A Rational Calendar
A Rational Calendar
Do you know the official date when spring starts every year?
Most of us just wait for Google to tell us, but it's all based on the position of the sun and moon. In fact, this is how most civilizations built their calendar: noting the seasonal changes and picking a date to consider it a new year.
We use the date that has equal hours of daylight and night to be the date of the spring equinox.
The Natural New Year: Spring
Most ancient civilizations (including Romans) used to mark the start of the new year in Spring: when the world is waking up from its winter sleep. Some cultures started a little earlier or later, but all used some version of sun and moon cycles to mark time:
The Chinese start their calendar on the second new moon after the winter solstice
The Greeks used the first new moon after the summer solstice
The Babylonians, Persians (Nowruz), early Romans, and some Indians used the spring equinox to begin the New Year, which was considered a spiritual balance of forces of light and dark
Understanding Solstices and Equinoxes
We can consider a solar year as broken into 4 parts, centered on the winter and summer solstices.
Solstices: Sol means "sun," and "sti" means "standing still." For 3 days, on either end of the calendar, the sun rises and sets in the same place, giving rise to all kinds of religious metaphors of a sun god who is born, dies, and recovers after 3 days. Solstices are the days when we have the most (summer) and least (winter) hours of sunlight.
Equinoxes: Equi means "equal," and "nox" means "night," signifying when the length of days and nights are equal (spring and fall). If you break it down further, "ox" can be seen as a variation of "oss" which means god. So equinox can literally mean "a balance of the gods”, or a balance of male and female energy.
The Cosmic Calendar's Beautiful Symmetry
The most beautiful thing about this solar calendar tied to religious stories is the spacing. The spring New Year was considered the fertile time of year, when water flows, animals emerge, nature flourishes, and trees and flowers bloom: life is abundant. This is also a moment of unity, of balance, when hours of light and dark equal out, and the male and female energies are in sync.
In the cosmic story, this is the moment of conception, the holy act of coming together, with love creating life. Creating babies has always mystified us, and spring has been seen as the sexiest time of year.
This is significant when we think about what happens 9 months later: the sun is reborn. On the Winter Solstice, I have a list of over 20 sun gods who are considered to be made flesh, born on this day. This isn't just cultures copying one another, but an understanding of life matching the stars above.
The winter solstice, while the day of least light, was the night when light wins. Each day thereafter will have more light; the light triumphs over darkness—a major reason to celebrate. Ancient societies associated their most blessed gifts (babies) with the light in the sky. The sun brings us life, all plants migrate to it, and we need it to create the hormone we call “vitamin” D that helps boost our immunity.
Life needs the sun in a very narrow band of temperatures. This fire of the sun is mirrored in the own heat within our earth’s core and in our bodies. We are alive when we can generate our own heat. When we lose that heat, we die, and our energy transforms. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. This gives us all kinds of imagery in words like “burial” in Egyptian, that means “returning to the earth”. Life sacrificing itself to create new life. A flower is beautiful for blooming, and we can use them as a remember to be present to enjoy it, however fleeting.
In Germany, the word for winter solstice is "Motrenicht," or "Mother's Night"—the night to celebrate all women who transformed into mothers with their new miracles, bringing their little sunshines into the world.
Countless songs portray this understanding: "You are my sunshine" is my favorite.
Egyptian Calendar: Following the Nile
Egyptians were different, since their seasons were based around the flooding of the Nile. With virtually no rainfall since the last ice age, everything depended on this rising river that occurs without local rain. The flooding was caused by monsoon rains from the rest of Africa carried by the Nile, the world's longest river.
Egypt was fortunate to be downstream, blessed with some of the richest soil ever known. Their calendar reflected this reality with just 3 seasons:
Flood
Plant
Harvest
This flood was remarkably consistent, starting in mid-summer, and extending through their first season. Though their calendar markings were different from those in the Middle East and Europe, they still used a solar calendar and positions of stars (notably Sirius for their summer solstice) to predict when the wet season would start.
For both major types of solar calendars (in Europe, Asia or Africa), water was the main reason for the start of the new year. Whether from spring rains or the flooding Nile, the year was marked by fertile wetness that brought life to the land.
The Cosmic Mirror: Sun, Moon, and Human Cycles
When you think about it, the way we view the sun and moon is quite interesting. Even though they are totally different sizes and vastly different distances, they appear to us to be exactly the same size. The sun is brighter and more predictable, but the moon is more elusive. You realize this feeling during phenomena like a solar eclipse, when the moon covers the sun in exactly the same size. How is that possible? It's such a strange coincidence that makes them even more compelling for stories.
