Rev. 16 Apr 06

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Note:  Modern Bergonians use the Gregorian Calendar.  The traditional calendar is understood by many, used for Miradi liturgical purposes, Pasan astrology, and mythology buffs.  Most wall and desk calendars give the traditional Berg equivalent for each day of the Gregorian year.

The traditional calendar's terms & names have always been in Nacateca, with the other languages adopting them with little change.

The traditional Bergonian calendar was a product of the Shufrantei religion, dominant among Bergonians until 1100 AD.  The calendar continued in common use until the plagues caused the near-total collapse of Bergonian civilization.  Most other calendars, including our Roman calendar, evolved from systems of religious ritual as well.  Since the colonial era Bergonians have accepted the Roman calendar for common usage.   

There is the view that in history lunar calendars-- calendars where the months, the new years, and most holidays are hooked onto lunar passages, and therefore shifted year from year relative to solar events such as solstices and equinoxes-- were evolved by herding, nomadic and hunting & gathering peoples-- while solar calendars were imposed by big mature agricultural empires, which the Romans perfected.  The Islamic & Jewish Calendars are lunar calendars, perhaps related to the  herding-based economics of the ancient Arab & Jewish people.  Bergonia conforms to this pattern; this solar calendar was perfected by the agricultural Ceiolaian & Necruruean Empires, while their histories describe the lunar calendar prevalent among the non-agricultural peoples (including the Faroi & Pasans) whose cultures survived from pre-neolithic times.  Indeed a derivative of that ancient  lunar calendar was adopted by Hiestat astrologers & magicians.

This calendar resembles the Roman and other Eurasian calendars in its primary reliance on solar cycles, but has 12 lunar-based months.  It depends on solar cycles even more precisely than the Roman calendar, since its year (at least in ancient times) was explicitly anchored to the annual solar cycle.  This calendar began precisely on the day after the Winter Solstice, and was more neatly quartered around the solstices and equinoxes.  

The most unique feature of this calendar is the disposition of the specially earmarked leftover five or six days every year.

It is said that the ancient Bergonian calendar is based on the numbers four, five and six.  

Four seasons to the year.  

Two sixes make twelve, and there are twelve months, divided back again into six "sky" months and six "earth" months, which in turn reflects the mythical division of the Gods.  (see chart right.)

The weeks have six days, The Shufrantei holy day was the sixth day, called Arei, and the faithful went to the temple then for purification.

and there are five weeks in each 30-day month. This scheme produces sixty weeks in the year.   

There are five leftover days in each year.  Leap years have a sixth leftover day, which marked a four year cycle of years.

The ancient Kuans of Eastern Bergonia used an agricultural calendar that divided the year into twelve months, based on the solar cycle.  The Kuan new year came with the spring equinox..  They also had a separate liturgical calendar divided into nine months each 40 days long.  Each of the nine months reflected one of the Nine Gods.  It was their mythology projected onto time, reflecting how the Nine Gods divided the world between themselves.

By contrast, the ancient cultures of western Bergonia, including the Lasa culture of the Cuanta Valley and the Ancita people, originally based their calendar strictly on the lunar cycle, and their original time-keeping practices resembled the Jewish and Moslem calendars.  The Moslem calendar contains twelve lunar months of 29 and 30 days apiece, producing a year of 354 or 355 days.  Therefore, the Moslem months do not keep to the same seasons relative to the sun, and they regress through the seasons every 32.5 years. The Jewish calendar follows lunar months, but the calendar keeps up with the solar cycle by the intercalation of a 13th month of 30 days in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th year of a 19 year cycle.  A Jewish year can be either 353, 354, 355, 383, 384 or 385 days long.  The Ancita lunar year commence with the first crescent moon after the spring equinox, and each Ancita lunar month likewise commenced with the new moon.  

However, by the time the Prophet Ierecina reformed Ancita religion by creating the Shufrantei faith, the Kuan practices of time-keeping had diffused westward so that by 500 BC almost all the agricultural people of ancient Bergonia reckoned time with a twelve month year that began and ended on the Spring Equinox.

Ierecina decreed that all his followers had to undergo rites of purification in the temples every sixth day. This day his followers designated Arei, meaning "sixth" and also the name of a white flower of six pointed petals that grew profusely throughout the summers in central and northern Bergonia.  White, after all, represented the process of purification.  From this practice evolved the Bergonian six day week.  Moreover, for no apparent purpose or reason,  Ierecina decreed that the year should commence with the Winter Solstice, instead of the Spring Equinox, and the weeks & months were counted from then.  His calendar commenced 212 BC, though no one ever though about counting "1,2,3..." like the Christian & other Eurasian calendars.  Instead he continued with the traditional counting of cycles  (see below).

