By |

Jamie Carter observes how dependent religious events such as Easter are on the moon. Humans celebrate these events not because of a numbered calendar date, but because of lunar cycles.

When is Easter? That’s easy—Easter is on Sunday, April 12, 2020 for western christians and on Sunday, April 19, 2020 for eastern orthodox christians.

Two dates, forever changing—Easter does not have a specific date.

Unlike Christmas Day, it changes every year depending on something that most people don’t often associate with the christian religion—the moon.

For the world’s 1.8 billion muslims, the exact date of Ramadan is determined by the lunar cycle—with the physical sighting of the crescent moon the day after a New Moon the critical factor. In 2020, that’s Thursday, 23 April—the evening after the next New Moon—unless the crescent isn’t sighted, in which case it will begin the evening after when the New Moon is higher in the post-sunset sky…

Easter is celebrated by roman catholics and protestant christians on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox as determined by the Gregorian calendar. That’s the rule. Since the equinox occurred on March 20, 2020 and the “Super Pink Moon” appeared on April 7, 2020, so the date of Easter Sunday was automatically set for Sunday, April 12, 2020. It’s been that way since the year 325 A.D…

Although its 99% a lunar festival in terms of the date it’s held, Easter isn’t just determined by the moon’s phases. The ecclesiastical authorities fix the vernal equinox at March 21, thereby limiting the dates when Easter can occur…

Clocks are a modern invention, as is the convention of global calendars standard time. “Prior to the Gregorian calendar, which is our standard calendar now, calendars were set by the phases of the moon because we didn’t have clocks,” said Dr. Jackie Faherty, Senior Scientist and Senior Education Manager jointly in the Department of Astrophysics and the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History.

The Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar that evolved from a lunar calendar. “Standards of time only began when people wanted to set train timetables, and this idea that we have a universal time that we can all get from looking at our watch is something we take for granted,” said Faherty…

Much of our calendar comes from astronomy,” said Faherty, stating that Monday is named after the Moon. “It’s a constant and observable feature that you can get your own understanding of, with its changing phases a great way of tracking the seasons.”

Our concepts of time, and the language we use to talk about it, owe a lot to the Moon and the Sun.“There’s so much to our keeping track of our time that’s related to astronomy, and so much in the early days was set and understood by the Moon—so that was the way that many religious calendars were calculated, and still are today,” said Faherty.

Carter, J. 2020. ‘When Is Easter? The Lunar Festival That’s Determined By The Movements Of The Moon.’ Forbes. April 9, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/04/09/when-is-easter-the-lunar-festival-thats-all-about-the-movements-of-the-moon/#4c8acf3316d7

By |

bible-1113483_1920.jpg

Defacto Design argues that religious conventions have contributed to shaping calendars which distance us from natural time. These artificial time structures is furthermore said to have perverted our impression of natural reality.

“The 12 month Julian calendar was inherited by the Christians some time around the 6th century then, in 1582, Pope Gregory the 13th reformed the 12 month calendar and it became known as the Gregorian calendar. It can therefore be argued that it is the Vatican’s calendar and the world lives on Vatican time.

The point though is the lack of reason, logic or intuition upon which this system is based. It remains devoid of methodology which stifles usability as attempts to calculate which days of the week correspond to days of the month make clear. It has no rational grounding, other than 365 days corresponding to one solar orbit, and therefore lacks any significant context: Why does a ‘new year’ begin on January the 1st? What relevance does that day have? Why isn’t the 1st day of the year on the solstice? What practical purpose do we have for months of differing lengths other than to disseminate global confusion? And why, in the UK, do we still change our clocks twice a year to encourage ‘day-light saving’ when it means children must walk to school in the dark?

The ultimate purpose of a ‘calendar’ is not to keep accounts but to synchronise. The Gregorian calendar disconnects humanity from the cycles of the planets and galaxies; from the universal order of ‘natural time’ and therefore nature itself. Jonathan Bate observes in his insightful book ‘The Song of the Earth’ that ‘thinkers from Rousseau (1) to the late-twentieth-century Greens have proposed that man’s presumptions of his own apartness from nature is the prime cause of the environmental degradation of the earth’ (2).

