REINVENTING TIME
The Nadirian Calendar

Under the auspices of the Church, the Nadirian Calendar was created by Dieter Heinz, the astronomer of Nadiria. He, like Samuel Brundt, was absorbed in the study of natural rhythms and their affect on the human mind and body. He noticed that the Gregorian calendar was a completely artificial system that made little sense. What Dieter realized was that there were thirteen lunar cycles in a year, plus one day. Therefore, He devised a calendar with the normal twelve months, keeping their traditional names for ease of use, plus he added a new month, called Tricember.

To balance the calendar, he added an annual Leap Day, which was inserted between the end of Tricember and the beginning of January. Leap Day became a festival day, with all kinds of celebrations, parades, games, and feasting. It was an auspicious day to start a new enterprise, or to get married, or do anything significant. The common greeting in the weeks leading up to the celebratory day was, "What will you do on Leap Day?" Some of the festivities of the day included the Leap, where the young men of the colony tested their

courage by swinging across the Central Shaft on a rope, the Feast, where exotic foods (prepared in the weeks previous) were traded in an open market on the Residence Level, and the Parade of Elders, where the various groups and secret societies made elaborate floats depicting poetic heroes, arcane scenes, and occult dramas.

The desire of the Brundt's to change the entire reality of the colonists was reflected in the new calendar. The need to break with the Outside World was strong. Heinz shared the Brundt's interest in performing social engineering where the very consciousness of the colonists was altered by removing all previously known cultural touchstones. They felt that by conforming to as many natural rhythms as possible, and rejecting all man made constructs, man could achieve perfection in mind, body, and soul.