The Natural Cycle Clock

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In the ancient world, time was many things besides what a wristwatch could measure today.

Let me give one of many differences. An hour was both approximate and tied to the length of the day and night. The beginning of the day cycle was at sunset, rather than midnight. The night, lasting from sunset to sunrise, was divided into watches or twelve equal hours, and the day lasted from sunrise to sunset, also divided into twelve equal hours, but the hours were not equal from one day to another, or between day and night. An hour was a twelfth of the time from sunrise to sunset. (At least where I live, the length of daylight varies considerably between winter and summer. The length of an hour changes with the changes in daylight.) In an age when you couldn't turn on a light switch and have bright light, daylight made a big difference. Time was tied to seasonal changes and how long daylight lasted.

There is a human side to time that I cannot calculate, but I have been profoundly interested in time since my time living in Malaysia and experiencing the different view of time there. Cultures have so many ways of knowing about time, and many of them are impossible for a computer to keep track of. However, this is a clock that keeps track of an ancient reckoning of the hours of the day, shortest at the winter solstice, then growing longer until day is equal to night at the spring equinox, then growing longer still until they are longest at the summer solstice, and then growing shorter until day is again equal to night and they are shortest at the spring equinox. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, as in Orthodox Judaism, day begins at sunset, not midnight, and even if some no longer speak about "the eleventh hour" or "the second watch," the day is one that is tied to the natural cycle, from sunset onwards.

Select the nearest city to you to get a local calculation:

Select the Old (Julian) or New (Gregorian) Calendar:

Natural cycle clock for Chicago, Illinois, USA:

Modern time:

Natural cycle time:

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