Richard McCarty wrote:
>
> Whoops!
>
> My archive of the first 100 contributions to CALNDR-L was
> accidentally truncated (I suspect by software limitations).
>
> Please contact me if you have saved most or all CALNDR-L messages
> since and including October 4.
>
> Meanwhile, I have loaded the archive I have onto the CALNDR-L
> web page:  http://ecuvax.cis.ecu.edu/~pymccart/calndr-l.html
>
> --Rick McCarty

Here's ALL my missing ten days again (October 5-14). I withhold only
my 4 October contribution which I copyrighted (since it appears to be
possibly my only original contribution to extant calendar lore**). I will
resend that to McCarty only. Sorry I appear to have copyrighted two
sentences of your words, Jim, how much of the $200,000.00 do you want?
I need at least half of it to save my Mother's life. WE ALL OWN OUR OWN WORDS.
Read Lambourne Wilson on the TAZ. Visit the Discordia calendar site
(the last item on Peter's Calendar page at http://serendipity.magnet.ch)
GET YER POPE CARDS! Sorry to be didactic, I'm probably preaching to the
converted.
 
 

enclosure 1 follows:
 

Subject:
          Why I DO bash the Gregorian Calendar
    Date:
          Sat, 05 Oct 1996 14:22:34 -0700
   From:
          Simon Cassidy <simoncas@pacbell.net>
      To:
          CALNDR-L@ECUVM1.BITNET
 

Chris Carrier wrote:

>I really have a problem with badmouthing the Gregorian Calendar.  Pre-
>scientific though it may be, invented by men who denied the true nature
>of the solar system, yes -- but it has withstood the test of time.
 

I have already given the group SOME of my views on why it has withstood the test
of time. To Chris's litany of their (Pope Gregory and Clavius) sins I respond
"This is the least of it!"

Christopher Clavius S.J. may have denied the physical truth of Copernicus'
hypothesis in his early writings, but he was actually one of the more
open-minded astronomers about this issue. In his last years he
defended, a now openly Copernican, Galileo and acknowledged that the new
telescopic findings concerning Venus' phases required that "astronomers see how
the celestial spheres must be constituted in order to save the phenomena"
(translated by Suter and Sciascia from Pasquale D'Elia S.J. on pages 85-86 of
his 1960 English edition (of his original Italian essay) "Galileo in China", out
of the Latin "Opera Mathematica" of C.Clavius vol.III of the Mainz 1611
edition)*.

Moreover by including, in his last book of his "Opera Mathematica", a reprint of
the "Compendium", Clavius acknowledged that Gregory's commission on the calendar
(in which he, Clavius, had held the senior post, as regards the technical
aspects) had taken care to promote their reform proposal as, adaptable to the
Copernican theory ("...this ingenious Cycle...can easily be adapted....,as for
example we have set out this one, differing not much from the theory of
Copernicus", Clavius' quote from the Compendium, translated by Noel M. Swerdlow
in his article "The Length of the Year in the Original Proposal for the
Gregorian Calendar", Journal for the History of Astronomy, JHA xvii, 1986,
p112)**.

As for "pre-scientific", I would rather say "proto-scientific", relying on a
notion of "modern scientific method" as incorporating the elements of inspired
theorizing, utilising mathematical analysis of reproducible empirical data, with
peer review, and Popperian "falsifiability" of working hypotheses.
While "peer review" in the 1580's was a rather agressive affair, readily
confused by political and ideological divergencies, and the nascent concept of
the reproducibility and comparison of data, was better practiced by the
Protestants under the Landgrave William "the wise", we must give the jesuit
intellectuals some credit for (initially at least) protecting and nurturing such
heretics as Kepler and Galileo, even if the reasons may have been pragmatic and
ultimately political.
 

As for MY litany of THEIR sins (Pope Gregory XIII and Christoph. Clavius):

I will say right now, that my working hypothesis is, that they passed up the
PERFECT Calendar (perfect by the very standards with which they justified the
adopted reform), which was handed to them on a silver platter (by a Syrian
Patriarch, whom they appear to have bribed and blackmailed into silence) and
then instituted a calendar which they knew to be inferior in most every respect
(and which turns out actiually to be inferior in every respect), apparently for
purely political reasons!

