Vernal Eqx & Full Moon 2019

Chat about pagan and Wiccan holidays.
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SpiritTalker
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Vernal Eqx & Full Moon 2019

Post by SpiritTalker »

I just noticed the Vernal Equinox coincides with a full moon. That doesn't happen often.
According to Farmers' Almanac it last occurred 40 years ago. Plus it's a super moon meaning the moon is closer in it's orbit & looks bigger.

https://www.almanac.com/content/first-d ... al-equinox
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L.J.Hex
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Re: Vernal Eqx & Full Moon 2019

Post by L.J.Hex »

SpiritTalker wrote:I just noticed the Vernal Equinox coincides with a full moon. That's doesn't happen regularly.
According to Farmers' Almanac it last occurred 40 years ago. Plus it's a super moon meaning the moon is closer in it's orbit & looks bigger.

https://www.almanac.com/content/first-d ... al-equinox
I noticed the same, but had no clue about super moon. Might be quite an interesting time... :mrgreen:
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Re: Vernal Eqx & Full Moon 2019

Post by Firebird »

I thought the Christian holiday of Easter was the first Sunday after the full moon that's after the Equinox. And they are just hours apart, I wonder by which time zone this is determined. It must miss it by minutes. I would have thought it (Easter) would be the Sunday after this event but because the moon is full moments (about 4 hours in this time zone) after the crest of the Equinox hits this year, the Holiday of Easter will not be until the first Sunday after the full moon in April.
For PDT moon is full 6:43 pm and Equinox is at 2:58 pm)
Those pagan Christians.
Seems to me if Jesus was resurrected it would have been a DATE. I do not understand the moveable part.

BUT back to
this Phenomenon of alignment. What are you thoughts on the energy emanating form such an event? Balance ya, but with the pull of the moon?
BB, Firebird
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Re: Vernal Eqx & Full Moon 2019

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Major change, renewal with a thrust forewad?
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Siona
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Re: Vernal Eqx & Full Moon 2019

Post by Siona »

firebirdflys wrote: Those pagan Christians.
Seems to me if Jesus was resurrected it would have been a DATE. I do not understand the moveable part.
Because it's not so much a pagan thing, as a Jewish thing. The date of the resurrection is based on Passover. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar as a majority of older calendars are. So something like Passover appears to move every year when we compare it to the calendar most of us use today, the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar is completely solar. It also didn't really come into use until some 500 years after Jesus would have lived and died.

So while on the Gregorian calendar it looks like Passover begins on April 8th, or March 27th, or April 15th, always moving... on the Hebrew calendar? It does not move. Passover always begins on the 15th of Nissan. Using lunar based months, the 15th of Nissan is always going to fall right around a full moon. Nissan is a spring month, and so will usually always fall around/after the equinox, with some exception (but never before). Nissan is "later" this year, starting in April, because this year has two months of Adar, as a leap year. The leap year keeps the months in line with the seasons, the solar part of the lunisolar calendar. (As opposed to say, the Islamic calendar, purely lunar, which constantly "drifts" backwards across the Gregorian calendar.)

The Bible is fairly clear that Passover was beginning in the few days before Jesus was crucified. (General thought is that the last supper would have been a Passover seder. Also plays into the reason why Jesus is considered the Passover lamb, and other Passover symbolism that gets incorporated into Easter/Christianity.) Easter cannot occur until after the full moon, because the full moon would be the 15th of the month, and we know from the Bible that he had not been crucified at that point. His death and resurrection must fall after that point. (Although some early Christian groups did begin celebrating Easter on the 14th of Nissan, so...)

The reason of bringing fixed Friday/Sunday etc into calculating Easter is because of the switch to the purely solar calendars, and trying to make the two calendars work together. There is also the fact that the Hebrew calendar had quite a bit of variants. The Christian church made their own reforms to it so they would have something more universal, and because they didn't want to rely on the Jewish people for calculating the date each year. Later the Hebrew calendar underwent it's own reforms to become more standardized. All hundreds of years after Jesus. Still, despite the fact that both calendars have undergone reform, Passover and Easter still line up almost every year.

So while the calculations are a little wonky, they're not pagan, they're more Jewish, and fairly Biblical. We have a fairly good idea of when Jesus died from Biblical evidence. Changing calendars several times over a few thousand years knocks it around a little bit, that's all.
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