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The To'ul'h Calendar |
(The
To’ul’h Common Calendar)
Together
with the To’ul’hoss language, the
‘Ha’ts’ul (known as
the “To’ul’h
Calendar” to most
Terragens) is an important part
of the transcultural memeplex that connected To’ul’h
civilisations across
barriers of time and geography during the millennia before Terragen
contact. Like To’ul’hoss, it has been remarkably resilient.
It survived in
various incarnations through thousands of years of cultural evolution
on To’ul’h
Prime, it survived the influx of Terragen ideas in the
post-contact
years, and it lived through a determined attempt on the part of certain
of
the Spacer
factions to eradicate it during the Spacer/Homeworlder conflicts. It
continues
to be a vital part of most To’ul’h and
To’ul’h-derived cultures and has even
been adopted by some Terragens. Its persistence and spread across some
46,000
Terragen years is nothing less than marvellous. Some Progenitists
assert
that a memeplex so well adapted to survival and propagation cannot
possibly
have been the work of the “primitive” astronomer-priests
and philosopher-kings
that conventional To’ul’h history assigns as its inventors.
The
basic form of the ‘Ha’ts’ul was invented by
philosopher-priests in
the cities bordering the
The
fundamental unit of time in the Ha’ts’ul is
To’ul’h Prime’s diurnal
period (19.2 Terragen hours). All other units however large or small
are
multiples or divisions of this time in powers of eight, in accord with
the base
eight mathematics common to nearly every To’ul’h culture.
Initially the
reckoning was from noon to noon of local time, but for more detailed
records
the common standard for the past 15,000 years has been from noon to
noon at the
ancient and now abandoned city of ‘Oss’thol on the
‘Oth Plateau on the
homeworld. This basic unit is multiplied upwards into
“weeks” of 8 days, and
“months” of 64 days. The 512-day “years” are
likewise multiplied upwards; the
largest unit in on which all scholars agree is equal to 32,768
“years” (about
36,886 Terragen years). The day was likewise divided into shorter
times.
Fractions of 8, 64, and 512, all the way down to times as small as one
32768th
of a day (about 2 Terragen seconds) are in common use among ordinary
To’ul’hs.
In its original formulation, this range downward and upwards, through
eight
orders of magnitude in To’ul’h arithmetic in each
direction, was believed to
encompass the entire range of To’ul’h life, from
personal experience to
the lifetimes of societies. These divisions remain in common usage in
all
To’ul’h societies, though in later times
To’ul’h philosophers and scientists
created names for additional orders of magnitude at either end of the
scale to
encompass larger or smaller times required by their disciplines, such
as the lifespan of the multiverse or the smallest possible division of
timespace.
A
“year” in the Ha’ts’ul is 512 days, which is
actually two days more
than a true To’ul’hese solar year. The calendar’s
creators were well aware of
this fact, and kept a separate record of the solar years in relation to
their
calendar. Given the relative insignificance of seasons in the native
To’ul’h
environment, and a good record of actual days in the solar year, the
difference
was important only to academics. Expressing the calendar in powers of
eight was
considered more important, not only because it simplified reckoning but
also
because eight was of great significance in the philosophies of the day,
as it
is many To’ul’h-derived cultures even now.
Ha’ts’ul may be roughly translated
as “eight ways of time”, in reference to the “eight
directions” (right, left,
forward, back, up, down, outward, and inward) of classical Narrow Seas
philosophy and faith.
From
its inception, and more so with each passing century, the calendar
carried a freight of wisdom, myth, superstition, and philosophy, and it
influenced and was influenced by the major religions and political
systems of
each age in which it expressed itself. Each day within the
“week”, each month
of the “year”, and so on, as well as each traditional
division of the day
acquired its own name and significance. By the latter part of its
history, the
calendar was also used in a complex system of weather and climate
prediction,
using some developments of what Terragens mathematicians would call
chaos theory. It
was used
in a variety of other ways, and depending on the culture and individual
might
have been anything from a form of divination to a focus for meditation,
in
addition to its prosaic use in politics and administration. By the time
of
Terragen contact the calendar and its set of commentaries and the
literature
around it had acquired tremendous cultural weight. It has been compared
to
Terragen equivalents as the I Ching, Ifa, Kaballistic thought, the
Popol Vuh,
or various holy texts, but it is unique in its scope and influence. Of
course,
some To’ul’h individuals and cultures used it only in its
most prosaic sense. For instance, the supremely rationalistic and
sceptical monks of the ‘Oth
plateau used it
solely as a precise measure for their historical documents and to
co-ordinate
their day to day and year to year operations. However, all but the most
isolated and ignorant To’ul’hs were aware of the
significance of a given day,
“month”, “week”, or “hour” in the
traditional system, if only in the form of
“fortunate” and “unfortunate” times for certain
actions.
