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Further Articles by José Argüelles/Valum Votan

Calendar Reform and the Future of Civilization

Preparatory Reflections for
the World Summit on Peace and Time
University for Peace, Costa Rica,
Crystal Moon 24-Cosmic Moon 1, Sixth Year of Prophecy
(Gregorian June 22-27, 1999)

Part 1

The purpose of the World Summit on Peace and Time is unprecedented. It is nothing less than to formulate and propose with distinct and concrete steps a reform of the current world standard of daily time keeping, the twelve-month Gregorian calendar, replacing it instead with a perpetual calendar of thirteen months of 28 days each. This step is taken with the utmost seriousness of intention and a recognition of the profound and wide-ranging implications which such a reform promises. To replace the current calendar with an entirely different standard of measure is to undertake a fundamental change that reaches to the foundations of everything we now call civilization. It is precisely because of the profound changes it augurs that this calendar reform is also undertaken as an act of bringing about universal peace on Earth. Hence, the World Summit on Peace and Time.

Calendar Reform is the final act of history, and the first step toward Earth Regeneration in the cradle of galactic culture. To change the calendar now is to change the course of history and to revolutionize altogether the future of civilization on Earth. In making these sweeping but accurate statements we would be remiss if we did not present a brief history of modern calendar reform so that we may be able to better grasp the subtleties and far-reaching implications of such reform. We must also understand that the timing of this calendar reform is of a vital nature and presents an evolutionary opportunity for humanity which it cannot afford to lose.

The topic of calendars and calendar reform is not a popular one for the simple reason that the calendar in use functions as a dogma and, therefore, there appears little reason to question it. Most people do not have any idea where the current calendar came from. People who live in mostly non-Western societies function with what is called a lunar calendar, as well as the more recent Gregorian calendar. The lunar calendars also dogmatize the sense of time. Though we speak of the Arab, Hebrew, or Chinese lunar calendars, for example, it should be kept in mind that there is only one moon and hence all lunar calendars are actually the same measure. The lunar calendars in use measure the synodic cycle of the moon, from new moon to new moon. This is a cycle of some 29 and one half days. Twelve of these synodic lunations take 354 days, 11 days short of the solar orbit of the Earth. The sidereal cycle of the moon, the measure of the moon from the same place it appears in the sky, is only 27 and one half days. Between the synodic and the sidereal measures, is the mean lunar cycle of 28 days.

While the lunar calendars in use by different world cultures are in no way solar calendars, or a measure of the Earth’s solar orbit, the Gregorian calendar in use today is an approximation of a solar calendar. We say approximation because on the one hand, while the Gregorian calendar accounts for the 365-day solar cycle, inclusive of an extra day every four years, its standard of measure is irregular and corresponds to no natural cycle whatsoever.

It must be unequivocally understood that an irregular standard of measure has a profound effect on the mind, especially an irregular standard of measure of time. This is because time is a mentally perceived phenomenon unlike space which is perceived through the senses. A standard of measure which is irregular and uneven is inherently problematic. Our sense of time is a fundamental perception. If the standard of measure of time that we use is irregular, then we must contemplate deeply and understand what this does to our mind over centuries of prolonged use.

Part 2

If the clock represents the mechanization of time, the Gregorian calendar is the instrument which normalizes the mechanization of time as a mental institution inseparable from the irrational irregularities of its monthly count. In this way modern human civilization has acquired its quality of institutionalized machine efficiency inseparable from a host of irrational social problems, crime and war. Aside from the Vatican itself which preceded and sponsored the Gregorian calendar Reform, virtually all of the inventions, nation states, and institutions of the modern world are incorporated in this calendar. Any attempt to reform the current civil calendar must come to terms with everything that is incorporated in this calendar.

Some 200 years after the Gregorian Calendar Reform came the French Revolution, and the call for a new calendar. The Republican Calendar of 1793 replaced the Gregorian calendar with a twelve-month schedule of 30 days each, plus a five-day period at the end of the year. The French Republican calendar was essentially the same as a Babylonian type which had the same way of dividing the year into twelve 30-day months with a five-day purification cycle at the end. Every four years, this five-day period of the French Republican calendar was extended to six days to account for the quarter day. The seven-day week was replaced by the decalogue or ten-day cycle. The French Republican Calendar lasted ten years, until 1803, when it was replaced by the Gregorian calendar once again.

