OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE THUNDER CALENDAR
There are some things you need to keep in mind when using what I’m going to call The Thunder Calendar of Tages the Etruscan:
- It follows a lunar calendar. It runs from new moon to dark-of-the-moon, which means its monthly predictions will likely straddle two of our normal months.
- It starts from the new moon closest to the Summer Solstice. For the northern hemisphere, that is most-likely sometime in the month of June, and for the southern hemisphere, that is most-likely sometime in the month of December. This calendar kinda/sorta assumes the Sun will be in Cancer at the start of the northern hemisphere’s lunar year, and that the Sun will be in Capricorn at the start of the southern hemisphere’s lunar year, but there’s usually only one new moon per month, so if the new moon is just a few days before the Summer Solstice, then I think it’s safe to take that as the start-date for the calendar.
- Its numbering doesn’t follow our western calendar. As you look over the Thunder Calendar, you’ll observe that each month of the year is assigned thirty days, even February. This is to allow for those times when the moon takes thirty days, not 28, to complete a whole lunar month. This is why the Thunder Calendar will likely straddle two months.
- Some days may appear to fall between the cracks. Because our calendar has 365 days, 366 days in a leap year, and the Thunder Calendar of Tages covers only 360 days, several days of the year may appear to fall between the cracks. Thunder is not an every-day event for most of us, so this may not prove to be much of a problem. However, if thunder does occur on a day which does not appear to be covered by one of the predictions, then note which day it occurs, and take a look at the Thunder calendar for that month; would that day fall within the current lunar cycle for this month, or would it fall under next month’s lunar cycle? Or the month before? With a little checking, you should be able to find a lunar cycle that day would fall into.
- The culture from which it sprang. As you peruse it, you’ll notice The Thunder Calendar of Tages is heavy on the agricultural and natural-world predictions, although there are some societal and governmental predictions as well. If you’re a farmer, a gardener, or someone who speculates in commodities, this is probably a strong selling-point for the calendar, because it covers your area of concern. Otherwise, you may have to get metaphorical in your interpretation, or creative, or extrapolatory, such as ‘well, if this and this happen, then it means this other thing is happening in this other area of life‘.
- Positive and negative often go hand-in-hand. On some of these days’ predictions, you’ll note there is a good event in one respect and a bad event in another. As I continued transcribing the calendar into a PDF-able format, I realized there was often some causality at work here. For example, if the prediction for a certain day is that the common people will be doing better and that there will also be civil unrest, it stands to reason that of course there’s civil unrest, because the common people are doing well-enough that they aren’t focused solely on survival issues and can raise a ruckus about other things. Wheat will be good, but barley less-so; then clearly, weather and environmental conditions will favor one grain over the other. But the causality isn’t always apparent.
With all that said, below is the Thunder Calendar of Tages the Etruscan. The parts I have added are the ‘…then’ at the start of each prediction, and the words in parentheses, which have been added for greater clarity of meaning. Remember, this calendar starts at the new moon in June for the northern hemisphere of the planet, and at the new moon in December for the southern hemisphere, so the page headings are noted accordingly. The summer solstice is the key marker for the starting point of the calendar. You’ll want to visit one of the moon-phase websites I mentioned in other divination lessons for determining at an accurate starting-date.