TheAbysmal Calendar

theAbysmal Calendar has been developed as a replacement for the Gregorian calendar in its role as the global standard. It was developed anonymously from December 21st 2005 to December 20th 2007 in Vancouver Canada.

theAbysmal Calendar seeks to harmonise a number of different Calendars' features in order to provide the most eloquent means of translating dates between one Calendar system and another, and for communicating dates across the world's cultures.

theAbysmal Calendar (from outside circle inward):

13 constellations of the real solar zodiac
13 calendar months
64 Hexagrams of the I Ching
Phases of the Moon during 1 Lunar Month
260 Day calendar

theAbysmal Calendar's Components

theAbysmal Calendar has several components, each of which assigns numbers, numerals or names to each particular Day, such that it may be more easily grouped into weeks, months, years and other measures of Days. The components of theAbysmal Calendar include: a Chromatic Counter; the LuniSolar Calendar; the Annual Calendar; the Unnamed Calendar; and the Constellation Calendar.

In almost every case, theAbysmal Calendar begins the numbering of time periods with 0, follwed by 1, 2, 3, etc...

the Chromatic Counter

theAbysmal Calendar's Chromatic Counter will replace the Julian day number by chronologically counting each Day, Lunar month and Year in increments of 1 beginning with 0. Each Day begins at Midnight, each Lunar Month at the New Moon, and each Year a the Northern Winter Solstice.

The initial periods occur as follows:

Day 0 = December 21st 2012
Lunar Month 0 = December 12th 2012 to January 10th 2013
Year 0 = December 21st 2012 to December 20th 2013

The Chromatic Counter is designed to allow for ease of translation between any two Calendar systems, using the Chromatic number as the intermediary.

The Chromatic Counter will also record all observational aspects of the calendar, including lunar cycles, sunspot cycles, transits of planets as well as their synodic and sidereal periods and so on.

the Lunisolar Calendar

theAbysmal Calendar has a Lunisolar calendar structure, assigning 29 or 30 Days per Lunar Month, 12 or 13 Lunar Months per Year. The Lunar Month 0 is the Lunar Month that contains the Day coincident with the Northern Winter Solstice (or Southern Summer Solstice).

the Annual Calendar

theAbysmal Calendar further has an Annual structure, which divides the 365 Days of the Year into 52 Weeks and 1 New Year Day which is not a Weekday. The Weekdays remain unchanged from the Gregorian, as most of the World's cultures have their own names for these Days, which reflect an attributation to the 7 Ancient Planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. theAbysmal Week begins on Saturday and ends on Friday.

The New Year's Day falls on the Day equivalent to December 21st in order to represent the Northern Winter Solstice.

The 52 Weeks can be arranged as 13 Months of 28 Days or 4 Weeks, as well as 4 Quarters of 91 Days or 13 Weeks. As such, each Week, Month, Quarter and Year begin with Saturday and end with Friday.

theAbysmal Calendar Notation

theAbysmal Calendar tracks a variety of time periods, and as such, a standardized format for noting a specific Day can be quite burdensome. Shorter abbreviations may be used where the full notation is understood from the context. The suggested format is as follows:

Weekday number-glyph
{C}Month number Day number
{C}Lunar Month number Day number
{C}Year chromatic number number-glyph

Example:

Tuesday 3-XVII
{C}Month 4 Day 24
{C}Lunar Month 4 Day 28
{C}Year 0 13-XIX

the Leap Year Rule

The intercalation of the Leap Year Day occurs once every 4 Years, with an exception once every 128 Years when the Leap Year Day is not observed. This aligns the Calendar Year most closely with the Tropical year. The Leap Year Day falls on the Day before the New Year's Day.

The Leap Year Day is assigned a number from the Chromatic Counter, and it is a Day on the Lunar Month in which it occurs, however, it is not assigned a Weekday nor a number-glyph combination from the Unnamed Component. This allows theAbysmal Calendar to remain perpetually aligned with the Tropical Year, with its components commeasurate.

the Case for a Calendar Conversion

theAbysmal Calendar has been devised such that implementation from the Gregorian be as smooth as possible. The first Weekday of theAbysmal Calendar falls on the Day equivalent to Saturday December 22nd 2012. As both the Gregorian Weekday and theAbysmal Weekdays are the same, the entire Year of Weekdays align, until the following New Year's Day on December 21st 2013. This should ease transition from the Gregorian to theAbysmal Calendar over the course of an entire Year, without the elimination or addition of Weekdays as has been done in the past.

Furthermore:

theAbysmal Calendar measures the Lunar Month, which is used by Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The Gregorian Calendar does not formallly measure the Lunar Month, despite its importance in calculating the major holiday of Easter.
theAbysmal Calendar takes the Precession of the Equinoxes into account.
theAbysmal Calendar Months become a fixed 28 Days or 4 Weeks, as opposed to varying between 28 and 31 Days.
theAbysmal Calendar Quarters become fixed at 91 Days or 13 Weeks, as opposed to varying between 90 and 92 Days.
theAbysmal Calendar Quarters begin and end on or about the four Cardinal Points of the Year, the Winter Solstice, the Vernal Equinox the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.
theAbysmal Months do not bear culturally specific names, which may alienate Calendar users from other cultures.
theAbysmal Calendar combines Calendar features from the Hebrew, the Hellenic, the Chinese, the Buddhist, the Mesoamericans and the Mesopotamian Calendars, which support its claim as a more globally relevant Calendar than the Gregorian.