The calendar became standardized in virtually all its details by order of the earliest emperors of the Second Ceiolaian Empire in the 300's and 400's A.D., who relied upon the advice of the Shufrantei priests. Astronomers working under their tutelage established the workability of the extra five days and the "leap day" every fourth year in order to keep the calendar fixed. Therefore, in 310 A.D. the Emperor Vareloc handed down a decree legislating the calendar. The Necrurueans had little love for the Ceiolaians, but they followed the Shufrantei faith as well, and their priests recommended the Ceiolaian calendar to the Necruruean emperor, who did not let pride veto reason. After that time this calendar dominated all Bergonia. No one has seen fit to change the calendar since. Vareloc's decree established the days with such fine precision-- as accurately as our current Gregorian Calendar-- that Bergonians did not have to refer precisely to the Winter Solstice again to find their new year.

The Basic Structure of the Calendar

prei -- week,  riei -- month,  roi -- moon.   

supreotlei -- "gratuitous blessing,  

Arei --  sixth day, day of purification.

The calendar consists of twelve months.  (The word rei is related to the word roi, which is the moon)  The similarities between the Roman and the Bergonian, given the vastly different calendars of other civilizations, are quite striking, though many other cultures employed calendars of 12 months, including the Inca and ancient Chinese and Hindu.

The Romans, however, had nothing like the week of our current calendar, which Christians created by grafting the Hebrew Sabbath and the related seven day week onto the Roman Calendar of twelve months. The Roman-Christian grafting produces the most conspicuous asymmetry in our calendar today-- there is no way of fitting even-day weeks into months variably of 30, 31 and 28 days length.  However the Bergonian weeks are of six days and the months are strictly thirty days long, producing a perfect fit. Just as the Judeo-Christian week revolves around the Sabbath, the Shufrantei week revolves around the sixth day of Arei, the day for ritual purification.

Thus the year consisted of 12 months of 30 days apiece, and 60 weeks of 6 days apiece. The months dependably consisted of 5 full weeks apiece. Thus, each date on the calendar invariably fell on the same day of the week, a feat unequaled by our modern Gregorian calendar.

The Bergonians recognized four seasons that corresponded identically  to  what we called Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. They began and ended on the Solstices and Equinoxes. The seasons and the four cardinal directions corresponded to the Four Children of Arkan and Icotesi, the Father and Mother Gods of all things, the four processional "stages and turns," by which time and movement through space were understood, and every other process of tranformation. 

Tratei, "repose"—Winter corresponds to the child-god Lacori, the essence of Samratla, and to the north. It is black, corresponds to the night, contains sleeping, repose, forgetfulness, preparation, waiting.

Sretei, "blooming"—Spring corresponds to the child-goddess Apura, the essence of Pueshatla, and to the east. It is green, corresponds to the dawn, the morning, youth, new projects.

Ipraei, Summer, corresponds to the child-god of Tanteli, the essence of Flietla, and to the south. It is white, corresponds to middle of the day, contains richness, ripeness, heat, siesta, long rambling.

Mietlei, Autumn, corresponds to the child-goddess Mara, the essence of Sienetla, and to the west. It is red, of the evening passing into night, the conclusions, the harvest, the culmination, celebration.

Each of the seasons embraces three months, regarded as a "family" of months.

Each of the months consists of 30 days. Each month also consists of five weeks of six days apiece. Each of the months bear traditional names derived from popular notions of the month's personality as evident in the weather or analogized to human emotions. Some names have self-evident names, such as Netekrishe, the 9th month that corresponds to late August and early and mid September. The name means "time of storms" since at this time the hurricanes come off the Atlantic and sometimes batter southern and western Bergonia. This month also sees the advent of the stormier westerly weather patterns for much of Bergonian that last throughout the winter. Other names have more obtuse meanings, such as Capinei, the second month, which means "impatience" or "rushing," and Clatei, the tenth month, which means sweetness. One journal from the 4^th century contains this: "’Is Clatei any more like honey because of its name,’ I ask you. The peasant, passing by, hears us and immediately answers, ‘of course.’"

The names of all the months come from the Nacateca language, as have most things associated with the Shufrantei religion.

For a long time before Emperor Velorec's reign, astronomers had known that the true solar year was a little longer than 365 days. They had estimated its true length as 365.25 days, and so-- like the Romans-- they added an extra day every four years-- which they called the five (or six) "leftover days."  

In fact the year is 365.242199 days long. Velorec's own astrologers came up with a figure almost that accurate. So they realized that merely adding an extra day every four years would not quite work. Adding an extra day in too many years would pull the calendar off its solar moorings. The Gregorian reckoning handles this slight difference by omitting leap day for every centennial year not divisible by 400 (e.g. 1900 no, 2000 yes). The Bergonians did not count by a decimal (base ten) system (see infra), but used a grand cycle of 360 years. Therefore, they concluded that every 360th year would be shorted by three days, almost the same net effect.  