The anti-ecclesiastical, pro-rationalist sentiment which animated the French Republican Calendar was also behind the proposed calendar reform of the nineteenth century French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Best known as the founder of the modern discipline of sociology, philosopher and mathematician, Auguste Comte had the opportunity in the 1840s of learning about a calendar of thirteen months of 28 days each. This information came from travelers who had been to Tahiti where this calendar was well known among the Polynesians. This universal indigenous calendar, timed to the menstrual cycle of woman, so impressed Comte by its harmonic form and biological truthfulness that he devoted several years to studying it before he finalized its form as the Positivist Calendar presented at an 1849 session of the Positivist Society.

Apart from Comte’s proposal for a thirteen month calendar, which of necessity, observes an extra day out of time, the call for Calendar Reform continued in France and elsewhere in Europe, but with a focus on maintaining a twelve month cycle and the seven day week. During the 1890’s, there was considerable agitation for a new calendar to begin the 20th century. In 1900, a conference was organized in Eisenach, Germany, for the study of the Reform of the Gregorian calendar. Throughout these efforts the Papal response was always very intense in the defense of the current calendar for liturgical reasons. But a further defense put forth by the Vatican was that any calendar reform had to respect the succession of the seven-day week. This argument of the Vatican very much restricts or even deadlocks the debate on calendar reform and essentially functions as a “catch 22” which says, “Yes, you can reform the calendar, but only so long as there is no break in the succession of the seven-day week and that there are twelve months.” Anyone skilled at problem-solving will see that these guidelines very much limit the possibilities of calendar reform, and in fact, have been the cause of a lack of success of every effort at calendar reform in the past 150 years. Indeed, all that this argument really amounts to is an expression of the power of the Catholic Church to maintain its calendar as the world standard.

This notwithstanding, it is of great interest that the thirteen moon Positivist calendar of Comte, originally derived from the indigenous Polynesians of Tahiti, figured again in the Pan American Scientific Congress, held in Santiago, Chile, December 25, 1908 - January 5 1909. At this seminal event, a Peruvian by the name of Carlos A. Hesse, introduced a calendar reform using a thirteen month calendar identical to that of Auguste Comte. While we cannot say exactly where Hesse derived his calendar, being from Peru, it is highly likely that he knew that the Andean civilization (conquered by the Europeans) possessed a thirteen moon calendar, as did the Tahitians. Still in use today, the Peruvian thirteen moon calendar is correlated to the 500-year Pachacuti Cycles, and is currently (Gregorian AD 1998-99) in its eleventh Pachacuti cycle, year 5506.

The logical nature of the thirteen month calendar attracted English Railroad magnate, Moses B. Cotsworth, who formed the League of the International Fixed Calendar. In 1921, the International Chamber of Commerce in London, England, decided to promote the calendar world-wide, and the matter was taken to the League of Nations. During the 1920s, Cotsworth attracted the interest of George Eastman of Eastman Kodak, who organized a great campaign on behalf of the International Perpetual Calendar. At the League of Nations a committee to study the topic of calendar reform received numerous proposals, but by far and away the most popular was the International Perpetual Calendar. In the United States alone, over one hundred industries of a great diversity of interests were ready to adopt the thirteen month perpetual calendar. The League of Nations determined that January 1, 1933, would be the date to commence with the new calendar, since that year began on a Sunday, and the perpetual calendar always begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday.

While maintaining a close tie with the traditional names of the months of the Gregorian calendar, the thirteenth month being called Tricember, the opposition to the calendar was mounted against the “null day” between the last Saturday of one year and the first Sunday of the next year. This is because 13 x 28 = 364 days, or 52 perfect weeks, (which is what attracted the accountants of industry) and the solar year counts 365 days. Despite the sheer self-existing perfection of form of the thirteen month calendar, resistance to it focused on a great campaign against the unique “null day,” the very point by which it maintained its perpetual perfection. Here the inertia of institutionalized ignorance and disharmony were able to put a stop to this otherwise most successful effort at calendar reform.

