MARCH 21
On this date, the Sun enters the sign of Aries. To the Ancients, the Sun appeared to make a slow annual orbit around a stationery Earth and stargazers divided the circle described by the Sun's progress into twelve constellations...the Signs of the Zodiac. On March 21, the first flickers of Spring awoke the Northern reaches of Earth from Winter slumber and thus, astrologers denoted Aries as the First Sign of the Zodiac.

MARCH 22
The modern branch of witchcraft known as Wicca observes a joyous holiday on the Vernal Equinox, which generally falls either on this date or a day or two earlier. The witches call this feast Eostre, after the Teutonic Goddess of Spring, and mark it with rituals of renewal and rebirth. Eggs are the primary symbol of Eostre. Dyed and decorated, they are as much a part of some Wiccan rituals as of the Christian Easter.

MARCH 23
In the Polish countryside, people prepare to send Winter packing with the Festival of Marzenna. They weave straw dolls, each three or four feet tall, dress them in rags and decorate them with ribbons. These dolls represent the waning season. On the first mild day, the villagers announce that Spring has arrived and, with song and dance, carry the straw figures to nearby rivers or lakes, where they are tossed into the water.

MARCH 24
The Day of Passover. Originally a Spring Harvest Festival, today it is an eight-day celebration of the "passing over" of the houses of the Jews by an angel sent by God to slay the firstborn sons of Egypt. This is a moveable feast. It begins at the full moon nearest the Spring Equinox. Its centerpiece is a ritual family meal known as the seder, during which prayers are recited and the story of the Exodus is read. The meal is rich in symbolic details and touches of drama. For instance, at one point, the door of the house is opened and the prophet Elijah is invited to enter and drink from a goblet of wine.

MARCH 25
On this date, the Ancient Romans once honored a pair of ill-fated lovers...the Mother-Goddess Cybele and a young shepherd named Attis. According to myth, Attis castrated himself in a moment of madness and bled to death. Cybele begged Jupiter to restore his life and the deity responded by transforming the body of Attis into an eternally-green pine tree. The Cult of Cybele was served in Rome by self-castrated priests, who would carry a pine to the Temple of the Goddess and then slash themselves, splattering the altar with blood.

MARCH 26
This date was traditionally designated by the old Slavic nation as the beginning of the plowing season. They believed the Earth was pregnant until this day and that it would be a sin to till the soil of the expectant mother with any form of iron implement.

MARCH 27
For the male population of Ancient Rome, this day...the Fesitval of Liberalia, in honor of the vegetation God, Liber...marked the transition from boyhood into manhood. Youths who had reach a suitable age (usually seventeen) cast aside their purple-bordered togas and donned the plain togas worn by men. Thus, they assumed the status of citizens.

MARCH 28
The Spanish mystic known as Saint Teresa of Avila was born on this day in 1515. Twenty years later, she joined the austere Order of Carmelite nuns. Over the years, she committed her mystical beliefs to paper...writing with great power and passion. In a book entitled "The Interior Castle," she laid out the path that a soul must follow in order to achieve union with God. She also left vivid descriptions of her visions, voices that she heard and details of "raptures," which lifted her bodily off the ground.

MARCH 29
Holding the belief that the equilibrium of sun, rain and soil is upset by farming, the Bobo people of Africa perform a restorative masquerade each year on this day. Clad in special costumes and wearing painted masks, they beg an intermediary god to redress the natural balance, banish evil and bring the rainfall which will ensure a bountiful harvest.

MARCH 30
Iran's New Year celebration begins at the Spring Equinox and lasts for thiteen days. Families light small bonfires and jump over the flames, symbolically leaping into the New Year. As with many Spring ceremonies, eggs play a large part in the ritual...in this case representing an ancient belief that the Earth trembles at the arrival of a new year. As the moment of transition approaches, an egg is placed upon a mirror and almost always shivers slightly.

MARCH 31
In upstate New York in 1848, two sisters, Kate and Maggie Fox, touched off a craze for spiritualism when, for the first time, they apparently communicated with the dead, who tapped out responses to their questions. Forty years later, the sisters admitted to faking the episode. By then, however, spiritualists who were practicing their techniques numbered in the tens of thousands.

APRIL 1
Known as April Fool's Day or All Fool's Day, this is an occasion for playing pranks and making fun of others. The origin of the day is a mysterious one and has been linked to: the uncertain weather at this time of year; or to an old custom of allowing the insane out of asylums one day each year for the amusement of normal folk; or even to the story of Christ's passion, during which Jesus was shunted pointlessly from place to place, only to be mocked and tormented.