But I will begin with a personal story that parallels Chris' following note:
>(Personal note: My surname is the same as one of the most bloodthirsty
>characters from the French Revolution.  (No, I'm not related.) When in high
>school history class the fact the Revolution had its own calendar came up, the
>whole class had a good laugh at my expense.  Nowadays, of course, it's
>expected that alumni-related correspondence from me be 'double dated'.)

After being well along in my research, of this Counter-Reformation "Calendar
War" as I had christened it, I discovered that my house-mate claims blood
descent from Gaspar de Coligny. Gaspar I learned was a Protestant, a high
Admiral of France and leader of the French Hugenots, murdered in the infamous
"St. Bartholemew's Day" "Paris Massacre" of 1572. Some accounts claim that this
treacherous "Massacre at Paris" (of Protestant wedding-guests) by the Catholic
citizenry was instigated by the Italian witch, Catherine De Medici, upon advice
from her jesuit councillors, specifically to get rid of Gaspar whom she tried to
kill once or twice before the wholesale massacre finally acheived her goal (an
excellent but gory cinematic dramatization of Alexander Dumas' version of this
story was released last year and is now on videotape, "Queen Margot"). Other
versions have Gaspar's head delivered to Rome, and presented to the gleeful,
newly-elected Pope, GREGORY XIII! (see Gordon Moyer's mathematically flawed
article "The Gregorian Calendar" in Scientific American CCXLVI, May 1982 p144).
Upon further research, I discovered that the young Sir Phillip Sydney's
attitudes to the Catholic League were traumatically imprinted upon his young
mind by being forced to witness this butchery of his co-religionists while he
too was a guest at the sham peace-marriage of Henri de Navarre and the Italian
witch's daughter. John Dee's friend and co-conspirator, Francis Walsingham,
later to manage England's foreign policy and nascent Intelligence Service, was
ambassador in Paris at the time. Dee himself, just the year before, on a secret
mission to the Duchy of Lorraine (probably concerning the infamous Cardinal of
Lorraine, founder member of the Catholic League, and/or the Italian witch's
other plot, to marry one of her sons to Dee's own Queen, Elizabeth) was taken
seriously ill. Probably in fear of Dee's poisoning at the hands of Catholic
Leaguer's, Queen Elizabeth sent two of her own doctors abroad to him.("The
Queene did fear for my life if I had to attende me foreygn physitians" as Dee
put it). These Englishmen whom I discovered had been scarred in 1571 and 1572 by
French Catholic Leaguer's reactions to Gaspar's rise to prominence, were the
very persons I had just discovered plotting a partly secret English response to
Pope Gregory's Calendar Reform, some ten years later!

Moreover I had just connected Dee's calendar reform activities with Raleigh's
and Harriot's and White's attempts (1584-1587) to colonise what is now Eastern
Carolina. I then learned, in my reading around Admiral Gaspar, that the jesuits
wished Gaspar prevented from taking up again, the Hugenot colonisation of what
is now South Carolina. In 1572, the jesuits were anxious about a particular
American project. This was an attempt to recement a claim to the continental
coast, north of Spanish Florida, for the Catholic states. The jesuits had sent
an ill-starred mission to the Powhatan confederation of Native Americans (See
David B. Quinn's "New American World" vol II, Ch.39 "The jesuit Mission on
Chesapeake Bay 1570-1571").

One of Ralegh's closest confidants in the "Virginia Enterprise" (which he took
over when Dee left for the continent in 1583), was Jacques LeMoyne De Morgue, a
Hugenot who had fled the murderous Catholic League to England in 1572, who was
an artist like John White, and had experienced for himself the Hugenot's
attempts to colonise this disputed coast, being "one of the survivors of the
Rene de Laudonniere colony, which was established in Spanish Florida by the
French and destroyed by the Spanish in September 1565" (according to John L.
Humber in his 1986 book "Backgrounds and Preparation for the Roanoke voyages,
1584-1590").