In 1931, the 111 delegates representing the 42 member states of the League of Nations listened to the 28 pages of the Report of the Preparatory Commission. While many countries including the United States, Brazil, France, Switzerland and Germany voted in favor of the thirteen month calendar, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands voiced opposition to the institution of a perpetual calendar which implied the introduction of “supplementary” days (the null day).

Support for this antagonistic position grew with the objection of various astronomers, such as Federico Oom of the Astronomical Observatory of Lisbon and Pope Pius XI, who argued that the break in the succession of the seven-day week would create chaos and calamity. The Pope further argued that the matter of fixing the date of Easter was exclusively under his jurisdiction. This position was further supported by editorials in leading newspapers such as the London Times, October 13, 1931, which argued in favor of the religious scruples, and the New York Times, December 16, 1934, which echoed the reasoning concerning the damage to be done by breaking the weekly succession, a succession which, it was argued, had not been broken since the most ancient Biblical times.

Perceived as an attack on religion and the succession of the week, despite the great amount of money spent on the campaign to promote the thirteen month calendar, the project floundered and could not withstand the conservative sentiments of the Church, certain scientists, and leading periodicals. Supported by a counter-insurgency of various organizations wishing to create an atmosphere favorable to the abolition of the Gregorian calendar, a final effort was made in favor of a moderated twelve-month calendar to occur on Sunday, January 1, 1939. However, this calendar also contained the notorious “null day,” and, on September, 4, 1937, the Committee of Communications of the Society of Nations, Geneva, arrived at the conclusion that the time had not yet come to reform the calendar. In 1950, Pope Pius XII issued a pronouncement that the Church was not opposed to calendar reform, but was opposed to those proposals that included “universal days” which are not days of the seven-day week. This sentiment is echoed in the 1962 declaration of Calendar Reform at the conclusion to the Vatican II Ecumenical Council. As of the middle of the 20th century, the Gregorian calendar prevailed world-wide.

Part 3

The debate on calendar reform as it had occurred up to the Second World War reflects a total immersion in the lens of the Western (Gregorian) mind. The argument that calendar change is a threat to religion is posed only by the religion whose calendar is the object of the calendar reform debate. That the accident of history placed the Vatican’s calendar as the world standard only hardened the position of its defenders. That the principle objection to the calendar reform was the inclusion of a day outside of the weekly cycle (hence assuring four equal quarters of 91 days or thirteen seven-day weeks each) is astonishing in light of the harmonic regularity that would be obtained by such a reform.

The very notion of an unbroken succession of seven-day weeks since the beginning of creation is actually a profoundly linear conception of time. The argument that a break in this succession would cause worldwide chaos, barbarism and the decline of religion, pales when one contemplates the actual course of events since the Second World War or even during the entire 20th century: never has there been more war, more violent death, and the proliferation of more weapons of mass destruction than at any other time in history. Could this be because the human populace is in the grip of a calendar whose actual measure defies harmony and whose proponents have safeguarded its reform by regulations which defy the possibility of any real reform?

In 1956, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations adjourned debate on the matter of calendar reform indefinitely. The cumulative inertia of the dogma of the Gregorian calendar held sway, and with it, the dominance of the civilization which had grown up in its shadow. We must assert that the concept of an unbroken succession of the weekly cycle is a Western provincialism. The notion of the seven-day week is not shared by the calendars of many other civilizations and cultures. Are we to say that the only true way is that of the seven-day week in unbroken succession as maintained by the Gregorian calendar? No, for this would be to fall into a type of chauvinism and imperialism by which the Gregorian calendar came into prominence in the first place.

While the debate on reform of the Gregorian calendar, the world’s civil calendar, had fallen dormant, the problems of the Cold War only increased, compounded by the unimpeded path of global industrialization. The result was not only the escalation of nuclear terror, but the negative effect of unbridled industrialism on the global environment. In such a complexity of social and technological forces, calendar reform seemed remote and irrelevant.

In 1987, a book called the Mayan Factor was published. For the first time a comprehensive effort had been made to understand the system of thought produced by the ancient Maya of Central America which was focused on a calendrical mathematics and astronomy that was unique to the history of the Earth. By the process of history, this book could only have been produced when it was, for only by this time was enough known of the ancient and contemporary indigenous Maya.

