Originally posted on April 8, 2014
Detail from Question by Allison L. Williams Hill
The Calendar
StarCenter
Heliocentric Astrology
Author: Robert Tkoch
Source of this article: http://www.starcenter.com/calendar.html
In ancient China, any astrologer who failed to uphold the true calendar was immediately executed.
Mankind lives inside of time. He builds empires and sciences as the years go by. His every breath is bound up with the natural cycles of his years.
Consider your own breath. Watch and listen as your breath goes in and out. It is always doing that, and it is essential. If you interrupt your breathing for too long, your body will cease to live.
Likewise with the year. Its pulsating cycles are fundamental to your life. Go against those cycles, and you miss your own natural rhythm. Forget the poetry of the seasons, and you forget life’s poetry in general. Instead, you take your place with the ant-people who toil without ceasing in their eternal twilight.
Your tendency to breathe naturally is the same as your tendency to flow in perfect tune with the earth’s changing seasons. When you flow with these seasons, you live as a poet lives. You live like a lover who sees his beloved’s smile in every sunrise, while every bird that flies above is a gentle thought from her mind.
When you know the seasons and live accordingly, you become aware that every passing year is a delightfully long, passing breath, something done harmoniously, without particular stress or unnecessary effort. Every blessed year becomes a fascinating story, even as every breath is a little gift of life.
But what if you lived under the dictatorship of some totalitarian hooligan who shouted to you, all day long, to “Now! Breathe in! Now! Breathe out! Not like that! Like this! Quickly! Do what I tell you! Breathe in! Breathe out!” and so on? What if your every breath was not allowed to flow naturally, but must obey some insane other schedule?
That would be uncomfortable and chaotic, would it not? If it went on and on, it would lead to all sorts of unnatural things, to a painful existence whose meaning was difficult to comprehend.
But this is precisely the situation with the present Western calendar. People live by this calendar, and they say it is New Year when January 1 rolls around. But January 1 has nothing to do with any natural cycle, and is merely a conventional date that a Roman emperor declared to be New Year.
Starting your year-long breath on January 1 is to fall, every year, flat on your face. For while you are breathing from January to January, the natural year is breathing by a different schedule. And thus do you miss every accord with Nature that you might have achieved. Since you are a part of Nature, to be out of accord with Nature is to be out of accord with yourself. And thus do you fight yourself all year long.
To begin every year at the time of coldness and sleep is to continually drudge through the year. And thus does society keep to its unlively ways. Thus is mankind, a mental organism dependent upon right ideas, enslaved by one error after another, so that — out of tune, unhappy, and stumbling along — he can be more easily manipulated by those who made the wrong calendar in the first place.
Alternatively, some cultures celebrate New Year at the Spring Equinox, around March 20. But this is not the beginning of Spring. Rather, it is the midpoint of Spring, the maximum-point of the Spring season. To celebrate Spring’s beginning on March 20 is to always be too late. And thus does it produce a human culture that is already “too late,” one that goes nowhere, an anachronism of the past, repeating old habits in a twilit realm without progress or hope.
So what is to be done? Live rightly, or righteously. When it comes to the year, live according to the natural year. How do you find the natural year? Very simply.
Think about it. The year consists of changing seasons. There are four natural points to the year:
- The moment when the Sun is lowest, i.e., the Winter Solstice
- The moment when the Sun is highest, i.e., the Summer Solstice
- The moment when the Sun is midway between the highest and lowest, i.e., the Autumn Equinox
- The moment when the Sun is midway between the lowest and the highest, i.e., the Spring Equinox
We think of Summer as the time of maximum light. Winter is the time of minimum light. If there are four seasons, each season will last about three months. Then Winter will be the season around the Winter Solstice. The most winterish time will be the Solstice itself, the maximum-point and midpoint of the Winter season. Winter will be a three-month span whose midpoint is the Winter Solstice. During this three-month period, the Sun will apparently traverse a 90-degree segment of the zodiac.
