Tag: Creation

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The Beginning of the Universe as We Know It; Birthdays of Adam, Lilith, & Eve; Conception of Jesus, Start of the Year March 25th

Lilith is shown coming her hair and looking in a mirror Study for Lady Lilith, by Rossetti. 1866, in red chalk. Now in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Wikipedia
Study for Lady Lilith, by Rossetti. 1866, in red chalk. Now in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Wikipedia)

March 25th is the Annunciation—the day that the Archangel Gabriel tells Mary she is pregnant. (to see some very fine paintings of this meeting, look at my other March 25th post here)

March 25th is also the anniversary of the birth of Adam and Eve (and presumably Lilith); the death of Jesus Christ; the anniversary of the Immolation of Isaac; the Parting of the Red Sea; the Fall of Lucifer; and, (until 1752 in the UK) the beginning of the Year.

Of course, it isn’t or to put it another way, no one can, or ever could, prove any of these dates except the last one. So what they speak to is the way the Church saw the world as logically structured by God. Christian thinking about the year, the world, the universe, creation, developed over many years and took influences from many cultures. It is also very complicated to work out the sequence, so I’m going to summarise from what I know (or at least what I think I know).

Christians chose Christmas Day as the Birthdate of Jesus probably because it was a prominent birthday already shared with several Gods, but particularly Mithras and Saturn. It was approximately at Solstice, the beginning of the Solar Year, and close to one of the main festivals of the Roman World, the Saturnalia. December 25th might have been chosen by the pagan religions because it is the time when the Sun begins to rise, to the naked eye, further north each day, lengthening the day, increasing light and the promise of warmer weather.

So, Jesus was born on/or around the Solstice, so he must have been conceived approx. 9 months earlier, which would be around the Spring Equinox. I have always thought that the 4 or 5 days difference between the Solstice, the Equinox and the Christian festivals was down to the fact that the Calendars were not well coordinated with the actual movements of the Sun (because the Sun does not circle the earth in 365 days, or in 365 and a quarter days, but 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes which makes Calendars hard to align with the Sun). But I have just realised the importance of something I discovered yesterday when preparing my two posts on March 25th. And since writing that sentence I have had another revelation. But be patient.

So, God sends his Son to save the human race. God is a logical being, so she would send the Son at an appropriate time. If the Child is born at or near the Solstice, which is an appropriate time for the Son of the Creator, then 9 months earlier, March 25th, is near the Equinox, which is the beginning of Spring. For many people, Spring is a new beginning, for example, the Anglo-Saxons saw Winter as the death of the year, and Spring as the young Year.

So to the Creation. God, having a free choice, would have created the world at the beginning of Spring. In fact, if you think about it, God creates everything necessary for life at the creation in 6 days, and it is going to immediately spring into new life, and the first season must, therefore, be Spring? Right? So March 25th.

This gives a nice symmetry with Jesus’s Life. Conceived on March 25th, born December 25th, and died 30-40 years later, according to the Church, on March 25th. (the only other famous person I know born and died on the same day is William Shakespeare).

Easter, when Jesus is martyred, isn’t March 25th I hear you saying. But remember, Easter is a lunar festival, so its date varies each year. Births and deaths, on the other hand, are fixed to the Solar Calendar and the Church chooses March 25th as the most appropriate day to pin the death of Jesus, on the anniversary of his conception and the anniversary of the creation of the Earth, and I am guessing that this is also the preferred date for the Day of Judgement.

It is also the Birthday of Adam, and his first wife Lilith (or so some say), and Eve. More about Lilith below. I thought this date was just one of the parallels that the Church liked, Jesus and Adam born on the same day but, I have just worked out why Adam is born on March 25th, and why these dates are not the Equinox, March 20th but March 25th, which has been bugging me.

Let’s go back to the Beginning of Creation. According to the Anno Munda‘s arrangement of the Year, the world was created 5500 years plus 2023 years ago so 7523 Before the Present. And it was supposed to have ended in 600AD, 6000 years after the Creation. So, they got that wrong.