APRIL 2
The fourth Sunday in Lent (named Rejoicing Day after a biblical verse from the Book of Isiah), has long retained a Pagan flavor among the German people. In some areas, a fight would be staged between two men...one dressed as Winter and the other as Spring, with the latter always emerging as the victor. In other locations, people would create straw dolls and then burn or drown them in a ceremony known as "carrying death away."

APRIL 3
In Iran, the people observe this day as the Sidzar-Bedah. It is the thirteenth day of their New Year, also known as the No Ruz festival. On this day, it is considered unlucky to remain indoors, so people flock to their favorite picnic spots. Along the way, children throw bowls of sprouted seeds into streams...the belief being that the old year's bad luck will be swept away with the offering.

APRIL 4
Threatened by the armies of Hannibal in 205 BC, the leaders of Ancient Rome delved into a canon of prophesies known as the Sibylline Books. Within this oracular source, they found a prediction which stated Hannibal would be driven from Italy. In less than a year, this prophecy was fulfilled. Ever ready to add a new festival to their calendar, the Romans set aside April 4 as day on which to honor their protector, Cybele.

APRIL 5
In 1922, after fifteen years of labor in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, excavators in the employ of archaeologist Howard Carter, Fifth Earl of Carnavon, broke through into an underground tomb containing a valuable collection of riches. Further digging revealed a tomb containing the mummy of a boy-king who had died thirty centuries before. The pharaoh Tutankhamen (or "Tut" as he later became to be known) lay sealed in a chamber only a few meters away. Lord Carnavon, however, would not live long enough to see the mummy disinterred. He was bitten by a mosquito when he went to vist the newly-opened tomb. On April 5, about five months after the intial discovery, he succumbed to a mysterious blood infection. Some attributed the demise of Lord Carnavon to a "Pharoah's Curse," vengeance for defilement of the royal resting place. It was said that, at the precise moment Lord Carnavon died, the lights of Cairo flickered and far away, in England, the Earl's dog howled and then also expired.

APRIL 6
On this day in Southeastern France, children cast miniature pine boats into the estuaries of the Moselle River. It is an annual celebration of Spring. Each boat contains a lighted candle in place of a mast to symbolize humankind's joy in sailing the seas of life.

APRIL 7
In Rumania, offering are made on this day to the spirits of the water and the underworld. Though hidden, they are apparently deemed to be beneficient if given their proper due. These spirits go by the name of Blajini, or "kindly ones."

APRIL 8
In 1960, this date saw the start of Project Ozma, a pioneering attempt by astronomer Frank Drake and his colleagues at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virgina, to direct messages from alien civilizations with a radio telescope.

APRIL 9
In the tiny Portuguese territory of Macao, situated along China's southern coast, this day is devoted to praises of the Goddess, A-Ma, patroness of sailors and fishermen. The very name of "Macao" is derived from this deity and the Chinese word A-mangao..."bay of the goddess A-Ma."

APRIL 10
On this day in 1977, a Japanese trawler hauled in a carcass that some investigators took to be the remains of a plesiosaur...a huge and supposedly extinct reptile that paddled the oceans of the world some 100 million years before. Skeptics, however, contend that the catch was most likely nothing more than a basking shark.

APRIL 11
Uusually in April (but sometimes in March, dependent upon the phase of the moon), the Season of Lent draws to a close with Holy Week...a series of religious observances commemorating the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Numerous folk beliefs have attached themselves to the week's Christian framework over the centuries. For instance, on Palm Sunday (the day which celebrates the joyous reception of Jesus in Jerusalem by a palm-waving crowd), churchgoers in some areas of Greece receive branches of evergreen myrtle or bay, along with the usual crosses of woven palm leaves. Mothers use these leafy bunches to protect their children from the evil eye. Good Friday...the day of Crucifixion...has attracted an abundance of traditions. According to one belief, planting a garden on Good Friday guarantees profusion. Similarly, a friend acquired on that day is supposedly a friend for life. Evil may be averted by baking hot cross buns on Good Friday and then hanging them over the bed. Many of the traditions linked to Holy Week have clear Pagan ancestry. Hot cross buns, for example, can be traced to the cross-inscribed loaves that Romans baked in honor of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. The origin of longstanding taboo against fishing on Good Friday can be found in the cult once associated with Atargatis, an ancient Goddess whose day was Friday and to whom fish were sacred.