Ideally, each month would contain thirty days, divided into five weeks of six days apiece, but the solar year of 365.242199 days prohibits such tidiness. While the Romans solved this dilemma with the expedient of pasting the five extra days to five of the twelve months, the Bergonians set the five days apart from the counting of months and years and made them special days of religious significance.

Therefore, the five days do not fall within any month, and they are not counted in the six day cycle of the week. The Bergonians called the five extra days supreotlei-- translated commonly as "leftover days"-- though the proper theological name is eshuotlei, which means "foundation days."

The placement of the five (or six) extra days is what makes the Bergonian calendar unique.  Each of the five days fell in its own unique way.  

The Day of Night -- the last day of the year, which was supposed to fall on the shortest day of the year. 

The New Light Day -- which followed the Day of Night, and was the first day of the year.  This was also the first day of the Festival of Light. 

The Summer Solstice, coming after the sixth month and before the seventh month, celebrated . 

Arcan's Day

Icotesi's Day

In the actual occurrence, these five days did not necessarily fall on the day of the actual astronomical event, since the calendar took on its own life, but the counting conventions allowed the days and the events to fall 

When the calendar required a sixth extra day-- what we call the "leap day"-- the Bergonians added it to the observance of the Summer Solstice, thus extending it to two days.

The Sixty Weeks

The names of the sixty weeks parallel the names of the sixty satlei (N)/ sfet (M), or sfei (N/M), "signs," employed in the traditional Oracle that people in Medieval times used  to predict the future and reveal the tendencies in events. The first term, satlei/sfet, refers to the essence of the element and refers to the manifestation of the element in divination, while the second term, sfei, refers to the weeks which carry the name. The weeks carry definite names and come  in a definite  order, while the satlei may have multiple names, symbols and ambiguous attributes. Moreover, while the temporal correspond to the elemental satlei, they are not identical.  The sixty sfei, like the satlei. fall into four "suits" which correspond to the four seasons, three "planes" which corresponded to the first, second and third months within  each  of  the four seasons, and five "essences" which correspond to the five weeks in each month.

Each of the sixty weeks of the year has a name, a symbolic glyph, a color and a bunch of associated myths and symbols. These names, along with those of the seasons and the months, comprise a great system of "symbology" for the Bergonian in which they see the world reflected. The sixty weeks correspond somewhat to the number of satlei-- "elements" or "possibilities"-- in the Bergonian Oracle, an arcane method of divination popular in ancient and medieval culture. Thus the Bergonians see every week of the year colored by its own unique personality.

The 60 satlei or signs, along with an explanation of the Oracle, is given below.

Each of the six days of the Bergonian week has a name. The names evolved  in the Minidun  language, and each has a Nacateca derivative. Except for the name,  these names derive from the Minidun language.

1.  Paomei-- the day for "Preparation," the "morning" of the week.

2.  Pebrumei-- the "August" or "Formal" day. Tieris, judges and other officials schedule all formal meetings and events for this day, or at least to begin on this day.  People exchange the formal greeting on this day.

3.   Clamei-- the "Market" day  (clamoi means "marketplace.").  On this day traders and peddlers traditionally convened in the markets and sold their wares to the people. This practice determined the rhythm of the traditional economy in Pre-Columbian times. Later, when the Europeans came and tried to impose their customs, they tried to shift the market day to Sunday. The markets continued to function on Clamei in the interior, where few Europeans settled. Moreover, in the larger cities merchants set up their markets both on Sundays and Clamei, creating a curious schedule, where the market opened every seventh day by one count, and every sixth day by another.

4.   Cotlei-- the day for "Gathering." On this day families gather in the evening for dinner. Typically weddings were held on this day.

5.   Tramei-- the day for "Completion." Before the final day, reserved for rest and ritual, workers conclude the week's work on the fifth day. The name also means Music Day, since, at the conclusion of the week's work, people join together,  play  musical instruments, and dance. This was the day for theater presentations and concerts. The concept "completion" and "music" (or at least musical compositions) imply a finished process.

6.   Arei-- The sixth day. The Shufrantei and Mihradist faithful attend rites at the temple on this day. Traditionally, people rest on this day. This is traditional Bergonia's equivalent to the sabbath. People have also translated the name as "Prayer time."

