HARMONIZE THIS

On October 30th I published this entry about the 13-Moon Calendar Peace Movement. Before I follow up on this, let me make a few corrections to some of the statements made in that entry. First: thought the calendar is harmonious with the lunar cycles, it is not a lunar calendar, it is a Solar-Lunar-"galactic" calendar. With 28 days per month, the calendar averages the timespan of the sidereal and synodical cycles of the moon, which last 29.5 and 27.33 days, respectively. The "day-out-of-time" in the end of the calendar was made to accomodate the time it takes for the earth to travel around the sun, 365. This is a good way to accomodate both the solar and lunar cycles in one calendar. Second: the thirteen moon calendar has been used by indiginous peoples around the world, but without the "day-out-of-time" thing and certainly not the "13-days-out of time-festival", an alternative to the leap year that entails having thirteen leap days every thirteenth year instead of one leap day every four years.

In any case, I have come to realize that there are some serious problems with the way that this calendar change is being proposed. First of all, replacing the leap year with a "13-days out of time festival" that occurs every 52 years almost defeats the purpose of having a calendar at all. Calendars are supposed to be kept as in synch as possible with the seasons so that humans can use it to know when to plant, harvest, perform rituals, and do a host of other important tasks that help to keep the society running properly.

Waiting until we are 13 days out of synch with the earth's cycles before recallibrating would make an otherwise harmonious calendar into an instrument of utter confusion, as farmers, churches, workers and other would-be dependents of the new time would need to shift all their seasonal activities a day earlier every four years--on their own. There is a simple solution to this problem: have ONE extra "day out of time" every four years. Or, if we'd prefer to not imitate the Gregorian Calendar, it may even be tolerable to have 2 extra "days out of time" every 8 years--but a 52-years wait before synchronization is unacceptable.

Unfortunatelly, Im afraid that proponents of the 13-moon calendar are well aware of this problem and of its almost trivial solution. In fact, I think that this whole leap year issue is only a diversion from the deeper problems of the movement. For instance, there is not a word in all of the literature of Jose Arguelles, the undisputed leader of this movement, about how to replace the hours and minutes of the present 12-unit clock, which, surely, is based on what Argueles calls the "artificial," "2-dimentional," and twisted "12:60 time frequency." In the "new time," how long is a minute, or the analog thereof? How many 'natural hours' are there in a day? 26? Please understand my concern, Mr. Arguelles, as I am sure you know how important these smaller units of time are for the early detection discrepancies between your calendar and the equinoxes. Perhaps Im being overly concerned, as your nearly total disregard for synchronicity has already been made crystal clear by the way you handle the leap year.

Still more disturbing is how in all your literature, consciously or unconsciously, you choose to leave out the most pertinent and important facts about the Mayan tzolkin calendar, a 260-day calendar used in the ancient mesoamerica which serves as an overlay to your 13-month calendar. You claim that this calendar "communicates the movement and measure of the living universe...unifying the orbits of all heavenly bodies including the Sun, Moon, Earth, Mars, Mercury, and Venus...serving to harmonize all of Creation's cycles". You even go as far as calling it "the galactic overlay", which accounts for why you classify your calendar as lunar-solar-galactic. However, though you mention its sketchy link to the human gestation period (9 months=roughly 260 days)and a far fetched connection with the period that our sun takes to circle the galaxy (26,000 years, but years do not equal days!), you do not explain what the tzolkin count has to do with the moon, mars, venus, and the rest of "Creation", which you claim that this calendar harmonizes. the Mayans did not invent it, the tzolkin count had been around for over 1000 years before Maya civilization (it began with the Olmecs). Its original use was not to count "days of the mind", as you say in your website, in your fancy presentations (you're not fooling anybody!). The tzolkin count measures the number of days it takes for the sun to pass the zenith point twice in the mesoamerican region. This explains why the 20 icons used to label each of the 13-day periods in this calendar are called solar seals. The tzolkin count has absolutely nothing to do with the the galaxy.