The Earth Epic Calendar for 11.724 is now available for purchasing and downloading. A Google Calendar URL is also available for free. I have also updated and improved the view of the current Earth Epic Calendar on this website.

There are no changes in the structure of the calendar. I did change the way I frame the reason for naming the quarters. Southlight and Northlight are still based on the position of the earth at the Southern Equinox (Winter Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and Summer Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere). Rather than justify the names of Eastlight and Westlight (timed around the Northward and Southward Equinoxes respectively) by relying on a metaphor, I made a different explanation that’s more straightforward.

North, South, East and West are always relative directions. Essentially, we assign one direction as “north” and the Those directions are based the location of the North and South Poles on Earth. On other planets, astronomers label north and south based on the poles of those planets,. Accordingly, the north and south poles for Uranus point in radically different directions from that of Earth. In looking at the Solar System, north and south are split by the planetary plane in which the eight inner planets travel on. It would be hard to define east and west, because we are in three dimensional space and thus we would essentially have six principal directions rather than four. Astrologers have mapped the planetary plane of the solar system using the zodiac.

But if we look at the orbit of the Earth as a circle, we could plot “north” anywhere along the circle, and then plot “south” “east” and “west” accordingly. In this case, the Earth Epic Calendar’s “north” in Earth’s orbit is its location on the day Earth has its Northern Solstice, and “south” is when the Earth is in its orbit on the day of its Southern Solstice. From there we can plot East and West. The Earth’s orbit is somewhat elliptical but North and South would still be the exact opposite locations relative to the Sun as would East and West.

In the spirit of being hemisphere neutral, the downloadable Earth Epic Calendar lists Australian and New Zealand holidays, as well as those of the US, UK, Ireland and Jamaica. These make up the six largest countries where English is spoken by the majority of the people.

The calendar also lists the holiest holidays in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Celtic Pagan religions. You will also get the dates and times of all new and full moons, and the dates and times of the solstices. New this year is the listing of the cross-quarters, located astrologically at 15° Scorpio, (the Earth Epic New Year) 15° Aquarius, 15° Taurus, and 15° Leo.

The calendar is a downloadable .pdf that includes the last quarter of 11722 and all of 11723. It shows both the solar and lunar dates in the Earth Epic Calendar and the corresponding Gregorian Calendar date for easy conversion. In addition to the calendar itself, you will have full color illustrations showing how the calendar works. It also has pages showing timelines of the history of the Earth and human history according to the Earth Epic Calendar. Finally, the calendar shows the holidays for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Jamaica–the six largest countries that have English as the primary language.

The calendar is 26 pages. Ten of the pages consist of the five quarters split in half to make them more readable, because stuffing 90 squares on a page makes it hard to read. Each half quarter is accompanied by a corresponding illustration, making 20 calendar pages overall. The remaining pages consist of the cover, the back, an explanation of the calendar and a timeline of with one page of Earth history and two pages of human history as dated by the Earth Epic Calendar.

The calendar can be printed on 8 1/2″ by 11″ paper with the short ends of the pages stapled together. It’s recommended to print either double-side on 80# paper or single-sided on 20# paper. Printing double-sided on 20# paper is not recommended because text or graphics will otherwise show through and it will be hard to read.

It’s only 35 days until the Earth Epic New Year so ring in the new year now.

Given that the circulation of the Earth Epic Calendar is still relatively low, I wanted to make the biggest changes to the calendar design and setup since I first started posting about this calendar in 11718 EE (2018 CE).

A 15° adjustment

The biggest change that you will notice is that the solstices and equinoxes mark not the beginning of the quarters but the middle of the quarters.  This makes the indicators of South, East, North, and West more accurate.

With the old design of the calendar, the first day of Southlight represented the southernmost orientation of the sun relative to the Earth.  But then the March Equinox occurred before the last day of Southlight, because of the Northern Hemisphere winter/Southern Hemisphere summer being the shortest season of the year with 88 days.

Under the new system, the solstices and the equinoxes are in the middle of the quarter.  And astronomically, the New Year starts at the midnight closest to when the Sun enters 15° Scorpio from the viewpoint of Earth.  This means that the New Year starts on November 7 or November 8 (but on rare occasions November 6 or November 9).  Basically, the New Year and Southlight starts at the halfway point between the September Solstice and the December Equinox.

