New 256-day Cycle

Once again, we’re in the Red

The 256-day calendar has two versions, the Fixed and the Wandering. They are both aligned until Jun 21 2024, such that today, Sep 11 2023 on the Gregorian, marks the beginning of another 256-day cycle, the 17th since it began in Jun 2012 with four red lines stacked vertically.

(As a side note, theAbysmal 13-Month Fixed Calendar aligns its days with September, such that today is 9~11 on theAbysmal as well as 9/11 on the Gregorian.)

As a derivative of the 260-day calendar, the 256-day count is still experimental in many ways. It is responsible for marking the 4-day week, which harmonizes with several annual calendars, as well as the 16-day, 64-day, and 256-day periods, which don’t. At least not without a lot of compromises. Fortunately, the 4-year Leap Year period keeps things running smoothly enough.

Today is Day 4,101 of the Era, as well as 2~VII (Deer) on the 260-day Calendar. While the glyph VII (Deer) is red (West), it’s also possible to mark the 16-, 64-, and 256-day periods with glyphs as well.

For the sake of simplicity, the Era began Jun 24 2012 with 1~XI (Raccoon), such that each measure also began with XI (Raccoon). This being the case, today marks the change of 16-, 64-, and 256-day periods such that today reads:

XV (Goshawk)
VII (Deer)
XV (Goshawk)
2~VII (Deer)

What this means is anyone’s guess, as this is a novel, experimental system, and meaning can only develop through usage by a community over time. Although, in the Canadian context, it’s curious that VII (Deer) should end up with the colour red, as Red Deer is a city in the province of Alberta in Treaty 6 and 7.

Actually an Elk, as Red Deer aren’t native to North America.

Something else of interest, is that the colour red, direction West is also associated with the element Water. This may seem counterintuitive, as typically we represent Water as blue. However, if we recall that the story of evolution has life begin in the ocean, and that our blood is essentially seawater plus hemoglobin, it suggests that we took a bit of the sea with us when we crawled onto land.

Plus, the Giant Red Octopus lives off the Western coast of Canada.

This tentacular animal has come to be associated with another glyph of the red West, XIX (Storm). Although none of this is set in stone. Not yet, anyway.

Happy days, beloveds.

Animated 256

colouring the days of the year

The 256-day calendar assigns a colour to each of the days of the year in the sequence red-yellow-green-blue.

To help illustrate this, theAbysmal uses quadrigrams, i.e. images created by stacking four lines, each of which is one of the colours, resulting in 256 distinct images.

the Northern New Year

Happy Summer Solstice, my fellow Northern Hemisphereans.

NB there’s a calendar for download at the end of this post.

theAbysmal Calendar system has developed quite a bit over the past 16+ years, and the past year has yielded yet more layers to this temporal mapping system.

When this project began Dec 21 2005, the new year was set at Dec 21, to approximate it to the end of the Mayan Long Count (which I believe occurred Dec 23 2012). After spending years following the 13-month calendar in combination with the 260-day calendar, other patterns have started to present themselves.

Although any holistic calendar system has a depth of sophistication and meaning, those Mesoamericans really do understand time on a level I haven’t encountered in any other system.

All this to say that theAbysmal Calendar system has 3 New Years: Dec 21 and Jun 22 are the Southern and Northern New Years respectively, and the Lunar New Year occurs on the New Moon prior to the Northern Solstice (May 22 to Jun 21).

Multiple New Years aren’t unusual – even with the Gregorian calendar, we celebrate Jan 1st, but also acknowledge the fiscal year, Apr 1st, and in some cases the Liturgical Year, Sep 1st. Birthdays and some anniversaries can also be considered New Years.

theAbysmal New Years

theAbysmal calendar system was originally designed to provide a better means of organizing the 7-day week, and has since gone on to accommodate a large number of regular weeks. The basic idea is to skip 1 to 5 days of the year, and organize the remaining days by regular measures. Excluding the leap day, this yields a series of frameworks: 365 days, 364+1 days, 363+2 days, 362+3 days, 361+4 days, and 360+5 days. The odd-numbered years (i.e. 365, 363, 361) begin at Jun 22), the even-numbered years (i.e. 364, 362, 360) begin at Dec 22.

