Time is important. Our life is measured in it, and there's no way to reverse it. How we use our allotted time on this planet is, of course, the most important question that anyone ever faces. But how to measure time? It all seems so obvious, doesn't it? You have years, which are divided into 365 days with a leap year every four years to make up for the fact that a year isn't exactly 365 days. You're good to go, at least for as long a period of time as anyone could expect. That's all you could expect from any calendar, right?
Wrong.
If you're a woo-meister, you know that a calendar could do so much more. In fact (well, not "in fact" so much as woo-meisters assert that) changing to a better calendar could save the world:
Known as Time's Special Witness, 7th century Mayan prophet Pacal Votan left a universal message for future generations of an evolving Earth.
Proclaiming,"If Humanity Wishes To Save Itself From Biospheric Destruction It Must Return To Living in Natural Time," he foretold of our accelerated technological society, and the resulting damage of our collective divergence from Natural Law in exchange for materialist values.
Pacal Votan's prophetic call is alerting present-day humanity that our biological process is transforming, approaching the culmination of a 26,000 year evolutionary program. Bringing the return of universal telepathy, heightened sense capacity, and self-reflective consciousness, this is a return to the sacred domain of our inner technology.
This grand cycle of evolution will culminate winter solstice, December 21, 2012 AD.
Yes! A prophecy from an ancient Mayan prophet, combined with a claim that we are approaching the culminatino of a "26,000 year evolutionary program"! Who could ask for more from their woo? Not me, that's for sure, especially since I now know that the culmination of this evolutionary program will take place in just a little over five years. Bowie fan that I am, it's all I can do to stop myself from belting out Five Years (which, of course, is the first song on one of the best albums ever produced any time anywhere, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars). It may be appropriate, given that the Bowie song is about what happens when the world learns that the end is coming in five years. On the other hand, like a lot of good woo, this Mayan prophecy promises great things at the Winter Solstice 2012:
As avid stargazers, the ancient Maya were keen to an astrological cycle we call the Precession of the Equinoxes. This is close to a 26,000 year cycle in which Earth transits through each of the 12 signs of the zodiac for about 2152 years each. Each of these astrological ages represents one month of the grand, Cosmic Year. Sumerians, Tibetans, Egyptians, Cherokees, Hopi, and Mayans refer to this same 26,000 year cycle in their mystical belief systems and each have developed calendars based on this great cycle.
The Maya messengers, reknowned for their architectural, artistic, mathematical and scientific achievements, left a calling card as a series of super-human sized stone monuments and pyramids with precise calendrical computations. Planted with great intention, these dates were left to ensure that future generations would be alerted to the coming end point of this great 26,000 year cycle. A cycle which corresponds also to a 26,000 year relationship of our Sun orbiting Alcyone, the central star of the 7 Sisters Pleiades constellation. According to the Maya, the "future" which lies beyond this end date is literally "a new world age" - "a new creation."
The 26,000 year cycle of the Homo Sapien's evolution and development is mirrored by the 260-day cycle of human gestation. Collective humanity is right now maturing into the being we have long been encoded to be. As with any labor, it is not the mother, or the baby, who is in charge - it is the primal process of Birth itself unfolding its own destiny.
Thus the December 21, 2012 AD is not the day where all of the sudden a light switch will flip on and everything will change, rather, we are NOW in the process of this transition from one World Age to the next. The changes are underway and will continue steadily accelerating as we head towards the culminating date!
Notice the exquisite woo-logic (or what passes for logic among woos). A prime example is the comparing of the 260 day cycle of human gestation with the 26,000 year cycle. Wow! It's, like, so amazing, maaan! It's, like, a number 100 times the number of days of human gestation. Never mind that the two have nothing to do with each other. After all, 260 days is really only 0.712 years, or 1/36,500 of the time of this "cycle" of 26,000. But, hey, days, years, months, what does it matter among friends, right?
But what does all this mean? Well, like lots of great New Age woo, it tells us that somehow we're "out of touch" with nature, just not in the way you're probably used to hearing. This particular woo tells us that it's all our calendar that's the problem:
What's wrong with the calendar we have?
The 12-month calendar is arbitrary and irregular, lacking any correspondence to actual cycles of nature.
Put simply by physicist Mark Comings:"The 12 month calendar has a cycle that is contrary to and out of phase with the natural annual 13 fold gravitational wave created by the Moon's orbit around the Earth."