Our artificial time has twisted our perception of reality sufficiently for the Oxford English Dictionary to define nature as ‘the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, and the landscape, as opposed to humans or human creations’(3). Are we really ‘opposed’ to the plants, the animals and the entire system which led to our existence? Have we really out-evolved our environment to such an extent that we are no longer part of it?

The imposition of artificial time has perverted our fundamental perceptions of reality. Robert Greenway (4) concludes that if we can learn to ‘…live within the understanding that we are nature, that we cannot be separate from nature, and that an interactive awareness of our naturalness is the first step towards a vast range of wisdom now closed to us… we can return to the communion that this historic period of objectification has [denied] us’.

The Gregorian Calendar provides the main metaphysical frame of reference for humanity and as such its’ influence is unprecedented. It is single-handedly responsible for the perception that ‘time is money’ which perpetuates materialistic cultures in which greed and exploitation dominate.

The objective now is to realign our consciousness, with the synchronic order of natural time, by changing our metaphysical frame of reference and acknowledging ‘time’ as something other than ‘money’. This single issue lies at the heart of the “crisis of perception” which Fritjof Capra (5) suggests is the single root of our contemporary ecological crisis. The entire system of artificial time is fundamentally flawed; to progress, or arguably, for humanity to ‘survive’, we need a different system. Thankfully one based on natural time, which is not linked to any specific religion, has been tried and tested for thousands of years. It uses 13 months of 28 days, and is know as the 13 Moons.”

Defacto Design. 2012. ‘Gregorian versus the Mayan Calendar.’ Defacto Design. http://defactodesign.com/gregorian-versus-mayan-calendar.

By |

moon-1817885_1920

Pitrim Sorokin and Robert Merton differentiate between a purely quantitative constitution of astronomical, mathematical time, and qualitatively differentiated constitutions of social times. Social times are said to use what is homogeneously regular about astronomical time for the development of calendars and rituals.

The system of [social] time varies with the social structure. Astronomical time is uniform, homogeneous; it is purely quantitative, shorn of qualitative variations. Can we so characterize social time? Obviously not-there are holidays, days devoted to the observance of particular civil functions, “lucky” and “unlucky” days, market days, etc. Periods of time acquire specific qualities by virtue of association with the activities peculiar to them. We find this equally true of primitive and more complex societies…

Summing up, we may say that thus far our investigation has disclosed the facts that social time, in contrast to the time of astronomy, is qualitative and not purely quantitative; that these qualities derive from the beliefs and customs common to the group and that they serve further to reveal the rhythms, pulsations, and beats of the societies in which they are found.

Mathematical time is “empty.” It has no marks, no lacunae, to serve as points of origin or end. Yet the calendar-maker requires some sort of starting-point or fixed datum. Some beginning, arbitrary or not, must be set in order to initiate any system of time reckoning which purports to be continuous (Sorokin and Merton 1937, 621-23).

Sorokin, Pitrim, and Merton, Robert. 1937. ‘Social time: A methodological and functional analysis.’ The American journal of sociology 42(5): 615-29.

By |

january-2290045_1920.jpg

Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield contest the characterisation of the week as being linked to celestial movements. Instead they note that the week is contingent upon social norms and contexts, which are distinct from the rhythms and revolutions of the planets.

