Karl Palmen's Calendars
Karl Palmen is retired, having worked for STFC at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England. He has always been interested in possible calendars. Just before the new year of 1998 he saw the crescent new moon, just like he did before the new year of 1990. This reminded him of an approximate eight year cycle he had discovered. He also started toying with the idea of a playing card calendar.
Thanks to William Morris Karl Palmen discovered many pages on the WWW about calendars, etc., including Peter Meyer's Goddess Calendar then under construction. This lead him to construct his own lunisolar calendar one weekend. It has 3 types of year arranged in a 334 year cycle more accurate than the 19 year Metonic cycle. He found out through email that Peter had considered using the 334 year cycle for the Goddess Calendar. He joined the CALNDR-L calendar email list in February 1998 and contributes his abundant ideas there and learns new things such as the difference between the Vernal Equinox year and the Tropical year.
His most valued calendar creation is a pure lunar calendar called the Yerm Lunar Calendar. In 2018, after many years of consideration, he has decided on a perennial civil calendar called the Week and Month Calendar, which has months, weeks, but no day of month numbers.
Below his calendar pages are listed starting with his three most important items then running from lunar calendars to solar calendars.
- Yerm Lunar Calendar A simple rule-based lunar calendar, that follows the moonphases about as closely as any such calendar can. It replaces the year with a longer period called a yerm suited to the synodic month.
- Leap Week Calendars Proposed calendar reforms that preserve the 7-day week.
- Week and Month Calendar A suggested civil calendar in which months are subdivided into weeks
- Overview of Rule-Based Lunar Calendars with some remarks of accuracy for various possible lunar years
- Seventeen Month Lunar Calendar A very simple rule-based lunar calendar, in which all lunar years have 17 months and one in 50 lunar years is a leap year.
- The Meyer-Palmen Solilunar Calendar An interesting calendar that follows both the seasons and moonphases.
- The Annuary Calendar A solar calendar with near-lunar months and a simple rule for tracking the slow drift of the moonphase relative to the month.
- The ONE DAY BEFORE Lunar Calendar on the Gregorian Calendar, which gives rules for full moon nights and a lunar week
- A 13-month Lunar Calendar with Solar Dates — the Palmen-McKenna Calendar.
- Rainbow Calendars Two simple solar calendars based on a rainbow of colours.
- Playing Card Calendar, although based on the ISO week, it can be adapted to any leapweek rule.
Other articles by Karl Palmen:
- Properties of the Hermetic Leap Week Calendar
- Lunar Calendar Cycles less than 1885 Months
- Week of Weeks Full Moon Nights in Yerm Calendar
- Colours of Numbers
Calendar Studies Hermetic Systems Home Page