DRUIDIC SCIENCE

Rules for intercalations to coordinate the lunar and solar year.

Measuring time has always been crucial for humans, measuring time correctly used to mean whether or not a community would survive. For example, if you planted a crop during the wrong time of year, you wouldn’t have food to eat throughout the winter. The moon and the sun are perfect for measuring time and calendars were created using both the phases of the sun and moon which has played a significant role in the lives of humans for millennia.
Intercalary days are insertions of days, weeks or months in a moon calendar to harmonize it with the solar year. Rules for intercalations to coordinate the lunar and solar year vary depending on the calendar. Intercalation or embolism in timekeeping is the insertion of a leap day, week, or month into some calendar years to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases. Lunisolar calendars may require intercalations of both days and months.The Buddhist calendar adds both an intercalary day and month on a usually regular cycle. 

The Buddhist, Burmese, Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindu, Jain and Kurdish as well as the traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Vietnamese calendars (in the East Asian Chinese cultural sphere), plus the ancient Hellenic, Coligny, and Babylonian calendars are all lunisolar. 

The Chinese, Coligny and Hebrew lunisolar calendars track more or less the tropical year therefore, these three give an idea of the seasons which is vital to an agriculture based community.
When the exercise is to define the beginning and length of the day, the week, the month, the seasons, quarter days, and festivals then a simple alternative way of dealing with the fact that a solar year contains thirteen twenty-eight day months plus a day. A calendar does not have to prove knowledge of the length of the tropical year or of the occurrence of leap years. 

The two sliding halves can be aligned and set at the beginning of each year by observing the first full moon after the first new moon after the winter solstice. The first full moon also marked the day or date which is readily distinguishable by the senses, to be recognizably different in nature.

This began with the "Moon after Yule", the name given to the first full moon after the winter solstice, and finished with the "Moon before Yule", the last full moon before the following winter solstice. It is rare to have a Full Moon on the Winter Solstice. The rarity of a solstitial full Moon—the average interval is about 19 years. This reinforces the Moon's role as a beacon playing on human history. The next occurrence of a full Moon that rises exactly on the calendar day of the winter solstice is 2094. The winter solstice marks the official beginning of astronomical winter (as opposed to meteorological winter, which starts about three weeks prior to the solstice).The astronomical start date is based on the position of the Sun in relation to the Earth. 

The meteorological start of a season anciently also was based as today on the annual temperature sun and moon cycle on a 12 or 13 month calendar. According today, each season begins on the first of a particular month and lasts for three months: Spring begins on March 1, summer on June 1, autumn on September 1, and winter on December 1. Climate scientists and meteorologists created this calendar thus definition to make it easier to keep records of time and the weather. With our calendar the start of each meteorological season doesn’t change from year to year. 

Full moon of the summer solstice is for the harvesting of strawberries, it is in June and it gives that month's full moon its name. Europeans have dubbed it the rose moon, while other cultures named it the hot moon for the beginning of the summer heat.

Typically there are 12 full moons each year, a full moon of the summer solstice occurs when the Earth is directly between the Sun and Moon so that the moon looks completely illuminated when you look at it. 

Rebirth on the first full moon after the winter solstice

With the end of the longest night the dark is defeated with the Return of the Sun, the return of light, hope and promise. The Goddess gives birth to the Son/Sun God. The Sun, the light begins increase, the start of the waxing half of the year and the days grow longer. All that is hidden will begin to emerge.

The Oak King and The Holly King

Starting the cycle with the Holly King of the Waning Year who rules over the dark half of the year from the first full moon after Midsummer day to Yule, when at Yule he surrenders his life to his twin, the young Oak King of the Waxing Year who rules over the light half of the year from Yule to Midsummer we see that both rule for half of the year, both fight for the favour and love of the Goddess and both surrender their life force, not their life, for the well-being of the land. In truth, they are an allegorical exposure of the natural annual cycle. Like the evergreens the cycle represents everlasting life.

The Mistletoe was greatly revered by the Druids, this is the healer and protector. It is carefully cut to ensure it never touches the earth. It's magical properties are believed to be connected to the fact that it lives between the worlds, between heaven and earth. The white berries of mistletoe represent the fertile white semen of the life-giving male. Which is where kissing under the mistletoe comes from!

The Holly another evergreen of protection, has spiky bristles are believed to repel unwanted spirits., just like the unwanted predators it repels when birds hide in its spiky bristles. Also ritually newborn babies used to be sprinkled with 'holly water', water in which holly had been soaked, especially potent if left under a full moon after the winter solstice overnight. Holly was sacred to Holle, the Germanic underworld goddess, and symbolizes everlasting life and potent life energy. Its red berries represent feminine blood. The mistletoe and the holly together, represent the Sacred Marriage, at this time of year with the re-birth of the Sun/Son and the arrival of his queen on the first full moon after his rebirth after the Yule.

The Hero in Fionn's Fianna (14+1 day adjustment story)

First cycle has a corresponding 'opponent' in the second cycle. The first  

The hero Fionn's Fianna. 

