Palm Sunday a Cosmic Ride

Where I live Easter coincides with the school holidays and the last glimpse of summer (especially this year). It’s early autumn and a major holiday with many secular entertainments taking place, although churches still mark the Easter events. I had known about these since childhood, but only later did it sink in that Palm Sunday points towards the eternal Christ mystery the power of which lives on beyond all the worldly coming and going.

The full Holy Week is special and unique. Coinciding with the spring festivals in the northern hemisphere and specifically Pesach in Jerusalem 2000 years ago its events changed the world. And yet it is also a recurring mystery in the cosmos. All earthly deeds and thoughts are etched in cosmic memory, called the akashic record. And shining above them all is ‘Easter’.  

These are a few thoughts Palm Sunday 2025 evoked for me, a cosmic ride at the beginning of the most holy Christian festival culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. The gospel accounts are potent with symbolism. There’s so much beneath the surface which can assist us to probe the deep meanings beneath a well-worn story.

On Palm Sunday Jesus enters Jerusalem riding down from the Mount of Olives on a young ass (a colt) as recorded with small variations in the four gospels. In legend and prophecy, the ass is ridden by the sacred king and Jesus is hailed as such by the watchers who follow him into the city. The beast is known for its reddish-yellow-brown ‘golden’ coat, which is why it traditionally symbolizes the sun. The gospels are letting us know that yes, the one who rides it is the sacred king. And more, Jesus Christ is the incarnating Sun Being beyond any human kingship. ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ Jesus will tell Pilate. (John 18:36).

The onlookers wave leafy branches, but only John’s gospel describes them as branches from palm trees. This adds extra significant symbolism. The palm branch represented triumph and Jesus’s ride is known traditionally as his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which is consciously counterposed with his humility and lack of pomp. The palm is also the tree of life, its fronds radiating out like the sun rays that bring life to the world. That people joyously wave palm branches is a sign that the Christ is bringing life on a higher level into the world.

In Greek the word for palm is the same as for the phoenix – phoinix, and the two are closely connected.  Phoenix, the radiant magical firebird is a universal symbol of resurrection and regeneration. In legend it flies forth from the sun and comes to rest upon top of the palm tree. There it self-immolates. After three days it rises from the ashes, resurrected to a new life. This is the wonder of the phoenix containing so much potent imagery of the eternal regenerative cycles of life. And in the gospel it is an image of the fiery I AM coming forth from the spiritual sun to become one with the chosen human being Jesus who will offer his life, to die so that the Christ can fulfill the destiny long ages in preparation.  

There is even more to this story. And it concerns the feminine. The palm as the tree of life was once sacred to the goddess of fertility. It was a birth tree under which women would be nourished by the sweet dates that gave them strength for the challenging process of giving birth. Then in lunar symbolism the phoenix hidden in its ashes on the palm relates to the dark of the moon cycle and its rebirth to the moon’s return to the light. In this sense the phoenix never dies. It is the always renewing feminine wisdom aspect of spirit. How beautiful that the divine feminine is integral to the Christ mystery. This is rarely mentioned. Yet the gospels contain powerful knowledge where the Christ guides us towards anthropos, the fully harmonized human being, which includes, while being beyond, male- and femaleness.

Eternal and ever-renewing, there’s so much more to discover about Palm Sunday, and the rest of the Easter mystery, that to paraphrase John the gospel writer, ‘the world itself could not contain it all’.

I wish you a blessed Easter.

Image: photo by Raquel Perotti on Unsplash