Tomorrow is the spring equinox. Equal light and dark. The exact moment between winter and spring.
Most people want to skip straight to the pretty part — full blooms, green grass, warm sunshine. But there’s something raw and honest about this phase. The awkward middle.
It’s real. It’s change happening in real time. It’s proof that transformation isn’t pretty — it’s messy and uncomfortable and takes longer than you want it to.
Kind of like us, right? We’re all in some version of an in-between season. Not where we were, not quite where we’re going. Just… here. In the mess. Growing anyway.
That’s not weird. That’s being alive.
What Even Is the Equinox
The word “equinox” comes from the Latin aequinoctium — “equality between day and night.” It’s the precise moment when the sun hits its zenith, perfectly lined up with the equator. Day and night: equal. From here, the light wins — each day gets a little longer, a little warmer, until the summer solstice tips the scales the other way.
In 2026, the Spring Equinox lands on March 20th in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s not just an astronomical event. Cultures across thousands of years have looked at this exact moment and felt something.
What Pagans Were Actually Celebrating
Long before Easter baskets and grocery store tulips, people were losing their minds over the equinox in the best possible way.
Ostara — the pagan name for the Spring Equinox — traces its roots to ancient Germanic and Celtic traditions. The name itself is believed to come from Eostre, the Germanic goddess of dawn, spring, and renewal. She’s associated with hares, eggs, and the return of life after winter. (Yeah. The Easter Bunny has pagan roots. Surprise.)
Cultures all over the world were marking this moment in their own ways:
The Greeks had Persephone returning from the underworld each spring, bringing the growing season with her. Her mother Demeter’s joy at her daughter’s return is literally what made the flowers bloom.
The Mayans built a whole architectural flex around it — at Chichen Itza, as the sun sets on the vernal equinox, it casts a shadow on the pyramid staircase that looks exactly like a serpent descending the steps. That’s their god Kukulkán making his way down to earth. On purpose. In stone. Thousands of years ago.
The Ancient Egyptians were honoring Isis and the resurrection of Osiris at this time of year — life overcoming death, the cyclical nature of the earth doing its thing.
Ostara as a formal Wiccan sabbat is a more modern construction — Gerald Gardner’s High Priestess Doreen Valiente and other coven members pushed to add the equinoxes to the Wheel of the Year because having eight sabbats felt more balanced than six. The themes, though? Ancient as it gets.
What they were actually doing:
🥚 Eggs — Pagans decorated eggs with symbols of the sun, animals, and fertility goddesses, and buried them in fields as offerings for a good harvest. The Easter egg is Ostara’s egg, slightly rebranded.
🐇 Hares — Sacred to the goddess Eostre, symbolizing fertility and renewal. The Easter Bunny has been hopping around since long before Christianity got hold of it.
🌱 Planting seeds — Both literally in the ground and metaphorically in their spiritual lives. What you plant now, grows. In the soil and in yourself.
🔥 Bonfires — Lit to honor the returning strength of the sun. A direct acknowledgment that the light has been winning, slowly, since the winter solstice.
⚖️ Balance rituals — Meditation, intention-setting, reflection. The equinox as a reset point. A moment to get right with yourself before the busy half of the year kicks off.
Nobody Talks About the Mud Season
Here’s the thing about the equinox though — it’s not the pretty part yet.
In Edmonton, March 20th is still frozen mud and sad leftover snow piles in parking lots. Bare branches. Grey skies. That specific kind of cold that knows spring is coming but isn’t ready to let go just yet.
And somehow that’s more honest than the full bloom of May.
In the same way a snake outgrows its skin or seedlings push through the final winter frost, we’re all in the process of overcoming something. The chrysalis doesn’t look like a butterfly. The seed in the ground doesn’t look like a garden. The person in the middle of becoming something new doesn’t always look like the vision they’re moving toward.
That in-between state — raw, awkward, unfinished — is exactly what I want to photograph. Not the polished final product. Not the “after.” The real, alive, in-progress version of you. The one with the complicated edges and the undone parts and the honest face.
That’s the art. That’s always been the art.
Celebrating the Transformation, Not Just the Result
Studio Von YEG exists because I believe there’s art in exactly who you are right now — not who you’ll be after the weight loss, the promotion, the glow-up, the “after.” Right now. In the messy middle. In the equal-parts-light-and-dark version of yourself.
The equinox doesn’t apologize for being halfway. It doesn’t skip to the good part. It just is. Balanced. Present. Exactly where it needs to be to get to what comes next.
That’s the energy I want in every single shoot. Show up as you are today. The rest is just editing.
Happy equinox, you wonderful weirdos. Here’s to equal parts light and dark — and everything beautiful that exists in between.