Leap Day

Every 4 years a leap day is inserted Jun 21 to keep theAbysmal Calendar aligned wit the Seasons. It is currently synchronized with the Gregorian Calendar, however, this is done for ease of transition rather than as canon. It would be better synched with the Persian calendar.

The Leap Day is a holiday in theAbysmal System, but celebrations and observations are up to each individual community to figure out for themselves. What’s most curious is that the Leap Day occurs during “Rabbit” years.

The Dec 21 New Year cycles between 4 glyphs from the 260-day calendar: XIII (tobacco), XVIII (mirror), III (night), and VIII (rabbit). The Leap Day occurs on Jun 21 following Feb 29, and the Rabbit New Year.

Time keeps on hopping into the future.

Scintillating Year

Initially, the 260- and 256-day calendars skipped the Leap Day, there are exceptions. Every 260 years, there is an “Era Day”, that has a glyph from the 260-day calendar, but not a number. The previous Era Day fell on Jun 21 2012, the glyph X (Coyote). The next will fall on Jun 21 2272, the glyph XI (raccoon).

The Scintillating Year is a variation of the 256-day calendar. Whereas currently, the Leap Day skips the 256-day calendar, and so does not have a colour assigned to it. This creates a 4-year cycle between the 256- and 365-day calendars. However, the Scintillating Year assigns a colour to the Leap Day, such that a 16-year cycle is created.

This is a departure from the Mesoamerican system that inspired this system. The fundamental different is with the 20 glyphs of the 260-day calendar. In the current system, each glyph is a fixed colour. Glyph I (turtle) is green, and only green. With the Scintillating Year, the colour changes every 4 years, such that the glyphs change colour, i.e. Glyph I (turtle) shifts from green to blue, red, yellow, and back to green.

This changes the symbolic associations from fixed to changeable.

As it stands, I’m following both conventions.

Multiple Years

I recently discovered a means of better accommodating certain periods that don’t fit into the 365-day year, by fitting them into multiple years. Currently, there’s 2-year calendar, which divides the year into 27 periods of 27-days, as well as a 3-year calendar that accommodates the 17-day “week”.

The New Years are the same, i.e. Jun 22 and Dec 22, however, not every year. There are 4- and 5-year calendars also being developed at the moment.

Entropy and Illusory

I recently came across a sentiment from a Zen Buddhist that held that we are born into time rather than space. The more I come to understand the Zen perspective, the more depth I find to this notion. We have maps of space, but we haven’t really explored time mapping to nearly the same extent.

I honestly feel that the Gregorian Calendar in particular is the Matrix (or the Datrix, I suppose). It is a means of framing our experience of time, and of all the systems I’ve come across, it holds the least meaning for the greater majority of people who use it. It’s fine for European Christians, but for the rest of us to frame our understanding of history by an ancient Roman schema is limiting.

After having lived by theAbysmal Calendar for years, and tracking as many New Years as possible, I can’t overstate the benefits of changing how we live in time. It’s liberating.

“Free your mind, your ass will follow”

Scintillating Year 9 (10~XVIII mirror) – Dec 21 2021 to Dec 20 2022

this is the current 13-month calendar with the colours shifted.

the Scintillating Year

a riff on the 256-day calendar

There’s a new page regarding the Scintillating Year.

Unlike the fixed 256-day calendar, which does not apply to the Leap Day, the Scintillating 256-day calendar does. This means that every 4 years, the colours of the days of the year shift by 1, which also effects the glyphs of the 260-day calendar.

Transforming Trigrams

Three means of changing lines around theAbysmal Wheel of the Year.

North – blue
East – green
South – yellow
West – red

Using the above colours and the structure of the I Ching, I’ve come up with a series of images made up of stacked lines.

Circles of two-, three-, and four-line images

In the I Ching’s function as a divinatory system, a starting image is determined, and lines are changed to create a second image. The idea is to contemplate the change between the first and the second. Because the I Ching is binary, any line that changes simply switches to its opposite: dark becomes light, and light becomes dark.