The Creation, as described in Genesis, has the following sequence of Seven Days. As the Creation began at the Equinox March 20th. I have added dates to the 6/7 day sequence of Creation:

  • Day 1: Light – March 20th
  • Day 2: Atmosphere / Firmament – March 21st
  • Day 3: Dry ground & plants – March 22nd
  • Day 4: Sun, moon & stars – March 23rd
  • Day 5: Birds & sea creatures – March 24th
  • Day 6: Land animals & humans – March 25th
  • Day 7: The Sabbath of rest – March 26th
  • For more information www.bibleinfo.com

So there you have it! Adam, Lilith, and Eve were created on Day 6 with the Land Animals – March 25th. Jesus conceived, also on this date, and so 9 months later is born on December 25th. It all makes sense, and aligns the Christian year fully with the Solar Year.

And that, dear Reader, is the very first time anyone has been able to explain to me why Christmas is not at the Solstice, and why the Annunciation was not at the Equinox. Maybe you all know this, but it is very exciting to work this out for myself. And believe me, I have done a lot of reading about calendars and not spotted an explanation.

So that was yesterday’s revelation. What about the revelation I had about 45 minutes ago? (now about 5 hours). When writing items like this, there are numerous things that are interconnected, and I begin writing them before realising I am interrupting the story I am trying to tell. This is often to the detriment of the story arc, or to understanding (although often, I think, adds to the joy of this blog – after all ChatGBT couldn’t write this stuff – could it?).

So I began to write about Dionysius Exiguus and his invention of the AD/BC system and about eras, cycles, and ages. (He replaced the Anno Mundo year with the AD/BC system in the 6th Century AD).

I was thinking about the beginning of the year. The Celts chose October 31st, Julius Caesar chose January 1st, other cultures have other dates, and the Spring Equinox is another choice sometimes made. The Church and Dionysius Exiguus choose March 25th, although secular society also recognised the claims of January 1st. Britain kept to March 25th until 1752 when we adopted the Gregorian Calendar. But people like Samuel Pepys celebrated New Year’s Eve on 31st December. So January 1st was the New Year, but the year number did not change until March 25th. So King Charles I thought his head was being cut off on January 30th 1648; while history books will tell you it was cut off on January 30th 1649. Same day, different reckonings.

December 31st/January 1st is essentially a Solstice New Year Festival. And I have, previously, used the difficulty of keeping calendars as to why these days has slipped out of alignment with the Solstice. But, today I realised that it is as likely that the reason is the Solar/Lunar nature of our time keeping. The year, and its festivals, is largely arranged around the Solar Cycle. But our weekly and monthly cycles are derived from the Moon. So, I think that January 1st (or the Kalends of January as the Romans would have called it) would originally have been the First New Moon after the Winter Solstice. Keeping the Moon months and the Sun years in sync is very, very difficult, and so Roman and Christian cultures gave up and fixed the moon months, completely abandoning any attempt to keep the months to the actual lunar cycle. This is our current system, in which only Easter remains a true to the moon festival, much to our perennial confusion.

Maybe you all know this, but I’ve learnt a lot in writing these two posts.

Lilith

The April 2023 Issue of ‘History Today’ has a short piece called ‘The Liberation of Lilith’ which suggests that the story of Lilith, a figure from Jewish Folklore, is first attested in a Medieval satirical text called ‘The Alphabet of Ben Sira’. The story goes that Lilith is created using the same clay as Adam. Adam then demands she lies below him during sex. She refuses, saying that they are both made from the same stuff and, therefore, equal. Adam refuses to accept this, and so Lilith leaves the Garden of Eden. So the story goes.