This lack of harmony, though generally un-examined, has a profound effect on the way we relate to the Universe we live within.
Wow, I never knew that the Gregorian calendar has such pernicious effects. But what's the problem? Nasty skeptic that I am, I always thought that the rotation of the earth around the sun was a perfectly fine thing to base a calendar on, and plenty "natural," too. For one thing, at least the seasons start and end on the same days every year. I'm happy to tell you more:
The system of 12 months and a corresponding 12 hour : 60-minute clock, is known as the 12:60 timing frequency, and has yet to be proven as a viable measure of time. This flat perception of time does not correlate to any actual cycles of time! It is an artificial model of reality. It is encoding humanity with a comprehension of the natural world as disharmonious and non-coherent!
For example, today on the Gregorian calendar is Tues, December 3rd. What day of the week will January 3rd be? What day of the week will February 3rd be?
The 13 moon calendar is an obvious and ancient way to structure the year. 13 cycles of 28 days describe the year perfectly, with one day of renewal before the new year.
Perfect Periodicity For every one time we go around the Sun,the Moon goes around Earth 13 times.
The year has already been divided by Nature-13 'moon'ths of perpetual harmony.
The 12-month calendar hides the 13th moon. The number 13 is now surrounded by superstition and is considered taboo; unlucky; evil. This fear is reinforced by cultural antiquities like "friday the thirteenth." Often buildings have no 13th floor, or avoid constructing a # 13 apt unit.
Even if all this is true, what's the problem? So what if we use the Gregorian calendar or some sort of lunar-based calendar. Given the tone of the rest of this woo, I think you know, dear readers. What is the very worst possible thing that can happen that New Age woo? That's right, you can lose connection with nature, thanks to that evil scientific mindset:
Why has the 13th moon been hidden from us? What is to be gained by suppressing the creational principle of Mother Nature?
As prominent theoretical physicist Gerard J. Milburn reveals, "The aim of modern science is to reach an understanding of the world, not merely for purely aesthetic reasons, but that it may be ordered to our purpose."
Living under the guise of the 12-month calendar, we have come to view nature as irrelevant - wilderness without intelligence, sentience, or order. It is from this fundamentally flawed perception that humanity attempts to progress 'beyond the limitations of nature.' In fact, it is our model of nature that is flawed, not nature itself.
As a comprehensive reflection of nature, the 13-Moon Calendar is an organization of creational elements that serves as a holistic tool for ongoing participation in life's cyclic processes. If humanity wish to produce harmony, we must use harmonic tools!
And, of course, when when woo-meisteres think of great "harmonic tools," nothing produced in the last several hundred years will do. It's got to be ancient civilizations, preferably long dead ones like the Mayans. The nasty cynic in me is tempted to speculate that it's because no one from these ancient civilizations can tell these woo-meisters that their interpretation of their society is a load of fetid dingo's kidneys, but probably it's just because invoking ancient Mayan mysteries just sounds really, really cool, particularly if you can start dabbling in numerology, astronomy woo, and invoking grand 26,000 year cycles of "evolution." In fact, it sounds just that much more impressive if you can make it into a law, particularly if you call it the LAW OF TIME:
The basis of the knowledge of time is called the Law of Time.
The Law of Time is written: T(E) = ART
Energy (E) factored by Time (T) equals Art.This means that (E) energy, any manifestation of the physical three-dimensional world, possesses order and is in harmony with its environment because it is factored by (T) time. In the conception of the Law of Time, however, capital T refers to time as the universal factor of synchronization. As such, time is defined by the self-existing and intrinsically perfect mathematical ratio 13:20. Derived from the mathematics of the ancient Maya, this ratio is a constant of time that organizes all of the universe as a radial sequence of synchronous moments reflecting different evolutionary phases simultaneously.
[...]
This is why you have never seen an ugly sunset. This is why the birds fly in patterns, even scorpions do a beautiful dance. All of the universe is actually a work of art... And in the days before the triumph of materialistic science it was common to say that God is the supreme architect. After the rise of materialistic science they said God was a clock maker. Big difference.
We say, what is time that it makes this order so harmonious and beautiful? What we say is that time is a form of information biology. We can see this in every living form; it has its stages of growth, it has its particular form of embodiment. Even its communities and social structures all have an aesthetic or artistic quality. This is because time is information biology and with the information biology of time, we say that Time in-forms life. This is a very profound point that we must understand very deeply. When we understand that it is time that informs life, then we see that time is the universal information and the universal in-forming principle...
