Why Is Easter a Movable Feast?: The Spiritual and Astronomical Significance of the Changing Date of Easter

By Walther Bühler

The date of Easter is different every year. Not only does the date change because Easter is always on a Sunday, but also because it's always the date of the first full moon after the spring equinox. That means it can be anytime between March 22 and April

• Language: English
• Publisher: Floris Books
• Release date: Jan 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781782504191

Walther Bühler

Walther Bühler (1913–95) was a German physician who specialised in Geothean research. He studied medicine and did research into the changing ratio of male and female births at different phases of the moon. He was the founder of the Paracelsus Clinic in so

Book preview

1. On the Nature of Rhythm

The world of space has an element of exclusiveness. The space occupied by one solid body cannot contain another. Everything and everyone makes a territorial claim. How many disputes and wars have been caused by tribes and peoples competing for territory? We all like to decide the place where we live and work freely for ourselves.

How different it is with time. All beings are carried along equally in its powerful and inexorable flow. The same time span contains people and creatures at the most various stages of development. Spring, summer, autumn and winter take place simultaneously over the continents of a hemisphere. The diurnal alternation of night and day extend in equal measure to all people throughout the globe. The rhythms of time have the particular quality that they bridge oceans and continents, the depths and the heights, and cross all geographical and artificial boundaries. Through them we share in a truly universal element.

But human beings seek to find their own position, not only in space but also in time. Calendars represent an ordering of time which governs and permeates life in a particular way. The division of time into hours and days reflects how peoples of different ages have regarded human nature and its place in a cosmic setting. Landmarks in the development of human consciousness are visible in various forms of calendars.

The basic components of every calendar are the rhythms of the universe – the interplay of Earth and the neighbouring heavenly bodies. The day and the year reflect the relation of Sun to Earth and the month the relation of the Moon to Sun and Earth. The final component, that of the seven day week, has a different character, to which we will return in Chapter 6. The week does not represent the course of any planet nor any spacial relation which can be observed in the heavens.

In each case, however, we are concerned with rhythms of a particular kind and their interaction. Every attempt to change the calendar requires an incursion into the realms of rhythm, and presupposes an intimate knowledge of its true nature. The sum total of present day knowledge must be taken into consideration. Modern research shows more and more clearly that rhythm is the foundation of all life on our planet.

This fact was constantly in the minds of earlier calendar reformers. For the reform of 46

BC

, Julius Caesar summoned the renowned astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria to advise on the institution of the leap year. This was then called the Julian calendar. Earlier, Meton of Athens became famous by his discovery of the nineteen-year lunar cycle, which resulted in a radical improvement of the Greek lunar calendar. From it we know that the same phases of the Moon recur on the same calendar dates every nineteen years, as the duration of 235 revolutions of the Moon is almost exactly 19 years. To this day the Metonic cycle is used in the computation of Easter. Pope Gregory XIII also made use of all the available experts of his day in the calendar reform of October 1582, which removed ten days from that year. Our present Gregorian calendar, which omits one intercalated day (February 29) in every three centuries out of four, has its origin in that correction.

The principal difficulty in all earlier attempts to establish a sensible calendar lay in the inaccuracy of astronomical observations, and consequently the imprecise notions of the time values in question. Only in modern times have astronomers learnt to estimate the transit of the Sun through the vernal point (spring equinox), or the opposition of Sun and Moon (Full Moon), to an accuracy of under a hundredth of a second. For leap years to work correctly it