The story of Lilith, Sarah Clegg suggests, is one of a series of similar stories found around Europe and Asia. And Clegg assumes that it is gradually modified to make Lilith a demon who will kill babies unless the names of three angels are spoken out loud. So, the story survives as a charm to keep babies safe, and perhaps to remind people of equality among the sexes. But this causes problems for, OK, let’s call them out, the Patriarchy. Lilith cannot be equal to Adam so she becomes a monster, not made from the same clay as Adam but from the scum and waste left over from Adam’s creation. I imagine the story then went on to propose that God creates Eve from Adam’s rib, and so she is created from Adam, and is, therefore nor equal, but subservient to him. Lilith is now a significant figure in feminist folklore circles.

I wrote about more about eras and ages in my post which you can see her: Greater Cycles and the Six or Seven Ages

Attached to the watercolour of Lilith by Rossetti (at the top of the page), was a label with a verse from Goethe‘s Faust as translated by Shelley. (Wikipedia)

“Beware of her fair hair, for she excells
All women in the magic of her locks,
And when she twines them round a young man’s neck
she will not ever set him free again.”

The model is Fanny Cornforth, Rossetti’s mistress. He painted another version a few years later, but the model in that is Alexa Wilding. His models are arguably more interesting than the man himself and include: Elizabeth Siddall, Jane Morris and Fanny Cornforth. Christina Rossetti, his poet sister, modelled for Rossetti’s painting, Ecce Ancilla Domini which you can see here.

I think I might have enough material to begin my own Cult.

For more on the Annunciation, look at my other March 25th post here.

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Greater Cycles & the Ages of Man December 19th

Capella Palatina Palermo 12th Century Mosaics God is shown creating the firmament. ‘And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters’

We are coming up to the key days in the year. And so will be looking at calendars and counting days. But what about ages and aeons?

‘Practical Magic in the Northern Tradition’ reports that there are seven ages of the world:

The life of a yew tree is 729 years, and there are seven ages from the creation of the world until its doom.

Three wattles are the life of a hound – 9 years
Three hounds are the life of a steed – 27 years
Three steeds are the life of a man – 81 years
Three men are the life of an eagle – 243 years
Three Eagles are the life of a yew. – 729 years

The life of a yew is one age, and there are seven ages from the creation until doom, giving a life for our world of 5, 103 years.

Archbishop Usher of Armagh (1581 – 1656) calculated that the world was created in 4004 BC by counting the begettings in the bible. If we accept his date, and apply the seven yew tree ages rule, then the world should have ended in AD 1099 (give or take a year). However, it doesn’t make sense to me to have a factor of 3 for the smaller divisions, and then to switch to a factor of seven . So, if there were nine (3 *3) ages of the world, then it would survive for 6561 years, which is in approx. 535 years time. This calculation has the advantage of not yet being proved wrong! (Please note cult owners, I have copywrite on this date). It’s notable that when a Cult declares the imminent end of the world, and they trudge up to the top of a high eminence to observe it (normally Hampstead Pond in London). They seem quite happy to trudge back down again, and are soon up and running again with the same enthusiasm for the next ‘end of the world’ date.)

By the way, the Capella Palatina, illustrated above, is a marvel of gold mosaics and absolutely stunning. It makes a trip to Palermo a must. It’s also strange to find a Norman state so far south.

The Jewish tradition was for six or seven ages of 1000 years. The seventh didn’t really count because it was the age of the messiah when there was a 1000-year sort of super sabbath. Or it was an age that ran parallel with the other six? So the world was to be 6000 years long.

With the coming of Christianity, dating the Creation, and therefore the Day of Judgement, became more important. (the Romans dated from the foundation of Rome, and the Greeks from the First Olympiad, but they had a whole mythology and creation myths about a Golden Age, preceding their base Iron age and the preceding Bronze Age.)

An early Christian attempt is the Anno Munda‘s arrangement of the Year. This is pretty complicated and is based on a Talmudic tradition. A late Roman version uses ‘the Diocletian Years’, which is when the persecution of Christians began. It held that the world was created 5500 years before the Birth of Christ. So we are 5500BC plus 2023 years ago, so 7523 Before the Present was the date of the creation. And it was supposed to have ended in 500AD, 6000 years after the Creation.