The later Maya civilization was crushed by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. In 1562, a Catholic priest, Bishop de Landa, burned all the books he could find, and smashed as many sculptures and works of art as he could, while he had the great pyramid temples of the Mayan pilgrimage center of Izamal taken down stone by stone to be reused for the construction of Christian churches and cathedrals. The auto-da-fe of Bishop de Landa caused him to be called back to Europe to report to his superiors. In 1572, the very year Gregory XIII came to power and called for the Calendar Reform ten years hence, Bishop de Landa published his book on the knowledge of the Maya whom he had either destroyed or converted. Apart from Bishop de Landa’s book, knowledge of the ancient Maya was now left to time and the jungle, awaiting “discovery” centuries later by teams of archeologists who would try to piece together the forgotten story.

While the Mayan Factor accounts for the persistence of modern Maya survivors known as “day keepers,” who continue work with the Tzolkin or sacred 260-day calendar, the author, Dr. José Argüelles, plunged into mathematical and historical analyses based on the Tzolkin, which demonstrated it to be more than “just a calendar.” What the Mayan Factor really pointed to is the elaboration of a point of view about time and the existence of a calendar or actually, system of calendars, totally apart from either the Gregorian calendar or the lunar calendars of the Old World. Indeed, according to a contemporary Mayan thinker and ceremonialist, Hunbatz Men, the Maya actually operated with at least seventeen calendars in the prime of their civilization, thirteen hundred years ago. Ironically, at Kitt Peak Observatory, outside of Tucson, Arizona, where the Vatican has its astronomical observatory, there is a mosaic mural of the Maya civilization with a statement asserting that the Mayan calendar was more accurate and scientific even than the Gregorian calendar!

Two years after the publication of the Mayan Factor, the author and his wife, who had long since begun an experiment living according to the cycles of the Mayan calendar rather than the Gregorian, found themselves in the Museum of Time, Geneva, Switzerland. Because of their immersion in another, “outside” view of time, the Argüelles were able to make an astonishing discovery which was to profoundly affect the course of calendar reform. This was the discovery of the 12:60 and 13:20 timing frequencies, the basis of what they later came to call the Law of Time.

What the Argüelles saw in the Museum of Time was actually the history of the mechanization of time. Incorporated into the Gregorian calendar, which had the same historical root in the metric division of space as the mechanical clock, the combination of mechanical clock and irregular calendar had produced an artificial timing frequency whose unconscious acceptance by and grip of the human mind had caused the human species to deviate farther and farther from the cycles of nature. This timing frequency the Argüelles identified as the 12:60, in contrast to what they now knew was the natural timing frequency, 13:20. This 13:20 frequency is derived from the Tzolkin, which they also referred to as the harmonic module, a permutation matrix of 13 x 20 = 260 units. The singular nature of the use and proliferation of so many calendars by the ancient Maya they now understood to be the result of the Maya knowing the actual timing frequency of the universe, 13:20, something consciously unknown to all other people’s of the Earth.

From their discovery, the Argüelles immediately perceived that the cause of the human imbalance with the environment, the reason for the proliferation of industry and new technologies, and the human population “bomb,” were all one and the same: the adoption to and acceptance of a timing frequency at deviance with the laws of nature.

Knowing nothing whatsoever about the earlier efforts at calendar reform, the Argüelles’ first conclusion drawn from their discovery of the 12:60-13:20 timing frequencies was to change the calendar. Instinctively they knew that the thirteen month 28 day calendar was the appropriate solution, as well as the first step to be taken by the human race to conform again to the natural cycles and thus, save itself and its biosphere from destruction. From their knowledge of the different Mayan calendars they also knew that the Maya possessed a thirteen moon calendar, the Tun Uc or Moon count. Following the Chilam Balam prophetic tradition of the Maya, and in accord with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the synchronization or New Year’s date of the new calendar was set at July 26. July 25, therefore became the Day-Out-of-Time (same as “null day”), which the Argüelles’ also referred to as galactic freedom day or Green Day, and which was for the purpose of forgiving debts and sins and wiping the slate clean. The Argüelles also perceived that while in the 12:60 system “time is money,” in the 13:20 system, “time is art.”

