When I was a child, my favorite nursery rhyme was this one from AA Milne:
Halfway down the stairs is the stair where I sit
There isn’t any other stair quite like it,
I’m not at the bottom, I’m not at the top,
So this is the stair where I always stop…
And here we are in the cycle of the year, halfway through the season when, in the pagan cycle, festivals of fertility are celebrated.
What I love about this hallway moment in the seasonal cycle is what happens the night before ~ at the eve, for here in the calendar a secret portal awaits. This halfway point is referred to as the cross quarter, and it occurs in each season.
In Spring, this time is most commonly known as May Day, which stands opposite All Saints Day in November. In February the cross quarter is observed in the US as Ground Hog’s Day, or as Candlemas or Imbolc, and is specific to the cultivation of inner light. At the opposite time of year, in August, there is an observance of Lammas, for loaf mass, which is a celebration of the first harvest as a way to ensure a bountiful yield.
So these refer to the day of the cross quarter, but on the eve, there are other mysteries. The eve of All Saint’s, or All Hallowd’s is Halloween, with its attendant mischief involving witches and ghosts and scary things surrounding our ideas of the dead. In the summer, Shakespeare immortalized the eve of the cross quarter by placing his heroine Juliet’s birthday just that, at the eve of cross quarter, as though to suggest that seeking the fruit too soon is perilous. JK Rawling made use of the same date for her main character Harry Potter. In the Christian tradition, the Feeding of the Multitude happens in late July at eve of Cross Quarter.
In February it’s not so easy to find the secret hidden at the eve of the cross quarter, but the closest I can find involves an Irish saint from the 7th century, whose name derives from the god of the underworld and means “fire.” So here we have this mystery of fire stirring from within.
And this week, the eve of the May 1st Cross Quarter is sometimes referred to as Walpurgis Night, a night when the witches are abroad, not roaming the earth, but taking to the air.
The stars are arrayed this way: about an hour and a half past sunset each night this week and especially on Wednesday, look West, where Jupiter is brilliant near the crescent Moon, moving through the horns of the Bull ~ on one side the star that marks the celestial gateway, and on the other, the star that’s name means “the butting one.”
This has a bit of the mood of the eve of this season’s cross quarter day: It’s a gateway, but you have to be mindful of the mischief so you don’t get butted as you step through!
