Dating Easter 2019By Mary Stewart AdamsThe Gregorian calendar rules, which are used to determine the date for Easter each year in non-orthodox churches, were instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, when: 11 days were stripped from the calendar then in use; the observance of New Year's Day was moved from March 25 (Feast of Annunciation) to January 1st; and a growing number of traditions were organized into a system that resulted in centuries-long tables that are used to calculate what was considered at the time to be the most serious task every year — the true date for the Easter Festival. The Calendar was intended for use by the Catholic Church in those areas where it has dominion and was not universally accepted as the world civic calendar system until the early 20th century, and while the civil administrations of eastern European countries adopted the Gregorian calendar in the 1910s or early 1920s, none of the national Eastern Orthodox Churches have recognized the Gregorian calendar for determining festival dates. In nearly the same decade that the Gregorian calendar achieved worldwide acceptance as the civic calendar, Rudolf Steiner published the first Calendar of the Soul, for the year 1912/13. In May 1912 he gave a lecture on the calendar at Cologne stating that it is important to begin with the “correct computation of time.” He introduced it this way to explain why the date indicated in the calendar was 1879, calculated form the Mystery of Golgotha, rather than 1912, which was the year in the Gregorian calendar as computed from the birth of the Christ Child. “This is because it is important for people of the present age to regard the year of the Event of Golgotha as the most momentous of all, as the year which determines how time is to be computed. When on a Friday in April in the year 33 A.D. the Mystery of Golgotha took place, Ego-consciousness in the present sense was actually born.” With 33 A.D. as the first year, then 1879 years later would correspond to 1912 in the Gregorian calendar. See: https://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/Lectures/19120507p01.html Rudolf Steiner goes on to explain further that his intent with the Calendar of the Soul was to “express in the Calendar the objective fact of the birth of the Ego. We reckon from the Mystery of Golgotha, hence from Easter to Easter, not from one New Year's Day to the next.” He warns his audience that this will lead to “derision and mockery, because it compels us to reckon with years of unequal length. But in what is unequal there is life; in what is uniform and fixed there is the impress of death, and our Calendar is intended to be a creative impulse for life.” As such, the Calendar moves according to the movable feast of Easter, which leads us to the challenge of 2019, when the astronomical and ecclesiastical Full Moons don't agree, which put the dating of the Easter festival in question. Why don't they agree? Because of the wobble of the Earth on its axis. This wobble causes a slow precession in the Earth's orientation to the stars, which results, over time, in a change in the date and time when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator. During the ancient Egyptian epoch, the Sun achieved its moment of Equinox in front of the stars of Taurus. For the ancient Greeks, the moment of Equinox had precessed into Aries stars. At the beginning of the Christian era, the Equinox moment occurred at zero degrees of Aries, and has since precessed into Pisces. In addition, the Equinox will not always happen on March 21st, as it has for several centuries, but will occur earlier, on March 20th, in accord with the Earth wobble and this precession. And that is what will happen in 2019: Equinox occurs on March 20th, followed a few hours later by the first Full Moon of the Spring. Technically, this should indicate that the date for Easter is the first Sunday following, which would be March 24th. However, the Gregorian calendar rules only recognize the Full Moon that occurs on or after March 21st, so even though the March 20th Full Moon is the first Moon of the Spring in an astronomical sense, it is not recognized as the Paschal Moon by the Church. Instead, the Church is using the April 19 Full Moon, which means they will observe Easter on April 21st. This presents a challenge, as well a dynamic opportunity for research! Some of the first questions we must ask are: What source is being used to determine the moment of Equinox? How do we align the Calendar of the Soul verses in a way that honors the intent to stay awake to the cycle of the year? Has this ever happened before? The answer to the last question is yes! At Easter 1924, the last Easter of Rudolf Steiner's life. In 1924, Equinox and the Full Moon occurred on March 20. The Church observed Easter one month later, on April 20 that year. It is important to note that Rudolf Steiner gave his Easter lectures in accord with the ecclesiastical calendar, and not the astronomical phenomena. See his “Easter Festival in the Evolution of the Mysteries”: https://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/Lectures/GA233a/English/AP1988/EasEvo_index.html In his concluding comments about the Calendar of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner stated that it was a deed he undertook that needed to be regarded “not as a sudden inspiration, but as something organically connected with our whole Movement.” To stay awake with it through this year's cycle, given the incongruence of the ecclesiastical and astronomical Full Moons, will require some work, the reward of which will be an invigorating frustration that keeps us awake and attentive to the waking and sleeping of the spiritual beings that inform and accompany us through every year. Here, then, is a suggested approach to the verses for the weeks from Easter to St. John's, considering both March 24 and April 21 as the date for Easter.
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