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Introduction
Religious Festival Calendars in the ancient Greek world varied greatly between cities. Modern practitioners are usually left between creating their own calendar, or using a readily-available reconstruction. At the time of writing this, a few such reconstructions stand out: one for the Attic festival calendar1, one for that of Delphi2, and one more broad3.
This calendar is greatly indebted to the above, as well as to one which was previously passed down (and later abandoned) by Kallimakhos of HellenicGods.org4. The framework which Kallimakhos relayed uses names of Zodiac signs for names of the months. It is also philosophical in nature, and relies on some of his other ideas (which he abandoned at the same time as the calendar)5. It seems clear that Kallimakhos intended to present a static and unified calendar that was based on various historical data from Athens, Delphi, and Sparta, and supplemented with mystical ideas, grounded in his own understanding of Orphism.
His philosophical framework and calendar are both fairly fleshed out and thoroughly intertwined, so it may have been that Kallimakhos chose to move away from them simply because he was unable (in practice) to fit it neatly into a static, unchanging calendar like the secular one in common use. However, the archived site does say that he had previously published a usable calendar, and that his calendar was always based on the one released by Hellenion, suggesting:
that while his website says the calendar is static, the actual calendar was lunisolar and calculated in a way similar to Hellenion,
and/or
that he was creating a rough calendar by placing events (most having been calculated by Hellenion) into his own (potentially static) Zodiacal year.
Even if the second point is true, the purpose of Orphicaeum’s Zodiacal Hellenistic Mystery Calendar is to take up Khallimakhos’ framework and apply it in a manner similar to the first point, so as to more closely align it with reconstructed ancient calendars.
Thus, the calendar presented here is a synthesis of a reconstructed lunisolar calendar framework and the philosophical and mystical Zodiacal calendar from the tradition to which Kallimakhos belonged. The intention of this synthesis is to produce an accessible, cohesive, and philosophical Mystery Calendar which is fully compatible with reconstructed calendars.
First Principles
Before we are able to present the calendar, we must look first at the underlying principles of a lunisolar calendar, as well as the philosophical framework adapted from the one handed down by Kallimakhos.
A Lunisolar Calendar
Lunisolar calendars like the those used by the ancients utilize the New Moon to reconcile the Noumenia, or the beginning of each month. For the ancients, Noumenia was the first visible sliver of the Moon after what we today consider the Astronomical New Moon. Instead of waiting to visually reconcile our calendar, we have applied a rule which aims to approximate this and also account for the fact that ancients began the new day at sunset. Our general rule is to find the Astronomical New Moon. If it occurs before sunset on the same day in Athens, we add one day to get our Noumenia. If it occurs after sunset in Athens, we add two days.
In addition, we use the Solstices and Equinoxes as markers. For example, in ancient Athens and Delphi, as well as their modern recreations, the new year begins on the first Noumenia on or after the Summer Solstice. In Sparta, and for our calendar, the year begins a few months later with the first Noumenia on or after the Autumnal Equinox. Solar events ignore the earlier sunset rule and are placed on the calendar on the days that they are expected to occur.
In a lunisolar calendar reckoned this way, the number of Noumenias between Autumnal Equinoxes determines whether or not any given year is a Leap Year: a regular year will have 12 months, while a Leap Year will have 13. In a Leap Year, the extra (intercalary) month is inserted between months 3 and 4. In ancient calendars, this varied from city to city. An intercalary repeat of the third month was chosen to line up with reconstructed Athenian calendars. For our calendar, the intercalary month is a brief respite from the cycle and does not hold any festivals or special associations.
According to Kallimakhos, “the Gates of Divinity are particularly open” and the “Aether is ‘swollen’” on these days specifically:
Summer Solstice
Autumnal (Fall) Equinox
Winter Solstice
Vernal (Spring) Equinox
Noumenia (New Moon)
Dichomenia (Full Moon)
The ancient calendar was tied to the harvest season, and the seasonal cycle in general. For this reason, actual calendar calculation should take geographical location into account: in the Southern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice takes place on the same day that the Summer Solstice does in the Northern Hemisphere. However, this calendar uses the Sun’s Zodiacal position for naming the months, and those positions are the same everywhere on Earth. Due to this, the Zodiacal month names stay the same relative to the Sun, and the reconstructed festival calendars and philosophical framework shifts with the seasons. For example, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, your Autumnal Equinox is in March, and your Zodiacal Hellenistic Mystery Year beginning with the equivalent of Athenian Pyanepsion and Delphic Heraios starts with Aries.
The Philosophical Framework
Kallimakhos’ tradition makes each Olympian God the overseer of one of twelve “Natural Laws” of the Cosmos, and elsewhere he further ties each God & Law to a month. Beyond the laws and deity associations, Kallimakhos has a sort of cyclic triad, where each month is defined by one of the following, in order and repeating for all twelve:
Energizing - Initiates action, introduces a new force
Stabilizing - Brings order, structure to that new force
Changing - Prepares established order for next cycle
Our calendar uses everything above to make each year an allegory for the cultivation of the Soul, as well as a microcosm of the Universe and the Celestial Spheres through which the ascending Soul will travel. Similarly, as Herakles occupies a special place in Orphism, and because ancient authors tell us that the Labors of Herakles are allegories for the purification and ascent of the Soul, they have been included in this system as well.
While Kallimakhos frequently asserts a materialist viewpoint on his website, he nonetheless equates the ninth level with Oceanus, the river that encircles the world, and makes a clear demarcation between the first nine natural laws and the final three, which he refers to as being “in the divine world” even though his firmly-held belief is that there is no ‘other’ or ‘incorporeal’ world.
It should be noted that while the system inherited from Kallimakhos treats the cycle of a Soul’s ascent up to and beyond unity, the Herakles system only treats the initial, pre-death purification. So, while they are parallels and complement each other in our calendar, they should not be confused as wholly interchangeable.
Also given are each month’s corresponding name in Attic and Delphic calendars, as well as a few others. In pursuit of the stated goal, great effort has been made to include as many of their respective festivals as possible. With many of the included festivals, dates on which they were held do not survive and thus for our calendar must be chosen. With a few of them, the evidence is so scarce that the dates chosen are almost arbitrary. In each of these arbitrary instances, careful thought was given to meaningful placement. Sometimes the best justification was to pick the 7th of the month based on Orphic symbolism. That Orphic symbolism of the number 7 refers to the following:
there are 7 Toys of Dionysus
there are 7 strings on Orpheus’ lyre
there are 7 classical Planets (including the Sun & Moon)
Syncretism of Dionysus and Apollo; 7 is sacred to Apollo
in Pythagoreanism, 7 is considered special: the only number under 10 which cannot be divided by another
The Calendar
This chart is a list of the months and each of their associations as mentioned in the First Principles section. Below, we briefly survey each month individually and provide an overview of their festivals.