Nadiel is still away this week. Sorry.
One of the greatest discoveries that we humans made during the 20th century was the concept of relativity. To describe part of it very, very simply, imagine you’re on a train that’s travelling over a bridge spanning a river at a rate of 50 mph/80 kph. Are you passing over the river, or is the river passing under you? Because you don’t actually feel as though you, personally, are travelling at 50 mph to cross the bridge with such haste, chances are that you’ve rather unconsciously decided that the river is travelling underneath you. That’s not really what’s happening, but that’s what it feels and looks like.
Space and time are inextricably bound to each other in this Universe, and the angels, having designed them to function together, experience time as it is relative to space, so that time on any point on Earth is unique to that particular point on Earth.
Nadiel has expressed to me a remarkable amount of bemusement at the idea of time zones and the much hated daylight saving time. I tried explaining to her that we, as a species, standardized time for a few reasons: 1) we needed consistent schedules for people in different parts of the world; 2) we needed to measure longitude; and 3) it’s just easier for us. She thinks it’s cute.
How the angels handle time is ridiculously complicated to humans because we have neither the mental capacity nor eons’ worth of experience with spacetime to perfect the sorts of calculations they perform to measure time like they do. But, if we were immortal, we’d have a different way of looking at time, too.
After Nadiel tried explaining it to me a few times, she agreed to help me locate tools on the internet to help me calculate how they measure time, so that I wouldn’t have to bother her about it constantly. The smallest unit of time that we humans have is the second; the smallest angelic unit is the hour. Nadiel said that to the angels, hours are ludicrously short enough not to have to divide them into even smaller units, and if you were older than time itself, an hour would seem like a thousandth of a thousandth of a thousandth of a thousandth of second.
The angels’ day begins at sunrise, the night at sunset. The day has twenty-four hours: twelve hours of the day and twelve hours of the night. How the angels calculate each hour is by dividing the whole of the day and the night respectively into twelve, so that each hour is then one-twelfth of the day or one-twelfth of the night. We humans used to mark the day like this, too, but we got rid of it when we wanted schedules. Humans who practice magics are known to divide the hours like the angels despite the precision of our time pieces, for they find that it is useful in helping them to achieve a specific result with their spells. Further to this, there is a curiosity known as Oxford time in which one of the colleges at the University observes the hour five minutes later than the standard GMT, which is actually in accord with relative time.
So—how would you be able to convert our time into the angels’ hours for today, March 15, 2011? First you need to find out what times the sun rises and sets to know where to start. The Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory can help you find out what time the sun will rise and set where you are, and if you need to find your latitude and longitude, you can find out here. Nadiel is presently located at 36°11′55″ North and 105°53′19″ West, where the sun rises at 7.15 AM and sets at 7.11 PM Mountain Daylight Time.
Next, you can either find the sum of all the minutes in the day and divide by twelve, which is a recipe for a migraine, or you can go to a site that will calculate the planetary hours as are used by magicians and alchemists. Simply enter the sunrise and sunset times where you live, and it will do the calculations for you. Once that’s done, you simply disregard the planetary name of the hour and replace it by numbering the hours from one to twelve for the day and night respectively.
Thus, the hours for today, provided you are at 36º11′ North and 105º53′ West, are:
1st hour of the day – 7:15 AM to 8:14 AM
2nd hour of the day – 8:14 AM to 9:14 AM
3rd hour of the day – 9:14 AM to 10:14 AM
4th hour of the day – 10:14 AM to 11:13 AM
5th hour of the day – 11:13 AM to 12:13 PM
6th hour of the day – 12:13 PM to 1:12 PM
7th hour of the day – 1:12 PM to 2:12 PM
8th hour of the day – 2:12 PM to 3:12 PM
9th hour of the day – 3:12 PM to 4:11 PM
10th hour of the day – 4:11 PM to 5:11 PM
11th hour of the day – 5:11 PM to 6:11 PM
12th hour of the day – 6:11 PM to 7:11 PM
1st hour of the night – 7:11 PM to 8:11 PM
2nd hour of the night – 8:11 PM to 9:11 PM
3rd hour of the night – 9:11 PM to 10:11 PM
4th hour of the night – 10:11 PM to 11:12 PM
5th hour of the night – 11:12 PM to 12:12 AM
6th hour of the night – 12:12 AM to 1:12 AM
7th hour of the night – 1:12 AM to 2:13 AM
8th hour of the night – 2:13 AM to 3:13 AM
9th hour of the night – 3:13 AM to 4:13 AM
10th hour of the night – 4:13 AM to 5:14 AM
11th hour of the night – 5:14 AM to 6:14 AM
12th hour of the night – 6:14 AM to 7:14 AM
As we’re pretty close to the equinox, the hours here have a pretty uniform length, because the length of the days and nights are almost identical. When the days are significantly longer or shorter in the months surrounding the solstices, the difference between the lengths of the hours of the day and night is more pronounced. Bear in mind, however, that this is all dependent upon whether you’re in an area above or below the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, where the lengths of days and nights wax and wane depending on the season. If you live in an equatorial region, the lengths of the days and nights are rather equal all year round, and the angels’ hours are similarly regular year round. More relativity.
But of course, this is only a tiny part of the angelic reckoning of time. There are Archangelic rulerships of hours, too, which we’ll get to when Nadiel’s got another week off.
Have a great week!
♥
UPDATE, January 6, 2013
OK OK OK What I should’ve written before is that there are twelve months in the angels’ year, with one Archangel ruling over each month. Within each month, the days are ruled by the Archangels, and each Archangel rules over an hour of the day and an hour of the night. Moving on…
Now that we’ve done all the math above, let’s go back and finish converting March 15, 2011 at Nadiel’s location in Dixon, New Mexico, at, say, 2:54 pm into Angelic time. If you go to the Calendar Page, you can see that March 15 (regardless of the year) corresponds to the 25th day of the month of Barakiel, which is a day of Sachiel. 2:54 pm falls during the 8th hour of the day above, which, if you go to the Hours Page, corresponds to the Hour of Michael.
Therefore, March 15, 2011, 2:54 pm, in Dixon, New Mexico, converts to 25th Barakiel, Day of Sachiel, Hour of Michael. 25.12.1.1.29.23
“But what about leap years? And feast days? What do we do for those?!”
The Angelic Year starts on the first day of the Vernal Equinox. A year in which you’d use the leap year dates would start the year before we’d mark it, e.g. March 21, 2011 to March 20, 2012 is an angelic leap year. That means that December 7, 2011 corresponds to a Day of Camael. The angels’ leap year would then continue past our new year, so that February 15, 2012 would be a day of Metatron, a feast day.
Feast days mean that you use the second table on the Hours Page, and not the nice, standardized version that you get on all the normal Archangels’ days. Then you have to know which day of Metatron you’re dealing with… ::siiiigh:: This is why Nadiel says that most mortals avoid dealing with feast days.
Let’s convert 11:29 am on February 15, 2012 for Dixon, New Mexico. Using the same tools we employed above, it corresponds to the 6th hour of the day, 26th Cassiel, a day of Metatron. After some more ludicrous calculations that only some of the angels care about, you’ll arrive at the conclusion that it’s the 1st day of Metatron, in which the 6th hour is ruled by Dirachiel.
So, at long last, February 15, 2012, 11:29 am in Dixon, New Mexico, converts to 26th Cassiel, Day of Metatron, Hour of Dirachiel. 26.11.2.2.30.23
I know, I know. It’s ridiculously complicated. If you’d rather have someone do the work for you, head over here and I’ll convert it for you.
♥ EAB
