The Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012 - Dr. Synthia Andrews Nd [30]
The Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar, so it’s based on the revolution of the earth around the sun. (The week is an example of a calendrical measure that is not related to any planet or astronomical event.) The smallest calendar unit is the day, which is the time it takes the earth to rotate on its axis. The month is the time it takes the moon to revolve around the earth. These three astronomical cycles form the basis of the calendar.
Unfortunately, the moon, sun, and earth do not synchronize very well. There are 365.2425 days in year, which adds to slightly more than an extra day every four years. There are 29.5 days in a lunar month, which means that a 12-lunar cycle has only 354 days. Periodic adjustments are made to keep the calendar in sync with the actual planets it represents.
Leap year is an example: we use 365 days for three years in a row, then add a day on the fourth year, thus correcting for the quarter day. This would work perfectly if the difference was exactly a quarter day, or 365.25, but it’s not. The difference is a little more. It’s 365.2425, and that .0025 adds up. To compensate, every 400 years we drop a day from the calendar. This is called the 400-year rule. To keep the moon in sync, we force the 12.5 lunations to fit into a 12-month period. We do this by making the months different lengths. Instead of reflecting the 29.5 days, we make our months 30 or 31 days.
def•i•ni•tion
Lunation, or lunar cycle, is the 29.5-day cycle of the moon’s orbit around the earth.
The Mayan system incorporated many more cycles than the three celestial bodies of the Gregorian. Unlike the Western calendar, they didn’t compensate for the lack of synchronicity. Instead they worked to bigger cycles where the sun and earth and other planets naturally synchronize. In doing this, they stayed in harmony with nature. Remember, the Maya believed their bodies had correlating points with the planets and parts of the galaxy. To stay in balance, they needed to remain harmonized to the natural cycles of the planets.
Different Calendars and Natural Rhythms
The Gregorian calendar is unnatural. It forces the sun and earth to synchronize by artificially adding and subtracting days. In a sense we are ruling time, forcing the calendar to reflect a contrived reality.
Your body is linked to the movement of the planets by your circadian rhythm. This rhythm is based on the effect the sun and moon have on your endocrine system. The pineal gland releases melatonin in response to shifting patterns of sunlight. Melatonin sets the hypothalamus, the body’s master gland, which coordinates all the hormonal rhythms of our body. In this regard, the Mayans weren’t far off in their understanding of the need to stay in harmony with natural cycles. Just look at all the sleep disorders people suffer today!
def•i•ni•tion
The circadian rhythm is a 24-hour biological cycle that is affected by light and dark. It’s an internal cycle that controls sleep patterns, eating patterns, and hormonal balance.
As we said, the Maya did not try to synchronize the day and year. They allowed time to unfold as the planets moved. They took a long view and allowed the sun and earth to complete a 400-year cycle necessary to synchronize. Does this explain the pressure we feel in our culture around time? Everyone is always rushing to beat the clock, to fit extra hours in the day. Do you let yourself be ruled by time? Does your calendar control your life? Our view of time and calendars makes it hard to understand the balance in which the Maya lived.
Putting the Puzzle Together
The calendars fit together to create a bigger picture of the universe as a whole. The one constant is time itself. Physicists call time the fourth dimension. We live in the three-dimensional world of space where everything has length, width, and depth. We can navigate through space as long as we pay attention to these three dimensions. Because we measure time as a constant based on the earth’s movement around the sun, we also tend to measure the movement of