I mentioned in the introduction to my last post on myth and stories as models for practice that I’ve been working on my old grammatomantic calendar, the Grammatēmerologion, again.  In short, this is a lunisolar calendar I devised based on the Attic calendar used in ancient Athens for my Mathesis work, with a special emphasis on associating the days of the lunar months to the letters of the Greek alphabet.  Not only does this help me get a sort of feel for the type of day I might be facing, a la omen calendars such as in Hesiod’s Works and Days or the day-based forecasting of Mayan astrology, but it also helps me organize rituals and meditations, especially for sacrifices to the Greek gods.  I find it an incredibly useful invention for my own work, and I used to do a Daily Grammatomancy blurb for my followers on my Facebook page that incorporated the information from this (the practice of which I plan to bring back in the near future, so if you haven’t yet, log onto Facebook and like my page!).  For more information on the Grammatēmerologion calendrical system, check out these posts:

• Lunisolar Grammatomantic Calendar
• Lunisolar Grammatomantic Calendar in Use
• Details on the Grammatēmerologion

Thing is, keeping track of a lunisolar calendar by hand can be hard.  I’ve written a few simple programs that calculate the lunisolar date and corresponding letter information for my convenience, but trying to export that information was hard enough as it is, especially if I’m down in my temple, forgot the proper date, and need to temporarily abort ceremony to run back to my computer to figure out what the date is.  For this sort of thing, having an actual physical calendar would be useful; after all, keeping track of dates is literally what they’re for!  Of course, given the kinds of data I wanted, I had to do quite a bit more programming to calculate any arbitrary set of astronomical and astrological phenomena, because…well, trying to find almost 40 years’ worth of such data online and then formatting it into a way I can use turned out to be far more work than coding the astronomical algorithms by hand, making sure the calculations were reasonably accurate, and formatting the output from said calculations.  It sounds like it’d be more work to do it that way, but it actually wasn’t that bad, compared to wrestling with any number of websites and then beating them into submission.

Well, I’m happy to announce that such a calendar is now complete in as good a form as I can stomach to make it (at least for the time being).  You can download the Grammatēmerologion Calendar for Cycle 69, spanning the time between June 2009 and June 2047.  This document includes:

• A thorough description of the design, calculations, and nuances of the Grammatēmerologion lunisolar calendar from its Attic calendar origins
• A discussion on grammatēmerologic days, months, years, hours, and days of the week
• How to organize ritual and divination according to the grammatomancy of the days and other time periods of the Grammatēmerologion
• Dates of significant grammatēmerologic importance
• Seasonal start and midpoint dates
• Zodiacal ingress dates of the Sun
• Lunar phases of the Moon
• Solar and lunar eclipses

Download the Grammatēmerologion Calendar for Cycle 69 for free at this link.
Ignore that link, check out the revised version (and why) here!

Unlike my other ebooks, I release this one gratis for all those who are interested in it.  Not only is it much different in style and purpose from my other ebooks, but I’m aware that this is a very niche thing that, in all likelihood, only I and maybe one or two other people will use.  Given its departure from the Attic calendar and the traditional way of assigning feast days to the Greek gods, I’m not holding my breath for Hellenion or any of the Hellenic pagan community to just suddenly up and adopt this calendar for their own usages.  That said, some of my fellow occultists and woogity friends have expressed interest in this calendar, so why not?  After all, I find value in long-term planning, and what could better fit that tendency of mine than planning out New Moon dates some 30 or 40 years in advance?  Plus, this way, I and others can print out hard copies to stash in our temples, so that we’re not running back and forth reaching for our phones or computers to check the letter-date when we happen to forget it after we already get comfortable in our sacred spaces.

Making this calendar was a fair bit of fun, and I have to say I learned quite a bit about astronomy and calendrical orders, as well as how to get my computer to play well with compiling huge documents programmatically.  Still, it was a lot of work, and I’m glad I don’t have to do this again anytime soon (though I may release other versions of this for previous or future cycles, just for those who want that sort of ephemerical information for decades far removed from our current one).  If there’s enough of a need for it, I may also decide to redo this project to include other astronomical or astrological information (perhaps retrograde periods of particular planets?) or other traditional Hellenic holidays accounted for by the Attic calendar, but that can wait for later.  If you find this sort of thing useful, please consider throwing a few bucks my way to my Ko-fi page to keep me caffeinated and productive on this and other projects!  Every little bit helps, and you’ll have my undying appreciation for the support.

Also, as another small update to be aware of: you can now purchase my ebooks directly through my blog!  I’ve added a new Books page to the top-level menu, so check it out!  Before now, the only way to get my ebooks was through my Etsy shop, but if (for some reason) you don’t like going through them or can’t, you can just use PayPal instead.  Be aware that, once you purchase an ebook directly through my blog, I’ll do my best to send you a copy of the ebook (either the file itself or a link to its download) as soon as I can; with Etsy, the download link is sent automatically upon purchase.  Still, this can give some people a helpful alternative to buying some of the things I’ve written.

Update: okay, so, later in the day after I publicly make this thing available, I found something in the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM VII.756ff) that would have been perfect to add into this.  Take a look; you won’t be disappointed once you see it.