Lunar calendars

India and China have lunar calendars for holidays, as well as holiday schedules that differ from each other and from that of the West. India tends to have many different holidays of several days ... 

To benefit from these lunar influences of the moon, people who practice gardening by the moon draw up an annual calendar and tend their plants accordingly. Biodynamic gardeners and farmers, who follow the teachings of Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner, also use lunar calendars, but theirs are more complex, as they believe that plants are affected by wider planetary rhythms, and that crops are linked to one of the four traditional elements— earth, water, air, and fire—depending on whether they are root, leaf, flower, or seed crops. Each crop must be planted when the moon is in the sign of the zodiac associated with that element. 

Every year all around the world we celebrate certain cultural events dealing with our past. For example, in Christianity, Easter is celebrated m the spring and Christmas is celebrated in December in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur is celebrated in October and Ramadan, the time of festing, is celebrated by Muslims according to a lunar calendar. Briefly discuss the basis of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Chinese calendars. 

It is established, therefore, that striking correlations exist between a count of 6 X 64 days and lunar motion. The 384-day year is a lunar year of thirteen lunar months. Such a lunar year has been determined to be 383.9 days or. 1 day less than 384 days. Therefore, the cycle loses 2.4 hours (. 1 day) each 384 days. If one were to adopt 384-day-long years as a calendar and insert one intercalary day every ten of such years, making every tenth year 385 days long, this calendar would lose one day every 454.5 of its years. Thus, the calendar would be accurate to. 0022 day loss per 384-day year. This is accurate indeed as calendars go. 

That neolithic calendars in China were lunar is generally regarded as established. The two most likely year counts would necessarily be 384 days (13 lunations) or 354 days (12 lunations). Three hundred eighty-four, if used as a day count, seems to have resonances with the durations of other astronomical cycles of longer duration. To demonstrate these resonances, it is necessary to continue to apply the same principles of hierarchical extrapolation that link the sixty-four hexagrams to a duration of 384 that is, multiplication of subunits into larger modules via numbers inherent in... 

The earliest Chinese dynasty whose calendar is known is the Chou. According to W. Eberhard, a 384-day year did exist in late Chou times, although it was regarded as an intercalary year with the usual year of twelve months being 354 days. Seven such intercalary years were inserted in every nineteen years, that is, into the Lunar Metonic cycle (W. Eberhard, personal communication, 1974). This mixed calendar may represent a transition form from an earlier time when years of 384 days were used exclusively. 

Discovery of calendrical properties operating in the / Ching that appear to bear a relation to a lunar year of thirteen cycles and to the zodiacal world year, as well as to sunspot cycles, suggests a possible historical speculation. The Chinese year has an average duration of 360 days. It is in essential agreement with the lunar Metonic year developed in fifth-century Athens. The thirteen-month lunar / Ching calendar is composed of 13 X... 

One can only speculate how and why this may have happened. Perhaps the astronomical rationale behind the 384-day calendar had degenerated into a secret knowledge, confined to a ruling or priestly class that came into conflict with a popular, rationalistic, antiesoteric faction that sought the elimination of the thirteenth lunar cycle in order to reform the calendar to more nearly conform with the solar year. W. Eberhard (personal... 

The manufacture of primitive stone tools and fire required a qualitative appreciation for the most common measures of mass, time, number, and length. The concept of time has been appreciated for millennia. In comparative terms it is qualified by longer and shorter, sooner and later, more or less. Quantitatively, it has been measured in seconds, hours, days, lunar months, and years. Calendars have existed for well over 6000 yr and clocks—instruments to measure time intervals of less than a day—were common as long as 6000 yr ago. Chronometers are devices that have higher accuracy and laboratory models have a precision of 0.01 s. 

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