With the Thirteen Moon calendar as the basis of their investigation of the Law of Time, the Argüelles forged ahead creating a “tool kit” of the new time called Dreamspell, the Journey of Timeship Earth 2013 (1991). Already a whole systems thinker, Argüelles had identified the unique Mayan vigesimal mathematical system with the mathematics of the fourth dimension, the cause of a radical revisioning of the modern physics of time. In his study of the relation of the human within its environment, Argüelles came to study the works of the Russian biospheric scientist, Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945). It was in Vernadsky’s final work, Problems in Biogeochemistry II (1944) that Argüelles found what he was looking for: a statement confirming Argüelles’ perception that modern (Gregorian) science had totally misperceived the nature of time by applying the metrics of space as measurements of time, thereby obscuring altogether the actual nature of time. In other words, time is a dimension totally apart from, or grater than space, and, according to Vernadsky, from the point of view of time space is an infinitely locatable point.

On this basis Argüelles was able to write “A Treatise on Time Viewed from its own Dimension” (published as The Call of Pacal Votan, 1996). The conclusion to this text considers what Vernadsky calls the biosphere-noosphere transition from the perspective of the analysis of the fourth-dimensional timing standards. According to this analysis, the contemporary human Earth civilization is already in the midst of this transition which augurs a radical shift in operations and evolutionary advance into what Vernadsky calls the “Psychozoic Era.” Argüelles was convinced that the Thirteen Moon calendar change was the most intelligent and only peaceful way for humanity to change its frequency and participate positively in this climactic evolutionary change.

The Argüelles also perceived that due to the unconscious mental effects of the Gregorian calendar, the contradictions inherent in global society are greater than the capacity for their resolution, while the problems created for the environment are far greater than nature’s capacity to restore and regenerate itself. Something dramatic had to happen. In his continuing efforts at decoding the ancient Mayan hieroglyph, on July 26, 1993, something dramatic happened to Argüelles. He began decoding the stone sarcophagus of the tomb of Pacal Votan (603-683) of Palenque, and was thunderstruck by the prophecy of the Thirteen Moons. This prophecy is known as the Telektonon and states succinctly: “Telektonon is revealed to you, God’s plan for peace on Earth, the last and only hope for spiritual renewal and salvation: immediate acceptance and adoption of the 28-day, thirteen moon way, the calendar Telektonon.” From this was born the World Thirteen Moon calendar Change Peace Movement.

Part 4

The Telektonon establishes the period between July 26, 1993, and July 25, 2000, as the “seven years of prophecy.” During the first five years of this time the Argüelles traveled throughout Latin America, Europe, the Far East and North America to spread the message of the Thirteen Moon calendar and arouse a world peace movement. The essence of their mission is summarized as the Thirteen Moon calendar Change Peace Plan (1995), the crux of which says that if there is to be a calendar change, then the world must come to a halt to observe the change. Stopping the world to observe the change is the pretext to call for a universal cease fire and implement strategies to alleviate the problems now locked into the old civil calendar. Through their efforts they convened First Planetary Congress of Biospheric Rights, Brazil, 1996, and the World Congress on the Law of Time and Judgement Day Tribunal, Japan, 1997.

The essence of the Judgement Day Tribunal was to bring to light the role the Vatican and its calendar had played in the creation and maintenance of the present world order. For this reason, and still with but scant knowledge of prior calendar reform efforts, the Argüelles mounted a diplomatic campaign to enlist the Vatican and the United Nations in their efforts to change the calendar. Arriving in Rome on January 1, 1998, with a legal team from Brazil, the Argüelles hoped to reach Pope John Paul II with their proposal. A meeting with one of the Pope’s private secretaries convinced them that they also needed the support of the United Nations. Though they later received acknowledgement from the Director of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as well as Secretary-General Kofi Annan, further efforts at communication were only met with silence from the Vatican.

Perceiving that the 12:60 world is in a quantum exponential disorder punctuated by the Gregorian calendar date problem of the Y2K and the current escalating war in the Balkans, the Argüelles have now called for the World Summit on Peace and Time. While still targeting the cooperation of the Vatican and the United Nations in coordinating the calendar reform, the Argüelles’ also know that time is of the essence and that to rely on any of the established procedures for instrumenting change is to lose time. For this reason they have perceived that a thoroughly populist approach may be the only way to move from one calendar and one time to another calendar and another time. There is no question that the future of civilization–and indeed of the biosphere–may completely depend on a strategically timed and well designed calendar reform which takes into account all aspects of human existence, for there is nothing that is not affected by time.

