China's Lunar Calendar 2013 11-02

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦

LEFT November 2..................................................................................................October 26 RIGHT

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 calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "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 calendar. Some 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.

Add caption

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left) 
二
日
六期星

  Eleventh Month, Second Day

Astral Period Six
Saturday, November 2

———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

生四六歲
氣相合支

Generational Branch
Six Linkages
Four Facings
Engendered Vapor

—————————————————

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

凶凶吉

酉己丑

吉吉吉

戌午寅

中中凶

亥未卯

凶吉吉

23:00-01:00 Auspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Inauspicious
05:00-07:00 Auspicious

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 In-Between
13:00-15:00 Auspicious

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

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

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

忌

伐安放開
木牀水渠

Opening Sluices

Putting-into Water

Positioning Beds

Felling Trees

————————————————— 

 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

廿
九
壬
申
金
氐

開

Twenty-ninth Day (Ninth Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: renshen (9/60)

Phase (element): Metal

Constellation: Foundation (3/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Open (11/12)

————————————————— 

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜
上開裁祭
樑市衣祀
置納理祈
產財髮福
成修移入
服造徙學
除動醫出
服土病行
俯咸蟲鷙
上火無吾
兀星祿離

Appropriate Activities  

Venerating Ancestors
Inquiring-into Fortune
Entering Study
Going Out (and about)
Cutting-out Clothing
Patterning Hair
Moving Residences
Doctor Visits
Opening Markets
Capital Outflow
Repairs and Building
Moving Soil
Erecting Beams
Setting-up Industry
Completing Clothing
Discarding Clothing

Insects Tuck Themselves Away
(the fifty-fourth of seventy-two five-day micro-periods on the solar calendar)

Miscellaneous Information  

Five Separations

Without Emolument

Fire Star

Upper Amputee

————

Section Seven
Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left)

白 
White
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Information

(Top to bottom; right to left)

爐 庫 倉
Furnace, Storehouse, Granary

Phenomenology Kitten—Kantian Turns (6)

Click here for the "Celebrity Commentary" Resource Center—(all posts available) Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Celebrity Commentary" (coming soon) 
This is a "small" (小) post—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.

***  *** 

On this day in Round and Square History
1 November 2012—Rural Religion in China (32)
1 November 2011—Middles: Gendered Confucian

[a] Appearing to consciousness RF

Our attaintment of enlightenment is something like the reflection of the

moon in water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water cleft apart...

The whole moon and the whole sky find room enough in a single dewdrop...

                             —Dōgen, Conversations

We continue today with one of the best explanations I have ever read of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It is embedded in Brian Magee's superb autobiography Confessions of a Philosopher. As we head toward the Husserlian Swirl, let's continue to unpack the Kantian underpinnings of phenomenology.

[b] Let sleeping bears lie RF

And, as before, we'll consider it our Prolegomena to Any Future Phenomenology. Yesterday we considered the proposition that objects conform to our knowledge. Let's continue to pack this phenomenal statement.

What is actually happening is that what appear to us as the objects of our experience are being produced for us by our experiencing apparatus in the same sort of way as a photograph is produced in a camera and a sound recording in a piece of sound-recording equipment. Things in themselves are not that way, any more than things in themselves are photographs or sound recordings, but all the ways we have of representing things are inevitably ways of representing, and are not the things in themselves.

In responding to this sort of epistemology empiricists have tended to make—and persist in making—one huge mistake in particular. They represent Kant as saying that we ourselves synthesize reality, that we put it all together in our head, that we make it up. He is specifically not saying that. On the contrary, he is always insistent that reality exists independently of us.

[c] Wholly water RF

What he is saying is something altogether different and incompatible with it, something about the nature of experience—namely that it has to be mediated by apparatus that is not itself the object of experience, and furthermore that it must inescapably take the forms determined by the nature of the apparatus, with the result that the representations it yields are categorically different from their objects.

To be sure, objects of experience are "like" experience, but that is because they are experience, they are what we mean by the word "experience." But they are not the independently existing objects that constitute reality as it is in itself, just as the photograph is not the object photographed, and the sound recording is not the sound recorded.

Ponder that. We'll keep plugging away for one or two more days with the frameworks established by Kant, the accidental founder of phenomenology.

Notes
[1] Brian Magee, The Confessions of a Philosopher (New York: Random House, 1997),148-149.

Bibliography
Magee, Brian. The Confessions of a Philosopher. New York: Random House, 1997. 

[d] Experience RF

[Originally posted on September 13, 2014]

China's Lunar Calendar 2013 11-01

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦

LEFT November 2..................................................................................................October 26 RIGHT

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 calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "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 calendar. Some 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.

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left) 
一十
    一
日月
五期星

  Eleventh Month, First Day

Astral Period Five
Friday, November 1

———————————————— 
Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

德天
合月

Heavenly Lunarity
Virtuous Linkages

—————————————————

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

吉凶中

酉己丑

凶吉凶

戌午寅

中吉吉

亥未卯

凶中吉

23:00-01:00 In-Between
01:00-03:00 Inauspicious
03:00-05:00 Auspicious
05:00-07:00 Auspicious

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 Auspicious
13:00-15:00 In-Between

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

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

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

忌

動合
土醬

Mixing Sauces
Moving Soil

————————————————— 

 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

廿
八
辛
未
土
亢

收

Twenty-eighth Day (Ninth Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: xinwei (8/60)

Phase (element): Earth

Constellation: Neck (2/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Receive (10/12)

————————————————— 

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜
祭
祀
嫁
娶
納
采
捕
捉
月五
刑虛
朱地
雀囊

Appropriate Activities  

Venerating Ancestors
Marriage Alliances
Grain Payments
Seizing and Capturing

Miscellaneous Information  

Five Voids
Earth Bag
Lunar Punishment
Vermilion Bird

————

Section Seven
Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left)

白 州

White, Landmass
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Information

(Top to bottom; right to left)

厠
廚 灶
Toilet
Kitchen, Stove