Yes! They've hit the woo trifecta: information, mathematics, and astronomy woo, all rolled up into one. Actually, it's even more than that, given the references to nature and earlier references to biologic evolution.
Of course, there are many, many other fantastic woo-filled passages on this website, far too many to be encompassed in this post. It's truly astonishing in its combination of New Age mysticism, load of B.S. about prophecies from a long dead powerful civilization that, of course, possessed ancient knowledge that we have lost, complete with the obligatory references to "sacred geometry." Of course, one of the oddest things about all this woo is that it's the only woo that I've ever seen that quotes Dennis Kucinich in support. Of course, this Mayan woo has the obligatory reference to Deepak Chopra, perhaps the most reliable indication of only the highest level of woo. Even better, it cites him as having done actual "studies" allegedly showing how "the stress of linear time contributes directly to an acceleration of the physical aging process, inclusive of deterioration and disease." Actually, I thought it was just time itself. Unless Chopra can tell us how to "unlinearize" time in a scientifically demonstrable way, linear time is what we're stuck with.
Unfortunately, as we get closer to 2012, we can only expect to see more and more of this apocalyptic New Age silliness. I think I'm with P.Z. in this one. I postulate that the end of the 26,000 year cycle is not 2012, but rather 2112. I think Rush probably has a better handle on when this great event is supposed to happen.
On the other hand, if we're to believe this particular site, then I have a reasonable expectation of being alive in 2012 to witness this great transformation of humanity. Maybe telepathy will break out, and we'll see the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or something. Of course, as is the case with most religious, pseudo-religious, or spiritual woo, you probably have to believe to reap the benefits, which means that, given my attitude that virtually all New Age stuff is nothing but the finest (or worst) B.S., I'd probably be left out.
Maybe I'll stick with the Rush prediction. It has the benefit that I'll be long dead by the time 2112 rolls around; so no one will be able to tell me I was full of it.
More like this
Fascinating - the old solar vs. lunar calendar battle, updated for the present day. The Jewish calendar tries to mediate between them - it is a lunar calendar that adjusts to the solar calendar every 2 to 3 years by adding a leap month, so that some years have 13 months. The Muslim calendar is a purely lunar one that does not attempt to calibrate with the solar year, thus it falls eleven days every solar year. In so doing, it is totally unconnected to any seasonal (i.e., "natural") cycles. On the other hand, the solar year is certainly connected to something natural - the period during which the earth goes around the sun.... This is at heart a theological argument and certainly not a scientific one!
Fascinating - the old solar vs. lunar calendar battle, updated for the present day. The Jewish calendar tries to mediate between them - it is a lunar calendar that adjusts to the solar calendar every 2 to 3 years by adding a leap month, so that some years have 13 months. The Muslim calendar is a purely lunar one that does not attempt to calibrate with the solar year, thus it falls behind eleven days every solar year. In so doing, it is totally unconnected to any seasonal (i.e., "natural") cycles. On the other hand, the solar year is certainly connected to something natural - the period during which the earth goes around the sun.... This is at heart a theological argument and certainly not a scientific one!
Actually, I thought it was just time itself. Unless Chopra can tell us how to "unlinearize" time in a scientifically demonstrable way, linear time is what we're stuck with.
I have a tiny quibble about this statement that does not lessen the magnitude of the woo these calender people are pushing (great post BTW!)
Time is only linear in flat Minkowski space, which doesn't actually exist, even if most space is nearly Minkowski. By Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which is definitely not woo--even if it is a pain in the butt to learn--the dimension of time curves continuously, which is part of the reason General Relativity produces gravity. By the very nature of curved spacetime, time is not actually linear anyway.
That said, some closed theoretical spaces have geodesics that return to their starting spacetime positions. This means that, in such a space, the path of an unforced object through spacetime leads back to where that object began its journey.
While such mathematical models do exist, it is important to note that we don't live in such a space and that, as such, this sort of situation is nothing more than a theoretical model created by an interesting quirk from a very powerful kind of physics regarded in a certain way. If anyone were to apply this argument to our real, physical world, it would be forcing the model into a situation where it will break down and not be suitable for selling existential woo.
