Spring

The Western tropical zodiac defines spring as the quarter of the year running from the March equinox, when the sun crosses the celestial equator moving northward and day and night stand in approximately equal length worldwide, to the June solstice. Astrologically the season opens with Aries, the first sign of the zodiac and, in the tropical system specifically, the sign whose beginning is defined by the equinox itself rather than by any fixed star position, followed by Taurus and then Gemini as the sun continues its apparent path along the ecliptic through the season. Each of the zodiac's four seasons opens with what astrology calls a cardinal sign, Aries for spring, initiating a new quarter's energy, moves through a fixed sign, Taurus, that stabilizes and consolidates it, and closes with a mutable sign, Gemini, that adapts and prepares the transition into the next season, a threefold modality pattern the tropical zodiac repeats identically in every one of its four seasonal quarters.

Because the tropical zodiac is defined by the equinoxes and solstices themselves rather than by the constellations' actual current positions, which have drifted against the tropical sign boundaries over roughly two millennia due to the precession of the equinoxes, a birth chart's placement of the sun in tropical Aries reflects the sun's position relative to the March equinox point specifically, a distinction from the sidereal zodiac systems, used in Vedic astrology among others, that track the visible constellations directly.

Sources TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy with A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

The spring equinox, or a date close to it, anchors seasonal observances across a wide range of cultures independent of any shared origin, reflecting the equinox's status as an astronomically obvious marker available to any society tracking the sun's path. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, falls on the March equinox itself and is observed across Iran, Central Asia, and the wider Persianate world by communities of several different religious backgrounds, rooted in pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition and centered on renewal, the cleaning and refreshing of homes, and family gatherings marking the literal astronomical new year.

Christian Easter, while not fixed to the equinox directly, is calculated in relation to it, following the ancient rule that sets Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the spring equinox, a computational method called computus that has itself been the subject of considerable historical debate and differing calculation traditions between Eastern and Western Christianity.

Modern Wiccan and broader neopagan practice observes the spring equinox as Ostara, one of the eight sabbats of the Wheel of the Year, associated with themes of balance, fertility, and renewed growth that draw loosely on older European folk custom and on the reconstructed, rather than continuously transmitted, framework modern Pagan traditions have built around the solar year's turning points.

Sources Nowruz, UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of HumanityUNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage with The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan WitchcraftRonald Hutton