The week does not have a basis in the motions of the heavens. As Michael Yong, Director of the Institute of Community Studies in London, put it: ‘The Sun has not been the only master. Humans can create their own cycles without having to rely on the ready-made ones. No other creature has demonstrated so much independence from astronomy. No other creatures has the week.’ The week probably arose from the practical need for societies to have a time unit smaller than a month but longer than a day. Communities run more smoothly when there are regular opportunities for laundry, worship and holidays. Ancient Colombia used to have a three-day week. The ancient Greeks favoured ten-day weeks while some primitive tribes today prefer a week of only four days. The seven-day week derived from the Babylonians who in turn influenced the Jews (though the former ended it with an ‘evil day’ rather than a Sabbath, when taboos were enforced to appease the gods – perhaps the origin of the restrictions on Sunday activities). Its popularity has defeated a number of attempts at change. The French tried to decimalise it after the Revolution but their ten-day week was scrapped by Napoleon. In 1929 the Soviets attempted to introduce a few-day week and in 1932 extended it to six, but by 1940 the seven-day week had returned. Just as the week ignores astronomy, so does the modern technology of timekeeping (Coveney and Highfield 1990, 43).

Coveney, Peter, and Highfield, Roger. 1990. The arrow of time: A voyage through science to solve time’s greatest mystery. London: Flamingo.

By |

flag-727241_1920.jpg

Émile Durkheim characterises time exclusively by the divisions created by social symbols and rituals. Durkheim recognises that the framework for this symbolisation and ritualisation is seasonal, natural, and cosmic. However, that societies each regulate time differently, illustrates that natural forces are external to the social causes of time.

What if one tried to imagine what the notion of time would be in the absence of the methods we use to divide, measure, and express it with objective signs, a time that was not a succession of years, months, weeks, days, and hours? It would be nearly impossible to conceive of. We can conceive of time only if we differentiate between moments. Now, what is the origin of that differentiation? Undoubtedly, states of consciousness that we have already experienced can be reproduced in us in the same order in which they originally occurred; and, in this way, bits of our past become immediate again, even while spontaneously distinguishing themselves from the present. But however important this distinction might be for our private experience, it is far from sufficient to constitute the notion or category of time. The category of time is not simply a partial or complete commemoration of our lived life. It is an abstract and impersonal framework that contains not only our individual existence but also that of humanity. It is like an endless canvas on which all duration is spread out before the mind’s eye and on which all possible events are located in relation to points of reference that are fixed and specified. It is not my time that is organized in this way; it is time that is conceived of objectively by all men of the same civilization. This by itself is enough to make us begin to see that any such organization would have to be collective. And indeed, observation establishes that these indispensable points, in reference to which all things are arranged temporally, are taken from social life. The division into days, weeks, months, years, etc., corresponds to the recurrence of rites, festivals, and public ceremonies at regular intervals. A calendar expresses the rhythm of collective activity while ensuring that regularity…the course of natural phenomena, the rhythm of cosmic life set its mark upon the rhythm of ritual life. Hence, for a long time the feasts were seasonal…

But the seasons merely provided the external framework of this organization, not the principle on which it rests, for even the cults that have exclusively spiritual ends have remained periodic. The reason is that this periodicity has different causes. Because the seasonal changes are critical periods for nature, they are a natural occasion for gatherings and thus for religious ceremonies…Yet it must be acknowledged that this framework, although purely external, has shown remarkable endurance…The form of this cycle is apt to vary from one society to another. (Durkheim 1995 (1912), 9-10 & 353).

Durkheim, Émile. 1995 (1912). The elementary forms of religious life. Translated by Karen Fields. New York: The Free Press.

By |

looking-glass-919017_1920.jpg

Kevin Birth argues that the human knowledge of time is not associated with celestial movements. Instead, the knowledge that humans have of time is embedded within culturally diversified objects and tools, which distantly represent celestial movements.

The study of objects of time is the study of cognition and culture, but not of the sort limited to the mind or to a simpleminded notion of cultural boundaries. For most clock users, the logics used to determine the time are outside of their knowledge but within the objects. These logics have an artifactual existence that mediates between consciousness and the world—part of what Cole describes as the “special characteristics of human mental life” as “the characteristics of an organism that can inhabit, transform, and recreate an artifact-mediated world” (1995, 32). When one wants to know what time it is, one does not calculate it, but simply refers to a clock or watch. When one wants to know the date, one consults a calendar rather than observes the Sun, Moon, and stars. This placement of temporal logics in artifacts clearly forms a feature of humans that is quite different from anything shared with any other animal—not only do humans make tools, and not only do humans have knowledge far beyond what animals exhibit, but humans place this knowledge in tools. The cultural diversity of concepts of time is closely related to the fusion of diverse ideas and artifacts used to think. Whereas my examples so far are the clock and the calendar, the use of objects to mediate time is not new. Objects related to time are among some of the most famous in the archaeological record, for example, Stonehenge, the Aztec calendar, and the Antikythera Mechanism (Birth 2012, 9).

