... 'The earth rises up from the sea again, and is green and beautiful and things grow without sowing. Vidar and Vali are alive, for neither the sea nor the flames of Surt have hurt them and they dwell on the Eddyfield, where once stood Asgard. There come also the sons of Thor, Modi and Magni, and bring along his hammer. There come also Balder and Hoder from the other world. All sit down and converse together. They rehearse their runes and talk of events of old days. Then they find in the grass the golden tablets that the Aesir once played with ...

The new grass is presumably connected with the idea of a shepherd at this time of the year. The True Shepherd of Anu (Orion) was once at spring equinox and Alrai (γ Cephei) means the shepherd. Day number 359 counted from spring equinox north of the equator is just before next spring equinox.

Alrai (?)

Gb5-5 (359)	Gb5-6

Also Hercules seems to have been originally a shepherd (cfr at Kai Viri):

... Hercules first appears in legend as a pastoral sacred king and, perhaps because shepherds welcome the birth of twin lambs, is a twin himself. His characteristics and history can be deduced from a mass of legends, folk-customs and megalithic monuments. He is the rain-maker of his tribe and a sort of human thunder-storm. Legends connect him with Libya and the Atlas Mountains; he may well have originated thereabouts in Palaeolithic times. The priests of Egyptian Thebes, who called him Shu, dated his origin as '17,000 years before the reign of King Amasis' ...

He was also a king, like Cepheus, and in ancient Egypt Orion was portrayed as a Pharaoh, which can be seen by his headgear (of Upper Egypt):

They were all Sun Kings, and they evidently ruled from spring equinox to midsummer, 'the quarter of the shepherd' we could say.

Reflected in the path of Sun in the day we can in the corresponding position find another picture of a walking man with the same type of staff, viz. a was:

(Wilkinson)

Thus we can guess the original sign for this wonderful season was the Shepherd. Later the precession forced a change to Taurus and then to Aries, the Bull and the Ram, both animals which the Shepherd King in the sky owned. The old connection with a pastoral landscape remained through the millenia.

But with Pisces a real change took place - from then on spring was beginning down in the 'water':

... This island was once a great land. The reason it became so small is because Uoke lifted the earth with a (mighty) pole and then let it sink (into the sea) ... (cfr at Te Pei)

South of the equator the 'landscape' in the sky changed so it was autumn equinox which came to be in Pisces, because the balance (Libra) had been upset by spring equinox forced to Virgo.