This means that the Sun’s light will be (with a few exceptions) focused on the southernmost part of the Earth.  This quarter wil have the shortest days pf the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest days in the Southern Hemisphere.  Therefore, this quarter can truly be called Southlight.

But what is 15° Scorpio?  If you divide the year and the planetary plane into the twelve Zodiac signs, 0° Capricorn is when the Southern Solstice occurs.  0° Libra is when the September Equinox occurs. Each sign occupies 30° of the Zodiac, and the signs between the September Equinox and December Solstice are Libra, Scorpio and Saggitarius.   So 15° Scorpio means 15° into the sign of Scorpio, which is halfway through Scorpio.

The names of the quarters have slightly changed, too.  Southlight and Northlight retain their names because they reference the times of the year that the Sun is the furthest south and north. But I’ve changed the quarters associated with the equinoxes to Eastcrossing and Westcrossing, because those are the times when the Sun, relative to the Earth, crosses the Equator.

It’s worth noting that not all of the world celebrates its changes of the seasons at the solstices and equinoxes.  In the eastern half of Asia, they are celebrated at the cross-quarters–the halfway point between the solstices and equinoxes.  Ireland’s traditional seasons are about a week before the cross-quarters, though I haven’t yet seen evidence that the ancient Celts actually calculated the cross-quarters.

Calendar for 11722 available in August

Starting August, I will be making available the calendar for 11722 EE.  It will feature the last quarter of 11721 and the four quarters for the new year which this year starts November 7, 2021 CE.  You will be able to buy calendar downloads from here as well as printed paper calendars, and I am considering making an Etsy store available as well.  You will also be able to have free calendars downloadable to your Google or apple calendars, as well as any other calendar that uses .ics pages.

Keep checking this space for updates.

My apologies, but I discovered that the Northward Equinox, which is the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and Autumnal Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere, is misdated on the 11.721 calendar.

The date is supposed to be Sunday, March 20, 2021.   It’s listed as Tuesday, March 22.

The other solstices and equinoxes are listed correctly in the calendar. Though it’s worth noting that the date of the solstice is based on UTC–Coordinated Universal Time.  This is why the North Solstice is listed for June 21 and not June 20.  In the US, the North Solstice is observed in the evening of June 20.

Greetings everyone!  As we enter the last quarter of 11.720, I have posted a new calendar for 11.721.

I’ve made a few changes.  First, I’ve dropped all references to the idea of a metric time of day.  I’ve been playing with the concept of metric time for years, and I now find myself wanting to drop it.  I’m doing so for the same reason that the French Revolutionaries dropped it in 1795–too hard to adopt it and not worth it.

I have, however, created a sister calendar which has its new year around Halloween rather than the December Solstice.  This is because a number of people who feel spiritually attuned to the Earth–many of whom call themselves Pagans–celebrate the new year on that day, which they refer to as Samhain.

This calendar has been a pet project for several years, and has taken on a life of its own. I don’t know how many people will ultimately adopt this, but I believe in the power of ideas.  While I personally prefer to see the new year start at the December Solstice, if there are enough earth-conscious people who want hold on to their tradition of starting the new year at Samhain, who am I to decide for them? I’ll be keeping track of downloads for each calendar, so we’ll see how it plays out.

Downloads for both of these are free and can be found here.

I was a little late in putting this out, but I finally have the Earth Epic Calendar for the Year 117.20 ready!

As usual, I am including the last month of the previous year (117.19).

I made one change to this calendar–something that I’d debated with myself for a while.  I have decided to give religiously and culturally neutral names to the days of the week.  Previously, I’d said that the seven-day week was not officially part of the calendar but was being used for practical reasons.  I’d suggested that in the future, people may want to change the arrangements of the weeks–perhaps so that every day ending in 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., would, in effect, be its own day in a ten-day week.

It’s clear to me that the seven day week is here to stay and  will be as long as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are strong social forces in the world. (Unless they decide that having a sabbath day every seventh day isn’t  important.  And that’s their choice–I have no inherent criticism of the seven-day week.)  Weeks also roughly correspond to quarters of the moon, and as such, have been deeply ingrained in human society for millennia. People may choose to change the lengths of the weeks in the future–the seven-day week is still not an inherent part of the Earth Epic Calendar.