For people living in the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter season will therefore begin when the Sun reaches 15 degrees of the sign Scorpio. The peak of Winter will occur when the Sun reaches 0 degrees of the sign Capricorn. And Winter will end when the Sun reaches 15 degrees of the sign Aquarius. From 15 Scorpio to 15 Aquarius is a span of 90 degrees.
So all four seasons can be defined in term’s of the Sun’s apparent motion through the Zodiac (with approximate dates):
- Winter begins: 15 Scorpio (Nov. 7).
Middle of Winter: 0 Capricorn (Dec. 21). - Spring begins: 15 Aquarius (Feb. 4).
Middle of Spring: 0 Aries (Mar. 20). - Summer begins: 15 Taurus (May 5).
Middle of Summer: 0 Cancer (June 21). - Autumn begins: 15 Leo (Aug. 7).
Middle of Autumn: 0 Libra (Sept. 22).
For people living in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are, of course, reversed. Summer begins around Nov. 7, Autumn begins around Feb. 4, etc. But the basic astronomical ideas are the same.
This is the true solar calendar known by the ancients. This extremely simple knowledge has remained largely hidden, simply because mankind is so crazy with the momentum of his own self-importance that he never even looks around to see what season it really is.
In addition, the ancients also made a lunar calendar to complement the solar one, even as the female complements the male. They enacted that each new season should be celebrated at the first New Moon in that season’s sign. Thus, since the solar Spring begins when the Sun reaches the midpoint of Aquarius, the lunar Spring will begin at the first New Moon after the Sun enters Aquarius.
The solar is more male, the lunar is more female. In the ancient times, both were celebrated. But the solar was more authoritative, mental, and orderly, while the lunar was more emotional, festive and sensational. In general, the intellectuals and the nobility would prefer the solar calendar, while the common people would prefer the lunar. But both are important.
Knowing the true seasons, you begin to know the natural cycle on earth. Knowing these, you do the right things at the right time. When everything in your life is done this way, all your days will prosper.
That is why it is so important to be in perfect tune with the seasons. And to be in tune, you must know when the seasons begin. This knowledge is the duty of the astrologer to provide. And since the matter is extremely important, that is why — in the times of old — any astrologer who did not provide this knowledge, faithfully and accurately, was to be immediately executed.
And even though we, living in this banal and democratic age, may not be executed for our ignorance, yet it is still just as important to obey the ancient laws. And thus is it imperative to provide this true information.
For the year 2014, the seasons — for people living in the Northern Hemisphere — will begin at the following moments:
- Spring: February 3, 2014, 22:00 UT (Solar New Year).
- Summer: May 5, 2014, 13:53 UT
- Autumn: August 7, 2014, 13:56 UT.
- Winter: November 7, 2014, 11:58 UT.
For those living in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are, of course, reversed. Autumn begins on February 3, Winter begins on May 5, Spring begins on August 7, and Summer begins on November 7.
So what does all of this mean to you? In general, it means that you have been living inside of a social organism that is hopelessly misguided with regard to the natural world, and that you have handicapped yourself considerably by going along with its destructive conventional ideas. But it also means that you — a unique human being with an original mind — can utilize your own divine knowledge and free will to separate from that social organism and its socially self-congratulating ways, instead inventing new life where you can, while you obey ancient laws where that is proper.
It means that if you plan your yearly cycle in accord with Nature, you will live in harmony with Nature. You will flow in tune with the seasons, and all that you do will prosper. Whereas, if you imitate the nations, you will live arbitrarily and conventionally, ignoring the Universe to your own peril.
Think back to other years, and consider what was happening around February 3 or 4. Remember the little signs, the new promptings that pointed toward new experience. Realize that the solar and lunar new years have always been two aspects of each year’s true beginning.
Thus armed with real knowledge and the certainty born of experience, you may choose to begin anew at every true New Year, knowing that your efforts will all bear fruit in a little while.
Sincerely,
Robert Tkoch
Allison L. Williams Hill is an artist; designer; planner; healer; integrative health coach, and inventor. She shares her work and services through:
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