Click here for the first post in the Round and Square introductory series "Calendars and Almanacs"
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| [a] Receptacle RF |
Picking up
right where we left off yesterday—you may remember a little calendar-consulting
and excuse making—let’s ponder some of the implications of calendrical
engagement. Social pressures often work against skeptics, though. Consider what was a common case in Chinese
history—that of a talented young man who had been chosen by his family to
receive an education, and who began to read and write with increasing skill at
the local schools. He would be seen as
the family’s key to success in the next generation.
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| [b] Deep breath RF |
The fact that he would not be engaged in
agricultural work meant that the rest of the family had to work all the harder,
but they counted on his eventual success. In the course of his education, he
would acquire many of the attitudes of his teachers, and would almost certainly
begin to look down upon the “superstitions” in the almanac and its popular
calendar. He occasionally might say as much to his family (occasionally making
fun of sections others took seriously). Yet even after all of the “rational”
instruction of his mentors, how might he respond if his grandfather asked him
to examine the family almanac and find an appropriate day for the grain
threshing? His “beliefs” may have changed during the course of his education,
but would his actions change within the family? His personal feeling might have
been utter disdain for the almanac, but if his grandfather asked, his behavior
might well be guided by filial piety—family respect was paramount. His personal feelings would only be a small
part of the matter.
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| [c] Parallels RF |
Returning to
the seeming contradictions of August 8, 2008 (at the “unlucky”) time of 8:00
p.m., we confront some of the calendar’s themes—and those of Chinese culture—most
powerfully. It should be obvious by now that there is no such thing as pure
auspiciousness or utter inauspciousness. So many factors go into the cyclical
rhythms of any one day that there will always be multiple weightings—often in
seemingly contradictory directions. The eighth of August was an auspicious
“completion” day, as well as a distinctly inauspicious “ghost carriage” day. It
was, as is any twenty-four hour period in the calendar, a complex meeting place
for numerous calendrical cycles—frozen into day columns on their continuing
paths of five, twelve, twenty-eight, sixty, and beyond. Not all of the cycles
carry the same cultural weight, and they change through time. In the Tang dynasty (618-906 CE), for
example, the constellations played a much more important role in individual
fortune telling than today.
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| [d] Guarded RF |
The
interpretive weight of the jianchu “personalities” are of relatively recent
origin, yet they dominate cultural practice today for those who consult the
traditional calendar. In addition to cultural “weighting” there is the sheer
arbitrariness of cycles gathering together in a chance of circumstances, and
this brings us to the biggest idea of all when it comes to Chinese conceptions
of time in the calendar. One way to look
at time in the calendar is that it consists of a series of elements that are
all eventually “the same.” Every fifth day is “the same,” in that it is made up
of one of the five phases—metal on August eighth. Every twelfth day is “the
same,” and August eighth shares similar properties with all other “completion”
days (such as August 20th and September 1st
of that year). This is a powerful idea, and it is the reason that the
Chinese have traditionally said that all time begins again every sixty years,
with a new jiazi or “01-year” in the cycle of sixty.
The opposite
is equally true, though, and it is this contrast that makes Chinese temporal
thought particularly resilient, nuanced, and flexible. Every day is utterly
unique, too. If one calculates just the most common of the cycles, it will be
seen that any one day’s major cycles, when taken together, completely “repeat”
themselves only every three hundred years or so. In terms of Chinese history, that is the very
rough equivalent to the longest-reigning dynasties. A “repeat day” once a
dynasty borders on uniqueness. When the dozens of other small cycles are added,
however, no two days in all of human history are “the same.” This continual
melody of “same/not same” is what gives Chinese temporal ideas their texture,
and the Chinese calendar its symphonic quality.
This is one post in a multi-part introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs." Click below for the other posts in the series:
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