If we associate women with the moon for being more elusive—since it does match the hormones of a woman, someone who may seem interested in you one day and not the next—while men are more like the sun, in that they are always wanting to spread their seed. Their hormones are set and predictable. We need to chase after the moon a bit to understand her, like the rainbow- the spanish version that preserves a name for the goddes in arco Iris, the ark of the goddess.
That is just one story that feels appropriate to me. Women have both moon and sun cycles of hormones. Progesterone, the hormone that gives her exuberance and energy, is the one that comes at her most fertile time—her full moon moment. While women do not have to match up to this perfectly, and there are always variations, the synchrony is hard to ignore.
Women still have the cortisol/adrenaline cycle that is like the sun, rising and falling by the end of the day. Progesterone in a woman is also very important. It is a delicate hormone; if she is stressed, this is the first to deplete. This is because if she gets put in a dangerous position, her body wants her to be able to protect herself, not work on the energy-intensive task of creating a baby inside her. If a woman has a stressful day, she will not be as interested in her partner at the end of the day. A man does not have this same shut of switch to wanting sex. This is why listening to ourselves is important. Aligning ourselves with the stars helps us see ourselves in the stars—the magic within us. It also helps us empathize and realize some things may not be personal, the biology within us dictates how we feel, but we can also set us up for the best possible combination by learning and acknowledging our differences.
Some cultures see the sun and moon differently. Some see the moon as male and sun as female. Scythians and Japanese are just two examples that had a female sun god. The Scythians were also known for their fierce female warriors that rode on horseback and gave us the word "nightmare." They were fierce and respected in both life and lore.
The stories we tell have real implications for how we all consider men, women, or any human. Understanding them is a way to slow down and empathize, to listen to these stories of cultures with more wisdom than we see in clickbait dramas on TV and social media.
Moon Cycles and Calendar Simplicity
Moons have this remarkable alignment with women's menstrual cycles. Both average around 28 days. Some believe women had better chances of conception if they menstruated on the new moon (when there was no moon), as husbands were more likely to be out hunting based on the new or full moon.
The lunar calendar used to be simple. Once the sliver of a new moon was sighted, the month would begin. Someone in the dark running to their friend, “I see it!”. The ides were always on the 14th, the night of the full moon: 4 weeks of 7 days each, adding up to the same 28-day months. Each day of the week was always on a particular day of the month. Many cultures would add a few days (or a short month) at the end to sync the sun and moon cycles. Egyptians would simply celebrate during these extra days that weren't officially counted.
How the Romans Confused Everything
The Roman calendar originally began with March, with January and February added later. This is where we lost the ancient wisdom of life matching the earth's cycles, all to make political calendars more convenient.
In doing this, we messed up the logic of our month names:
Sept = 7, but September is the 9th month
Oct = 8 (like octopus), but October is the 10th month
Novem = 9, but November is the 11th month
Deca = 10 (like decade), but December is the 12th month
The Romans added July and August in the middle, named for rulers Julius Caesar and Augustus. Most months alternate between 30 and 31 days. Augustus was jealous of Julius, so his month needed 31 days too—where did he get it from? He stole it from February.
A Brief Timeline of Calendar Evolution
10,000 BC: Evidence of solar and lunar calendars around the world (possibly as far back as 50,000 BC, counting moon cycles carved into ivory jewelry)
3,000 BC: Earliest recorded birthday celebrations in Ancient Egypt, celebrated with cake offerings to the moon god, with candles whose smoke carried wishes to the gods
2,510 BC: Egypt forms a "civil" calendar of 12 months of 30 days each, with an additional five-day month to complete the year
1,780 BC: Babylonian calendar with solar observations, starting with new moon sightings
1,200 BC: Greek calendars based on sun and moon, with extra months to balance solar and lunar cycles
713 BC: January became the first month in Rome for political reasons
44 BC: "Quintilis" (5th month) changed to "Julius" (July) after Julius Caesar's death
8 BC: "Sextilis" (6th month) changed to "Augustus" (August) while Augustus was still alive
0 BC/AD
622 AD: Islamic Calendar forms, lunar only, starting with the spring equinox, but disconnected from seasons
1100 AD: Romans start to celebrate birthdays
1582 AD: Gregorian calendar starts, replacing the Julian calendar. This placed the voted-on birthday of the Christian messiah at the center of time at 0 BC/AD.
The Disconnection from Nature
The Islamic calendar shows the complication with disassociating from the sun: foods, crops, and dress in celebrations don't align with the same season every year. Over a 33-year period, Islamic months move through all seasons.