APRIL 12
The New Year of Nepal falls in the middle of an eight-day festival called Bisket. This festival is linked to an ancient account of a princess possessed by two serpent demons. The princess took many lovers, so it is said, and all died in her bed. Then, the prince of a foreign land arrived and arranged a tryst. That night, after visiting the bed of the princess, he hid himself and watched her sleeping form for hours. Finally, two threads of darkness emerged from her nostrils and expanded into serpents. Leaping from concealment, the prince slew the demons with his sword...and then returned to the bed of the princess.

APRIL 13
On this day and for the following two days, Buddhists in Thailand welcome the new year with a ceremony of cleansing. During the celebrations, statues of the Buddha are ritually bathed and people throw water at one another to wash away the evil of the old year.

APRIL 14
On this date in 1912, the ocean liner Titanic sank on her maiden voyage after striking an iceberg. It would not be seen again until a deep-sea camera discovered its grave in 1985. The huge floating palace was believed by the owners to be the world's safest ship. Accordingly, it was equipped with only twenty lifeboats, which could carry fewer than 1,200 people. In a novel published fourteen years before, an American writer named Morgan Robertson invented a British liner...the S.S. Titan...describing it as the biggest and safest vessel in the world. The size, speed and passenger capacity Robertson gave to the Titan were almost exactly the same as those of the Titanic. Like that ill-fated liner, the fictional Titan put to sea in April, struck an iceberg on its starboard side and sank with a huge loss of life. It is said by some that Morgan Robertson considered himself something of a psychic and once claimed that he owed his inspiration to what he called his "astral writing partner." As for the similarity between Robertson's tale and the sinking of the Titanic, the author never shed any light on the matter. He died, destitute and forgotten, three years after the Titanic went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

APRIL 15
In the Roman calendar, this day was set aside for an offering to Tellus, the Earth-Mother. In order to ensure that their farms would be productive, the people sacrificed a pregnant cow and burned the unborn calf.

APRIL 16
With the culmination of Holy Week, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated on Easter. It is the most important festival of the Christian calendar. A moveable feast, it occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox...a formula devised at the Council of Nicea, a gathering of bishops held in the Year 325. Consequently, Easter can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25. The Orthodox Church observes Easter a week later...on the second Sunday after the first full moon of Spring. During the early days of Christianity, Easter was linked to the festival of Passover. The Council of Nicea severed that tie, but the influence of many other non-Christian religious traditions can still be discerned. Eggs, for example, once a symbol of fertility in many Pagan cultures. Church leaders forbade the eating of eggs during Lent, but lifted the prohibition on Easter. The practice of dying and decorating eggs probably originated in Middle Eastern Spring festivals and spread to Europe during the time of the Crusades. The tradition of an Easter Bunny is Teutonic in origin. The hare, emblem of Eostre (the Teutonic Goddess of Spring who gave Easter its name), an animal known for its prolific breeding habits, came to be associated with the laying of Easter eggs. Even the custom of wearing new clothes on Easter may be traced to Pagan times, when people chose the time of Spring festivals to shed the old and don the new.

APRIL 17
On this day in 1790, American statesman Benjamin Franklin died, having harbored for many years an interest in the possibility of bringing the dead back to life. On one occasion, he noticed that flies presumed drowned in a bottle of wine were revived when he placed them in the sun. From this, he hypothesized that humans might also be retrieved from death.

APRIL 18
A paragon of chivalry and virtue, the Hindu God Rama was the seventh of the ten incarnations of the God Vishnu and husband of the Goddess, Sita. The festival of Ram Navami, staged at this time of year, commemorates Rama's royal birth as the first son of King Dasaratha. As part of the celebrations, Hindus retell their favorite stories from the epic proem the Ramayana, or "romance of Rama."

APRIL 19
This day in 1824 marked the death of English poet, George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron. He had an avid interest in the occult and helped shape Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." He also gave John Polidori the idea for "The Vampyre," a novel which led to all other vampire-themed books, plays and movies which have since followed. Lord Byron died of a fever while helping the Greeks fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. His corpse was shipped to England for interrment...except for his heart, which was buried in Greece.

APRIL 20
On this day in 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in the village of Brandau in Austria. Destined to display malignant genius at building political and military power, he was also intrigued by the hidden powers of the mind. On one occasion during World War I (when a lowly corporal in the Austrian/German Army), he left his position in the trenches only moments prior to the location being struck by an artillery round. It was a narrow escape from death, which Hitler later attributed to clairvoyance. Also on this date, the Sun begins to take its leave from the Sign of Aries and continues its journey by entering the Sign of Taurus.