Users Guide to the Ecliptic Calendar by Damon Scott, Author of the Ecliptic System

Introduction The currently prevalent method of marking time is called the Gregorian Calendar and is filled with arbitrary conventions. The lengths of the months make no sense. The names of the months are arbitrary as well, and even nonsensical, in that the ninth month is called September. The year begins on an arbitrary day in winter. To keep things aligned, a counting rule is adopted for leap years: divisible by four, unless divisible by 100, unless divisible by 400. Even this rule will not keep the Gregorian calendar aligned properly for thousands of years to come, as a good calendar should. In addition to all this, Daylight Savings Time obtrudes to let one know just how much one’s sense of time is dictated by civil authorities. In the Ecliptic System, one’s sense of time is restored to the operations of celestial mechanics. No parliament, prince or prelate can change the sense of time conferred by the Ecliptic Calendar. One’s days begin at 6:00 a.m. Sundial Time. One’s months are named after the constellation one sees overhead at night. Years begin at sunrise on the day of the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring for those in the Northern Hemisphere. Years themselves are grouped into Saturnia, the course of which one may see by noting the position of Saturn as it moves across the constellations in the sky. Such are the timescales one can live one’s life by, but for mankind at large two other timescales are made available, the age and the cycle, again defined using celestial mechanics. The current calendar, though familiar, is arbitrary and capricious. With the Ecliptic Calendar, one may mark time in a manner that is sensible, natural, and beautiful.

The Ecliptic Calendar Website The official website of the Ecliptic Calendar is at http://www.EclipticCalendar.org It contains calendars at all scales in printer-friendly versions.

Locating Today’s Date The first thing to do is find out where you are in time. First, locate the age for today’s date. Go to the page “Our Cycle” and look at the boxes. At the bottom of each box you will see when each Age began. Find the Age for today. Unless you are reading this long, long after this text is written, it should be the Age of Aquarius. At the very top of the box, you will see the “Ecliptic Number” for the age, “Aevum 04”. Next, locate the saturnium. Now go to the page marked “Age of Aquarius” and see the various boxes there. Each box represents a saturnium, a span of time that is either 29 or 30 years long. Each orbit of Saturn begins on the day of the Vernal Equinox (about March 21) in the year printed at the bottom of the box. Find the orbit of Saturn (O.S.) in which today’s date falls. If you are reading this between the years 1988 and 2016, then you are in the first orbit of Saturn of the Age of Aquarius. Notice the “Ecliptic number” at the top of the box. Next, locate the year. Now go to the sheet that lists that orbit of Saturn. The whole page should have at the very top the same “Ecliptic number” as the box on the other page. You will see listed various years. Notice that the years do not start on January 1 as in the traditional calendar. By looking at the dates at the bottom, determine in what year today’s date falls. Again, note the “Ecliptic number” for that year. You will notice that the “Ecliptic number” makes sense as you go further and further into the calendar. Next, locate the month. Now go to the page that has that year as its title. You will see twelve months. Each box has the “Ecliptic number” of the month printed at the very top of the box, and also the constellation-name of the month. At the bottom of the box is found the day when the month begins. Find out which month today’s date falls and note its Ecliptic number. Finally, locate the day. Go to the page that has that Ecliptic number at the very top. Find today's date on that page. There it is. In the process of finding this Day, you have found out as well the Age, Saturnium, the Year and the Month in the system of the Ecliptic Calendar.

Writing the day in Ecliptic Notation The day I am writing this User’s Guid just happens to be the 12th day of Leo in the 18th year of the 01st saturnium of the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius is itself the 04th age. The long form for the day is to write these numbers, always with longer spans before shorter ones: 04 / 01 / 18 / 01 / 12 A shorter way of writing the same is to leave off the first two numbers: “18 / 01 / 12”. A more beautiful way to write it is as 18 Leo 12 or, if one wants to specify the year with less ambiguity, 14 / 01 / 18 Leo 12.

Writing other timespans in Ecliptic Notation. One of the more important advantages of the Ecliptic Calendar is that one can write longer scale timespans as easily as writing dates. An age is not often referred to, because its 2,150-year span is a bit unwieldy. Nevertheless, one may write, for example, “Aevum 03” or “Aev 03” to mean the Age of Pisces. Saturnia are named with two numbers and the word “saturnium” to say what these numbers mean. For example, the First World War occurred in Sat. 03 / 71, and the Second World War occurred in Sat. 03 / 72. The year in which the American Declaration of Independence was signed (1776) may be written as “Annus 03 / 66 / 24” or “Ann 03 / 66 / 24” or, in English, as “the year 03 / 66 / 24”. Similarly, a month may be written with four numbers, preceded with the words “Mensis” (from the Latin) or “Men” or, in English, “the month”. Stargazer’s Guide to the Ecliptic Calendar The sensibility of the Ecliptic Calendar is taken from stargazing. If one is observant of celestial motions, then one will find the Ecliptic Calendar a very harmonious way of marking time. Days in the Ecliptic Calendar start at 6:00 a.m. Local Solar Time. This moment is called daystart. One way to find daystart is to take the average of sunrise and sunset as printed in the newspaper (this gives you Solar Noon) and subtract six hours. In the summer months, the sun rises before daystart, and in the winter months the sun rises later. If you want one single “time” to anchor your own personal sleep cycles and rhythms on, daystart is the anchor to choose. Months tell you which constellation is most prominent in the night-time sky. Conversely, anyone who looks at the stars a fair amount will develop strong associations of time-of-year to the various constellations. For persons in the northern hemisphere, the very sight of Leo will make one think of Spring, Scorpio and Sagittarius will make one think of summer, Aquarius will make one think of autumn, and Gemini will make one think of winter. In this way, the Ecliptic Calendar is in harmony with associations that one will naturally devlop about the zodiacal calendar.