Calendar Commeasure

As a result of the combination of Calendar Components, theAbysmal Calendar has a number of numerical features which make its operation more functional. The most notable of these is the cofunction of the 365 Days of the Year and the 260 Days of the Unnamed Calendar.

As we cycle through the 365 Days of the Year, two progressions of number-glyph of the Unnamed Calendar become evident. From Day-to-Day, the number-glyph increases by 1-I, in the manner described above, 1-I, 2-II, 3-III, and so on. The second progression is notable for any single Day as observed from Year-to-Year (say December 22nd, 2012, then December 22nd 2013, 2014 and so on). The number-glyph increase by 1-V, such that if a particular Day falls on 2-I this Year, next Year it will fall on 3-VI, the next 4-XI, 5-XVI, 6-I, 7-VI and so on.

This allows us to schedule and note progression from Year-to-Year as well as Day-to-Day, which simplifies thinking in terms of longer progressions of time.

Calendrical Numerology

theAbysmal Calendar's whole-number numerology follows from its components as follows:

260 Days = 13 x 20 = Period of Human Gestation
260 Weeks = 5 Years (52 x 5)
260 Months = 20 Years (13 x 20)
260 Quarters = 65 Years (4 x 65)
260 Years = Lesser Cycle of History
260 Centuries = Precession of the Equinoxes

the Lesser Cycle of History

Although theAbysmal Calendar does not have a proleptic function, i.e. it doesn't count dates backwards from Day 0, a case may be made where it already measures a historical period of 260 Years, similar to the Lesser Cycle of the Maya. In the case of the Long Count of the Maya, they measure 260 periods of 360-Days, not Years, and as such, their Lesser Cycle is shorter than theAbysmal's.

theAbysmal Calendar notes 2 Lesser Cycles in the history of globalisation: 1492 CE to 1752 CE, and 1752 CE to 2012 CE. 1492 CE is widely accepted as the Year in which Christopher Columbus brought knowledge of the Americas to Europe, and by extension to the rest of the "Old World." 1752 CE is the Year in which the Gregorian Calendar became adopted by the British Empire, thus making it the most widespread single Calendar system in use, including all of Anglo- and Latin-America. 2012 CE is the Year that ends the Maya Great Cycle of 5,125 Years, and signals the beginning of theAbysmal Calendar.

As it stands, theAbysmal Calendar has not proleptic function.

the I Ching and Time

The I Ching, or Book of Changes is an ancient Chinese oracle system. The I Ching consists of 64 Hexagrams (figures of 6 horizontal lines stacked vertically). Each line is either firm or yielding, depicted as either a solid line or a broken line. theAbysmal Calendar uses a white line to represent the firm-solid line and a black line for the yielding-broken. This is meant to represent light and darkness, which have also come to be associated with the lines of each Hexagram.

The numerology of the Hexagrams of the I Ching coincide with the cycles of the Moon, Sunspots and Precession of the Equinoxes as follows:

64 Hexagrams x 6 lines = 384 lines of the I Ching

384 Days = 13 Lunar Months (13 x 29.53 = 384)
64 x 384 Days = 24,576 Days = ~67 Years = 6 Sunspot Cycles (where 1 Sunspot Cycle = ~11 Years)
64 x 24,576 Days = 1,572,864 Days = ~4,306 Years = 384 Sunspot Cycles
6 x 1,572,864 Days = 9,437,184 Days = ~25,838 Years = 1 Precession of the Equinoxes

the Bible, the Zodiac and 13 Months

Assigning the 13 symbols of the Constellations of the Zodiac to the 13 Months of theAbysmal Calendar creates a symmetrical image as displayed above. The Constellations begin with Aries at the bottom left, continuing in clockwise order through Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The circled Constellations/Months are Taurus, Leo, Libra, Ophiuchus and Aquarius. Libra has the distinction of being the only sign of the Zodiac which is an inanimate object. It is exception in this regard, particularly considering that the word Zodiac means "circle of animals." Libra is also the middle sign, with six constellations before it, and six after.

The remaining four circled signs, Taurus, Leo, Ophiuchus and Aquarius resonate with descriptions in both the Book 1 of Ezekiel in the Bible's Old Testament, and Revelation, which describe four living creatures with the features of a bull, a lion, an eagle (presumably Ophiuchus) and a man.

Ezekiel Chapter 1

"4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal,

"5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man,

"6 but each of them had four faces and four wings.

"10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.

"19 When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose.

"20 Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

"21 When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels."

Revelation Chapter 4

"6 In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back.

"7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle."

External links

theAbysmal Calendar (weblog chronicling Calendar development and features)
Bible Gateway Book of Ezekiel