Today is March 3rd.
On the Gregorian calendar, it reads 3/3. A small, satisfying symmetry. The number three has long carried a sense of wholeness in human imagination. Beginning, middle, end. Birth, life, death. Mind, body, spirit. Across cultures and religions, three has often symbolized completeness. We seem to get an exquisite sense of satisfaction from the perceived strength of a triad.
In the ancient Maya Tzolkin (the 260-Day sacred calendar), today is 1-Ahau. It is the beginning of a new thirteen day cycle (trecena). Ahau is associated with the sun, with light, with illumination, and unity. The number one marks initiation. A starting point. A seed moment.
Astronomically, today also holds a full moon and a total lunar eclipse. A precise alignment of sun, earth, and moon. This is the kind of celestial choreography that humans have tracked for as long as we have looked up.
Different systems. Different languages. Different ways of relating to movement in the sky and the passage of days.
But here’s the part that fascinates me most:
None of these frameworks (or any others in existence) are the ultimate truth. They are beautifully constructed agreements. They are ways of attempting to organize the vastness of what we experience. They are ways of trying to locate ourselves inside something that never stops moving.
In short... it’s all made up!
I certainly don’t mean this in a dismissive or cynical sense; quite the contrary. I mean it in the most awe-filled sense imaginable!
Humans are astonishingly creative. We imagine structure from formlessness. We carve meaning out of repetition. We build calendars, myths, equations, and rituals as bridges between ourselves and the mystery.
And once something is agreed upon, we get super serious about it real quick!
January 1st is the new year where I live. Somewhere else, the year begins with a different moon. Another culture marks a different turning. Another era counts differently altogether. From place to place and century to century, what is “true” about time shifts.
Our perceptions differ. Our meanings differ. Our agreements differ.
And yet there is a powerful mechanism in the human body-mind that longs for certainty and solidity. For shared ground. When something feels like it provides safety or belonging, we cling to it so tightly, as if our lives depend on it. And maybe they do...?
So, what began as imagination hardens into identity. What began as a symbolic marker becomes something we defend as though it were absolute.
To me, it is beautiful that we make meaning. What other creature on this planet does?
It just becomes really complicated really quickly when we forget that we made that meaning out of nothing more than a byproduct of an animated meat suit doing its best to survive.
Beneath every calendar, every eclipse, every sacred count, there is something prior to the story about it. Something that does not require agreement in order to exist...
Maybe the larger purpose of “auspicious” days (as if there is a purpose), is to simply invite us to be curious:
What is here that precedes all concepts of time, alignment, and sacredness?