The Thirteen-Moon Calendar Change Movement
Argüellés's argument that the rediscovery of the importance of the Tzolkin should be the impetus to reform the world's calendar system is also significant. The calendar we currently use is called the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII, under whom the last significant reforms occurred. The calendar originated during the Roman Empire and was adopted by the Catholic Church, which steadfastly protected it as a most sacred treasure of the church. This is because the calendar is used to determine the exact date of Easter, a historically defining debate for the church. What is important to note about this is that the calendar we use was decided upon because of religious and cultural power, not because it was the best or the most accurate. The progressive adoption of the calendar around the world has been a pragmatic one, dictated by the needs of business. The Gregorian calendar is effectively a global calendar by default.
There is some evidence to suggest that the successful reforms of Pope Gregory were partly stimulated by the discovery of the Mayan calendar. This became known in Europe as the devil's calendar because of its “fiendish” accuracy. Its reputation prompted the concern that the Christian calendar should, at least, equal it. It is certainly the case that calendar reform had been stalled for several hundred years before this happened.
The idea of calendar change is very much tied up with a point of view that sees the ending of the thirteen-baktun cycle in 2012 as both a deadline and an opportunity for planetary change. The view is that our planetary crisis of overpopulation, environmental pollution, and global conflict is a by-product of an inaccurate calendar. This might seem somewhat exaggerated, but a calendar is a powerful tool for shaping culture. Our view of time has important consequences for how we behave. The suggestion of the thirteen-moon calendar change movement is that our calendar system treats time as an unlimited commodity. This results in a culture that treats the planet's resources similarly. To be effective, systemic change is required at the root level of a culture. This means we must first change the calendar if we are to be successful in creating a more ecological culture. Change your time, change your mind has become the movement's slogan.
The Thirteen Moons
The thirteen-moon calendar divides the solar year into thirteen moons of exactly twenty-eight days each for a total of 364 days; the extra day is taken as a day out of time. This day equates to July 25 in the Gregorian calendar. This was the starting date of the Haab calendar that was given in the Book of Chilam Balam of Mani, so this is the date that Argüellés took his starting date from. What is useful about the number 364 is that two, four, seven, and thirteen all easily divide into it. This gives a year that can be halved and quartered and that has exactly fifty-two weeks every year. An added bonus of this is that each week starts on the same day of the week. Another strange anomaly of the current system is that its months run independently from its weeks; a new month doesn't start on a particular day of the week. This makes it difficult to work out what day of the week a date will fall upon if it is more than a few weeks in advance.
The Gregorian calendar can quite simply be shown to be irrational in structure. For example, the name of the month September means the seventh month, yet it is actually the ninth. This is because originally the Roman calendar had ten months, before the inclusion of extra months for Julius and Augustus Caesar. The names have never been changed.
Moons and Months
The word month has its origin in the word moon, but the two meanings have become fundamentally separated. The Romans called them demeters and regarded them simply as convenient divisions of the solar year. The word “month” comes from old English, where the moons would still have been counted as part of the calendar. There are two significant cycles of the moon: the sidereal, the time it takes to come back to the same phase, and the synodic, the time it takes to return to the same place in the sky. The sidereal period of the moon is roughly twenty-seven days and the synodic is roughly twenty-nine days. Neither of these corresponds to the moons in the thirteen-moon calendar.
A moon in the thirteen-moon calendar won't specifically start or end on a particular phase of the actual moon. The number of days in one of these moons totals twenty-eight. This is the whole number mean between these two moon cycles, so it is from this that the moon takes its name. It is possible to easily chart the progress of the moon using this calendar, as each phase usually moves backward one or two days each moon. Despite its name, the thirteen-moon calendar is, in fact, a solar calendar.
The thirteen-part year has another advocate: the International Institute of Chartered Accountants. The division of the year into thirteen is mathematically the easiest way to divide it, and it makes accounting much more straightforward than having months of different lengths.
Leap Day Conundrums
Leap days are ignored in the thirteen-moon calendar because the calendar is primarily designed to be a conversion tool from the current Gregorian calendar. By ignoring these dates, the Dreamspell and the thirteen-moon calendar perfectly synchronize every fifty-two years. It also keeps translation from the Gregorian simple. This idea has also been a major source of criticism for the Dreamspell: It ignores the traditional Mayan idea of counting all days, breaking the sacred count of days.
Is the thirteen-moon calendar a Mayan calendar?
Not really. The Maya did use glyphs to track the position of the moon in their inscriptions, but not in this way. They also had a zodiac of thirteen signs that divided the solar year, but this wasn't recorded in their calendar. The Yucatán does seem to have had a calendar that was similar to the thirteen-moon calendar. This was called the Tun Uc, which means “moon” and “seven,” probably referring to weeks.
