Happy Spring Equinox and Happy Nowruz (Persian New Year) Art by Maryam Morrison https://facebook/maryammarts Nowruz, literally meaning “a new day,” has through the ages lived up to its name in wondrous ways. For much of the world, it has provided the supreme occasion for renewal and rejuvenation, for new resolves and new beginnings. The power behind its inexhaustible appeal to the human mind resides in a simple truth: humans need a ritual that transcends distinct and distinguishable groups, peoples and nations to celebrate our common humanity. Nowruz does so by inviting us to contemplate nature as it puts on its most magnificent dress at springtime and to synchronize personal and communal relations with the spirit of nature. By pointing to nature’s ability to renew itself each and every year, Nowruz has evolved through the millennia the manifestation of more pressing and more intense human yearnings. The roots of Nowruz are scattered in myth and in history; they go deep into the earth beneath our feet, all the way to the time when the settlement of the first peoples in Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, on the Iranian plateau and the steppes of Central Asia signaled a new phase in human civilization. In Persian mythology, it is King Jamshid who is credited with the founding of Nowruz as the beginning of the ancient Iranian calendar, while in Kurdish legends, the same event is said to have coincided with the victory of King Faridun over the usurper King Azhi Dehak. Celebrating the New Year at the vernal equinox may well have been an old Babylonian tradition already known before 2340 BC, as it is often mentioned in later Babylonian documents and the Achamenid King Darius I may well have built Persepolis for he specific purpose of celebrating Nowruz festivities there.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:06:05 +0000
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