Years are strictly calibrated from the Earth’s annual orbit. Like the Persian Calendar, years start on the day of the Boreal Vernal Equinox. (Note to novices: “Boreal” means “in the Northern Hemishpere, and “Austral” means “in the Southern Hemisphere. Spring in the Northern Hemisphere is Autumn for those who live in the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, the Boreal Vernal Equinox is the first day of Spring for those in the Northern Hemisphere, but it is the first day of Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.) The saturnium is perhaps the most poignant span of time. Each person lives to see two or three saturnia and that’s it. One can see the years of one’s life by seeing the slow motion of Saturn in the sky. The planet Saturn is not faint: it is brighter than nearly every star except Sirius. If one goes to the “Saturnium” chart, one can see in which constellation the planet Saturn is in that year; the month for best viewing that constellation is itself given in the Ecliptic Calendar. One may therefore see Saturn slowly move throughout the zodiac in its 29 or 30 year circuit. And one may see the years of one’s accordingly. Ages are more theoretical. If one goes out and sights the zodiacal constellation that is directly overhead at midnight on the day of the Boreal Vernal Equinox, one will see it to be Leo. It was not always so. Due to a phenomenon called the Precession of the Equinoxes, the constellation overhead at midnight on the day of the equinox used to be Pisces, and before that Aries, and before that Taurus, and so forth. One is living in the Era of Leo because one can check which constellation is directly overhead on the first day of Spring. In order to maintain continuity with the ancient usage of the “age” concept, the names of the ages are six constellations removed from the names of the eras. Thus, this text is presently written in the Age of Aquarius, which is the same as the Era of Leo. Cycles are very long spans of time: 25,800 years give or take 10. It is the length of time for the Precession of the Equinoxes to go through all twelve zodiacal constellations and “come back to the same point again”. Cycles change when the plane of the Earth’s Equator, the plane of the Earth’s Orbit, and the plane of the Galactic Equator all intersect in a common line (or, intersect in a point when projected onto the Celestial Sphere in spherical geometry). The last such intersection happened about six thousand years ago, and the next such intersection will occur over twenty thousand years into the future. You may look at the chart “Our Cycle” for exact details.

Other Aspects of the Ecliptic Calendar Passing by of the Lunar Month In creating the timespans of the Ecliptic Calendar (day, month, year, saturnium, age, and cycle), all other timespans had to be passed over. One may not feel much loss that the cycle of Jupiter, for example, is not made its own timespan, but definitely there is some sense of loss that the lunar month simply does not get a timespan of its own. If one reckons one’s time in the Ecliptic System, then the phase of the moon is “just there”, like the day of the week. One can see the phase of the moon by looking at the moon-phase notations on printed calendars, but one does not use it to mark spans of time that fall into other spans of time in a systematic fashion. Improved New Days In the system currently present, days begin at midnight. In the new system, days start at 6:00 a.m. local solar time, and if one gets up early at all, one can see the new day come into being. Improved New-Years Event Given that days start at 6:00 a.m. Local Solar Time, and that on the day of the equinox the sun rises right at this time, neither earlier nor later, it turns out that one celebrates the coming of a new year at dawn of the first day of spring. This is certainly a more beautiful time to mark than in the middle of the night in winter on a day of no particular astronomical significance. Clean Division of the Astronomical Seasons Astronomical Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter fall into neat three-month segments. Note that these are the “astronomical” seasons. When “Spring” occurs in terms of daffodils being in bloom and so forth depends on ones climate and even in the same place can be different by as much as three weeks depending on that year’s weather. Clearer Delineation of the Hours of Sunlight The twelve months in the Ecliptic System keep track of when the hours of daylight are many or few, and when the amount of daylight is lengthening or shortening. Light can be strongly connected to mood and outlook. The chart on the Interpretation of Months gives more complete details. Continuous Self-Calibration Because the celestial motions are taken as the definition of the Ecliptic Calendar, the calendar is continuously self-calibrating. As long as the Earth continues to spin on its axis, go around the Sun, and so forth, so long will the Ecliptic Calendar remain in perfect working order.

