The Hindu 'Yuga' Periods

Of all the major religions the Hindu Philosophy seems to be the best balance of Science and Spirituality. Their time periods cover thousands of years based on the 'precession of the equinoxes' - the movement of the equinoctial points backwards through the zodiac. This precession cycle averages 24,000 years over its duration and apparently also varies over a 41,000 year period based on the changing tilt of the axis of the Earth.

We are currently 13,513 years into the present precession cycle (depending where we start from) and combining this with the other evidence suggests that this is more accurate as the 'common era' year number (note: more details about precession have since been made part of the UCC Wiki). So for the launch of the calendar I'm going to use 13,513 as the 'common era' year number for all human cultures all over the planet.

  

'WORK' - ARE WE DOING TOO MUCH?

Edit of a 2nd Facebook blog written at the time of the calendar's launch on New Year's Day 13513 UCC (21 March 2012 Gregorian)

What Do We Mean By 'Work'?

Would you agree that most people who want to achieve their life goals while they're around on this beautiful globe, don't have a problem working about a third of their days, especially to help share the load within their communities. And, when we're fulfilling our 'life mission', 'heavenly mandate', 'what we came here to do' etc. etc. i.e. doing 'something we love', we can happily "work" a lot more than that because it doesn't feel like "work". I guess it's the difference between 'performing necessary tasks' that all need to be done in any community versus 'achieving worthwhile goals'.

Sadly, as a friend once pointed out, we're the only species on the planet expected to pay for our very existence. This IS beginning to change, with many of us waking up and opting out of our destructive, controlling, outdated corporate biased systems in order to stop doing harm and spend more time on that life mission. But accepting the fact that for the time being the majority are still 'Employed' (which incidentally means we are being kept busy and occupied) or 'Self Employed' to make a living, let's define 'Work' as stuff we need to do or have to do to 'survive'.

Then, the old "work, rest and play" adage is probably not too far off the mark, with a third of our time roughly devoted to each.

But of course this depends on how we're measuring our time. Most modern human societies have developed based around a 7 Day 'Week' as the standard societal cycle, and this 'Week' has meant that most of us on the planet who are still part of 'The System' are expected to work at least 5 days out of every 7. But hang on a mo! 5 days work out of 7 means we're occupied by 'Work' for over 70% of our days rather than 30%. Even allowing for Public or Religious Holidays (ooo thanks a lot!) we still do not have anywhere near the right balance. But how did this 7 Day Week business come about?

Religion

The 7 day 'Week' came about (based on research) because religious institutions interpreted the 'Creation Stories' of their various "Holy Texts" to mean that 'God/The Creator' created everything in 6 days then kicked back for a day's rest! Whether you concur with their interpretation or not is another matter, but it does seem that our modern calendars have evolved from this basic premise.

Clocks & Calendars

Apparently, Clocks & Calendars were first introduced on the outside of Churches to call the masses to prayer at the right times and so that certain "Holy Festivals" could be observed. But independently of this, various 'Pagan' groups had for many years, had their own Calendar systems so as to live in harmony with the natural cycles of the Earth with The Sun & The Moon and to some extent the other Planets such as Venus & Mars.

The Religious Institutions evolved and became the driving force directing administration for their respective State Institutions, perhaps funded from the spoils of Empires which had made their Elites very wealthy, but also, almost always, piggy-backing their newly created Religious Calendars onto the earlier Pagan 'Natural Cycle' occasions and festivals to keep the people 'on side', whilst simultaneously outlawing those earlier Pagan practices.

And so the 7 Day 'Week' became the norm, based on everyone grafting for 5 or 6 days and having one days rest, like 'The Lord' (except for the priests of course who wangled it so they operated the other way around, only working on the Sabbath and having the rest of the week off!).

For example, in the Abrahamic Faiths you get either Friday, Saturday or Sunday as your 'Holy Day' depending on which Prophet you got born to follow. All this of course helps to keep the masses working most of their time to pay for everything and so the wealthy can maintain the 'Status Quo! (perhaps to keep the masses 'Down Down Deeper and Down' arf arf). Nowadays though the system uses the fear of poverty more than the fear of God (whilst keeping the majority in poverty) and still uses that 7 Day Week based Calendar to drive the people to work every 'Monday' morning

So What's The Problem?

