Easter
The highest and most important of all Christian Church Festivals is Easter. Did you know that its date depends on the Moon, a full Moon to be precise? This year 2016 Easter falls on 27th March, whereas in the year 2011 it took place on 24th April, in 2010 on 4th April, in 2009 on 12th April and in 2008 very early indeed on 23rd March. If you have ever wondered, like I used to do, why the Easter dates should fluctuate so wildly, you may find the result of my investigations into this matter of interest.
It is a well-known fact by now that the event Christianity commemorates as Easter was originally a celebration that honoured the resurrection of all nature. Its date was based on astrological calculations. With the appearance of Christianity this feast was adopted as Easter and a biblical event into the church’s calendars. One cannot help wondering how much our modern day church fathers are aware that the date for their Easter festivities to this day is based on astrology/astronomy, which in the olden days still were one.
A long time ago, to be precise in the year 325 AD, the tenderly guiding hand of the Unseen, who on all levels of life cares and provides for every need of our whole world and all its inhabitants, plant, animal and human alike, steered the members of the Church Council of Nicaea into an important decision. At one of their meetings the Church fathers decreed that Easter should from then onwards be celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full Moon after the vernal equinox. Should the full moon occur on a Sunday, Easter would have to wait until the following Sunday. That is why to this day the date of Easter can fluctuate so wildly.
Clearly, the underlying reason for coming to this decision is an astrological one. The timing of Easter was simply taken over from the pagan traditions. They were ever more forcefully suppressed by the followers of the Christian faith, when this belief system spread. In the same way many of the ancient pagan customs were gradually integrated into the new faith and re-appeared, only thinly disguised, in its celebrations.
The vernal equinox is the event that marks the Sun’s entry into Aries. Its date fluctuates slightly from year to year. A full Moon is visible in the sky each time the Sun and the Moon are in exact opposition to each other. At Easter the two signs of the zodiac involved are cardinal Aries, the point of all new beginnings, and cardinal Libra, the sign of marriage and partnerships. The spring equinox brings us the renewal of the marriage vows between Heaven and Earth, so that new life may spring forth on all its levels. Let me illustrate how the Easter date is calculated with an example. In the year 2008 the first full Moon after the equinox took place on Friday the 21st March. Easter therefore had to be celebrated as early as the 23rd March. All very simple, don’t you think?
Ah, as ever there’s more to this than meets the eye. It is remarkable that each time the Sun moves into one of the cardinal signs is marked by a special event, either an equinox or a solstice which calls for a special celebration, whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Somehow humankind has always known, in the earliest stages of our colonisation of planet Earth we probably merely sensed instinctively that Cardinal energy brings to our world some kind of a new beginning, when a fresh outburst of creative ideas from the highest levels of life flow into our race’s consciousness. It is more than likely that you and I spent quite a few of our past lifetimes in some of the pagan traditions. If that were not the case, we would hardly be interested in matters like this one. So, shall we continue with our investigations?
We probably took part in rituals of worship that celebrated the Sun’s entry into Aries as the rebirth of the Sun for our world. Worshipping the Sun and the elements was all humankind knew in those days. Anything of a higher nature would have been impossible for us to grasp so early on. What a long way we and our world have come since then! Now that at last we are learning to look beyond the end of our noses and deeper into what happened and why, it can be recognised that everything that took place in our world, even in ancient times, invariably had hidden esoteric meanings and was of great significance.
With this understanding it comes clear why the most important focal point of all earthly acts of worship has always been the Sun, who in the olden days was celebrated as the giver and source of all life. Over the ages, this theme remained unchanged. It was just that, as our race slowly progressed into a greater comprehension of spiritual ideas, the symbol given by the wise ones in charge of us on the Highest levels for this provider of life became a different one. God’s truth is unchangeable. It’s just that from time to time the name and description of a concept has to alter, so that we can grasp its meaning better, although the underlying truth remains unchanged. That is why God’s truth, which from the very beginning of Earth life has been with us, is that the Sun in the sky above us is a physical manifestation and at the same time a symbol of the Great Light, the Universal Christ, the only born Son/Daughter of the Great Father/Mother of all life. How wonderful that all the ancient rituals and ceremonies that are still known to our world already contained this message in seed form!
Let us turn to astrology to help us understand that truly for all earthlings Easter is the most sacred time of the year. This has nothing – and yet, in a way everything – to do with Christianity. What I mean is a much higher and elevated version of the Christianity that our world has known, up to now. Although many to this day are as yet unaware of the true meaning of their celebrations, they are taking part in a great Cosmic event, in which every lifeform on all life’s levels throughout the whole of Creation is involved. Our Creator has wisely provided that in Aries the Sun should be in its exaltation, so that as it moves through this sign the life force pours particularly powerfully into all life, not only that of the Earth. Our Sun is but one of the many outer physical and spiritual manifestations of the Universal Christ Spirit’s energies that are constantly flowing from the highest levels into all life, including that of the Earth, to support and maintain it.
The vernal equinox marks the points when, on the physical level of the life on our planet, the strength of the Sun is at its greatest in the Northern hemisphere and at its lowest in the Southern hemisphere, and vice versa. Yet, there is no need to suspect that one part could be receiving preferential treatment. Because of our oneness on the inner level, everybody constantly receives the Sun’s blessings, wherever they may be. After the gradual slowing down of the life force on our planet during the autumn and winter months in the Northern hemisphere, spring is the time of year designed to help all growing things of the Earth to forge ahead with great vigour. The Southern part of our globe has to wait its turn for this to happen until six months later.
The words Easter and its German equivalent Ostern have their origin in Eostre or Ostara, Old English: Eastre, Northumbrian dialect Eostre; Old High German: Ôstara, is a Germanic divinity who, by way of the Germanic month bearing her name, Northumbrian: Eosturmonaþ; West Saxon: Eastermonaþ; Old High German: Ôstarmânoth, is the namesake of the festival of Easter. Eostre is attested by the Venerable Bede c.673-735, English theologian and historian, who in his eighth century work ‘The Reckoning of Time’ states that during Eosturmonaþ, the equivalent of April, the pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Eostre’s honor, but that this tradition had died out by his time. It was replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
By way of linguistic reconstruction, the matter of a goddess called Austro in the Proto-Germanic language has been examined in detail since the foundation of Germanic philology in the 19th century by scholar Jacob Grimm and others. As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn Hews?s (Aus?s), from which descends the Common Germanic divinity from whom Eostre and Ostara are held to descend. Scholars have linked the goddess’ name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names in England, over 150 2nd century BCE matronae Austriahenae – inscriptions discovered in Germany, and have debated whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede’s. Theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic Easter customs, including hares and eggs, have been proposed. Eostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism.
The three videos below are about the origins of the religions of our world. It is not hard to see from them that the Jesus legend is but a new version and a re-interpretation of an ancient myth that has been with our race for a very long time.
Part 2
The ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris reinterpreted and retold in the Jesus legend.
• ‘The Christian Adoption of Egyptian Iconography, Symbolism And Myth’
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The above is a chapter from ‘The Astro Files – Special Events’.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘The Astro Files – Special Events’
