The Esoteric Easter
Most of us know these days that Easter has its roots in Paganism. Why else is it tied to the Full Moon? Here is a repost from 2007 you might enjoy.
“Easter Morning” by James B. Janknegt
While you’re all nibbling on chocolate bunnies and hunting for easter eggs, I thought you might enjoy another take on this multidimensional holiday from a 1931 lecture by G. de Purucker, Gnostic scholar:
Easter is a beautiful season of the year. It is not merely a day, it is rather a spiritual idea; indeed, it is an ideal — as it were a breath of the soul of antiquity, which has come down to us, albeit distorted, from far past ages, this soul-breathing of antiquity arising in the inner spiritual life of man. By these words I mean that Easter represents an actual event which occurs annually in the spiritual life of man, because the events of man’s spiritual life faithfully reflect the events that take place in the spiritual life of the world.
It is a fact, Brothers, that every great mystical event of the ancient religions and philosophies of the world was commemorated in a feast, in the ancient sense of this word — in a festival such as Easter in Occidental lands now is, and such as was the European original and forerunner of the present-day Easter festival: the Ostara or Eastre, as it was called by different families of the early Germanic inhabitants of the northern European countries. In those lands it took the form of a celebration of the vital forces working in the springtime, when new life is surging through the earth and affecting all earth’s children, when the trees begin to burgeon and the flowers begin to blow, and when a new hope […]