Of note in these “Preparatory Reflections for the World Summit on Peace and Time” is the persistence of the thirteen moon calendar: Comte’s Positivist calendar was derived from Tahiti. The Andean thirteen moon calendar “Pachacuti” is still in use. The Maya knew and used the Thirteen Moon calendar, calling it the Tun Uc. In ancient England and Europe this same calendar is known as the Druid calendar. Archeology from Japan shows that this calendar was known to its ancestor peoples. The remembrance of the 28 day-cycle, which after all is the human female biological cycle is recalled in the traditions of the 28 lunar mansions of the Chinese and the Hindus, while among the Lakota, 28 poles were always used for the construction of the tipi. And not only is 28 the mean number of days of the lunation cycle, it is also the number of days it takes the sun to rotate at its diameter. The point of” returning” to use of this calendar is precisely because it corresponds to the female menstruation cycle while possessing a profound natural harmony and regularity. What better way for humanity to advance its evolutionary cause and return to the cycles of nature?

The myth of the succession of the weekly cycle has no power in the face of continued use of a calendar which is inherently problematic and without resolution. This myth must be seen for what it is, the final dogma of the Gregorian calendar. Following the defeat at all efforts at calendar reform in the first half of this century, the Gregorian calendar has had a half century reprieve. But it must be asked, for instance, on which calendar do the NATO powers depend? Humanity must now walk out on its own and experience a day out of time, no day of the week at all, not as chaos but as the beginning possibility of relieving all debts and creating an atmosphere of forgiveness and reconciliation where peace may be practiced as the proliferation of art and culture once again.

Finally, in consideration of the promise of peace guaranteed by a new calendar of harmony and regularity, we should consider the opportunity presented by the principle of “incorporation, disincorporation and regeneration in time.” Virtually all existing institutions are incorporated in the Gregorian calendar. This means that their sovereignty in time is owing to their incorporation date in the Gregorian calendar. To relinquish this calendar is actually to disincorporate all of these institutions–whether they be corporation or nation state. In the complete calendar reform, all sovereignty in time must be renegotiated in peace.

This defines the purpose of the Seven Commissions: if there is disincorporation in time of the old order, there is a regeneration in time in the new order; therefore, determining that it is humans and not institutions who have sovereignty in time, how is the transition to come about? All previously existing institutions incorporated in the Gregorian calendar, being now disincorporated, their former managers must be brought to a new human understanding of time and the creation of a genuine equality, justice, and brother and sisterhood of the human race, where violence is no longer acceptable and peace is how we live each moment of every day. Given the opportunity of replacing the one calendar with the other, each of the Seven Commissions must ask: “What is the first pragmatic step to be taken and what procedures are to be followed assuring that the human species creatively and peaceably enter a new time, where, like the even weeks and harmonious months of the new calendar, life is returned to a cosmic order and harmony on behalf of all that lives?”

In delivering these “Preparatory Reflections,” we conclude by declaring that everything undertaken by this calendar reform is in peace. The thirteen moon calendar is the calendar of peace. It is not in reaction to an old calendar or any old institution, but on behalf of a profound common sense and discovery of an underlying law of nature, the Law of Time, that this Reform is undertaken. We are also acutely aware that in these opening reflections there are many issues of a profoundly theological, psychological and scientific nature touched upon by the calendar reform which we have not been able to mention but which we hope will be discussed and experienced during the deliberations of the Seven Commissions and the General Assembly of the World Summit on Peace and Time.

We come in peace, we are peace. It is our mission to help establish a genuine culture of peace on Earth. We call it a galactic culture because, liberated into the natural cycles of time, we shall come to experience and know ourselves as the truly cosmic beings that we are, partaking of a spiritual evolutionary process that intimately connects us to the entire order of the galaxy in which we find ourselves. Yes, there is a time of war and a time of peace. In the time of war we could only know war, so in a time of peace we shall only know peace. May peace prevail! Global Peace Now!

Submitted and Presented by Summit Coordinators, Dr. José and Lloydine Argüelles

Crystal Moon 5, Kin 201, Sixth Year of Prophecy