Unfortunately this wonderful piece of natural woo suffers from a slight mathematical error! The natural lunar month is not 28 days but approximately 29.5 days which is why most traditional lunar calendars have 12 alternating whole months of 30 days and hollow months of 29 days giving an average lunar month of 29.5 days. Actually the lunar month has varied with time and the true value in 2000 CE was 29.53057962 days or 29 days 12 hours 44 mins. 2.08 secs.
So... how many joule-seconds are in the Mona Lisa?
26,000 year evolutionary program? Well, at least they're not YECs.
Bob
All this pseudomath is very nice and quite awesome... until you check some real Mayan studies book (anything written in the last 50 or 60 years will do) and discover that no Mayan society actually used a lunar calendar, at least not in a prominent way, and no Maya in the last 3000 years has ever used a 28-day month.
I already knew this 13-Moon calendar, supposedly more respectful of Nature, and I saw something odd: it ignores leap years. Or are leap years product of that evil scientific, über-rational mindset?
The Mayan calender stuff has been around for a while, but I must say this is the first time I've heard we have to actually use the calender for benefits. Usually we're just supposed to get magic powers or something at the end of it.
It might kill the jocularity of all of this, but I wonder how many suicide cults will be planning to end themselves at that time believing that it'll gift them with some kind of magic power. Other than that, in 5 years we get to see a mass disappointment that will rival the Y2K scare. Although, now that I think about it, they'll probably just claim something really spiritual happened and we evil materialists can't perceive it.
YOU CAN'T HANDLE LOVE, BABY
YOU CAN'T HANDLE LOVE
IT'S OBVIOUS
YOU CAN'T HANDLE
I'd really like to see which set of Mayan symbols translate into the late-Twentieth Century neologism "biospheric".
Maybe Votan really was a prophet, saw into our time, and happened to glance over the shoulder of Lovelock or someone in a vision.
Or ... gee, maybe these 13moon people are just a cartload of delusional liars or something.
And that the next cycle has started. (Or, for the wackier ones, that the world is now living "beyond time" or some such gibberish?) The next mathematical (measurement) cycle starting is all that happens. On(?) that day in 2012 or whenever (I believe the date is in some dispute amongst scholars?) the current cycle ends. Ergo, the next one begins. Yawn...
Or, as the Wikipedia article puts it:
OK, how many people have the theme song from Rent running through their heads?
I suggest we coin a new term for these situations when a "trifecta" just doesn't cover it: "omnifecta"! And I won't even charge you a nickel every time you use it, or anything.
Sorry to be distracted by trivia (ok, that's a lie), but I love this typo in the paragraph after the first blockquote: "culminatino" -- it's like the fundamental particle of achievement or something :)
Everyone who managed to read that whole page is far more patient an tolerant than I. I managed to get through the first three paragraphs and just couldn't go on. It's like my brain was lactose intolerant and that page was a tall glass of milk. Once woo-ness has been ascertained, why go on?
Yes I have. Nov 16, 1997. Ugliest damn thing I ever saw. You'd think these people could have employed one disinterested fact checker. But NO.
It's the little details like this which trip them up.
Yeah, anyone claiming there is no such thing as an ugly sunset has never been in Saskatchewan mid winter when the Sun is a pale washed out disc in the sky shining faintly through hazy clouds.
time is a form of information biology
That is the most beautifully compact statement of woo I think I've seen in a long time. I'm in awe. Shades of "celery consciousness"....
"nd, of course, when when woo-meisteres think of great "harmonic tools," nothing produced in the last several hundred years will do. It's got to be ancient civilizations, preferably long dead ones like the Mayans."
Which always prompts me to wonder (nasty cynic that I am); if they were so incredibly wise, how does it happen that they are also long dead?
Susannah -
They aren't dead, they've ascended. I thought everyone knew that. . .The culmination came a bit early for them.
Why not slow down the Earth rotation a little, so a year would last exactly 360 (new) days.
We'd be done with that leap years tomfoolry.
Oh, and fix up the Moon too, so a Lunar month be exactly 30 new days.
"So... how many joule-seconds are in the Mona Lisa?"
I love you, Bronze Dog!
I especially liked the Flash animation on the webpage, supposedly illustrating how the moon circles Earth 13 times for every revolution around the sun. It actually has the moon circling Earth 11 times, and the numbers are just displayed totally at random to sum up to 13.
So... how many joule-seconds are in the Mona Lisa?