All this activity, that I was discovering through the Gaspar connection, on or
close to the longitude of Jamestown, was icing on the cake for my newborn
working hypothesis. This hypothesis, first stated publicly by me at a lecture at
the Berkeley Institute for the Study of Consciousness, March 3rd. 1994, was,
that there was a secret, "school-of-night" Khayyam-style calendar-reform
initiative and that the first English American-colony-projects, Raleigh's,
Harriot's and White's "Old Virginia" (and possibly Jamestown), were at least
partly motivated by the resulting calendrical significance of the longitudes of
these places.

I have since found confirming evidence in the unpublished papers of Thomas
Harriot, archived at the British Library, Spanish documents, archived at Seville
and Vatican studies on Gregory's only Oriental calendar commissioner, the Syrian
Nestorian Patriarch Na'amat allah.

When, just last month I read in William S. Powell's "Roanoke Colonists and
explorers: an attempt at identification" (The North Carolina Historical Review
v.XXXIV Apr.1957 #2 p225), that two of John White's lost colonists shared my
genetic father's name "Ellis" and that an Ellis' brother-in-law, John Pory, was
one of the very few Jamestowners who made any attempt to solve the mystery of
White's "Lost Colony" (by searching in what is now Gates County, North Carolina,
in 1622), I was primed to respond rather too effusively, when invited to discuss
Calendars and their Reform, on the EAST CAROLINA University Calendar Discussion
List!

Perhaps yet more of us, in this discussion group have apparent karmic destinies
interwoven with their scholarly interest in the history of calendar reform!

That is probably more than enough for this contribution, though I have a lot
more to say about Chris' interesting thoughts, next time.

**Swerdlow's research highlights the extent to which Gregory's calendar experts
relied upon Copernicus (at least upon the popularity of his tables if not
overtly upon his physical theory). This finding can throw light upon two
intriguing mysteries and thereby contradict Swerdlow's own judgemental comment
in JHA v,1974,p49,note 2 "...the calendar reform literature is on the whole
'interesting to few and entertaining to none', and a scholar of sense will
readily turn to other labours rather than cultivate this barren field"!! ASK AND
YOU SHALL RECEIVE! ("New light on the Galileo affair and the English mission of
Giordano Bruno" S.Cassidy in progress)

* Giordano Bruno held that "translation is the mother of all wisdom" or words to
that effect. While, I agree with Bruno, in as much as he meant that, translation
of an idea from one cultural viewpoint into another (e.g. from one language into
another) tends to winnow out the dross (dross = cultural idiosyncracies which
are not understandable to a foreign viewpoint and therefore are either not
chosen for translation or cannot plausibly survive the attempt),  I persomally
find the Babel of languages that constitute the cultural heritage of the West,
extremely irksome, especially when, as here, I have to cite a translation of a
translation in order to source my claim.
However I must acknowledge, a la Bruno, that this babble/Babel was probably
another instrumental contribution to the historical transition  which now
fascinates me so much (that of western culture from Renaissance to
Enlightenment).

"He sort of asked for it, I sort of answered"!, Please excuse my humor.
--
Yrs, Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St. Emeryville Ca.94608,. ph.510-547-0684.
 

enclosure 2 follows:

Subject:
          Thiry-three year calendars
    Date:
          Mon, 07 Oct 1996 14:00:05 -0700
   From:
          Simon Cassidy <simoncas@pacbell.net>
      To:
          CALNDR-L@ECUVM1.BITNET
 

Subject: Re 4-1/8 yr. Leap Rule responses of Richard, Jim and Amos
Date:Sun, 06 Oct 1996 23:09:04 -0700
To:East Carolina

Richard McCarty wrote:
>On 4-Oct-1996 Simon Cassidy wrote:
>----------------
>An old tradition of 8 leap-days* in 33 years (probably handed down by
>oral tradition, from a pre-Druidic time when both the summer solstice year
>and the vernal equinox year followed this rule)could have been most easily
>applied by adding a 366th. day every four and one-eighth years.
>----------------
>
>Simon, this is fascinating; you've made my week.  But please help
>me get the concepts to mesh.
>
>The idea seems to be that a solar calendar more accurate
>than the Gregorian results by adding leap-day every 33/8 year.  If
>my math is right, this yeilds 96.96 leaps in 400 years, compared to
>the Greogrian's 97 in 400.

actually 96.96969696... recurring (i.e. 96.97 to the nearest 1/100 th.)
leap days every 400 years.
As Amos understands, this is an average year (in decimal notation) of
365.24242424..recurring days.