St Augustine of Hippo took the tradition of six ages and brought it into the Christian canon. These are the six ages:

  • The First Age “is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood“, i.e. the Antediluvian period.
  • The Second Age “extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations”.
  • The Third Age “extends from Abraham on to David the king”.
  • The Fourth Age is “from David on to that captivity whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia”.
  • The Fifth Age is “from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ“
  • The Sixth Age: “With His [Jesus Christ’s] coming, the sixth age has entered on its process.”

Wikipedia.

As each age is 1000 years, then you can see why so many people were worried about it in as 1000 AD approached.

Of course, six is not such a magical number as seven, and so Shakespeare ran with the idea in the Seven Ages of Man spoken by Jacques in ‘As you like it’. If there are seven ages of human life, and we have a span of six score and ten, then each age is ten years.ten,ten,

The Seven Ages of Man

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with a good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
(Jacques, Act 2, Scene 7)

Seven Ages of Man Statue 22-foot high cast aluminium Sculpture by Richard Kindersley, located on Queen Victoria Street, Blackfriars, near the Blackfriars. St Andrew’s by the Wardrobe in the background. Photos k. Flude

Now, the Kalendar of Shepherds has a similar idea, but it calculates it differently. The Kalendar, based on a 15th Century French original, says there are 12 ages of man, corresponding with the 12 months of the year. Each age is 6 years long, and so our likely lifespan is 72.

Kalendar of Shepherds

Each month is allocated to one of the ages, and each month has an insight into human life for that span. So for the first 6 years, if you read above you will see we have no ‘wit, strength or cunning, and we may do nothing that profiteth’.

A little harsh, and as a fond grandfather, it, I refute it, except maybe the first 6 years should not be down to profit.

How Old is a Yew Tree/Eagle

A comment by a reader has prompting me to write the following lines on the discussion of the ages given above:

‘Practical magic’ says the poem is ‘Ancient’ so it’s folklore and not science, so the ages are opinion not scientific fact.

As I understand it Yew trees live a long time but not quite as long as many people think. I base this on the Yew Tree at Steventon, Hampshire where Jane Austen was born, which has/had a plague on it saying it was 1200 years old. I used to visit it regularly and. On one visit, was told that an expert opinion suggested it was more like 700 years old (if memory serves). I do not have the details, but my source would have been one of the people associated with the Church.

The Woodland Trust (says Yew Trees get old at 900 years and cites a few which are ‘said to be’ over 2000 years old. But are they? The scientific sites I have looked at suggest that Yew Trees should be described as ‘ancient’ from 400 not 900 years, and there are problems with dendrochronology dating of yew trees, and so most methods depend upon an estimation from the width of the tree trunk. But that, itself, depends upon how much you believe in the claims for the ancient trees. So, I think it’s best to take the extreme cases with a very large pitch of salt. So 729 years is probably not so far off the mark for a Yew tree.

As to Eagles, this website on eagles says they can live to 30ish in the wild and 68 years in captivity, so the claim for 243 years is way off the mark!

First Published on December 18th 2022, revised and republished in December 2023

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April 10th Anglo-Saxon Easter

Lullingstone Mosaic representing Spring
Lullingstone Roman Mosaic representing Spring

Easter is a Germanic name, and, the only evidence for its derivation comes from the Venerable Bede, who was the first English Historian and a notable scholar. He says the pagan name for April was derived from the Goddess Eostra. The German name for Easter is Ostern probably with a similar derivation. But this is all the evidence there is for the Goddess, despite many claims for the deep history of Easter traditions.