Similarly, the Islamic religion's prayer times were set to avoid the connection with the sun god. Followers are forbidden to pray at sunrise, sunset, or noon, when the sun is strongest. But I believe in avoiding the sun, they acknowledge its strength—they feared people would associate it with god.
So now we have a calendar that makes little logical sense, but we follow along and teach it to our children, hoping they just memorize the strange broken logic.
And we give the Romans credit for giving us a "sensible" calendar. Except they didn't. They borrowed from everyone else and misinterpreted it several times over, disconnecting us from the natural rhythms that once guided human civilization.
Finding Our Way Back: Science, Spirituality, and Freedom
We live in a time that can combine spirituality and science, where we're humble enough to admit that the more we know, the more we realize we don't know. The more we study nature, the more brilliant we see it being—without needing an orchestra master, at least not one that we can see.
This perspective doesn't push aside religion, but it means we don't have to rely on man-made structures that are easily manipulated for power, as we've seen time and time again throughout history. We don't need a priest to interpret the signs between us and the divine. We can find our own voice, and use it.
We don't have to be scared to ask questions, or be labeled a "heretic"—which literally means someone who chooses their own way to tell the story of the stars and life. Einstein believed in this idea, that the way we see the world can make everything feel like magic, or nothing at all.
We don't have to choose between religion and science, but we also don't have to choose a religion that was made for a different place and time. We are evolving creatures and can always ask questions. This is an era of freedom and access to information as we have never seen before, and mega-religions tend to dislike any change to the narrative. We should not confine ourselves prematurely.
Religion, Christianity especially, is often about hiding the animal instinct, while I believe we should be doing the opposite. We should meet that animal within, understand it, to really operate at our best. The book "Blink" tells this perfectly—often we run at our best when we rely on our instincts, rather than the newest part of the rational brain called the prefrontal cortex. Like when we dance: we stumble a lot when we think too much. Focusing on the music, for music's sake, lets us flow. And this flow state, as we are finding out, is magic for health and well being. We should all be trying to find ways to get into this flow state, a state of concentrating on something so intimately that everything else fades away. We should be cultivating this in our children, and ourselves.
Often, religion (Christianity included) restricted music and dancing—in Hawaii, invader Americans, with the genius of Christian missionaries, put laws in place that made dancing illegal, since hula was a sacred dance in their culture that preserved their identity and would have encouraged them to stand up to oppression. Anti-dancing laws still exist, though not enforced, in some towns in Maui. Do not ever let someone silence your inner drum beat. Our first drum was said to be our mother's heart against our bodies. We cannot ignore its pull on us, just as we cannot ignore how the moon pulls the tide. Do not forget, we are 60% water. Imagine what the moon actually does to us in subtle ways, that maybe the ancients knew better than us.
Reconnecting With Our Bodies' Wisdom
Just like it is wise to calm ourselves down in the morning to have a bowel movement so we feel better all day, we cannot will this to happen with force—we need to be calm. The same principle applies to natural childbirth. If a woman is scared, her hormones will hold the muscles of the uterus tight, rather than relaxing to release the baby and push it out. This forcing of the same exact muscles to contract and expand at the same time is what CAUSES pain, and is not taught to pregnant mothers.
Simple education about our bodies, and getting to know our birth team—not just the doctor who may pop in at the last second to "catch" the baby—but hiring a doula, a woman who gets to know you and your partner and helps guide you through all of labor and beyond, can make all the difference. These were the wise women pushed out by modern medicine, but they are coming back. There was wisdom in the old ways.
We can still have a birth in a modern hospital without needing to use their interventions. They were not trained for a natural birth, they were trained for issues, which should be predictable and only 10% of the time. We can use the insurance we pay for all year round rather than needing to go out of pocket to use midwife programs that have much better outcomes, yet are not included under insurance. We can use the modern systems while enforcing our own bubble to live our best, most vital lives, with our own well-being in mind.
Perhaps reconnecting with natural cycles—the moon, the sun, the seasons—is one way to hear that inner beat again. To remember that we are part of something ancient and wise, written in the stars and in our bodies. And in that remembering, we might find a calendar that makes sense not just to our minds, but to our souls.
About the Author: Victoria is a mother and engineer, with a mind designed to solve puzzles and a heart dedicated to preserving wisdom for the next generation. Her writing explores the intersection of ancient knowledge and modern understanding, as she weaves together historical patterns, natural rhythms, and forgotten stories that deserve to be remembered. Through her blog CauliQueen, she shares insights that bridge science and spirituality, helping readers reconnect with the wisdom our ancestors understood but modern society often forgets. As she raises her young family, Victoria is passionate about passing on not just facts, but the deeper stories that give meaning to our place in the cosmos.
