Who Decides?

"Oh I don't believe in Astrology....that's sooo Unscientific!"

But you surely follow the calendar don't you? Ever wonder why the calendar has days of the week named after the planets? Doesn't that carry a hint that the calendar was born as an astrological tool?

"Oh the modern day calendar is the most precise,most scientific Gregorian Calendar. I am not talking about stuff steeped in superstition"

So do you know how the modern day calendar came to be? Western history has ignored the wisdom of the east while it boasts of the achievements of the Roman Civilization. One such achievement of the Romans is the calendar they produced which is a precursor to the modern calendar adopted worldwide today.

Let's take a look at how the Roman's devised their calendar.

The Romans devised a calendar influenced by calendars of far older civilizations. However there was no depth in their study and no science in their approach.

They chose to only have ten months-

Martius (named after Mars, god of war and agriculture.The first month of the year, marking spring's return and the resumption of military campaigns),

Aprilis (Possibly from Latin "aperire" (to open), referring to opening buds and flowers or potentially from Aphrodite/Venus),

Maius (named after Maia, goddess of growth and nurturing). Sacred to elderly women (maiores) and

Junius (named after Juno, goddess of marriage and childbirth). Also associated with young people (juniores).

So far so good. After which they seem to run out imagination and call the rest of the months Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December. These names simply stand for Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Month respectively.

After December there were two void months with no names. The dead winter, they decided doesn't really count.

Later they made more changes. They added two months January and February assigning 31 days to January and 29 days for  February.

Then they decided that January, previously a dead month according to them, would be the start of the New Year. This decision was made because Roman Council members took their oaths in January. To the current day U.S Presidents take oath in January as well. (ask me sometime about the astrological significance of that!)

The Roman calendar was chaotic, erratic, following lunar cycles, whims, and fancies. This meant the calendar was repeatedly not in sync with the equinox/the seasons. They found the need to add a month here and there. Done randomly when the need arose. There is a concept in time keeping called intercalary where days,weeks and months are added to get the calendar to align with what is the base measurement. This concept is prevalent in ancient Vedic calendars as well, but executed with great precision and science. Never on a whim. Never because you didn't know how to base your calculations before.

Julian Calendar

At the time of Julius Caesar there was a real need to correct the Roman calendar.

To solve this Ceaser consulted an Egytian astronomer who recommended adopting the Egyptian solar year of 365.25 days. This led to the Julian calendar, which established the familiar pattern of 365 days with an extra day every fourth year.

Their whims however, continued. Julius Ceasar decided to name the Fifth month after himself. And later when Augustus ascended the throne, he chose the sixth month for himself. But he could not accept that July had 31 days and August only 30. Augustus apparently borrowed one day from February (leaving it with only 28 days!)

The Julian calendar brought more stability, however the actual solar year is approximately 365.2422 days , which means the Julian calendar gained one day every 129 years. In other words, the Julian calendar gains 3.1 days every 400 years.

Gregorian Calendar

Easter was traditionally celebrated after the Spring equinox on March 21st. By the year 1582 AD, when Pope Gregory was in power, the calendar date of March 21st was removed from the actual occurence of the equinox by around 10 days. And now Easter coincided with the Jewish festival of Passover(festival date calculated by the Jewish calendar, around April in the modern day calendar). The Pope wanted a separate identity for their festival, with a clear demarcation of time between the two festivals.

Thus he appointed his own council. They quickly course corrected by simply deleting/dropping the ten extra days that had accumulated. This was in October. So if today was October 4th, you woke up next day and it was October 15th! And March 21st the following year fell much earlier, aligned with the time of the equinox again, and Easter was celebrated well ahead of Passover.

They did another interesting thing. This was a good calculation. They made additional rules to calculate leap years.In a Julian calendar a leap year occurs every four years. But this was making the calendar longer than the seasons. Generally a leap year is if it's divisible by 4. However, now they added the rule that if the year is divisible by 100, it's not a leap year unless it's also divisible by 400.

They arrived at a calendar that syncs with the seasons.

When it came to the question of marketing, the Catholic Church and the Roman Governments did their best to spread the word,get people to adopt their calendar, and when people refused it was often shoved down their throats through violence and war.

Eventually it became the standard for the world, with countries like Russia adopting it as late as 1917.

A matter of perspective

The Gregorian calendar works well when we look at it from one perspective. The Tropical year. The relationship of the earth with the Sun. This sounds great, the calendar is now matching the year with the time of the equinox and solstice. It is mapping the seasons you say.

However this calendar doesn't take into account a concept called the Precession of the Equinoxes. Put simply it is a matter of perspective. If you look only at the earth and the Sun, the point of the equinox will be at the same place at the same time. But when you broaden your mind and change your perspective, you can see that this point changes with respect to the map of the cosmos. In the greater scheme of things, the point of the equinox shifts back gradually when seen from aligning the earth to the Sun and then aligning the Sun to the fixed stars of the Universe.

Meanwhile....in India

India had developed the most elegant, sophisticated calendar. They had made discoveries that are simply mind blowing to even imagine. They understood the precession of the equinoxes, they explained how one cannot base the calendar on the seasons alone. They measured the earth cycles not only by the earth's seasons or its relationship to the Sun or the Moon. But they had a mind boggling perspective, where they saw the earth positioned with respect to the great fixed stars of the cosmos and to the centre of the Galaxy itself.

They drew their cycles from keen observation of these great alignments.They calculated with a depth of knowledge that is inexplicable in its beauty. They even calculated with accuracy the difference between basing a calendar on the seasons and basing it on the true position of the earth in a vaster cosmos.

And they did this around 5000 years ago!

None of their decisions were arbitrary, or done to please a ruling king or a religious figure. The calculations were based on real positions in the sky. The lengths of time reflected actual movements of celestial bodies. These calculations are unbeatable even today. The calendars made here are the most scientific. They are based on observable phenomena, so they retain their accuracy even today.

"Oh we can't possibly adapt things now, you know. Everything depends on our Gregorian calendar."

So your interest was never in something being scientific. Your problem is in adapting, in doing empirical study. In acknowledging that you follow a system based on the highly disorganized whims and fancies of a few people.

You can't seem to accept that what you consider scientific reeks of superstition, and what you considered superstition was actually science.

You also are an ageist. You consider things that are old, are no longer relevant or useful.

Your perspective is narrow. Your measurements based on highly myopic visions.

India placed the earth in a grander scheme, it gave us a place , rightfully so, in the vast Universe. Whether it is with the calendar or with the natal chart, Jyotishya is the mother of all astronomy and astrology around the world.

"Oh But Wikipedia tells me astrology was born in Babylon...or Greece"

How can it be Babylon or Greece when there is no culture of astrology alive there today? 'What is rooted is easy to nourish', the roots are here in India and astrology is India's gift to the world.

How it all came to be, how the seekers here discovered truth and beauty in the stars, in mathematics or in games like chess will always retain an aura of mystery, wonder and deep respect.