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Finding Easter at Knowth Gillies Macbain
There is a theory that the midwinter sun shines into the chamber of Newgrange exactly on the shortest day of the year. Many people know this 'for a fact' and could prove it to you by taking you to Brú na Bóinne on the 21st December, and - advanced bookings and local weather conditions permitting - showing you that this is so.
The fact is that the sun shines into the Newgrange passage for several days before and after the winter solstice. If you believe that Newgrange was a deliberate and accurate construction (and I do), you will need to be more precise. You will need to be aware that there was no 21 December in Neolithic Ireland. You will need to be aware that the modern 22 December can also fall on the astronomically identifiable winter solstice. You will be wise to remember that the year is 365.25 days long, and for this reason the 365- and 366-day intervals between the Newgrange events mean that no two of the Newgrange sunrises are ever exactly one year apart, nor can be.
You will then need to remember that the place on the horizon where the sun set was a little further to the south when the mound was built sometime around 3150 BC. You would need a basic astronomy computer programme to indicate the angle of the sunrises on the horizon in that era. These programmes are cheap, popular, and nowhere nearly as complicated to use as they sound.
Finally, having done all of that, you would need to show that the focus of the construction was to identify the sunrise that was closest to winter solstice sunrise, rather than to give a 'window' of a certain number of days either side of the solstice.
Such a 'window' existed and, though it has changed with the passage of time, still exists. It has the value that, in uncertain weather, the approach and departure of midwinter could be monitored, even though the day itself dawned sunless. In 3150 BC, this would have extended from 15 days before the solstice to 15 days afterwards. This leaves open a second interpretation of the Newgrange passage - that it was focussed to answer the question: 'which new moon (or full moon) is the first of the new year?'  Moveable feasts
Familiarity with our own calendar sometimes makes us oblivious to its eccentricities. Our system of European Union bank holidays has added to, but failed to obliterate, the seasons of the Church year. The main Christian feasts are Christmas, a fixed feast with regard to the calendar year, and Easter, a moveable feast. Church seasons such as Advent and Lent are then fixed according to these fixed or moveable dates.
The exact date of Easter was a source of doctrinal dispute over several centuries. It was one of the issues between the Roman Catholic Church and the 'Celtic Church' tradition. But, for all the disputants, Easter had a formula that was based upon the first full moon to follow the vernal equinox, as did the Jewish passover from which the Christian tradition arose.
So, was Newgrange constructed to mark a feast or festival of a fixed nature, or to identify a particular phase of the moon - a full or new moon moveable feast? We do not know.
Knowth
One pointer would be if the passages at Knowth also admitted the sun. The rising sun moves along the horizon from southeast to northeast as the year proceeds. Half way between is the spring equinox. How neat it would be for the supporters of the fixed feasts if the passages at Knowth faced due east and due west to the rising and the setting of the equinoctial sun!
Many have hoped this, or even fudged the data to try and make it so, but the truth is different. The passages at Knowth are very long and narrow and, thus, very accurate. The east passage is aligned to the sunrise that occurs six days after the vernal equinox, while the west passage is aligned to sunset 18.5 days after the equinox. This apparent waywardness, compared to the very precise focus of Newgrange, has been a source of bafflement to many and would have remained so if a retired Connecticut doctor had not come up with the only solution put forward so far.
Finding Easter at Knowth
The solution rests upon the Neolithic builders of Knowth having a culture that counted the passage of time in synodic lunar months. This is not a big assumption. It would be most anachronistic to expect them to have evolved any division of time other than the natural one. They also dwelt within a mile or two of the tidal reaches of the Boyne estuary, where the tides faithfully keep lunar, not solar, time. It is our artificial months, which originated with the Romans, that have lost touch with the basic astronomical reality. The builders of Newgrange were more 'scientific' than we are, and more methodically precise.
The Connecticut doctor, Charles Scribner, pointed out the possible significance of two days: 'vernal equinox plus six days' and 'vernal equinox minus eighteen and a half days'.
If you habitually measure out the year in lunar months, as do the Native Americans, the Jews, and many other well-documented cultures, the significance of these two days on which the sun is aligned with the Knowth passages can be assessed.
Knowth east is aligned to sunrise three synodic lunar months before the summer solstice, six synodic lunar months before the autumn equinox, and nine synodic lunar months before the eve of the winter solstice.
Knowth west is aligned to the sunset that occurs 13 synodic lunar months before the following vernal equinox.
All of these figures are for the period around 3300 BC. This has to be said because the lengths of the seasons vary in a slow cycle over the millennia.
So, using the following procedure, you can determine in advance the Christian Church's moveable feasts for the following year. Observe the sun reaching the passage of Knowth west - the one that is still open - in early spring. There are now 13 moons until the following year's vernal equinox. Now, after dusk falls, observe the day of the moon. If full moon is to follow in two days time then the following year's 'paschal' full moon, the one that defines Easter, will be two days after 21 March or wherever your vernal equinox is falling in that year of that era.
This, like the Newgrange orientation, could be a coincidence. But when the opposite passage at Knowth east can be 'read' to predict the other three of the four points of the year, as they stood with the season lengths of 3300 BC or thereabouts, the odds lengthen.
Knowth west also has a kink in the passage. The inner few metres may represent a slightly earlier passage incorporated into the mound. The case is immeasurably strengthened when it is found that the orientation of the inner passage, if projected beyond the mound, would admit the sun on a date that is 10.5 days after equinox, or twelve synodic lunar months before the following equinox. This too, if it admitted light, could be used to predict the date of Easter of the year to follow.
Fact and speculation
Thus it is a fact that both Knowth and Newgrange could be used to identify lunar or 'moveable' feasts. It is, however, like finding an abacus. Simply because a calculation can be performed on an ancient abacus does not mean the calculation was the original purpose of its maker. To suggest it was can only be speculation.
Nevertheless, the intact and open passage of Knowth west still functions to admit the light and foretell the full moon of Easter 13 synodic months ahead. This function is less affected by the passage of the millennia than the functions of Knowth east or of Newgrange itself. To predict a festival in advance is also of more practical value than merely to mark a solstice or equinox as it occurs. Irish weather makes such prediction vital for, as many know to their cost, a midwinter morning can choose to be over clouded.
Her day in the sun
There may still be a few conservative scholars who would be reluctant to give scandal to the faithful by admitting that the festival of Easter is not of Christian origin, but the fact is already apparent from a cursory reading of the gospels themselves. There may even be a lingering prejudice against the darkness, the moon, and the number thirteen. It all smacks too much of Halloween and the fairies. But this does not excuse the researcher from taking a rational and consistent view.
As things stand, we neither accept nor reject the orientations of the Brú na Bóinne passages, but make a marvel of one while dismissing another two that are considerably longer and thus more precise. Is Newgrange a solitary anomaly among passage mounds? A clock with only one hand? A bell that strikes but once a year?
Knowth is an older, more decorated, and more complex passage mound than Newgrange. The instincts of archaeologists point to an equinoctial connection. They should trust their instincts and persist with this line of enquiry. There is more to discover. Newgrange is neither the earliest marvel at Brú na Bóinne nor the only one.
It would be a shame to deny Knowth her share of the glory, her day in the sun.
Gillies Macbain is an organic farmer and wheelchair van driver who lives in a tower house in County Tipperary. He learned basic observational astronomy from the retired Connecticut doctor whom he credits in this article with the 'solution' to the calendrical functions of the passage mound at Knowth. He has not met Doctor Scribner but has corresponded with him over the internet.
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