Roman Weeks & the Calendar of Shepherd’s March 2nd

This year, it has been announced, has budded 4 weeks earlier than normal and we are having a lovely early display of Magnolias and  Camelias. 

March is described in all it’s Jacobean glory in the text, above, from the Kalendar of Shepherds. We are still in Pisces

The obvious division of the month is into  the phases of the Moon, except many calendars lost any actual alignment between the month and the Moon. The early Romans chose to keep the lunar associations with their division of the month into the Kalends, the Nones and the Ides, as I describe in my Ides of March post here.

But, following Julius Caesar’s successful calendar reforms, Constantine the Great wanted to get in on the act annex make his own rationalisation of the Year.

He established the week.  To please the Christians while displeasing the Jews and the traditional Romans he swopped the day of leisure from old man Saturn’s day to the Son of God’s day Sunday.  This is the day Jesus ascended to heaven, but it was also the day for Mithras and the Unconquered Sun. He then established the 7 day week.  7 was a sacred number and the number of the ‘planets’ in the Solar System (including the sun and moon).

This idea was invented by Babylon, who used the numerical base of 60.  60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 360 degrees in a circumference.  

In Britain we clung to some of our pagan names for the weeks. So Saturday, Sunday and Monday are Roman in origin  while Tues – Friday are Anglo Saxon, named after the deities: Tiv,Woden,Thor, and Freya. 

The Latin origins of the days of the week are obvious in the Romance languages, French, Spanish and Italian.  Lundi from the moon, Mardi from Mars, Mecredi from Mercury, Jeudi from Jupiter, and Vendredi from Venus.   Samedi came from  Saturn and Dimanche from dies Dominica which means the lord’s day.

The order of the days comes from their position not in their position  around the Sun but Babylon’s division of the sky into 24 hour long sections, a god presided over each division. It is too complicated to explain but there were 7 deities and 24 divisions, so they rotated.

Other societies ignored hours until we had clocks to measure them.  Anglo Saxons divided days by tides; morningtide, eventide and nighttide

Ages of man

As I have mentioned before, prophecy often sees a connection between the yearly calendar and future events.  For example, if it rains on the fourth day of the twelve days of Christmas it will rain during the fourth month.  The next section of the Kalendar of Shepherds illustrates this method giving a comparison between the ages of man and the months of the year. Twelve months in a year, Twelve ages of man in six year blocks. So March represents ages twelve to eighteen, as it says time to learn doctrine and science.

First written in March 2023 revised on 2nd March 2024