Lunar month

“ Sign 7, it seems to me, indicates that this period should be divided into lunar months (denoted by Ben-Ik) , and, as I have already demonstrated in my examination of page 24, the length of the period is stated here by Signs 4, 5, 6 and 9, but the dot before the fifth should be placed before the fourth, as is actually the case on page 24. Therefore:—
It is perhaps not accidental that the ninth sign is that of the fourteenth month, which signifies the expiration of the preceding lunar month, for here the month begins with the first day of the fifteenth month. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the day of full moon could become detached from the genuine lunar month, and such a process would seem still more strange since the day of new moon remained a genuine new-moon day. On the other hand the development of market and rest-day into a day of taboo is everywhere natural, and is attested in the above examples from Africa ”

“ The moon makes her circuit of the heaven in twenty-eight days plus about an hour, and with her return to the sign from which she set forth, completes a lunar month. ”

“ Thus by neglecting the invisible one, which would properly be called 28, 29 or 30, and which falls in the great interval between keunòngs 1 and 23, we get exactly one keunòng for each lunar month. This makes the calculation extremely easy, but it is obvious that as we advance we shall in time arrive at a month in which the keunòng we obtain by observation falls on a different date from that which the series would lead us to expect. It is in fact at the end not of a lunar, but a solar year, that the keunòngs revert to nearly the same interval of time separating them from the preceding new moon. ”

“ For the first few days in every lunar month the moon rises or sets twenty-three or twenty-four minutes later for three or four successive evenings, after which the retardation varies from that time to an hour and seventeen minutes, and sometimes more. ”

“ This argument simply is, that the moon as she travels on her orbit round the sun—the real centre of her motion—turns every part of her equator in succession towards him once in a lunar month. At the time of new moon the sun illuminates the face of the moon turned from us; at the time of full moon he illuminates the face which has been gradually brought round to him as the moon has passed through her first two quarters. ”

“ The moon in the long nights was a most beautiful object; that satellite being constantly above the horizon for nearly a fortnight together in the middle of the lunar month. Venus also shone with a brilliancy which is never witnessed in a sky loaded with vapors ”

“ Each third of the lunar calendar consists of 30-and 29-day months arranged in alternating sequence, with intercalary days added by the substitution of a 30-day for a 29-day month when the error arising from the nonconformity of the moon’s revolution reaches more than one day. In order that the lunar calendar might agree with the eclipse calendar more closely, these months were recorded in groups of five and six. ”

“ The only natural phenomenon which from the very beginning meets the demands of the continuous reckoning is the moon. It is a fact of importance that the course of the moon from the first appearance of the new moon to the disappearance of the old is so short a period that it may be surveyed even by the undeveloped intellect. The decisive factor however is that not only is the lunar month in itself a limited and continuous period of fixed length, but it has also a natural sub-division into parts of equal length, viz. ”

“ The apparent revolution of the moon around the earth was taken by the Mayas as the basis of a lunar calendar distinct from the civil calendar, but used in combination with it for various ceremonial purposes. Now the average duration of a lunar revolution is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.87 seconds. Twelve lunations amount to a little more than 354 days and are therefore far short of a true year. Primitive peoples whose principal interest is to keep the moon in adjustment with the seasons have an occasional thirteenth month in their luni-solar calendars. ”

“ In ancient times ceaseless efforts were made to adjust the months to the measure of the year, but we have practically given up the attempt, and in our calendar the lunar months shift along as they will, while the ordinary months are periods of a certain number of days, having no relation to the movements of the moon. ”

“ In 2other words, though the difference between a single solar year and a single lunar year is more than 11 days, it is possible, by taking a number of years together and reckoning them as lunar years, one or more of them being lengthened by an additional month, to make the whole period very nearly coincide with the same number of solar years. ”

“ The same progress of events must continue, till, at some remote period in the future, the day has come to equal the month, lunar tidal action has ceased, and one face of the earth looks out always at the moon with that same fixed stare which even now the moon has been brought to assume towards her parent orb. ”

“ Worm expressly states that these lunar months were still in use and began with the first new moon of the new year.
An account of connected lunar months among the East Finns has been translated and communicated to me by Professor Wiklund. The authority makes a man of the people speak as follows [1033] :—“The moon which is born while the winter day is still in his house (December 18–22) , or after [306] that, is the first heart- (middle-) moon. In this way the Christmas festival sometimes falls in the first heart-moon, and then we hope for a good harvest. ”

“ The period thus arising is nothing else than the lunisolar year, since the months through their connexion with the seasons are bound up with the annual course of the sun. The problem then arises how to make the lunar months fit into the solar year. Practically the difficulty first appears in a disguised form; primitive man has no conception, or at most only an extremely vague idea, of the length of the solar year. ”

“ Epacts.—Epact is a word of Greek origin, employed in the calendar to signify the moon's age at the beginning of the year. The common solar year containing 365 days, and the lunar year only 354 days, the difference is eleven; whence, if a new moon fall on the 1st of January in any year, the moon will be eleven days old on the first day of the following year, and twenty-two days on the first of the third year. ”

“ It might seem, that, since the moon rotates on her axis in about twenty-seven days, the lunar day ought to be twenty-seven days long, instead of twenty-nine. There is, however, a solar, as well as a sidereal, day at the moon, as on the earth; and the solar day at the moon is longer than the sidereal day, for the same reason as on the earth. During the solar day the moon must make both a synodical rotation and a synodical revolution. ”