Birth, Kevin. 2012. Objects of time: How things shape temporality. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

By |

time-flies-2470848_1920.jpg

Michael Flaherty explores the difference between the subjective impression of time’s passage, versus how much of that time has actually passed. The distinction is established between a reality of time, and contingent impressions of time.

Time flies. For centuries, this has been one of the stock phrases in Western civilization. But, on occasion, we are struck by the sense that time has passed even more quickly than is usually the case. This is to say that, in particular circumstances, it feels like much less time has elapsed than has actually been measured by the clock or calendar. Regardless of whether the relevant interval is ten hours or ten months, it seems to those of us in such circumstances that a much shorter length of time has gone by. Therefore, we can refer to this sensation as “temporal compression” (Flaherty 1999, 104).

Flaherty, Michael. 1999. A watched pot: How we experience time. New York: New York University Press.

By |

candles-2681068_1920.jpg

David Miller interviews Pagan teacher and author Waverly Fitzgerald, who says that natural time in her book is a reference to a time that can be touched. Conversely, artificial time is characterised as a temporality that is abstracted into homogenous, identical parts. Fitzgerald notes that the rhythms of natural time intersect with Pagan spirituality.

[Miller] You make a distinction in your book between what you call “natural time” and “artificial time.” Isn’t time really an abstraction? So how can it be natural?

  • [Fitzgerald] That was my quest (in writing the book), to answer that question. What is natural about time? And the answer had to do with looking at different time intervals and noticing that some of them you can actually see, touch and smell. You can tell when it’s day and when it’s night. You can observe the moon in the sky and after a few days of observing it you can know whether it’s waxing or waning. You can know what season it is by walking outside. These are all, for me, examples of natural time. What I noticed about all of those cycles was that they were, in fact, cycles. They had, if you will, an “on” and “off” position, or a maximum and a minimum. And then they had a slow gradual progression to and from that state. That’s really different than when you look at a calendar, a schedule or a clock, where everything is completely regular and all times are presumed to be exactly the same. There are blank spaces on the calendar, and you can put the same amount of activity into each of them. There is this sort of unnatural — that’s why I call it artificial — aspect to them, which I think gets us in a lot of trouble because we think, “Oh, we can do this thing in this amount of time,” when really all of these other factors play into it that are not under our control.

You’re not suggesting we throw out our calendars and clocks, are you?

  • No. There are really good reasons why those tools were developed to synchronize activities. But I think as biological beings we also need to be aware of our natural rhythms, including the need for rest. I think many people believe that when you sit down at your desk you should be working flat out at the top of your productivity for the maximum amount of time. At least that’s the ideal. But there something called the ultradian rhythm, a biological cycle where there is an arousal period, a period of waking up and becoming alert, and then a period of getting restless or bored or unfocused and then a time of rest. If you start to observe that cycle in your life, it allows you to have a more relaxed and effective approach to your daily tasks…

How and why do religion or spirituality and slow time intersect, do you think?

  • Most of the major religions have a seasonal liturgy, even though it may be sort of buried. If you look at Christianity, with the Easter cycle and the Christmas birth, there is this lovely use of the seasons to tell a story, and the same is true in the Jewish religion. And, of course, the pagan religion really works with this notion of the seasons and the cycle. So there is a very deep connection between this notion of cyclical time and spirituality. And there is a message of hope that things will come around again, that we may feel despair but spring will come again. It is a pretty profound metaphor that is imbedded in our lives (Miller 2008).