The letter "A" is the monthly Moon adjuster. ("ABRT" is for Abarta and ABT is for abata), the performer of feats, and who is also known as Giolla Deacair (the Hard Servant). In Irish mythology, Abarta (also Ábartach, possibly meaning "doer of deeds" was in some accounts one of the Tuatha Dé Danann and in others a Fomorian, and is associated with Fionn mac Cumhaill.

One tale of Abarta's which is interpreted as trickery is where Abarta offers himself as a servant to Fionn mac Cumhaill, shortly after Mac Cumhaill had succeeded his father as leader of the Fianna, a band of mighty Milesian warriors. In a gesture of goodwill, Abarta then gave them a wild grey horse, which fourteen Fianna had to mount onto its back before it would even move. Only after Abarta had mounted behind the Fianna on the horse, it galloped off taking the warriors to the Otherworld where the Tuatha Dé Danann had been driven underground by the Milesians.

Then  Abarta sought to become Fionn Mac Cumhail's servant he came to him with an ugly grey horse which made trouble with the horses of the Fianna. Conan Maol tried to calm the horse by mounting it but it stood still. The other warriors sought to weigh it down thinking Conan wasn't heavy enough but the horse still managed to jump about. When Abarta in turn also mounted the horse then it managed to gallop away with 'fifteen' of the Fianna with Liagan, running behind and holding on to its tail. Unable to hold the horse, the Fianna were carried off with Abarta to the Otherworld. 

Then, Fionn sought the aid of Faruach so he could make him a magic ship, and Foltor, the best tracker in Ireland, together with the rest of the band were able to track Abarta to the Otherworld. 

Abarta, at this point agreed to release the men, but Conan was still not pleased and demanded reparation by asking that fourteen of Abarta's servants join them and return to the land of the living while Abarta ran behind holding the grey horse's tail. 

I believe that this represents the second 14 days cycle which corresponds to the summer solstice when again an adjustment to synchronise with the New Moon of the waxing year is required when the Moon is waxing. This places the "A" before "B", at the winter solstice where a 15 day adjustment period exists after which Abarta would have to return home where needed on the following winter solstice, allegorically running behind holding on to the gray horses tail.

Following the Beth-Luis-Nion,  Abarta must be positioned after the extra day when the sun stands still.  

Flux and the unity of opposites:

The last day of the year the death day is occupied by the I and the first day of the year, the birth day is occupied by the A, Abarata. Abrata a designer abstracted word from ABRT Ailm/Beith/Ruis/Tinne. The five vowels invented by the Goddess A,O,U,E,I plus the B&T. The B consonants that opens the Waxing part of the year and the T the Waning part of the year.

Druidic science

The ancient ones obviously understood the intricacies and relationships between the real and unreal worlds. Through meticulous observation, they discovered the complex mechanisms of the heavenly bodies that govern the changing skies, and seasons. They could successfully predict the coming solar and lunar events and the precession of the equinoxes. With this new gained knowledge of the world order, an optimism was expressed by the more competent priesthood which slowly made itself felt. The old was replaced by the more accurate predictions of the priest-astronomers who developed an exact seasonal calendar as well as a new taxonomy and classification with the greatest invention of all, a new language, a syllabic abstract word creator and a sophisticated grammar. 

With this new ingenious word processing system they defined the first logos/language to represent the metaphysical world  .

The Celtic Calendar was strictly lunar. The month (mins / mens) corresponded roughly to a full waxing of twenty-eight days, give or take half a day. 

This discrepancy between Moon and Sun time brought about the need to distinguish the lunar cycles from the solar year. The Druids called the thirteen month lunar year Blidnis and the solar year of 365 days the 'march of the Sun' 

The Sun was said to represent the spirit, inner fire and physical aspects of man and the active part of human will. 

The Moon, was said to represent the psyche, mind and all it's manifestations; individual memory, hereditary memory, imagination, dreams as well as the collective and individual consciousness. 

The Moon also represented the reproductive cycle and was likened to the water element, to humidity, due point. 

The Druids year was divided into two halves, a dark half, with long nights and short days, and a light half, with short nights and long days. This division is equinoctial. 

The dates were fixed in respect to the Full Moon following the solstices. 

The Dark Half was called the "sprouting cycle".  New Year's Eve evening was the celebration commemorating the ancestral spirits and souls of the deceased.

The Light Half  was for the "cycle of seeding". This is the season for renewal after winter's end. Spring being the period that started the warm and light part of the year. The Celtic system was called "trees" which is different from the Greek system featuring animals. 

Logic tells us that this lunar and solar system would have to include periodical corrections or embolismic (intercalary) months every now and then. Corrections would have had to be made preferably every year. This adjustment I believe had to be made at the solstices to coinside with the agricultural planting season to make sure to include at least six or seven lunations. The two half-year seasons were again divided into two halves, deviding their year into four seasons or "fourths", four quarters.

The Fire-Festivals are not solstitial as the fire may suggest but more of a lunar in nature. To find these dates, one must first make the adjustments and then keep track of the adjustments of the lunar year to the solar year. This means, that if there were two leap-months as in lunisolar calendars, where an extra 28 days are added to the equally divided 12 month 30 day plus 5 calendar. 13 lunar months plus the day of Equos (one extra day). 

Beginning the 13 months with the Full Moon was a general practice among the I.E. peoples, this was so with the Vedic calendar as well as with the Germanic.