LESSON VIII

Magical Calendars

                In writing this lesson it is not our purpose to familiarize you with every possible magical calendar, or every possible magical use of a calendar. Rather it is our hope to familiarize you with the idea of magical calendars, and a few specific examples.

                Magical calendars are calendars which are used for purposes of divination. The divinatory qualities of a year, day, or hour, are used to shed light on the personality, strengths and weaknesses of people born on that date, as well as what actions the date is most favorable toward. This is commonly termed “Calendrical Astrology.” By studying the divinatory qualities of years and months, we can align ourselves better to their energies and take best advantage of them –swimming with flow of the Universe rather than against it.

                We will begin by discussing the development of the calendar in the West, and how it relates to natural time, IE: the movement of Sun and Moon. We will then examine several magical calendars, specifically the Chinese Hsia calendar, the Aztec calendar, and the Witches’ Calendar of Years.

 

Development of the Western Calendar

                The earliest calendrical notations which exist are carved into a portion of reindeer antler found in the Dordogne region in France and dated to 30,000 years of. They show a record of the Moon’s cycle tracked over several months, as well as the position of the Moon each night upon the horizon. It must of course normally be assumed that a practice must have existed for some time before being committed to record, even more obviously at such an early time as this when making a record was a much harder task than it is now, so we can assume while this is the earliest “calendar” to survive, it is surely not the earliest one made and represents a well established practice of Lunar reckoning of time.

                We have always known that the earliest calendars were Lunar, because this was still the practice at the dawn of written history and long after, and indeed is still commonly used in liturgical calendars by many people even today. But it was a revelation that people were keeping records of the Moon’s Lunations, presumably for use as a calendar for future Lunations, at such an early date. Indeed, it was a bit of a revelation that people were keeping records of anything at all so early.

                You no doubt already know that the Lunar and Solar calendars do not coincide. The Sun takes 365 and 1/4 days to complete an orbit of the Earth. During this same time there will be 12 and 1/3 Lunar months of 29 and 1/2 days each –with 12 Lunar months forming a Lunar year of 354 days or 13 Lunar months forming a Lunar year of 383 and 1/2 days, depending upon practice. Because of this the Lunar and Solar calendars are out of synch with each other, coinciding only rarely. Often the 13^th Lunar month is an intercalary month added to keep the Solar and Lunar calendars more or less in alignment.

                The ancient Egyptians began their history with the Lunar calendar, presided over by the Moon God Thoth (as well as lesser local Moon Gods like Khonsu). The Egyptians normally thought of the Moon as masculine until the Ptolomaic period introduced Hellenistic ideas. The Sky was thought of as feminine.

                By 200 Aries (1000 BC) the Egyptians had developed and implemented a Solar calendar consisting of 12 months of 30 days each, and five epogamenal days. They continued to use the Lunar calendar as a liturgical calendar while the Solar calendar became the civic calendar used for every day activities.  

                The five epogamenal days were considered to form a period between the end of one year and the beginning of the next, and were said to be the birthdays of five of the most important Deities. No work was done during these days which were considered to be “a time outside of time.”

                The Egyptians had three seasons each of which had four months.

The first season was Akhet (The Flood) which lasted from roughly 21 June till 21 October. Akhet began with the entry of the star Sirius (representing Isis-Sothis) into the sign Canis Major at the Summer Solstice. This signaled the rise of the Nile flood, upon which the Egyptian agricultural year was totally dependant. It also commemorated a legend that a tear shed by Isis-Sothis, searching for the body of Her husband Osiris, which started the cycle of the Nile’s yearly inundation. This is still a major festival in Muslim Egypt today, under the name of Aid or “The Tear.”

Akhet included the months of Payni (June-July), Epiph (July-August), Mesore (August-September), and Thoth (September-October).