The Counting of Years

Most Eurasian cultures count years in numerical succession from some single point in history, significant in the particular religious view of history. By far the most prevalent of these counting systems is the Christian system which counts the years from the year in which early Medieval scholastics presumed the birth of Christ to have occurred. The Moslems count from the year that the prophet Mohammed migrated from Mecca to Medina. Other Eurasian cultures counted years within discrete eras of comparatively short duration. For example, the Japanese count years within dynastic eras. The accidents of history determine the length of a particular era, so that the counting resumes from number one whenever a new dynasty replaces an older one.  The Pre-Columbian Bergonians did not count from a fixed point within history, but rather referred to an epochal long-count inside which human history fit.

The Pre-Columbian Bergonians employed two systems of counting years. The common man, especially the peasants, employed one system, which consisted of repeating cycles. They called this system the "Little Reckoning." Each cycle consisted of 64 years, which the natives called a "great year." They divided such a cycle into 8 "months," which in turn consisted of 8 years-- a "week" in the time of a "great year." They counted the years as follows:

This is the same alternating method of counting that the Mayans used in enumerating their calendar.

This pattern established a succession of sixty-four years, which coincided with the sixty-four characters of the Oracle. The years carried along with them the names of the Oracle-- which also nearly coincided with the names of the sixty weeks of the year, so that sixty of the sixty-four years shared names with the weeks. Therefore, each year also had a private name, although these names were used only for strictly superstitious and poetic purposes, and never in the actual reckoning.

The other system, called the "Great Reckoning" allowed the Bergonian to embrace the sweep of time and consider the passage of eons. This system is built out of large  units of 360  years called "grand cycles" and again coincide thematically to the annual calendar. Each year  represents  a day in a theoretical year of 360 days. In this cycle, unlike the actual year, the five extra "days" are not replicated in any way. The Great Reckoning then employs the Little Reckoning to tally the grand cycles. A single repetition of the Little Reckoning's count of sixty-four, with each count including 360 years, allowed the Bergonians to count 23,040 years in time.

To keep count, the priests of Shufrantei who devised this system divined that the current era of  23,040 years commenced in what we refer to as the  year  15,787 B.C. (16,785 years ago) This era will terminate in the year 7,252 A.D. Some ancient sources maintain that Arkan and Icotesi ordained this system after they created the world in 15,787  B.C. and that they would "cause the world to collapse" at the end of the cycle. But most Pre-Columbian Bergonians recognized the rather arbitrary nature of the Great Reckoning.

The ancient Bergonians attached importance to the Great Reckoning because they supposed that other civilizations grew and then "collapsed" before their own. They traditionally recounted the mythical history of three such prior civilizations, which we know as the Atlantis myth.  The oldest and most revered account of these early civilizations is the Minioathi-- "Book of the Dawn Years," itself apparently composed more than three thousand years ago by bards and singers, and later committed to writing.

Frighteningly, the very first year of the cycle One Cow was 1493-- coinciding with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on his second trans-Atlantic voyage.  This told the Bergonians that the calendar did, indeed, circumscribe eras of history.

The Two Cow cycle began in 1853 and will last until 2212 A.D. Coincidentally, 1852 saw the invasion of Serpi by General John Rarsa in the last year of the Civil War.  In 1853 Burani won election to the office of Pacunot and his Mountain Lion Party consolidated the victory  that  they  earned  in winning the civil war. In 1853 the Mountain Lion engineered something of a social revolution by granting the voting franchise to all adults, opened the field up to unions and peasants associations, and passed sweeping laws designed to protect the peasants' land interests. Many saw in these events the final close of the colonial era and the beginning of a strong national government with a clear social agenda that permitted the reassertion of native culture. Bergonians love coincidences and, like many other people around the globe, tend to put a little too much store in them.

Other years  in which new eras commenced were:

1387 B.C. (One Eagle),  

1027 B.C. (Two  Eagle),

667  B.C. (Three Eagle),

307 B.C. (Four Eagle),

53  A.D.  (Five Eagle),

413 A.D.  (Six  Eagle),

773 A.D. (Seven Eagle),

1133 A.D. (Eight Eagle) and  finally

1493  (One Cow).

Another system of reckoning dates years from the beginning of Ierecina's mission of religious conversions, akin to how the Christians and Muslims count their years, but this system never came into common use.

60 x 24 = 1440 minutes/day / 16 Bergonian segments = 90 minutes / 8 short segments = 11 minutes.

THE ANCIENT BERGONIAN ORACLE 

The Ciesitei or Oracle is an arcane method of divination popular in ancient Bergonian culture.  The oracle originated among the Lasa folk of the Cuanta River Valley and after the Ancita people appropriated it from the Lasa, it evolved parallel with Shufrantei culture.  It became a common device for priests and common people to seek divine guidance and prediction of the future.  It also embodied nearly the entire system of Shufrantei symbolism. While many institutions and practices of traditional Bergonian civilization didn't survive the histori­cally traumatic experience of the great plagues, the Oracle remains in popular usage to the present, and its symbolism recurs in modern fiction, movies, puns and poetic allusions.