The current VE-year (interval between vernal equinoxes smoothed over
several decades) is 365.24238 days (by my calculations, and from the work
of Jean Meeus) and thus, the current error in keeping the VE steady, in
Gregorian average year (365.24250 days), is three times that of calendars
using the "8 leap-days in 33 years" rule. Over the centuries to come this
comparative accuracy factor (currently three) should get larger and larger,
(in fits and starts) and eventually rise towards infinity!

Amos, please note, that while you are right, that the mean tropical year
(averaged over all points in the tropical zodiac) is 365.2422 days (to the
nearest ten-thousandth of a day) and decreasing, this kind of tropical year
is not the correct one to use in judging the accuracy of the Gregorian
calendar or 33-year calendars (like the "Khayyam"-style calendars or my
hypothetical eight-fold implementation) which all seek to (or can only,
in this epoch) KEEP THE VERNAL EQUINOX STEADY.

This confusion about the true length of the vernal-equinox year is
acknowledged by the jesuit-run Vatican Observatory itself (see J. De Kort
S.J. in "Astronomical Appreciation of the Gregorian Calendar" vol.2 #6
of Richerche Astronomiche Specola Vaticana, 1949), but even the jesuit
astronomer De Kort could not get his math quite straight (he came up with
365.2423 days as the current VE-year). Please let us clear up this matter
before proceeding with the discussion.

The source of the confusion appears, to me, to be in publications of
institutions such as the United States Naval Observatory and the Greenwich
Royal Observatory which (in the context of celestial mechanics) define
the "tropical year" as a mean over all points of the tropical zodiac, but
then turn around and (in the context of calendars) define it as "the (mean)
interval between vernal equinoxes". Scholars of calendars and historians
of astronomy such as Gordon Moyer ("The Gregorian Calendar" Scientific
American, May 1982) are thus understandably led completely astray when
trying to explain to the layman how well or ill, the Gregorian calendar
suceeds in keeping the Vernal Equinox on the 21st. of March. This is
because he uses the formulae of these institutions, as they do, (which
formulae are designed to model the celestial mechanics of the whole of
the earth's orbit) as though these formulae were the right way to model
the actual varying average interval between real instants of vernal
equinox! Simon Newcomb can never have intended his formulae to be
adapted for use in this deceptive manner!

On this read my page(http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cassidy/err_trop.html).
I do not expect you to take my word on this, but please do believe me, that
resolving this issue (either ourselves or by bringing in further qualified
consultants) may be the one true positive contribution that we can make to
Calendar Reform and its body of expert lore.

Consider, for instance, that the Greek Orthodox Church (whose decisions are
also determininative for the newly liberated Russian Orthodox Church) has
made (early this century) a decision to diverge from the Roman Catholic
Gregorian Calendar by one leap-day come 2800 A.D.. This was apparently done
to have a calendar more accurate than their competitior but to postpone
the confusion into the indefinite future. Their belief in their correctness
must be based on the misleading statements of astronomical institutions,
so imagine the stir if it is revealed that they have been suckered into
adopting a calendar which is less accurate than the Gregorian by the
standards of their very own revered Nicene council!

Further to Amos' clarification of how a Celtic-style 4-1/8 year leap-cycle
might NOT require 8 equal periods, I supply an example like his below:

Samhian-45days-WinterSolstice-45days-Imbolc-45days-V.E.-46days-Beltane-
-46days-SummerSolstice-46days-Lughnasa-46days-FallEquinox-46days-Samhain

My choice of starting the 3 short eighths at Samhain is merely conditioned
by my knowledge that the sun (earth) currently travels fastest (when at the
perihelion) in January (between WinterSolstice and Imbolc). Such a scheme
is thus unlikely to correspond exactly to any supposed lost prehistoric
tradition.

