Hebrew Calendar

["John Grove" <4groves@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've been quite silent for a while as I've been pre-occupied with some other
hobby-work that has been costing me some time and cash. Anyway, I was
looking through a Hebrew text book today and read about their lunar/solar
calendar - apparently running on a 19 year cycle with 7 leap years that add
an extra month to make up for the lunar month lengths. This made me look
again at the VMS zodiac pages...

Here's some speculation on how a calendar might work with the VMS diagrams
(Heavy on speculation!!)

You take a six year cycle with the normal month having 30 days, thus the
normal year has 360 days. To make up for the short fall, two of the six
years add a fifteen day period. Now, this isn't quite perfect as six years
(probably includes 2 leap years - totalling 2192 days) - so we need to add a
couple more days--- here's how the VMS could supply the full cycle of 2192
days:

    Year One: Every Month is 30 days long
    Year Two: The 1st of Pisces is doubled for an inter-calary year (the
reason it is the only label inside the inner circles)  - so Pisces consists
of 31 days this year. As this is the first inter-calary year, the 15 days of
light Taurus are run through a second time as an extra -half month. The
remaining months retain their 30 days.
    Year Three: Normal 30 day months
    Year Four: Second Inter-calary year, 1st of Pisces is doubled - and the
15 days of Light Aries are run through a second time.
    Year Five: Normal 30 day months
    Year Six: Normal 30 day months.

    So, the totals are 360, 376, 360, 376, 360, 360 = 2192 days.

    Hey, it's not perfect - but if existing calendars can add an extra month
7 times out of 19 - why not? It might give some explanation for Pisces and
the division of Taurus and Aries!

    John.

    Oh, Welcome back Dennis S!