“ The lunar year is eleven days shorter than the solar, and so loses three years in every century of ours. There is this convenience in the lunar reckoning, that, if the date be given, you can tell the age of the moon ”

“ Just as the growth and dwindling of plants became associated with the moon’s wax and wane, so changes of weather became associated with changes of the moon, while, by astrologer’s logic, it did not matter whether the moon’s change were real, at new and full, or imaginary, at the intermediate quarters. That educated people to whom exact weather records are accessible should still find satisfaction in the fanciful lunar rule, is an interesting case of intellectual survival. ”

“ The day of the week on which the moon is new or full, is a question that awakens the most anxious concern. In the north of Italy Wednesday is dreaded for a lunar change, and in the south of France the inauspicious day is Friday. ”

“ Is there not something a little more romantic in the moon—something to relieve the strain of all this nomenclature of words terminating in ‘us,’ and this frightful lunar geology?”
“Yes,” I said, “I believe that on the other half of the moon, which has not yet seen the sun rise, we shall find something better to your taste. But do not be too impatient. ”

“ From this table the astronomical moons not only for Easter but for the whole year can be found without variation of more than a day for about three hundred and twelve years, at the end of which time the new moon will fall one day earlier, when a new set of epacts must be made, the first of which will be 1 instead of 0, and the succeeding ones will be changed correspondingly. To find the age of the moon for any day of the year, we add to the epact the date of the month, and one for every month from March inclusive, the epact for a year being eleven days, or a day a month nearly. ”

“ The moon is the more powerful of the two perturbing bodies, hence the main tides are due to the moon; and its chief action is to cause a pair of low waves or oceanic humps, of gigantic area, to travel round the earth once in a lunar day, i.e. in about 24 hours and 50 minutes. The sun makes a similar but still lower pair of low elevations to travel round once in a solar day of 24 hours. ”

“ But men have tried to connect them from the most remote ages, and have devised the lunar-solar year, the duration of which is related to the movements of the sun and the moon. Although this system may appear complicated, it is in reality quite simple, for the sun and moon spare man the trouble of calculating the days, while the years and months write themselves in large characters in the appearance of the sky and of vegetation. ”

“ The Moon’s distance is taken from the horizon East or West, according as it is increasing 281or decreasing in light. If increasing, it is taken from the East, and if decreasing from the West. The number of zodiacal degrees between the Moon and the horizon thus indicated has then to be divided by the Moon’s mean diurnal motion, which is 13° 11 ́ roughly, and this will be the number of days more or less than ten lunar revolutions by which the birth is separated from the inception. ”

“ The week, however, is found in various parts of the world in a form that has nothing to do with astrology or the seven planets, and with such a distribution as to make it pretty certain that it had no artificial origin, but suggested itself independently, and for natural reasons, to different races. In fact, the four quarters of the moon supply an obvious division of the month; and, wherever new moon and full moon are religious occasions we get in the most natural way a sacred cycle of fourteen or fifteen days, of which the week of seven or eight days (determined by half moon) is the half. ”

“ Then, too, regarding the moon as a timekeeper, we must not forget the service that it renders in furnishing a division of time intermediate between the day—which is measured by the earth’s rotation—and the year, which is defined by the earth’s orbital revolution. Notwithstanding the survival of lunar reckoning in our religious services, we, in our time and country, scarcely need a moon to mark our months ”

“ The Lunar Day.—The lunar day is twenty-nine times and a half as long as the terrestrial day. Near the moon's equator the sun shines without intermission nearly fifteen of our days, and is absent for the same length of time. Consequently, the vicissitudes of temperature to which the surface is exposed must be very great. During the long lunar night the temperature of a body on the moon's surface would probably fall lower than is ever known on the earth, while during the day it must rise higher than anywhere on our planet.
Fig. ”

“ We know that changes occur in the moon, from cold to heat, and from darkness to light. But the lunar day is as long as 291 of ours; so that each portion of the surface is exposed to, or turned from, the sun for nearly 14 days. This long exposure produces excessive heat, and the long darkness excessive cold. ”

“ We have, it is true, been taught until very lately that the side of the moon turned sunward would grow hotter and hotter in the long lunar day, till it reached a temperature of two hundred to three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and that in the equally long lunar night it would fall as much as this below zero. ”

“ Precisely similar changes affect the moon, only, instead of taking place in a year (the time in which the sun circuits the stellar heavens) , they occur in what is called a sidereal month, the time in which the moon completes her circuit of the stellar heavens. For about a fortnight the moon is above the horizon longer than she is below the horizon, while during the next fortnight she is below the horizon longer than she is above the horizon. ”

“ In the lunar year, the months are alternately of 29 and of 30 days, the moon's synodical revolution taking place in about 29 days. The lunar cycle of the Mohammedans comprises a period of thirty lunar years, during which the seasons begin at all times of the year. If a Turkish festival now falls in the middle of the winter, it will, fifteen years hence, be celebrated in the summer.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. ”

“ The moon, whose course through the heavens regulated the months of the early lunar year, and whose influence was regarded by the ancients, in common with that of the sun, as one of the fertilising principles of nature, and as exerted chiefly amid wilds and woods, at a distance from the crowded abodes of man, had in this spot, apparently, a peculiar claim for her special appropriation. ”

“ The result is a difficulty which formerly was not felt, owing to the fluctuating character of the names of months, for the natural phases and the moons are pushed out of their mutual relationship, and this naturally leads to the question how many months the year includes, i. e. to the necessity of the intercalation. For the moon-month, which begins with the new moon, is a natural unity, which cannot be broken up. ”