The Chaos Calendar

By Hxaosanto, hxaosanto@yahoo.com

(This is a rough draft of my ideas about a calendar.)

A ritual system needs a calendar. The feasts can't be too far apart, lest the ritualists get bored with the system. Yet, they cannot be too close together, or the ritualists have no time for themselves.

Try not to use historical "human events" or human measuring systems as timepoints. For example, don't use some specific date to start the calendar - use an astronomical event of some sort instead (the last perihelion? a supernova explosion? Crab Nebula is 6,294.958 light years distant, seen here in 1054 AD.). Don't use a specific longitude for a "base", but use instead something like the midpoint of the average of the landmasses on Earth along its axis.

1 day = the period between sunrise and sunrise on the equator at the midpoint of the Earth's landmasses at that latitude. Sunrise is the time when the sun is first visible with a clear horizon. (This can be changed depending on what I learn about sunrise/sunset times, etc.)

1 year = 1 Anomalistic year = the time between perihelions of Earth to the sun= 365.25964 days mean value

365 days/year
10 days/week
36 weeks/year plus 5 or 6 day holiday

Days should start based on a specific place on the Earth so that the days start at the same moment for everyone observing the calendar.

Chaostar-based

Four weeks for red
Four weeks for orange
Four weeks for purple
Four weeks for yellow
Four weeks for green
Four weeks for blue
Four weeks for black
Four weeks for Fast (Fast of Determination? Fast of Focus? Fast of Will?)
Four weeks for octarine
Five to six days for Celebratory Holiday

Add a day to the Celebratory Holiday every 4 years (plus correcting years that don't have them, like in the Gregorian calendar) to correct the calendar. Better, use leap rules like the Gregorian plus the 4000 year rule. Don't be horribly picky, but get to 1/10,000th or so accuracy (I think this rule does that).

Notes:

Arrange colors in evolutionary chronological order? Red, purple, yellow (for self-awareness), orange, green, blue, black, octarine

Call full dates by day/color/year ("It's 12 Red 1")

Call months by days and colors ("It's 12 Red." "It's 22 Fast." "It's 3 Celebration.")

Static ritual structure should talk about all colors, but the dynamic parts should be about the current color and subcolor.

Structure inside each color: Introductory week (the rituals vaguely explain the color, its significance, its evolutionary start and progress, etc.), explanatory weeks 1 and 2 (the rituals are more detailed, they give example of its use and dangers, etc.), and summary week with fast and special feast (like intro week, with more buildup towards the Feast). The fast should be for a day or two before the color's Great Feast, and the rituals on fast days would talk about what it would be like without that specific color. And, within each color are subcolors, each 5 days long, in same order as colors. The dynamic subcolor ritual parts talk about the subcolor in general terms plus its interrelationship with the current color and the pros and cons of that relationship.

Fasting is eating one small meal per 24 hour period (and drinking tea, juice, or water only), no sexual acts unless used for gnosis, extra meditation or ritual, and at least one divination.

Start day of calendar should be something significant, like an astronomical event that could be referred to many centuries in the future (e.g. a supernova, etc. 1987A?). This document was written at just after 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (maybe started around 9:15 or so), November 4, 2004, just outside Port Townsend, WA, US, NA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.

Chaos Clock

Let's see if I can come up with a clock to fit the calendar. Let's try pure metric time first.

1 day = 10 hours
1 hour = 100 minutes
1 minute = 100 seconds

To give a comparison, these seconds will be a bit shorter than a Gregorian second - 0.864 seconds each. A Chaos hour will be 2.4 Gregorian hours. Simple to use, but not linked in any way to the Chaostar.

Another model, purely based on the Chaostar:

1 day = 8 hours
1 hour = 8 segments
1 segment = 8 minutes
1 minute = 8 seconds

This makes a Chaos second over 21 Gregorian seconds. No good. Can you picture trying to talk about small increments of time? So, let's combine the Chaostar-based time with smaller metric increments:

1 day = 8 hours
1 hour = 8 segments
1 segment = 10 minutes
1 minute = 100 seconds

This makes a Chaos second equal to a hair over 1.3 Gregorian seconds. This could work, as it allows each day to be split into colors, and each hour to be split into colors, and it leaves the smaller increments easy to use for day-to-day purposes. I think this could work...

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