Calendars Old and New |
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This page has articles describing various calendars, in particular the Gregorian and the Julian Calendars, the Chinese Calendar, the Maya Calendar, John Dee's calendar, the Kazakh Nomad Calendar and several lunar and solar calendars invented by the author of this website. Also there are links to many articles by other authors on various calendrical subjects.
| "Once pursued for its own sake, [astronomical observation] comes to provide the vehicle for scheduling rituals and coordinating the activities of complex society. With the help of the stars, the year and its divisions exist as instruments of organizational authority. The formation of a calendar is basic to the formation of a civilization. The calendar was the first symbolic artifact that regulated social behavior by keeping track of time." |
| — John Zerzan: Time and its Discontents |
| Types of Calendar | Lunar, solar, lunisolar, solar-count, etc. | |
| The Julian and Gregorian Calendars |
1. The Julian Calendar 2. The Gregorian Reform 3. Adoption of the Gregorian Calendar 4. Astronomical Year Numbering 5. The Proleptic Julian and Gregorian Calendars 6. Variation in the Tropical Year 7. Accuracy of the Gregorian and Orthodox Calendars 8. True Length of the Tropical Year |
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| The Gregorian Calendar is a Religious Calendar | ||
| Astronomical Year Numbering and the Common Era Calendar | ||
| The ISO Date Format | A note concerning date formats, especially the ISO date format. | |
| Julian Day Numbers | The nature and origin of the Julian day number system. | |
| The Meyer-Palmen Solilunar Calendar |
A calendar consisting of 60-year cycles which stays in sync both with the Moon and with the seasons. | |
| The Structure of the Chinese Calendar | How the Chinese Calendar depends on the times of astronomical events. | |
| The Archetypes Calendar | An accurate lunar calendar with (mostly) weeks of 10 days. | |
| Calendar of the Ancient Kazakh Nomads | A seasonal calendar consisting of 13 or 14 sidereal months, based on the Moon and the Pleiades. | |
| The Hermetic Leap Week Calendar | A calendar with an integral number of 7-day weeks in each year, and which stays in sync with the seasonal year. | |
| The Hermetic Lunar Week Calendar | A solilunar calendar which avoids the problem of rescheduling with each new year. | |
| Lunar Calendars | The synodic month and how it is changing. | |
| The Dee-Cecil Calendar and its Date Conversion Algorithms | A description of the Dee and Dee-Cecil Calendars, plus algorithms for conversion of dates in these calendars to and from Julian day numbers. | |
| John Dee's Calendar and God's Longitude | ||
| Why Seven Days in a Week? | Why not six or eight? | |
| The Maya Calendar | Article about the Maya Calendar See also the documentation for the Mayan Calendrics software | |
| The Liberalia Triday Calendar |
A new calendar combining a lunar calendar and a solar calendar with 3-day cycles in common. | |
| The Goddess Calendar | A calendar whose 13 months accord with the lunar cycles and are named after thirteen goddesses. | |
| The Tabot Calendar | A calendar with (mostly) 30-day months in which New Years Day always falls on November 2nd in the Gregorian Calendar. | |
| Two Integral-Week Solar Calendars |
Two new solar calendars in which years have an integral number of weeks. | |
| When Did the New Millennium Begin? |
It depends on which system you use for numbering years. | |
| Interconverting Tibetan and Western Years | ||
| Interconverting Chinese and Western Years | ||
| Writings by Other Scholars |
| Lance Latham: |
| Simon Cassidy: |
| Karl Palmen: |
| Duncan Steel: |
| Robert Poole: |
| Kirkpatrick Sale: |
| Jean Meeus: |
| John R. Beattie: |
Bohumil Böhm and Vladimir Böhm:
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| William Becker: |
| Paul Hill: |
| W. M. Flinders Petrie: |
| John Zerzan: |
| Date/Calendar Software | Hermetic Systems Home Page |