Ancient High Holidays
Modern Sun and Moon festivals
The Jewish High Holidays are not exactly 6 months after Passover but they are close.
The math checks out.
Before sanyasis, ecumenical councils, and fatwas, people looked to the cosmos for inspiration, understanding, and universal story arcs.
The stars told ancient truths encoded with scientific precision.
IMHO, Christmas and Easter are. the. best. Christian. holidays because they're ineffably humanistic - and pagan.
“It is evidence of a concern centuries before Christ to coordinate the lunar and solar calendars.
What we have to recognize is that these celestial bodies represented to the ancients two different modes of eternal life,
one engaged in the field of time, like throwing off death, as the moon its shadow, to be born again;
the other, disengaged and eternal.”
- Joseph Campbell
Akhenaten, the heretical Pharaoh, burned down a millennium of Egyptian theology to invent the world’s first monotheistic belief system, idolizing the physical manifestation of the solar deity in the sky, “disengaged and eternal.”
The lunar cycle represents ongoing and continuous rebirth.
Two solstices, two equinoxes, and twenty-eight phases meant lots of mathematical opportunity to make sense of our place in the universe, managing through life, and finding meaning in it all.
Festive He Gods
Pagan Roman festivals - Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, and the Winter Solstice - all had a hand in shaping the timing of Christmas.
I can imagine that one strategic thinker at the early Christian (read: formerly pagan barbarian) planning committee, clearing his throat and saying:
“Our tribe used to celebrate stuff around this time, so why don’t we just take the preexisting pattern which users are familiar with, and add this feature to it?
Let’s test it and see what happens…
Oh, breakthrough product-market fit!”
Brilliant, bro.
Time to party.
Calamitous She Gods
Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon which follows the spring equinox.
Unfortunately, per Poetic Outlaws:
“What has always been basic to Easter, or resurrection, is crucifixion.
If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion.
Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that relationship and emphasize instead the calamity of the event.
Feminine energy breaks and renews its seal every 28 days, along with the lunar calendar.
There’s not enough focus on what the women discovered when they went to the Jesus’ tomb.
Spring brings renewal and rebirth in the northern hemisphere, and what better way to represent that than with symbols of fertility, like eggs and rabbits?
It’s almost like every year, Easter, Passover, and Ramadan convey a message:
"Hey, everything's gonna be okay!
The stars keep shining!
Indeed.
Take a moment to appreciate the ancient magical math, layers of history, and optimism of rebirth during these transcendent High Holidays.
