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.