From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

China's Lunar Calendar 2020 10-08

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs" 
⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦
10/16..............................................................................................................10/8
This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar-solar (or "luni-solar" calendar; I call it the "lunar" calendar in order to distinguish it from the kinds of calendars most Westerners use. It has a basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution tha"it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendarSome of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years.

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar. You will likely find that several of the translations seem quite "fanciful" in English. I am simply trying to convey that they also sound fairly fanciful in Chinese.  
Section One
Solar Calendar Date

四期星
Tenth Month, Eighth Day
Thursday, October 8
————

Section Two
Beneficent Stars 
(top to bottom, right to left)
時生驛歲
陽氣馬祿
Generational Emolument
Postal Horse
Engendered Vapor
Timely Yang

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left
申辰

酉巳丑
吉吉吉
戌午寅
凶凶
亥未卯
中吉中
23:00-01:00 Auspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 In-Between

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
9:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 Inauspicious
 13:00-15:00 Auspicious

15:00-17:00 Auspicious
17:00-19:00 Auspicious
19:00-21:00 In-Between
21:00-23:00 In-Between
 ————

Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

伐安出開
木牀財倉
Opening Granaries
Capital Outflow
Positioning Beds
Felling Timber

Section Five 
Cosmological Information
廿




Twenty-Second Day (Eighth Lunar Month)
Cyclical Day: jiashen (21/60)
Phase (element): Water
"Constellation Personality" Cycle: Astride (15/28)
"Day Personality" Cycle: Open (11/12)
————

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
and Miscellaneous Information  
(top-to-bottom; right to left)
露寒
五三寅
十時初
五       
分       

上開理祭
樑市髮祀
置動移出
產土徙行
賓來雁鴻
趙厭五
搖對離
————
Cold Dew
At the beginning of the yin hour; 3:55 a.m
(the seventeenth of twenty-four fifteen-day solar periods on the agricultural calendar)

Appropriate Activities
Venerating Ancestors
Going Out (and about)
Patterning Hair
Moving Residences
Opening Markets
Moving Soil
Raising Beams
Setting-up Production

Wild Geese Arrive to Stay
(the forty-ninth of seventy-two five-day solar micro-periods on the agricultural calendar)

Baleful Astral Influences
Five Separations
Mutual Enmity
Rollicking Braggadocio

Section Seven
Inauspicious Stars
(the Chinese should be read right to left, 
but the English translation is underneath each character)
Person
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Items 
(the Chinese should be read top-to-bottom, and right-to-left;
the English translation is under the bottom of each character)
爐 門 占
Furnace, Gate, Divination

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