Raccoon’s New Year

Today marks yet another of theAbysmal Calendar’s interlocking New Years.

This past year I’ve been developing a novel calendar system, which divides the year into 363 + 2 days. The 363 days are divided into 11 months of 33 days each. Each month is made up of three weeks of 11 days. There are also three terms of 121 days.

The first day of the year is today, Jun 22 (21 in a leap year).

 

image of concentric circles. The outermost circle is made of eleven "months" of thirty three days arranged as three by eleven rectangles. Each rectangle contains thirty three circles representing the days of the year. Each circle is shaded from white at the top through greyscale to black at the bottom. The next circle in numbers the months 0 to 10 from top right clockwise to top left. The next circle in numbers the terms 0 to 2, beginning at the top right, ending top left. The central circle has the number 363.
Northern Hemisphere

 

 

image of concentric circles. The outermost circle is made of eleven "months" of thirty three days arranged as three by eleven rectangles. Each rectangle contains thirty three circles representing the days of the year. Each circle is shaded from white at the top through greyscale to black at the bottom. The next circle in numbers the months 0 to 10 from bottom right counter-clockwise to bottom left. The next circle in numbers the terms 0 to 2, beginning at the bottom right , ending bottom left. The central circle has the number 363.
Southern Hemisphere

The two days that aren’t included in the 33-day months are Sep 7 (6) and Apr 5 (4). These particular days fall between 11-day weeks, however, they do interrupt two of the months. They were selected because they fall 260 days from Dec 21, which is the midday of the 363-day year, and also theAbysmal Calendar’s 13-month New Year. More importantly are how these three days interact through the 260-day calendar.

calendar page of 3 rows of 11 days for year 8, month 0. The days are numbered 0 to 32. The gregorian dates are noted from Jun 21 to Jul 23. The days are coloured red, yellow, green, blue ending on red. One last code identifies each day by number and glyph from 9~XI to 2~III.Here’s Year 8 (9~Raccoon), Month 0, Days 0-32. The colours and the number~glyph in the top right corner of each day are from the 260-day calendar. The first calendar date 8~0~0, has the number 9 and the glyph XI, which is Raccoon. So, this year is also called 9~Raccoon.

Here’s the full 11 months of Year 8 (9~Raccoon)

the New Yearses

While this Raccoon Calendar begins Jun 22, the longer standing New Year for theAbysmal Calendar has been Dec 21. Fortunately, this date falls exactly midway through the Raccoon Calendar’s 363-day year.

What’s more, the two dates that are 260 days away from the New Year also bear the same number and glyph. These dates are Sep 7 (6) and Apr 5 (4).

The important thing to know is that Dec 21, Apr 5, and Sep 7 rotate through the same four glyphs from year to year: III, VIII, XIII, XVIII. They also progress through the numbers 1-13 by increments of 1.

For example, beginning with 2012, Dec 21 fell on:

1~XIII, 2~XVIII, 3~III, 4~VIII, 5~XIII, 6~XVIII, 7~III, …

close up image of a very placid raccoon's face.

The Raccoon Calendar marks all three of these dates in the following order, beginning with 2012:

Sep 06: 13~VIII
Dec 21: 1~XIII
Apr 05: 2~XVIII

Sep 07: 1~XIII
Dec 21: 2~XVIII
Apr 05: 3~III

Sep 07: 2~XVIII
Dec 21: 3~III
Apr 05: 4~VIII

Sep 07: 3~III
Dec 21: 4~VIII
Apr 04: 5~XIII

In any given year, these dates mark the current year on theAbysmal 13-month calendar, as well as the New Year, and the following year. These seem appropriate to apply to the three terms of the year. This year:

Sep 06: 8~VIII
Dec 21: 9~XIII
Apr 05: 10~XVIII

This illustrates how these particular structures reinforce one another, and that each of these calendar systems becomes a cog in a sophisticated mental image of time, the year, and organizing the days.

theabysmal
nothing’s better

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