GRGR (17): Rocket-Raising/Spring Equinox

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

"... Chorusses of drinkers in the distance break from time to time into laughter 
or a song. It's a Rocket-raising: a festival new to this country. Soon it will 
come to the folk-attention how close Wernher von Brauns's birthday is to the 
Spring Equinox, and the same German impulse that once rolled flower-boats 
through towns and staged mock battles between young Spring and deathwhite old 
Winter will be errecting strange floral towers out in the clearings and meadows, 
and the young scientist-surrogate will be going round and round with old Gravity 
or some such buffon, and the children will be tickled, and laugh...." (p. 361)

"the green man is a personification of that mysterious influence, which creates 
the phenomenon of spring. it is difficult to say why it should be like that, but 
it is so; there is a connection with the ideas of irresponsibility, exuberance, 
idealization, poetic invention and of star-like dreaming.
at spring's return in all of us the fool awakes, and since we are a little 
confused and embarrassed, it was considered to be a healing custom, to embody 
the unconscious impulse through ritual aid".

(aleister crowley on the tarot card "the fool". from "the book of thoth" [1944], 
 my re-translation from the german edition) 

                                                            kfl