Celebrating Birthdays and Anniversaries Because the Ecliptic Calendar has four variables months in it, and because these months can vary more than once every four years, there is a lot more occurrence of days “being there” on some years and not being there on others, in the same manner as February 29ths of the Gregorian calendar. When this occurs, one uses a system of equations of days. That is, two notations are considered equal if they point to the same day. These “equations” are not necessarily formulas, but rather are a way of keeping track of which day will be called the same as which. For example, in a year in which Leo has only 30 days, then Leo 31 is equal to (that is, the same day as) Virgo 01. In terms of the Gregorian Calendar, it is the equivalent to people born on February 29th celebrating their birthdays on March 01st. For people celebrating their birthdays and anniversaries, that is all one needs to know about the “Equation of Days”. For technical professionals, though, the equation- of-days concept allows for one to adopt unambiguous conventions concerning the numbering of days. For example, 04 / 01/ 01 / 01 / 2532 is the 2,532nd day after March 19, 1988. The computer would be programmed to convert this day into more conventional ecliptic notation, and from days in conventional notation into this particular, somewhat strange, format.

Chart on How to Interpret the Months The following chart shows how to interpret the months for persons in the northern hemisphere. The names of the months are for the Age of Aquarius; they are all shifted by one during the Age of Pisces:

Change of the length Month Amount of daylight of daylight each day Astronomical Season Leo About 12 hours or a Quickly increasing Early Spring bit more Virgo More than 12 hours Slowly increasing Middle Spring

Libra Much more than 12 Staying about the Late Spring hours same Scorpio Much more than 12 Staying about the Early Summer hours same Sagittarius More than 12 hours Slowly decreasing Middle Summer

Capricornus About 12 hours or a Quickly decreasing Late Summer bit more. Aquarius About 12 hours or a Quickly decreasing Early Autumn bit less Pisces Less than 12 hours Slowly decreasing Middle Autumn

Aries Much less than 12 Staying about the Late Autumn hours same Taurus Much less than 12 Staying about the Early Winter hours same Gemini Less than 12 hours Slowly increasing Middle Winter

Cancer About 12 hours or a Quickly increasing Late Winter bit less Uses of the Ecliptic Calendar for Historians The ability to see time at the various scales may be likened to seeing land using topographic maps of various scales. The Ecliptic Calendar is useful for “mapping out time”, especially large-scale time, which currently do not have very good “maps” or calendars. The Ecliptic Calendar also equips each duration with its own name. One may say “Sat. 03 / 63” to represent the generation when Newton’s Principia Mathematica was published. The actual year, 1685, conveys some digits more information than usually is needed here, but if one wants the extra accuracy one can append the extra digits in the Ecliptic system: “Annus 03 / 63 / 22”. Saying “17th Century” is also a bit too crude for a lot of historical work, in addition to the annoyance that all they years that start with “16” are in century “17”. The Ecliptic system is simply more convenient to use, once one gets used to it, and has large-scale calendars at hand so as to “see” time at this scale. Historians frequently are called upon to name dates or times in non-Western Civilizations. This has caused some consternation, because it sometimes appears as a foreign imposition to affix Western-style dates on events that use different calendars. The Ecliptic Calendar, by being relentlessly scientific in its construction, is a calendar that is approximately most free of cultural baggage. It marks the beginning of the Cycle not by a political or religious event, but by the event of the plane of the Earth’s Equator, Earth’s Orbit, and Galactic Equator intersecting in a line, something that occurs only once every 25,800 years. By naming dates using the Ecliptic system, especially if one numbers ages and avoids the constellation-names for them, one is then naming time with as little cultural baggage as possible. The Ecliptic Calendar can help also with the teaching of history. Just as basic geography is taught in school using maps of entire continents on a single sheet of paper (a scale too crude, for example, to serve for making road maps), just so a basic study of history may use the calendars of the various ages so that students can locate events on that calendar with some accuracy. These calendars then help students “see” time at this scale in a manner that is unwieldy if time is stretched out in one long line. Seeing a saturnium in an age then looks like seeing a day of a month; it has something of the same feel to it. And if the events of a certain saturnium need to be studied in more detail, then that calendar can be generated and printed out for students to look at, just as if one wishes to study the geography of a certain region one uses maps that cover less area on a single page.

Conclusion After the course of many years, it may be that the Ecliptic Calendar will develop a following. Perhaps historians will at first slowly and then more generally use the Ecliptic Calendar in their work or teach history with students mapping out events on large-scale Ecliptic calendars. Perhaps astronomers and others inclined to a natural-law or scientific sensibilities will adopt the Ecliptic Calendar in their own professional work. Perhaps eventually poets will be writing ditties about the Merry Merry Month of Virgo. Perhaps. Until then, the Ecliptic Calendar will be very much a personal calendar, a way for those individuals who use the system to feel their place in time both brief and long. There is music in the spheres, and the Ecliptic Calendar is a way of marking time in harmony with the celestial motions.