The Oracle is used to identify and characterize situations and evolving patterns.  It is a system of arcane understanding which categorizes and interrelates all phenomena.  It is also a system of divination.  The Oracle preexisted the great Shufrantei prophet Ierecina and was practiced in one form or another all throughout ancient Bergonia.  It survives to us in three different versions.

The most common version of the Oracle is the Central Oracle (referring to the central part of Bergonia where it originated) consists of sixty elements that parallel the sixty weeks of the Shufrantei calendar.  The “Central” version contains sixty “signs,” produced by combining basic elements according to this formula:  5 x 3 x 4 = 60.

There has also persisted over the centuries a “Western” Oracle, originally from the ancient cities of Clacupo.  It also follows the principles of 3 x 4 x 5 = 60, but uses a modified set of symbols.  Since it was invented by coastal people, it contains more ocean and coastal images.  Its whole tone is more fatalistic and perhaps more pessimistic as well, and almost entirely lacking in the military images that the Central version includes.

The “Eastern version,” from the Amota region, uses 64 signs instead of 60.  The number sixty-four is the Bergonian equivalent of our "100," because ancient Bergonians used eight digits in a base-eight system of numbers.  The Amota version once used some unique signs, but over the centuries has adopted the 60 satlai, and then added four more, which represented the basic four elements of "suites" that permeated Bergonian symbolism.   

Under all three versions there are three dimensions, so that every sign is located somewhere on each dimension.  Here are the dimensions under the dominant Central version:

The Five-Way Dimension:  the nature of the action and the relationship.

This dimension identifies five different types of action and interrelation.  Each act and state of being partakes of one of these five natures. 

O  oscillation, steadiness, conscientiousness (Big 5 personality trait),

S  “separatio,” dividing, fission, neuroticism (Big 5),

C  “coniunto,” joining, fusion, agreeability (Big 5),

E  “exedo,” eating, consumption, absorption, openness (Big 5),

V  vegetative, spreading, extroversion (Big 5).

The Three-Way Dimension:  the essence of the matter.

Many ancient Greeks thought the world was comprised of four elements: earth air, water and fire.  The three elements understood by the ancient Bergonians were not exactly elements in the sense either we or the ancient Greeks meant the term—instead these elements were elements of energy and the three categories defined the inherent force in an entity and not just its composite matter.  The Bergonians after all did not see the world as comprising dead matter and animating energy, but instead of force.

R   Fire, red, energy, Id, physicality, sensuality.

Y   Earth, gold/yellow, matter and earth, Ego, logos, word, corpus.

B   Water, blue, spirit, Superego, fluidity, crystallized ideal.

The Four-Way Dimension:  the subject or action in time and space

This dimension describes the four primary anchor points in the various continuums of sequence, location, relative position, and time. 

W  Samratle which embodies the north, the color black, the preba, Arkan, the Pacunot, the Mountain, Winter, stillness.

P  Pueshatla which is green, east, Spring, the fertile crops, expansiveness, arousing, youth.

S   Flietla which manifests itself in the south, Summer, whiteness, meaning variously heat, fire, quickness, torpor, fullness.

F  Sienetla which shows itself in red, the west, autumn, blood, the hunter, passion, decline, atrophy.

The Sixty Signs:

Number in parentheses is the sign’s official number, and also denotes its order in the 60 week calendar.  Thus [1] is the first week of the year, when the Festival of Light occurs and [60] is the last week of the year.

            O-R     the Quartet of Motion

1          O-R-W   [9]   lamp, focus, meditation, concentration, illumination, fire controlled, regulated and tamed. (jump to fire) 

2          O-R-P   [24]  banners in the wind, stirring of air, proclamation and arousal, bravado and pride, group identity, mobilization, and campaigning.  (precedes war)

3          O-R-S    [39]   running, dancing, warrior discipline. See Blue-Heart who avenged wrongs and restored balance.

4          O-R-F    [54]  flying bird:  bird migrations, travel. Obverse: fleeing. (b) heart,

            O-Y     the Quartet of Foundations

5          O-Y-W   [4]  (a) base, mountain, protrusion, dominant. (jump to sky, metal)  (b) all earth, stone, (c) alienness, unhuman, Underground alien monster, chthonic, utterly alien, bats &

6          O-Y-P   [19]  (a) music, (b) drummer/summoning (w/C). Obverse: thunder, earthquakes.

7          O-Y-S   [34]  caravan, exchange, trade, equations, transformation, chemical formulas.

8          O-Y-F   [59]   the juggler.

            O-B     the Quartet of Elements

9          O-B-W   [14]  the dolphin: ocean, tides, fish, dolphins & sealife.

10        O-B-P   [59]  lyre, sky-dancer, wind, kite-flying.

11        O-B-S   [34]   The animator, eagle, prophet.  Obverse: the happy thief, the reckless bon vivant, he who refuses to acknowledge authority.

