to blossom in countless petalled beauties. In ancient times and in every human culture the lunar and or solar months were named in honor of divinities and each four-week cycle was considered a sacred time within which festivals, rituals, prayers and ceremonies were carried out each day to honor the divinity who is the caretaker of that time in the great twelve month solar cycle. For those who continue to honor these great traditions even today, this principal of sacred relationship between Earth in her temporal cycle and Spirit in its eternal divine forms is honored and enacted.
For the ancient Greeks and Romans April was sacred to the goddess Venus also known as Aphrodite in Greece. She is a divinity of immense beauty and is responsible for a world of human experience and imperatives. She watches over both the chaos and order of love in its various forms and manifestations; beauty in all its aspects both dark and radiant; and while she honors and fiercely guards the purity and chastity of her devotees, she also oversees marriage, conception and giving birth. In relationship to Earth-in-her-Angel who contains and IS all of the life that forms her body-being, Venus is a Nature Goddess of the spring. And, as all the great ancient female divinities of the western world Astarte, Aphrodite, Ishtar, the Goddess of Beauty and Love is at the very same time the Goddess of War and Victory; she is Judge and Avenger and Equalizer. The Primordial Feminine and Time itself is represented by the Trinitarian goddess Venus-Ishtar-Astarte in the sacred dance of life; the circle of being; the emergences, and the leave-takings. So we honor Venus in the Eastern skies as the exquisitely radiant morning (and evening) star when each day she elegantly stands aside with the arrival of the great Solaris, the sun deity and then as she returns in ever more intensity of brilliance when it his time to brighten the Western skies.