M&D - chapter 19-21 - The Calendar

[Elisabeth Romberg]

I always wondered why we didn’t just stick to the moon. Probably since moon (måne) is the same as month (måne) in Norwegian. 

We should have a quick check in with Robert Graves and 'The White Goddess' at this point. He talks about The Tree Alphabet (Beth-Luis-Nion), a relic of Druidism orally transmitted down the centuries. Graves’ research found that the consonants of this alphabet form a calendar of seasonal tree-magic, and that all the trees figure prominently in European folklore! (p. 165)

The lunar month has 28 days. There are 13 such months in a solar year, with one day left over… The Druidic year was reckoned by lunar months. «For the first-century B.C ‘Coligny Calendar’ which is one of lunations (though no longer regarded as Druidic) is engraved in Roman letters on a brass tablet and is now though to be part of the Romanizing of native religion attempted under the early Empire.» (p.166)

My underlining.


> 30. mar. 2015 kl. 11.40 skrev Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> 
> Those lost eleven days have always bemused me in my readings. I want to find something metaphysical since Time matters in all his work....yet, haven't.
> 
> I keep thinking very simplistically, very prosaically, probably stupidly about that feeling of " where does the time go" we've all had......or the song about....
> As I said, not quite right....
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On Mar 29, 2015, at 3:05 PM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com> wrote:
>> 
>> ON THE CALENDAR
>> 
>> David Cowart (in TP&the dark passages of history) reckons the the attention to calendar reform serves a number of thematic strands, like the dread of Jesuit machinations, and that TP contrives to make the time-changing paranoia suggest new variations on a colonialist theme, like when Mason «concocts fantasies worthy of Cyrano de Bergerac» later on in the book «with which to regale those who persist in badgering him about the supposedly lost days» (p. 146) The first one badgering him, as we learn here, being his father. And this is also his first "concocted fantasy" (?) …as he produces his pipe and pours himself some wine...-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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