12        O-B-F   [59]   descending, wisdom, mystic, Tocathe, settling, aging.

            S-R      the Quartet of Authority

13        S-R-W   [12]   (a) forge, volcanism (b) mourner, pyre (c)  firebird (See Lacori, jump to mountains) (w/R)

14        S-R-P   [27]   (a) midwife, catalyst, (b) rebel, risk-taking, sacrifice, (c) chaos erupting (a liminal state), (d) winged cat.  Probably the most multi-faceted and complicated signs.

15        S-R-S   [42]   hardness, blade, harvest, slaying, power, Iregemi, (b) carnivorous, teeth, equating teeth with blades (w/E).  Obverse: beheading, disaster.

16        S-R-F   [57]   the emperor, Obverse: the tyrant.

            S-Y      the Quartet of Reflections and Evasions

17        S-Y-W   [7]   counting, twins, reflection, multiplicity, plowing & sowing, (b) alienation, frontiers. (precedes war), (c) surreptitious meeting, shadows, lovers, treachery, disaster, liminality both in a hopeful revolutionary way and a a scary way.

18        S-Y-P   [20]   child with new toy.

19        S-Y-S   [37]   masks & masquerades.

20        S-Y-F   [32]   ennui, traditions, rejection, decaying house, collapse & catastrophe followed by failure of rebirth, hiding place, time past. post-fire, hiding place, Ecclesiastes & Rubiyat & Osimandas. (jump to the story-teller, the scribe) 

            S-B      the Quartet of Thought

21        S-B-W   [2]  (a) logos, reason, law, (b) solitude, contemplation, (c) the Lame God.  (jump to emperor.)

22        S-B-P    [17]  stargazer, owl/watchfulness, knowledge,

23        S-B-S    [32]  (a) hermit, (b) believer, belief, doctrine, true and tested ways.  (w/O).  Obverse: he who is an intellectual hermit, shut off from the world, intolerance, blind tradition.

24        S-B-F   [47]   reductionism, revealer, judge, cross-examiner, judgment, sorrow, a man walking sadly away, disillusionment. 

            C-R     Quartet of Commingling

25        C-R-W   [15]   (a) cooking pot (w/E), enclosed heat, (b) secret meeting (e.g. "covered pot").  Precedes meal, eating together.

26        C-R-P   [30]   lovers, coming together.  (jump from flags waving.)

27        C-R-S   [45]   feticinai, the army, individuals uniting in a cause or fight.

28        C-R-F   [60]   kickballer, fire, animality, youth, muscularity, vigor, the team.

            C-Y      Quartet of Words

29        C-Y-W   [10]   the scribe, the written word, the ideal, meaning, distinctions and identity.  Story telling, literati, memory. Ink, "red & black," the library.  (w/S, since the discriminations made by literati and men of books are separatio)  Obverse:  lies, questions.

30        C-Y-P   [25]   (a) messenger, the runner, (b) the mythical talking-cat, (b) honeybee, helper. (c) the cricket, frog, owl, noises of the evening (w/O).

31        C-Y-S   [40]  peslar/lacori, celebration and relief, man feasting with neighbors, implicitly after victory. (w/E)

32        C-Y-F   [55]  (a) gift. (b)  marketplace, commingling of things, (c) riddleteller.  Another complicated sign.

            C-B     Quartet of Nourishment

33        C-B-W   [5]   (a) sleeping couple, seed in the ground & germination, contented calm, (b) giving alms (offering with two hands, and in Bergonia the two hands represented the man and woman), sympathy, intercession, also the bed, sleep, refuge, privacy, inner life.

34        C-B-P     [20]   herds & flocks, people acting like herds and flocks, and the shepherds who care for them.  Obverse: prey, what preba-cats eat.

35        C-B-S    [35]   heron, riverbanks, the watering hole, the public well, city plazas, cities, diversity drawn together, feasts, also canals.

36        C-B-F    [50]  (a) wine. (b) fruit, fullness, the arbor, the orchard.  Obverse:  the drunk (liminal), inversions, disorder (w/C),

            E-R     Quartet of Fire

37        E-R-W   [3]  preba, resoluteness, crouching cat, wilderness, supremacy, waiting, patience, noble virtues

38        E-R-P   [18]   hunter and hunted, eating meat,  (precedes fire)

39        E-R-S   [13]   sparks, wildfire, war, fever. 

40        E-R-F   [48]   pyre, fire, smoke

            E-Y      Quartet of the Body              

41        E-Y-W   [13]   corpse, stillness, frozenness.

42        E-Y-P   [28]   apprentice.  the young body, the teacher, guide, mentor, (bad side connotes poor student, bad attitude), c) Big Ugly.