I have named the holy days of Friday, Saturday and Sunday after Islam, Judaism, and Chrisitanity respectively.  The remaining days are named after the four elements, Water, Earth, Wind (or Air) and Fire, which are important in Buddhism, as well as  many indigenous religions in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

One other change you’ll notice in the calendar’s design: I’ve replaced the seasonal pictures with graphics that explain different aspects of the Earth Epic Calendar.

I discovered an error that I made in calculating when the leap years occur.  I thought this year, 11.719, was itself a leap year, but it turns out I had the leap years wrong.  11.717 was a leap year and 11.721 will be one, too.

I’m not sure how I made the error but I discovered it when calculating the likely leap years going into the future. As such, it was necessary for me to change the calendar for this year, 11.719.  I had it down as starting on December 21, 2018, but it actually began one day later on December 22.  Eastlight also started one day later.

However, the fact that this isn’t a leap year means that Eastlight has only 91 days instead of 92. This is because the leap day is currently added to the end of Eastlight if this is a leap year.  By beginning the first day of the year one day later and removing the leap day from the end of Eastlight, the calendar actually “catches up” with itself by Northlight 0.

In the Earth Epic Calendar, the New Year is based on the actual time of the December Solstice.  To be precise, the New Year begins at the midnight closest to the time of the solstice according to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  If  the solstice falls before the stroke of noon in the UTC time zone, the New Year begins that previous midnight–if it falls after that stroke of noon, then the new year begins the following midnight.

Most of the time, 365 days elapse between the two New Years on the calendar, but occasionally, 366 days elapse, which makes the year a leap year.  The Gregorian calendar has a formula for determining the year–every four years except for years ending in “00” that are not divisible by 400. (Thus, 2000 CE was a leap year, but 1900 wasn’t and neither will 2100).

On one level, determining the day of the New Year in the Earth Epic Calendar is very simple, but it requires knowing the precise time of the December Solstice. Modern astronomy has been able to predict the precise time going several hundred years into the future. But the further in the future or the past the prediction is made, the less accurate it will be.  To some extent, it’s due to the unpredictability of the Earth’s rotation. A discussion on this topic is here.

This challenge is also shared by both the Solar Hirji calendar and the Baha’i calendar (the latter starting only in 2015 CE), both of which have their new years tied to the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. So, while the Gregorian calendar bases its leap years on a simple mathematical formula, such a simple formula isn’t availalbe for the Solar Hijri, Baha’i, and Earth Epic calendars. Attempts have certainly been made, but nevertheless, a formula has proven elusive.

I calculated the dates of the New Year from a database developed by Barry Carter that I downloaded from GitHub. He has acknowledged its limitations in the discussion I previously referenced. I’ve made the corrections on the downloadable calendar and the Google/iCal file that you can link to your own smartphone calendar. I have also added a list of leap years on this website for between 11.283 and 12.000 EE (1582-2300 CE).  The year 1582 CE is the year the Gregorian Calendar was first implemented.

Analyzing the data, most leap years occur every four years, but once every 33 or 37 years, an interval of five years occurs.  In looking at the years between 11.283 and 12.000 EE, the pattern of 33 and 37 years isn’t fully predictable. Sometimes the 33 and 37 year cycles alternate, and sometimes two 33 year cycles will occur before alternating with a 37 year cycle.  The original data base dates from 13,201 BCE to 17,091 CE, so theoretically, I could put together a database for the entirety of Epoch 12, which runs from 9,701 BCE to 15,299 CE.  But in looking at the data, I can see how the dates for the December Solstice drift several months, which shows the limitations of the Gregorian calendar.

Okay, so I have a right to change my mind, right?  I made changes to the Earth Epic Calendar because some things didn’t seem to fit right.

I had previously been telling people that they could choose between using the Millenium and the Century and between the Milliday and the Centiday.  I’ve now dropped the Century and the Centiday from being official units of measure on the Earth Epic Calendar.

Why? Because of the rule of KISS–Keep It Simple, Stupid. (Or Sweetheart.)  I felt that this change would make the calendar much more intuitive to understand.

So, this calendar is designed with the Rule of One Hundreds in mind.  One hundred secs equal a milliday, 91 or 92 days equal a quarter (okay, not quite 100 but close), one hundred epochs equal a genesis, and one hundred geneses equal an eon.

