| Part 2 If the clock represents the mechanization of time, the Gregorian calendar is the instrument which normalizes the mechanization of time as a mental institution inseparable from the irrational irregularities of its monthly count. In this way modern human civilization has acquired its quality of institutionalized machine efficiency inseparable from a host of irrational social problems, crime and war. Aside from the Vatican itself which preceded and sponsored the Gregorian Calendar Reform, virtually all of the inventions, nation states, and institutions of the modern world are incorporated in this calendar. Any attempt to reform the current civil calendar must come to terms with everything that is incorporated in this calendar. Some 200 years after the Gregorian Calendar Reform came the French Revolution, and the call for a new calendar. The Republican Calendar of 1793 replaced the Gregorian Calendar with a twelve-month schedule of 30 days each, plus a five-day period at the end of the year. The French Republican calendar was essentially the same as a Babylonian type which had the same way of dividing the year into twelve 30-day months with a five-day purification cycle at the end. Every four years, this five-day period of the French Republican calendar was extended to six days to account for the quarter day. The seven-day week was replaced by the decalogue or ten-day cycle. The French Republican Calendar lasted ten years, until 1803, when it was replaced by the Gregorian calendar once again. The anti-ecclesiastical, pro-rationalist sentiment which animated the French Republican Calendar was also behind the proposed calendar reform of the nineteenth century French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Best known as the founder of the modern discipline of sociology, philosopher and mathematician, Auguste Comte had the opportunity in the 1840s of learning about a calendar of thirteen months of 28 days each. This information came from travelers who had been to Tahiti where this calendar was well known among the Polynesians. This universal indigenous calendar, timed to the menstrual cycle of woman, so impressed Comte by its harmonic form and biological truthfulness that he devoted several years to studying it before he finalized its form as the Positivist Calendar presented at an 1849 session of the Positivist Society. Apart from Comte’s proposal for a thirteen month calendar, which of necessity, observes an extra day out of time, the call for Calendar Reform continued in France and elsewhere in Europe, but with a focus on maintaining a twelve month cycle and the seven day week. During the 1890’s, there was considerable agitation for a new calendar to begin the 20th century. In 1900, a conference was organized in Eisenach, Germany, for the study of the Reform of the Gregorian Calendar. Throughout these efforts the Papal response was always very intense in the defense of the current calendar for liturgical reasons. But a further defense put forth by the Vatican was that any calendar reform had to respect the succession of the seven-day week. This argument of the Vatican very much restricts or even deadlocks the debate on calendar reform and essentially functions as a "catch 22" which says, "Yes, you can reform the calendar, but only so long as there is no break in the succession of the seven-day week and that there are twelve months." Anyone skilled at problem-solving will see that these guidelines very much limit the possibilities of calendar reform, and in fact, have been the cause of a lack of success of every effort at calendar reform in the past 150 years. Indeed, all that this argument really amounts to is an expression of the power of the Catholic Church to maintain its calendar as the world standard. This notwithstanding, it is of great interest that the thirteen moon Positivist calendar of Comte, originally derived from the indigenous Polynesians of Tahiti, figured again in the Pan American Scientific Congress, held in Santiago, Chile, December 25, 1908 - January 5 1909. At this seminal event, a Peruvian by the name of Carlos A. Hesse, introduced a calendar reform using a thirteen month calendar identical to that of Auguste Comte. While we cannot say exactly where Hesse derived his calendar, being from Peru, it is highly likely that he knew that the Andean civilization (conquered by the Europeans) possessed a thirteen moon calendar, as did the Tahitians. Still in use today, the Peruvian thirteen moon calendar is correlated to the 500-year Pachacuti Cycles, and is currently (Gregorian AD 1998-99) in its eleventh Pachacuti cycle, year 5506. The logical nature of the thirteen month calendar attracted English Railroad magnate, Moses B. Cotsworth, who formed the League of the International Fixed Calendar. In 1921, the International Chamber of Commerce in London, England, decided to promote the calendar world-wide, and the matter was taken to the League of Nations. During the 1920s, Cotwsorth attracted the interest of George Eastman of Eastman Kodak, who organized a great campaign on behalf of the International Perpetual Calendar. At the League of Nations a committee to study the topic of calendar reform received numerous proposals, but by far and away the most popular was the International Perpetual Calendar. In the United States alone, over one hundred industries of a great diversity of interests were ready to adopt the thirteen month perpetual calendar. The League of Nations determined that January 1, 1933, would be the date to commence with the new calendar, since that year began on a Sunday, and the perpetual calendar always begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday. While maintaining a close tie with the traditional names of the months of the Gregorian calendar, the thirteenth month being called Tricember, the opposition to the calendar was mounted against the "null day" between the last Saturday of one year and the first Sunday of the next year. This is because 13 x 28 = 364 days, or 52 perfect weeks, (which is what attracted the accountants of industry) and the solar year counts 365 days. Despite the sheer self-existing perfection of form of the thirteen month calendar, resistance to it focused on a great campaign against the unique "null day," the very point by which it maintained its perpetual perfection. Here the inertia of institutionalized ignorance and disharmony were able to put a stop to this otherwise most successful effort at calendar reform. In 1931, the 111 delegates representing the 42 member states of the League of Nations listened to the 28 pages of the Report of the Preparatory Commission. While many countries including the United States, Brazil, France, Switzerland and Germany voted in favor of the thirteen month calendar, Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands voiced opposition to the institution of a perpetual calendar which implied the introduction of "supplementary" days (the null day). Support for this antagonistic position grew with the objection of various astronomers, such as Federico Oom of the Astronomical Observatory of Lisbon and Pope Pius XI, who argued that the break in the succession of the seven-day week would create chaos and calamity. The Pope further argued that the matter of fixing the date of Easter was exclusively under his jurisdiction. This position was further supported by editorials in leading newspapers such as the London Times, October 13, 1931, which argued in favor of the religious scruples, and the New York Times, December 16, 1934, which echoed the reasoning concerning the damage to be done by breaking the weekly succession, a succession which, it was argued, had not been broken since the most ancient Biblical times. Perceived as an attack on religion and the succession of the week, despite the great amount of money spent on the campaign to promote the thirteen month calendar, the project floundered and could not withstand the conservative sentiments of the Church, certain scientists, and leading periodicals. Supported by a counter-insurgency of various organizations wishing to create an atmosphere favorable to the abolition of the Gregorian Calendar, a final effort was made in favor of a moderated twelve-month calendar to occur on Sunday, January 1, 1939. However, this calendar also contained the notorious "null day," and, on September, 4, 1937, the Committee of Communications of the Society of Nations, Geneva, arrived at the conclusion that the time had not yet come to reform the calendar. In 1950, Pope Pius XII issued a pronouncement that the Church was not opposed to calendar reform, but was opposed to those proposals that included "universal days" which are not days of the seven-day week. This sentiment is echoed in the 1962 declaration of Calendar Reform at the conclusion to the Vatican II Ecumenical Council. As of the middle of the 20th century, the Gregorian calendar prevailed world-wide.
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