Well it's not just the work thing... If we take just the Christian (Gregorian) Calendar as an example, it has not been updated to take into account religious, societal or astronomic (natural) evolution for almost 500 years!

Religious

Most people no longer practice a religion day to day, such that the 3rd Largest Religious Group in the world, estimated at over 1 Billion People, is those of 'No Religion' - especially in 'The West' (as you can see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups)

Societal

In 'The West' families have tended to get smaller, move around a lot more, live further away from, and therefore commute to, work, and recently have become aware of stresses resulting from what we call Bad 'Work/Life Balance'. "...too much work and not enough play makes Jack a dull boy..." and all that...

Astronomical / Astrological

And, the 'Months' of the Roman Calendar do not align with the seasons described by The Zodiac, which starts at 'The 1st Point of Aries' (indicated by the symbol ♈) and is the point at which the path of the Sun (ecliptic) and the 'celestial equator' of the Earth cross on a 'Vernal Equinox'. (We had one of these equinoxes YESTERDAY - 20th March 2012 Gregorian). BUT the Romans added in the 2 months of 'January' & 'February' and moved the start of their year back into winter. Many older cultures however, such as in Iran (Persian) and India (Hindu) still use the Zodiac months for their calendars.

All this means that the majority of our Calendars (particularly the Gregorian) are now "out of synch" both with us and the place we live in the cosmos, as we spiral with our Sun around our Galaxy through space at almost 52million km's per day...

So Why Do We Still Have A Seven Day Week?

We've all been born into this 7 day week approach and often don't even think about whether there is a better way of doing things, "...that's just the way it is...". But now many of us are working too long and too hard, often for not much reward, and at the same time becoming more Spiritually Aware and so moving away from Religious Dogma, making the 7 Day Week more and more unnecessary and out-dated.

A quote I love from J.F.K. (or perhaps one of his speech writers!) goes like this: "...some people look at the way the world IS and ask 'WHY'? Others, look at the way the world COULD BE and ask 'WHY NOT'?..."

Break-Free

So, in the spirit of that sentiment, we in this calendar group are proposing a few Changes in view of all the above, related to the way we operate with our Time these days...

Your Age In Days

We've tried counting our age in days instead of years and got on well with that, as the Day is the most consistently accurate, repeating cycle, and the basic unit of time for life on earth. The Sun comes up and it goes down again, and if we didn't have all this complicated 'Stuff' going on around us that's all we'd need to focus on. But many of us DO have to interact with this 'Stuff' and we all need some kind of agreed Calendar so we can arrange meet ups and gatherings and the like.

Different Calendars

Amazingly though, as we saw above, I've discovered there are 46 Different Calendars in use around the world and at least 6 different 'Ages' with different Year Numbers being used. The thing that all these have in common however is that they are all used to Control the way society operates.

Peak V Off Peak

I see stark evidence of this on my travels as a FreeMan/Troubadour. For example where masses of people will all turn up at a beach at the same time to do the same thing because the calendar says "it's the weekend", then they'll all disappear again by Sunday night and Monday morning the place is deserted because everyone is now in their cars all going to 'Work' at the same time! This of course means that infrastructure has to be designed to cope with 'Peak' use/traffic and so costs multiples more than it need to if things were balanced out a bit better. This is especially crazy in 'The Age of The Internet' when things can be done remotely and at all times of the day so you do your 'Work' whenever it suits you rather than like Reggie Perrin and CJ. I'm sure 'The Banksters' love it that way as it all adds to the debt to keep everyone working to pay the interest via taxes but that's not what 'We The People' want - is it?

So What's The Aim?

The Ultimate

The ultimate aspiration for the world I'd love to see would be for everyone to be 'Doing Their Thing' i.e. doing what they love for themselves and as a result, for the common good, where we only undertake tasks that are really necessary or do some good for someone, but sadly we are a long way off that at present, with most people having to do 'A Job' just to get by and pay the bills.

In The Meantime

But while we still need Calendars of some sort I'm offering up a new Universal Calendar to anyone on the planet who would like to use it. So how does it work, and how does its structure help with some of the issues we've discussed above?