Since any rule must be rooted in observational results collected at some
period earlier in the tradition, you might want to study the article I
cited (Archaeoastronomy suppl.#13 of JHA) to see how McCluskey fared when
testing for several different ways of dividing the tropical year into
eighths (by different mixtures of observation and geometry).

My point is that rule-based calendars inevitably develop out of
observationally based calendars when patterns (in numbers of days) are
noticed by the record-keepers. If the lost folk tradition, that McCluskey
tests for, is as old as Alexander Thom's evidence for PRE-Celtic eight-fold
calendars (McCluskey tests specifically for Thom's reconstruction of an
eight-fold year), then, I suggest that, by Christian times, patterns in the
numbers were bound to have been noticed. The one pattern that would have
stayed most constant over such a long period of time (waiting to be
noticed) would have been the pattern of days between Vernal Equinoxes which
would show up as requiring a 366th. day, every four years for twenty-eight
years, and then a gap of five years before requiring the next 366th. day.

Of course this would not be an absolutely consistent pattern (though
inconsistencies would probably have been more due to observational errors
than to discrepancies between the solar behaviour and the ideal 365 + 8/33
pattern). But, the Vernal equinox pattern would stand out as much more
consistent than any of the other seven possible years in an eight-fold
calendar. Note also that all proposed observational methods are more
accurate (and therefore also more consistent) at the equinoxes. A Fall
Equinox marker would benefit as much as a Vernal Equinox marker from this
greater observational precision (in locating its actual day of occurence),
but the Fall Equinox has been, in the millenia under discussion, the
fastest changing of the tropical years.

However this is not quite my favorite scenario for explaining McCluskey's
findings. My thoughts are conditioned by my own field research
and measurements at Stonehenge, which supplement the findings of Alexander
Thom, Gerald Hawkins and Fred Hoyle as well as the dating by the
archaeologists. Briefly, I propose that the rule, of seven four-year leap
-days followed by one five-year leap-day, was known and built into the
central sarsen structure of Stonehenge. This suggests that the observations
and records for establishing confidence in this pattern (for either the
vernal equinox or the summer solstice) actually predate that structure
(currently estimated at ca. 2300 BC calibrated radiocarbon) and thus
predate the preponderance of the evidence for Alexander Thom's eightfold
(or sixteen-fold) calendar.

This suggests that an eight-fold calendar may have been constructed to
take advantage of this Stonehenge-memorialised leap-day scheme, at about
that same time (3rd. millenium BC). If asked where and when I suppose,
that the pre-Stonehenge observing, recording and pattern-recognition could
have occured, I would point to Old-Kingdom Egypt. I will not go into my
reasons, for that, here.

Let me be clear that I am not proposing that such a scheme (of moving the
leap-day around the year by stepping it through some eight stations in the
calendar scheme) is an appropriate scheme for reforming our current
calendar (though neo-pagans may get very enthusiastic about the idea) nor
should you suppose that this was the secret scheme and perfect rival, to
the Gregorian calendar reform which I have discovered was contemplated, and
suppressed, in both Vatican and English circles ca. 1600 A.D..

As to Jim's concerns:

>All deny that they have (a la ideologically) enshrined one consideration
>above all others.  All proceed as if they were enlightened only by
>numbers, processions, intersections and fuzzy circumferances.  None
>speak of the social objectives they pursue, if any.
>
>What I'm saying here is that it all has the smack of ideology, that
>oh so familiar licorice smack of arguing for an unstated interest.
>I want to cry "But whose interest does it serve?" but dare not since
>I have only a very partial grasp of the details.  Anybody can say,
>What do you know; you can't even do the Calculus?"

I have tried to be honest about all the factors that brought me to this
discussion (see my message "Why I Do bash the Gregorian Calendar") and
I will admit that part of my current personal agenda is to remove the
name of Pope Gregory XIII from humanity's major method of ordering its days
and rhythms. This may seem petty, but I pursue it also in the belief that
the pursuit of this cause may also demonstrate the folly of unquestioning
belief even in modern scientific institutions. I am not a UNABOMBER but
there was something in what he wrote. Modern science and technology
worshippers need to be jolted out of their hypnotised march to planetary
doom! I will continue with my specific calendric proposal for a non-violent
stab at such a jolt, in a separate message. But lets not get too serious!
This is fun too!