Miller, David. 2008. “Pagan teacher and author of “Slow Time, Waverly Fitzgerald talks about rethinking her relationship to time.” SFGATE. January 28, 2008. https://www.sfgate .com/living/article/Pagan-teacher-and-author-of-Slow-Time-Waverly-2525444.php

By |

person-110305_1920.jpg

Gail Weiss argues that subjective time, and the time of clocks and calendars and planetary movements, are not mutually exclusive. In describing how clock time is embedded within corporeal movements, and vice-versa, Weiss likewise suggests that planetary movements are integral to clocked representations of time.

One danger of emphasizing the gulf between temporality and time as I have done thus far, is that it makes us liable to forget the ways in which our own lived experience continually traverses the divided between them. For surely it is overly simplistic to say that time, as measured by calendars, watches, sundials, and the movement of planets and stars, is “out there” while our temporal experience is within us; rather, we “inhabit” time and are inhabited by it, through our own bodily rhythms and movements, and through the interconnections between our own durée and the durée of all that we encounter. Indeed, to the extent that the conventions of clock time are themselves based on the movement of the earth around the sun, clock time is not merely an external, analytical device that helps us negotiate our everyday affairs, but is based on corporeal movement, movement that is inscribed in our own bodies (Weiss 1999, 112).

Weiss, Gail. 1999. Body images: Embodiment as intercorporeality. London and New York: Routledge.

By |

narrative-794978_1920.jpg

Eduardo Mendieta observes an historical differentiation between natural time, historical time, and social time. These differences are said to be reducing, however, as the rate at which historical events develop is accelerated. Furthermore, despite an opposition between natural and social constitutions, social time is regulating shorter temporalities for naturally occurring rhythms.

The symbolic deconstruction of time, partly a result of the information revolution discussed above, has lead to a rethinking of the differences among natural, historical, and social time. Social time is the time in which and at which societies experience their lifeworld. Or rather, just as Henri Lefebvre spoke of the “social production of space,” we must also speak of the “social production of time.” This socially produced time is social time; it is the time that punctuates the rhythms of social existence. This is the time that ticks at the sounds of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months. This is the time that keeps track of workdays, academic calendars, and leisure time. This time, however, is timed by clocks and timetables that have been arranged in terms of assumptions, beliefs, and ideologies about how much time constitutes a workday, a work week, how long should persons work in their lifetime, and so on. Like maps, clocks clock only what they have been arranged to clock. The rhythms of social existence, however, intersect with historical and natural time. Historical time has to do with the time in which historical events, forces, processes, and transformations take place. Historical time is the time in which societies and civilizations live and mark their transformations. Historical time, one may say, is punctuated by political revolutions, wars, elections, and technological revolutions that may have accelerated the rhythms of social time. Finally, natural time is the time of nature, of tectonic plates, of seas, of weather patterns, of draughts and floods, of freezing or melting polar ice caps, and other such forces that are punctuated in millennia, in cycles whose regularity or patterns are not discernable because their time span is beyond human time.

What is distinctive about the global condition, at the phenomenological level, is that these three times have began to merge, or seem to have collapsed into each other. Social time has accelerated to such an extent that it has caught up with historical time. Revolutions are lived within decades. Major social transformations occur where entire societies are uprooted and restructured in the blink of the eye. What took centuries, now takes decades, and sometimes a score of years. History is being televised at any given moment, even as its revisionism is aired and posted that same evening. By the same token, historical time seems to have caught up to natural time: The El Niño weather pattern is now part of pedestrian speak. The greenhouse effect is melting the ice caps, and sea levels are rising, regions are turning into desserts, while desserts are turning into irrigated gardens. The cumulative effect is that time has to be symbolically reconstituted. The self-assurance of Cartesian and Newtonian thought that operated on the dependability and seeming immutability of natural and world historical time have to be traded for a type of thinking that will set out from the social productivity of temporality (Mendieta 2007, 21-22).

Mendieta, Eduardo. 2007. Global fragments: Latinamericans, globalizations, and critical theory. Albany: State University of New York Press.