The New Calendar (UCC)

A 10 Day Week ('Decan)

The aim here is MORE FREEDOM as it's based on 36 Weeks of 10 Days where IF we HAVE to 'Work' maybe we only need work those 3 Days out of each 10 (30%) in order to re-dress the balance a bit and give people back some Freedom to be and do whatever they want. And maybe we will randomly pick a different 3 days each for the work bit, based on how we feel each day, so that we; share the load, get everything done, don't burn out, there's enough for everyone and we get away from the 'Peak Time' problem.

Since coming up with this calendar I've discovered that the ancient Egyptians apparently had a 10 day week for thousands of years, and after the French Revolution they adopted a 10 day week, so this is really nothing that new, it just makes a lot more sense. Having a Sun with 9 major orbiting spirals means there are 10 celestial bodies to be taken into account. (The 7 day week only accounts for the visible orbs)

Common Era

It also has a true 'Common Era' for all humans everywhere - the last 13,000 years - based, as we saw earlier, on (i) this being the period (according to official history) during which we've progressed into organised civilisations and produced ALL our written documents, regardless of religion, race, creed or culture, and (ii) the number of years we are into the 'Great Year' or 'Yuga Cycle'

Natural Harmony

It's in harmony with nature as, like the old pagan calendars, it's based around the natural cycle of the 2 Solstices and the 2 Equinoxes which give those of us living in the 'temperate zones' (the majority) our 4 seasons.

Intercalary Days

It has 5 Intercalary Days (off the regular calendar cycle) in a Standard (non-leap) Year. These are made up of a day for each season and one for the year, which together with the 360 Standard Calendar days (36 weeks of 10 days) make up the 365 for the year. But what about the bit left over?

Leap Years

It uses the Persian Calendar approach of 8 leap years in a 33 year cycle to 'sweep up' all the odd 0.2422 extra days per year into one Leap Day. This is inserted as a 6th Intercalary Day and 'Day Zero' at the start of the Leap Year (like yesterday!) so it doesn't affect the Perennial Structure

Perennial

Yes, it's also 'Perennial' which means the days stay the same EVERY year making organising stuff a lot easier. EVERY 'month' (since named as a Triad) has 3 'weeks' (since named as Decans) and so 30 Days, which line up closely with their equivalent Zodiacal Signs

Solar

It's a 'Solar' Calendar in synch with the big firey object in the sky which accounts for 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. But it also incorporates the 19 year 'Metonic Cycle' between The Sun & The Moon.

Number Based Structure

The other thing that makes it Common to all is that at its foundation its basically a numerically based repeating cycle, so if its adopted anywhere people can choose whatever 'Names' they like for the various periods but the seasons, months, weeks and days will always be at the same point numerically wherever you go. (Note: as the months, later named 'Triads', align closely with their equivalent Zodiacal Signs, they were named after them and their number in sequence from 'ONE-Aries♈' through to 'TWELVE-Pisces♓')

And So...

If you fancy a change and would like more free time, give it a go.

On the Home Page you will find Full Year Calendars and Year Planners to download, both incorporating Gregorian dates for those of you using the Gregorian calendar, so you can run the two calendars together and see what you think.

There is also a Date Converter and an animated Calendar Clock Converter' which is an HTML (web page language) prototype of an APP we're working on. Maybe if enough people rate the UCC we'll put it forward officially for adoption (can't see 'The Feds' liking it though!)

To be honest we're not seriously expecting that many people who are kind of 'used to things the way they are' to pick this up. The people who have shown most interest so far are those well on their way to freedom. And of course if you currently work in the 7 Day Week business cycle it would be kind of hard to go and tell your boss your only coming in 3 days in every 10!!

But, if the idea catches on enough in our free evolving communities we're proposing that we consider phasing this Calendar in over a generation (c25-30 years), so that kids starting off in the first generation could get taught about it and these natural cycles. Then by the time they're adults, maybe with kids of their own who are also getting taught the same, it could replace existing calendars.

I remember this kind of thing happening twice when I was in primary school, when Britain was converting to the metric system and decimal currency. We got taught both imperial and metric units and how to convert between the two, so there is a precedent for wholesale societal administrative change. So, who knows, maybe by the Gregorian year 2040 we could be sharing the same basic calendar, and working a lot less!?!?

Anyway, for now it's 'New Years Day' in our New Calendar

Hope You Like It!

  

Litmus A Freeman

New Year's Day 13513 UCC

............