But the system already forces exceptions.  If I continued the rule of one hundreds with decimal time, I would have centidays (roughly equivalent to 15 minutes), and, um, myriadays that are 8.6 seconds.  Yeah, not useful, right? (Just try to watch football, basketball, and hockey with those units. Especially with those famous game-changing plays at the buzzer.)  Units more useful to us would be millidays (roughly 1 1/2 minutes) and secs (equal to 0.86 seconds). That’s easier for us to imagine, since they are most similar to

Likewise, two hundred fifty centuries or twenty-five millenia equal an epoch.  But when you think about it, which is easier for us to imagine–250 centuries or 25 millenia? I would say 25 millenia, because 25 is smaller than 100 while 250 is bigger–and in my view, an awkward number. We’re used to thinking in terms of millenia because most world calendars encompass several millenia (even if they have to go before the start of year 1 of their calendar).  Plus, the year 11.719 can easily also be read as 11,719, which is the number of years since the start of this epoch.  And for those who don’t always want to be formal can just refer to this year as the year 719 of this calendar.  Just don’t confuse the year 700 (2000 CE) with 0.700 (the approximate year the ancient city of Jericho was built, or 9000 BCE).

The exceptions to the rule can be easily recognizable with the prefix Mill in Millenium and Milliday since that prefix is associated with “one thousand.”  As for 91-92 days in a quarter, well, there’s not much I can do about that unless I want my years to be 400 days each (which was probably true of the Earth two eons ago when days were 22 hours each–but not now).  And as for there being 25 millenia in an Epoch, well, I’m sticking to my plan that takes advantage of the 100:1 difference in time years ago between the dawn of the dinosaurs and the dawn of the genus Homo.

Oh, and you might notice that I’m using the word Epoch when I’d previously use the word Age.  That is also to avoid confusion.  Remember when I talked about the axial precession as a unit of time? That period, roughly 25,000 years, corresponds to a period of time when the view of the universe appears to rotate through the twelve signs of the zodiac.  Most astrologers would say that the Earth is in the Age of Pisces.  But the reference to an age here is only about 2,000 years, with roughly 25,000 years being the period of time the Earth passes through all twelve signs of the zodiac.  So if I were to call that 25,000 period of time an “age,” it would be confusing to people familiar with astrology.  Therefore, to keep consistent, I chose the next measure of time above Age on the Geological Time Scale, which is Epoch.  Coincidentally (are there coincidences?), the Holocene Age and the Holocene Epoch are one and the same, and the Holocene dates from the beginning of this Epoch that began 11, 719 years ago.

This calendar went through many refinements before I made this calendar public, and it might go through a few more.  This is the biggest one n years, but fundamentally, it changes the calendar very little. I need to make a couple more changes in order to be completely consistent across the board.  I need to redo the history of human civilization so that it shows years in the millenium.year format instead of the century. year format, and I need to change the calendar link that is also responsible for the date that appears on this website.

The Earth Epic Calendar for the year 117.19, which starts this December 21, 2018 on the Gregorian Calendar, is now available as a downloadable .pdf.  This is a five-quarter calendar that spans from the last quarter of 117.18 through the last quarter of 117.19.

The publishing of this calendar is also a good opportunity to announce a tweak that I’ve made to the calendar.  I have changed the international names for the quarters so that they better reflect what they describe.

As I said in my original description of the four quarters that make up the year in the Earth Epic Calendar, the actual names of the quarters should be left to local custom. After all the Gregorian Calendar was essentially imposed on the world due to the overwhelming economic and political power of Western countries. But I did also create some names that were hemispherically and culturally neutral for the purpose of international use.

I have altered the names of those quarters slightly, which you will see reflected in this calendar download.  Originally named Southtide (near the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere), Easttide (Spring Equinox), Northtide (Summer Solstice) and Westtide (Autumn Equinox), I’ve now changed them to Southlight, Eastlight, Northlight, and Westlight. As before, the North and South references indicate the part of the Earth tilted towards the sun at the beginning of the quarter (Southern Hemisphere in December, Northern Hemisphere in June). The East and West references are more metaphorical–the East and West refer to the earlier and later parts of the day just as the sunrise in the East and the sunset in the West do. I changed the suffix from -tide to -light to better describe the astronomical phenomenon.

Enjoy your calendar, and I always like hearing your feedback!