Philip A. Shaw has proposed that the name of Eastry in Kent might derive from a local goddess, called Eostra and that the influence of Canterbury in the early Church in England and Germany led to the adoption of this local cult name for the Holy Week in these two countries. Otherwise, the name for Easter in Europe derives from Pascha which comes from the Hebrew Passover and Latin. In French it’s Pâques’ in Italian Pasqua, Spanish Pascua; Dutch Pasen, Swedish Påsk; Norwegian Påske and so on.

The timing of Easter is the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. I have already explained that Spring was the time the Church set for the Creation, the Crucifixion and Resurrection and other key points in the Christian Calendar. See march-25th-the-beginning-of-the-universe-as-we-know-it-birthday-of-adam-lilith-eve-conception-of-jesus-start-of-the-year.

Eleanor Parker in her lovely book ‘Winter in the World’ gives a lyrical insight into how the dates were chosen because of the belief that God would only choose the perfect time for the Creation and the events of Easter. The Creation began with the birth of the Sun and the Moon, so it was fixed to the Equinox, when the days were of equal length, and the fruits of the earth were stirring into life. But Holy Week also needed to be in harmony with the Moon and so was tied, like Passover, to the first full moon after the Equinox, which is also when the events take place in the Gospels.

The quotations Parker uses from early English religious writing and poetry shows a deep interest in nature and the universe which is very appealing. It seems to me that this is something the Church, to an extent, lost in later times, and replaced with fixation with dogma and ‘worship’ of the Holy Trinity.

At the time fixing the date of Easter was very controversial as the kingdoms in Britain had a different calendar to the Roman Catholic Church and therefore Easter fell on a different day. The King of Northumberland, for example, celebrated Easter on a different day to that of his wife. Oswiu was exiled to Ireland where he was influenced by Celtic Christianity while his wife, Eanflæd, while also being from Northumberland, had been baptised by the Roman Catholic missionary, Paulinus.

Oswiu, became the ‘Bretwalda’ of all Britain, and encouraged a reconciliation, culminating at the Synod of Whitby (664AD), between the two churches where the Celtic Church agreed to follow the Catholic calendar and other controversial customs. After her husband’s death Eanflaed became Abbess of Whitby.

King Alfred’s law code gave labourers the week before and after Easter off work, making it the main holiday of the year. Ælfric of Eynsham gives a powerful commentary on the rituals of the Church over Easter, which was full of drama and participation including Palm leaf processions on Palm Sunday, feet washing and giving offerings to the poor on Maundy Thursday. Then followed three ‘silent days’ with no preaching but rituals and services aiming to encourage empathy for the ordeal of Jesus. Thus the night time service of Tenebrae, when all lights were extinguished in the Church while the choir sang ‘Lord Have Mercy’. The darkness represented the darkness and despair that was said to cover the world after Jesus’ death. Good Friday was the day for the adoration of the Cross in which a Cross would be decorated with treasures and symbolised turning a disaster into a triumph.

It seemed to me that I saw a wondrous tree
Lifted up into the air, wrapped in light,
brightest of beams. All that beacon was
covered with gold; gems stood
beautiful at the surface of the earth,….

The Dream of the Rood quoted in Eleanor Parker’s ‘Winter in the World’

The days before Easter Sunday are known as the ‘Harrowing of Hell’ which was a very popular theme in the medieval period (featuring in Piers Plowman for example). Jesus went down to hell to free those, like John the Baptist, who had been trapped because the world had no saviour until the first Easter. The Clerk of Oxford Blog provides more information on the Harrowing of Hell on this page, including that the name ‘Harrowing’ comes from ‘Old English word hergian ‘to harry, pillage, plunder’ which underpins the way the event is depicted as a military raid on Hell.

I have just realised that the Clerk of Oxford Blog is by written by Eleanor Parker, and started ‘in 2008, whilst an undergraduate student at Oxford. The blog won the 2015 Longman-History Today award for Digital History‘.

The above is but a very poor précis of Eleanor Parker’s use of Anglo-saxon poetry and literature to bring Easter to life. So if you are interested to know more or would like to have a different viewpoint on the Anglo-Saxons please get a copy of her book.