43        E-Y-S   [43]   the body, flesh, skin.  Obverse: underground worm-monster.

44        E-Y-F   [58]   (a) dancing, (b) monkey god.   Obverse: narcissism.

                        Quartet of Passivity

45        E-B-W   [8]  (a) frost, mist, whiteness, opaqueness, (b) weakness, slave. respiratory disease.  Most negative sign of all.

46        E-B-P   [23]  laughing girl, joyousness, simplicity.

47        E-B-S   [38]   (a) arei, purification, (b) sacrifice.

48        E-B-F   [53]   hurricane

                        Quartet of Home

49        V-R-W   [6]   Defense, locks, the guard, briers and thorns, walls, closed doors.

50        V-R-P  [21]  sunlight, sunlight on the doorstep, flowers, sunflowers.

51        V-R-S   [36]   tree, system, composite, vertical, stillness, stability, the house. (jump to emperor, foliage)

52        V-R-F   [51]   baking bread, hearth, family gathering.

                        Quartet of Fullness

53        V-Y-W   [1]   the festival of light.   (OLD: (a) edelei,  rose, boy climbing fence.  The most ambiguous (b) pyre-builder (w/E), preceding pyre.)

54        V-Y-P   [16]   corn, Arcan, gold, the high summer afternoon to come.

55        V-Y-S   [31]   (a) vines, rotting wood, manure, compost, mash, wine: "Now I am terrified of the Earth, it is that calm and patient,/It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions..." --Walt Whitman. sign

56        V-Y-F   [46]   (a)  wheat, Icotesi, silver, Ifuno, (b) acorn, time passed,

                        Quartet of Stillness

57        V-B-W   [11]   lake, stillness, fullness.  (a) hidden waters, the chimo-tree, underground, from the root, subtle below-ground regeneration.

58        V-B-P   [26]   Rain, man viewing rain, waiting, hope/disappointment.

59        V-B-S   [41]   swamp, serpent

60        V-B-F   [56]   brush foliage, growth, concealment, also equated with urban life.

Hybrid Forms of the 5-Way

Hybrids Forms of the 3-Way

proper count of Oracle signs

Different methods of using the Oracle

The most common way is to produce three different signs in a “reading,” the three cards respectively equate to (a) the subject’s internal condition, (b) the subject’s external circumstances, environment and conflict, (c) the outcome.  Sort of a dialectic model.

Oracle and Calendar

History explicitly records that the Great Prophet Ierecina ordered his new religious calendar on the sixty elements of the Oracle.  Each of the sixty weeks of the year has a name (sfei) that corresponds to one of the sixty satlai.  The satlai, along with those of the seasons and the months, com­prise a great system of symbology in which Bergonians see the cosmology reflected.  The sixty satlai are organized around a great circle or wheel, like a medicine wheel or mandala, reflec­tive of the order of the sixty weeks of the year, and the drawings of this calendrical wheel has become a great metaphor for the universe-- and in modern times an emblem of Bergonian culture, like the Aztec calendar wheel is for Mexico.  A little doll figure exists for each satlai, every doll a traditionally recognized figure with a conventional­ized shape and coloration. 

The devotees never forget that the number sixty is built on the basic numbers three, four and five (3 x 4 x 5 = 60).  The calendar embraces four seasons, and each of these in­cludes three months, which in turn include five weeks apiece.  Likewise, the elements of the Oracle are grouped into four "suits" or "stages" which parallel the seasons, which in turn consist of three "planes," and each part consists of five "essences."  Each of the sixty elements, or satlai, corresponds to a sfei, the identity of a week.  Each element and each week thus partakes of one of the four suits, one of the three planes and one of the five essences, producing a unique configuration.

The devotees of the Oracle believe that it and the Calendar together present an integrat­ed manifestation of all the elemental forces at work in the universe.  Therefore, the Oracle Calendar  symbolism  have  produced a representation of the universe that a single individual could employ and, by using it, learn the sublime relationships at work in the world and gain enlightenment.  On a more pedestrian level, a man or woman could employ the Oracle to learn what influences the future would bring to bear.  Bergonians have always understood that it did not guarantee the future, but only described the forces at work.  One could respond by either conforming to the forces or opposing them.

The Common Usage:

The Oracle consists of sixty signs or satlai as elements to future behavior or influences. 

