Coligny Calendar

[crowman]

Just having a look at rituals and ceremonies, specifically their dates and meanings behind them... i wondered if the coligny calendar had any bearing on the dates that neo-pagans generally celebrate feast days ie samhain, imbolc etc...) Heres a link to wikipedia...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar

What do people generally think of the coligny calendar? Could it be used as an effective research tool? The explanation wikipedia gives is that it was created circa 2nd century and uses latin.

Could it be a throw-back to something earlier? Im interested in the latin meanings of the months... for instance riuros, thick/ fat/ large month... could this mean a long, hard month maybe?

Maybe one for the linguists?

[megli]

This is a bit of an ancient one. The calendar is in a terrible, fragmentary state. It allows us to tell certain things: that its 2nd c AD makers thought in terms of named months, some of which we can interpret with confidence, and that they divided said months into 'lucky' (MAT = *matus) and 'unlucky' (ANM= *anmatus) ones---the ancestor-words of the terms used in the triads in Branwen about the three fortunate (mad) concealments and the three unfortunate (anfad) disclosures, incidentally.

BUT this is why it almost causes more problems than it solves (!)

a) we're not sure how each month 'pins' onto our calendar year because the Samonios month, which seems to be related to Irish Samhain, actually means (perhaps) 'summery', 'to do with summer', and it is hotly disputed how we should interpret this.

b) we don't know who made it and how 'representative' it is of 'Celtic' calendrical thought---as that article points out, it's v similar to Greco-Roman public calendars.

c) the area had been deeply Romanised, and the calendar itself was found in a temple to Apollo; again, it is a Gallo-Roman item, not a pristine 'Celtic' one

d) and as such it is unwise to generalise from it for 'Brythonic' practice.

[crowman]

Hmmm certainly a difficult subject to approach, I'm trying different ways to get an understanding of why they would celebrate or ritualise before I can look at how the rituals would be performed. Certainly enjoying getting my teeth into the experiential research in the meantime

[deiniol]

I've written about how the Coligny Calendar (or at least the principles behind its organisation) might be "adapted" for Brythonic use here: www.scribd.com/doc/41711977/The-Moriconion-Liturgical-Calendar