Exactly 100 times as many as the difference between the distance from the Earth to the moon and the mass of a small orange.
This is just another fact confirming the intrinsic sacred geometry present in the whole of Creation.
This woo has been around for a while - in fact, the cyberpunk roleplay universe of Shadowrun has been based on it.
I'm quite looking forward to 2012, when elves and dwarves and orcs will walk among us again...
Or maybe not. ;)
We are the priests of the Temple or Syrinx!
Someone's going to be offering furniture with no payments, no interest for 5 years at the end of this year.
I feel sorry for the poor folks who get it thinking, "Free furniture!"
According to this article, on the morning of December 21, 1986 my mother was completing her 260th day of gestation, allowing me to live for exactly the last 26 years of a 260,000 day evolutionary process.
Since the time I was 15 I would just start writing in the middle of the night (while fully lucid and awake), coming up with these wonderful ideas that would later be presented to me in similar theories written throughout history. I randomly sought out this page (feeling exceptionally antsy), and like most of the people posting, I didn't make it completely through. Not because it was too "out there" for me to perceive. I take in all ancient beliefs and current theories with an open mind. I couldn't get through because I noticed that some of my life experiences and ideas coincide with some of the information presented. By the end it came to the point where it made so much sense that I didn't need to read on, I needed to use the information I'd obtained to create something else. But that's a totally different story. What I want to share here is the most recent and concrete example of how my life relates to the information presented.
The moon has been throwing information at me for about a month. Normally I could care less about the moon, but it first pushed my eyes open when I discovered to what extent the moon is controlling life on this planet. I love fishing but don't get out much, so somehow I found that moon cycles can predict aggressive eating patterns in fish, enabling me to skip those days in which I'm doomed to get no bites. I realized the moon is much more significant than I ever worried, which shows how much I've been paying attention to it. I've learned nothing in 20 years, which is why all this information obtained in the past month stands out to me.
The second time the moon came into my experiences was when I had the random desire to read this medicine wheel book that I was forced to buy from the library because my rabbit chewed the cover. I hadn't even read it when I bought it. I did eventually discover that it's bursting with wonderful ideas coinciding with my experiences, but I rarely read it because I suck at life. I haven't even read half of it in 3 years. Anyway, the random page that I opened to described the moon's relationship to humanity. I immediately thought it was funny since I just learned of the fishing thing, which helped me take the information in. I figured the ideas presented were of importance and would have liked to done some experimenting, but I am wholly consumed by my busy days and pretty much didn't think about it again. This was like, the night before Harry Potter book 7 came out, so it was in-fact pretty much pushed totally out of my mind.
But it came back when I noticed another moon-related coincidence. I tuned into a program titled science today or something equally vague and general. Normally I don't like to turn stuff like that on because I can't really busy around and pay attention, but this time I stopped busying and just watched. The entire subject was the moon, followed by some show about comets and the moon's effect on them. It just seemed to me that
a. the moon had a great effect on the coming and going of dinosaurs, wiping out 99% of life. so
b. without such things happening in the planet's history things wouldn't be precisely as they are today. In that way the moon had a huuuuge hand in our development. I'm not saying that the moon is a celestial being throwing comets at us at precisely the right time, I'm just saying, its forces had a big hand in the big picture so it should not be ignored.
So I like to notice little coincidences and take them as a sign that there's a bigger picture to be discovered. What I got of this current collection of moon information being thrown at me is that the moon should not be ignored. It effects weather, which directly affects plant life, which indirectly affects animals. Animals are also directly affected by the moon, some basing mating patterns on the moon's cycle. It pretty much effects all life on this planet in ways that we may not even know. It would probably be naive of us to think that we are an exception. It probably shouldn't be ignored. But of course, turning knowledge into action is hard and I pretty much completely ignored this realization. But fate would continue to pulls my eyes open for me since I obviously can't lift them myself.