--
Yrs, Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St.EmeryvilleCa.94608,USA.ph.510-547-0684.
 

enclosure 3 follows:

Subject:
              Re: 4-1/8 yr. Leap Rule
       Date:
              Tue, 08 Oct 1996 18:58:27 -0700
      From:
              Simon Cassidy <simoncas@pacbell.net>
         To:
              East Carolina University Calendar discussion List
<CALNDR-L@ECUVM1.BITNET>
References:
              1
 

Amos Shapir wrote:
 
> Exactly.  As Simon Cassidy had pointed out, we can never achieve enough
> accuracy; every time we think we did, the Earth-Sun-Moon system pulls
> yet another trick on us...
>
> That's why I consider the whole business of calendar reform as just a
> parlor game; we should never have left the Julian calendar anyway.  So
> what if certain astronomical and religious dates would have to be shifted
> by one day every 100 years or so?  The effect on an average person's life
> would never be felt more than once in a lifetime, at most.

Actually Amos, what I have been trying to get across (apparently I need
to communicate more carefully) is that, to the contrary, if the earth,sun
and moon have somehow conspired to do anything, it is that they have made
life for us calendar makers, (in this ten-thousand year epoch starting
around 3-4000 BC), as convenient as they possibly could, subject
to the larger (cosmic) framework of strictures laid down by who knows
what, and partly interpreted to us through such geniuses as Omar Khayyam,
Dr. John Dee, Newton, Einstein and so on.

It is not the Earth and Sun and Moon who have tricked you, tricked the
Greek Orthodox Church, tricked Gordon Moyer, tricked the world, it is
the modern United States Naval Observatory and Greenwich Royal Observatory.

But don't get so defeatist! You're starting to sound like the poor English
Elizabethan Bishops who refused to countenance a change in the calendar on
the grounds that the world was going to end soon anyway, so why bother!

Persevere, do the math and the veil will be lifted! My current studies of
Dee and his mathematical angels is starting to give me constant ecstasy!

Chris Carrier wrote:

>How can 365.25-(7/900) be less accurate than 365.2425?  Although 365.2425
>might be more accurate for the time being in computing the time from March
>to March equinox, over thousands of years this will change and the March
>will no longer be the closest to 365.2425 of the four seasonal events.

Chris, listen to yourself! You have answered most of your question by
admitting that the Gregorian value is more accurate for the time being,
so your real question must be about what happens in the future. And the
answer to that depends on how far into the future you wish to probe. Let
me first tell you that the Gregorian value will get more accurate,  versus
the Greek Orthodox value, over the next millenium, all things being equal.

My caveat (all things being equal) pertains to the rotation of the Earth
which is already being measurably affected by human activities. So I
suggest you not worry too much about the future beyond 3000 A.D., because
well before that time (if any modern calendar has survived at all) we will
be full participants in Mother Earths every breath, nod and twirl in the
solar dance! The length of the year will be beyond the grasp of our current
mechanistic analyses. We and She shall set the tempo of the whirling
dervish sun-tranced life orbit!

Dee aimed at his ensuing three hundred years, he suceeded in predicting
the earth's dance to date, though we modern steam-powered watch-obsessed,
nations of shopkeepers have helped him out for the last century or so,
with our mean-time and our railway instigated time-zones. We can now extend
his result to carry us to that happy time when we and the Earth are on
better terms than analyst and inert dissected specimen.

I am just finishing my follow up proposal to my last "Thirty-three year
calendars" message. Hope to broadcast it tomorrow, if I can stop laughing
at the miraculous joke Dee and his angels have pulled.
--Yrs, Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St. Emeryville Ca.94608. ph.510-547-0684.

seven more enclosures to go under separate cover.

** Even the leap-day every 4 and 1/8 years is not entirely my own idea. It came
to me while in phone conversation with Gerald Hawkins, as I was attempting to
explain to him 8 leap-days in 33 years and its encoding at Stonehenge. He may
actually have been trying to get it across to me! Lets see if he sues!

--Yrs, Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St. Emeryville Ca.94608. ph.510-547-0684.