One poses a question, prays and then tosses wooden chips in a prescribed manner in order to select three of the sixty satlai.   The first throw reveals the prevailing or initial influence, sometimes called the protagonistic element or, in Hegelian dialectic terms, the "thesis." The second toss indicates the rising, ascending, antagonistic or challenging influence, or the "antithesis."  The third and final throw produces the outcome or synthesis of the conflict or melding of the first two.  However, one cannot take each of the three offered satlei in isolation from each other; instead they should be taken as a synthesized whole.

Each of the satlai has a number as well as a name.  The number corresponded to the place the satlai held in the calendaric sequence if weeks.  In other words, the first week of the year corresponded to the satlai bearing the number "one," while the last is numbered sixty.

The "Oracle," as it came to be called in colonial times by English speakers, worked in a manner superficially very similar to the Chinese I Ching.  In the 1700's the Oracle became a popular parlor game among the wealthy in Europe.

The Mechanics:

The other systems of divinations in the world typically employ s single method.  The Tarot is a set of cards.  The I Ching allows two different methods: throwing the yarrow sticks and throwing the coins.  This Oracle allows four different ways of randomly producing signs.

1.   Throwing chips.  One takes four square flat chips that tradition dictated must be carved from white oak.  One side of each chip bears a carved symbol, usually the uma, a lozenge device signifying the universal principle.  One throws the chips to obtain three satlai.  In order to obtain a single satlai, one goes through this three step process:

First a person tosses three of the chips and counts the umas appearing-- one uma signifies the Spring, two represents Summer, three represents Autumn, and none represents Winter.  Supposedly, the order of the numbers recalls the process of planting and sowing.   The plowing and planting of corn occurs in the Spring (one), the corn grows through the summer (two), and at its greatest it is harvested (three).  Winter is the dormant time (none).  This step narrows the possibilities to the satlai corresponding to the particular season, ruling out those contained within any of the other three. 

Secondly, the person tosses four chips to yield one of three choices:  In order to get four chips to randomly yield one of three possible choices, the chips are marked as follows:  All the chips are blank on one side.  Two of the chips are marked with a white uma, while two are marked on one side with a black uma.  Marked accordingly, the four chips when thrown  yield  nine possible outcomes (see Appendix), and each of the three "parts" are assigned three of the outcomes.

Finally the person throws four chips to select a number one through five, in order to select one of five weeks within a month.  (Interesting this in his text, when I wrote it, I didn’t bother explaining how.

2.   Rolling dice, as follows: 

Method 1:   You roll one dice, choosing a value x (either 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6).   You roll again, choosing a value y, (1,2,3,4 or 5 or re-roll ).  You roll a third time to choose z, odd or even.  xyz = 6 x 5 x 2 = 60. 

Method 2:  You roll one dice, choosing value x (either 1,2 or 3)  Roll again to chose value y, (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.  If 6, then re-roll).  Now roll two dice for value z (1 thru 4).  xyz = 3 x 5 x 4 = 60

3.   Throwing sticks, perfect for rolling 64 under the Eastern version.  This method of divination entails throwing of four sticks.  Each of the sticks is by standard usage about four inches long and cut with four flat sides, about a half inch in width.  Each of the four sides is painted with a different color: black, green, white and red.  Ceremon­ially, the end of the sticks are painted yellowish orange to indicate the essence of the Center, and a stripe of blue is painted all around the stick, representing the Outer Essence.   Naturally, the four sides and four colors represent the four essences of the cardinal points:  black, green, white, red.

By using the sticks, one finds that the four sticks of four sides yield sixty-four possible combinations.   One simply has to throw once and then considers the colors showing on the sides of the fours sticks facing up.  Each of the sixty-four possible combinations refers the reader to one of the sixty-four elements.  For example, one tosses the sticks and produced combinations such as:  red-red-white-black, or red-white-green-green, or white-green-green-green.   Obviously, the combination of green-green-green-green referred the reader to Pueshlata, one of the four pure essences, which is not part of the system of sixty satlai.

4.   Drawing cards.  In Tan times this became a popular variant for the 60-sign version, when playing cards were square.  In modern times they adopted the rectangular pattern of European playing cards, and this is the most common version in use today.  One can walk into just about any bookstore or variety shop and find a deck of Ciesitei Cards.

5.   Spinning a wooden top.  For the 64-sign version the top had eight sides and each was painted with a number, one through eight.  When it fell over, it landed on one of the eight sides.  The seeker spun the top twice, and eight possibilities times eight possibilities yielded a total of sixty-four possible outcomes.  For the 60-sign version there were tops painted with sixty stripes and the stripe highest on top it came to a final rest represented the chosen sign.

6.  Spinning wheels, like a small roulette, keno or game-show wheel.  The 60-sign version used three different wheel, one for each dimension, all on .

17 May 2006