So at this point I'm aware that all this moon information is suspicious and I need to do something with it, but I'm pretty much worthless when it comes to taking an active hand in my philosophizing. When I came upon this article in my mystery searching antsy-ness one day, I took it as a coincidence that I immediately discovered how its not just my birthday that fits into the end of the calendar pattern, its the age I am going to be on that date as well. 260; 26; 260,000. The coincidence tells me to pay attention to what this article says. And coincidence, it just happens to discuss the exact cycle of the moon that the book I read describes. I don't research this stuff; it comes to me. The book was obtained by complete accident. It gives information of the ancient shaman medicine wheel, having nothing to do with the mayans in particular. I didn't even know what a medicine wheel was when i checked it out that day. Its not like I'm out there trying to discover what is going to happen on dec 21 2012. I'm simply mildly interested in the fact that an ancient calendar was predicted to end on my birthday, and everything else just seems to come into my head and fall into my lap. I type my birthday into google and read a couple of articles every 2 or 3 years. In this tiny time span new information continues to come up. And these new ideas surrounding the end of the calendar mysteriously continue to relate directly to my life. Its like I was just waiting for this article to give me the last piece to the puzzle. How can I ignore it?
I know we like to pretend that things are all fine and dandy, but should we really stop trying to figure out the answers to questions that science can't address. But where do we look for the answers that science can't reach? The answer is in the question. Where science can't reach. Chance. We know that the probability exists, but when it is so low and happens anyway we consider it chance. God's hand, a miracle. Follow the hand, the coincidences, and we may find god himself. and by that I mean everything and nothing, ya know.
This experience has told me that it may be possible to tap into the moon's influence to aid spiritual searching, and hopefully shed some light on humanities deepest questions. I have a feeling we may be led to something having to do with the same date as the mayans were. The moon's phases are said to provide periods of spiritual awareness for humans. A period for action, for planning, for contemplation, etc. Simple meditation and awareness/trust in the effect of the moon's cycle & phases on humans could bring us into a greater awareness, or at least a more harmonious way to work with fate. It's not like it'll hurt to try and I doubt many people in the past century have. So I think this and I'll post it because it's interesting enough to want to try myself. But I wont. I know myself well enough to know that I suck at action.
So if anyone out there is interested, dont be as lazy as me. If you think that it really would be interesting to meditate daily, or at least often, with an awareness of the moon, than do it. Research shamanism, the information is out there. Though europeans/time tried to suppress it hard as they could. Native Americans predicted that the descendants of europeans (who wiped all record of spiritual answers in the first place) will be able to find the answers again from within. It's easier to believe something when you know it and then realize other people know it, though it seems to come from no particular source. Ancient civilizations that held the key to the spiritual world and the mystery of this calendar have been wiped out. What's left are tiny sub-cultures whose translations end up as symbolic and skewed as ruins. We've got to figure this one out ourselves, using the same unknowns as our predecessors: the sky and our own spiritual frontiers.
it kinda makes sense.
"Unfortunately this wonderful piece of natural woo suffers from a slight mathematical error! The natural lunar month is not 28 days but approximately 29.5 days which is why most traditional lunar calendars have 12 alternating whole months of 30 days and hollow months of 29 days giving an average lunar month of 29.5 days. Actually the lunar month has varied with time and the true value in 2000 CE was 29.53057962 days or 29 days 12 hours 44 mins. 2.08 secs. "
All paranormal stuff aside, I think the appeal of this calendar is the fact that it does an excellent job of syncronizing the lunar and solar cycles. They are both imprtant to life on earth in varying capacities, but these two cycles are not synchronous. The reason for the usual 29 and 30 day months is indeed based on the average lunar cycle of 29.5 days. This is how long it takes for the moon to reappear at exactly the same point in the sky. However, the amount of time from dark moon to dark moon is approx 27.1 days. Hence the 28 day months of the mayan calendar, and many old and new pagan calendars. But the Gregorian calendar has months of 30 to 31 days, with February having 28 or 29 on a leap year. This allows for minimum compensation. We only need to add 1 day every four years to keep in sync with the actual cycle of the sun. But in return, syncronization with the moon is further lost. In a full solar year we see the full moon 13 times, but with our long months we can only fit twelve full months in a year. Our gregorian calendar seems like it does a pretty good job of compensating. We only lose 1/4 of a day each year, necessitating one extra day every four years. But this was only accomplished by essentially ignoring the lunar cycle. 30 to 31 days in a month does not give us a perfect average of a lunar cycle. If it did, we would always be seeing the full moon around the same day of the month. A calendar containing 13 months of 28 days syncronizes the lunar and solar cycles to within 1 day of each other. The extra day is added each year as a "day out of time" to compensate. As other commenters have said here, there are other lunisolar calendars, such as the jewish calendar, but I know of no other that accomplishes that syncronization so well.