--- Amanda Babcock <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> > valien
> > megraur
> > caelian
> > seuthul
> > caret
> > urgom

Right about now, they all look "blood" to me, so
I won't bother trying to sort them out any
better.

> As for months of the year, they start at the
> bottom of a circle with
> January and proceed counter-clockwise.
> July-August is at the top, rather
> than just July, causing me to always think that
> August-December is six
> months instead of five; spring must be more
> crowded than fall :)
>
> This always annoys me when I see depictions of
> the Wheel of the Year in
> neopagan books, because they always start at
> the top and go clockwise.

Deosil? What's wrong with going round with the
Sun? ;)

> When I was growing up, I rationalized the
> counterclockwiseness as meaning
> that I was *inside* the clockface of the
> seasons, looking out.

Neat! I often thought that "clockwise" should be
round to the left (lloking from the clock's
perspective).

Anyway, the Talarians (or rather, scholars in the
Eastlands in general) have a visual
representation for how time flows. Minutes and
seconds don't exist, and hours only barely
(clocks are few and far between, and never seem
to jive with the Sun!). The halfday is seen as a
boatman bug twiddling around (deosil!) in current
of a stream that flows along to the right. As the
boatman flows along, he describes larger circles
around rocks in the current and these are the
neverending cycles of the months and years.

Once you get to time bigger than years, you move
over to the less poetic and more abstract Flower
of the Ages of Stars. It is depicted as a large
flower, in fact. At the stem is a bud with the
name of the current Age on it (and surrounding
the Flower are eight stylised stars with the
names of all the preceeding Ages). Then comes a
fanlike leaf divided into 40 leaflets (in four
groups of ten) each marked with the name of one
of the Hipparchian Ages. Beyond that is a rack of
four seivelike devices with the names of the
zodiacal eras. And at the top is a ring that
represents the beginning, ending and fullness of
Time.

Starting out at each Hipparchian Age, you move up
along the rack of zodiacal eras and around ten
times before moving on to the next rack. Once
you've moved around the four racks (and thus
through all 40 ages) the flower comes to full
bloom and you go back to the start with a new
Star Age and do it all over again! Sort of a huge
cycle of cycles as big as the universe.

Padraic.


=====
beuyont alch geont la ciay la cina
mangeiont alch geont y faues la lima;
     pe' ne m' molestyont
     que faciont
doazque y facyont in rima.

.