I’ve been chewing on the idea that Western civilization is built on a self-destructive concept that is coming home to roost now. Here’s an interview with Peter Levenda from over a decade ago on topic.
I usually return to this line of thought around Orthodox Christmas and Easter. The difference in the dates of the two holidays between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church arises from the use of different calendars to calculate the date of the holiday.
The Roman Catholic Church follows the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in AD 1582 to reform the Julian calendar. According to the rules established by the Gregorian calendar, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox (March 21st). This means Easter can fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th.
The Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, has a different method for determining the date of Easter. It also follows the same basic principle of Easter falling on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. However, because the Julian calendar doesn't account for the discrepancy between the solar year and the actual length of the year (sidereal and synodic), it gradually drifts out of sync with the Gregorian calendar. As a result, Orthodox Easter tends to fall later than Western Easter, this year a full month (moonth) later.
The timing of Easter, as well as some of its symbols and customs, also have roots in pre-Christian pagan celebrations. In many ancient cultures, the spring equinox was a time of celebration, marking the end of winter and the arrival of spring with its themes of rebirth, renewal, and fertility.
The name "Easter" itself is believed to derive from Eostre, the name of an ancient Germanic goddess associated with spring and fertility. Some of the customs associated with Easter, such as the use of eggs and rabbits, also have pagan origins.
I’ve always found it fascinating how religion and theology sit at the root of all cultures. Calendars and holy days (holidays) are founded on cycles of birth and death, rising and setting, dark and light. From Aztec to Zoroastrian, all calendars follow solar, lunar, or hybrid calculations, with some like the Mayan adding Venus into the mix.
Before I divert too far into the calendrical deep end, I want to come back to a theological concept that sits like a poison pill at the core of Western civilization, and may be the philosophical source of all we see going wrong today. I think Christopher Hitchens put it best, when he noted:
“Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well.”
The concept we are speaking of is Original Sin. This one concept is at the heart of Roman Catholic theology, but not Orthodoxy. It assumes that humans are born in a collective state of imperfection (sin) and must be forced to achieve perfection by an authority. Since Roman Catholicism is the foundation of Western civilization — morality, laws, governance, etc. — the concept of Original Sin is essentially the core assumption of our entire culture and philosophy.
Original Sin is the idea that humanity has collectively inherited culpability for Adam and Eve eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Thus, we have all been separated from our Perfect Nature and must spend our lives seeking to re-establish it. St. Gregory Palamas said that this line of reasoning would lead to mass atheism and the devolution of culture and society. It seems he was right. It could even be argued that this one idea is the cause of animosity between Russia and the West, and the cause of the Ukraine War.
This one concept lies at the root of all of Western history: the Protestant Reformation, the Inquisition, the Age of Exploration, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and even hierarchical collectivist thinking (see Dante’s The Divine Comedy). The concept of basic individual and innate human rights are essentially Orthodox ideation. Western concepts see rights as prizes handed out to collectives as rewards for good behavior, “right thinking” and abject victimhood.
The cyclical movements of celestial objects led to the creation of calendars and the realization that there were aspects of the Universe that were much larger than humans and ultimately mysterious. This laid the foundation for religion and theology, which formed the basis for societies and civilizations.
Inquiry into the Nature of Cycles expressed itself as real science, in that observation was the foundation for understanding and knowling the Divine, and ultimately ourselves. Our current Science Inc. operates on the assumption that we are dirty, corrupted economic units that must be purified — essentially Original Sin — thus hand sanitizers, masks and pharmaceuticals. “Herd Immunity” is Original Sin in its most obvious manifestation.
Lying mostly unnoticed at the base of Western civilization is the notion that humans had lost their Perfect Nature and had to be forced to attain it again (the Nanny State, Darwinian Evolution, Transhumanism). This flies in the face of the whole concept of God becoming Human as a demonstration of our innate perfection. As noted in John 14:12, we are born with Divine Nature and need only realize it. We do not need to seek divinity, only express it as our natural state of being.
Instead, our whole cultural philosophy is based on the idea that we lost something, because our distant relatives were disobedient. We have been collectively punished by being disassociated with our Divine Selves. From there, we have collectively built ever taller towers of authority to find what was within each of us all along.
The concept of Original Sin is so deeply buried in the Western Mind that we cannot separate our culture from it. It is the foundation of our System of Systems, our laws and public institutions, our corporations, and our views of ourselves and the world around us — our weltanschauung. Colonization was based on the need to “purify” the entire world and everything in it, because Creation had been corrupted by Adam and Eve.
So, on this Easter Sunday, as the kids gorge themselves on pagan symbols of fecundity, let us remember that the idea of the Resurrection was Jesus “realizing” the divine within himself, showing us what we are all innately capable of, if we allow ourselves to express it.
The ultimate realization of our Divinity is in our calendars — we do not exist in opposition to the Universal Cycles, but rather are expressions of them. When we live in harmony with the Cycles, we enjoy peace and plenty, but when we arrogate to ourselves the power to defy the Cycles and bend them to our collective will, we are miserable and weak.
Happy Easter!
Express your Divinity on the Far Side:
E-book: Paper Golem: Corporate Personhood & the Legal Fiction
Contact Bernard Grover at luap.jkt @ gmail . com
Radio Far Side, published (mostly) every Sun/Wed at 7a CST/7p WIB, is a labour of love. We don’t use a paywall, and we don’t sell stuff. We just create things to inform and entertain. But like any good busker on the digital mean streets, we put our hat down and if you feel inspired, drop a coin in to show your appreciation:
BTC wallet - bc1qth6drgzcyt7vlxxpvqh6erjm0lmaemwsvf0272
The Divine Source knows itself through thee and me.
A worthy and thoughtful essay, and it hit me between the eyes. Thank you!