Lately I’ve been thinking about the way that the year progresses from month to month, and the character of each time period in a general way. And looking into the actual meanings and word origins of the months, I’ve come to the conclusion that some of the names of the months are actually encoded with information of exactly the same nature.

January - Comes from the Roman god Janus. He is always depicted as having one face that looks forward, and one that looks backward. He is the god in charge of gates and doorways, and beginnings and endings. This is exactly what January as a period of time is all about too.

February - Comes from the Latin verb “februare” which means to purify. Once you have spent time in January looking ahead and back over your life, you go through a process of purification or refinement. February to me has often been a long and grueling month, even though it’s shorter than the rest. Perhaps that’s why February has less days - we can only endure so much purification.

March - Once you’ve been purified, you’re ready to move ahead. You go “on the march,” named after the Roman god of war, Mars. You start gathering your forces, making things happen, getting ready to go. There is also that saying, “March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” The lion here being symbolic of the warlike springing into action energy of March. (It’s also worth point out that “the lamb” that March “goes out like” is a symbol that is picked up in Easter - occuring toward the end of March/beginning of April - where Jesus is the paschal lamb sacrificed at Passover)

April - From the Latin “aperire” which means “to open.” Said to have been named because the flowers open during this month. To me, this is a nice statement about what you need to do once you’ve begun moving forward (gone “on the march”) - you have to open yourself up to the world around you in order to bring anything to fruition.

May - Sort of a tough one to fit into this scheme here. Seems to relate to Maia, a goddess in Greek mythology who was the eldest of the Pleiades. It seems strange though that all the rest would be Roman except this. Some sources say that she was actually the Roman goddess who was called “Bona Dea,” the good goddess, and that she was related to virginity, fertility and healing. Her main festival was part of the Floralia, May 1st - May Day. Which was originally a springtime fertility/love festival (dancing round the Maypole - symbolic penis), before being taken over as a socialist/labor holiday in some countries.

June - Named after the Roman goddess Juno, who was the wife of Jupiter (Zeus) and was related to marriage and childbirth. She was queen of the gods. Also worth noting is that she is the mother of Mars, which is symbolized by the motivating force of March. Also, we talked about how April is an “opening” May is probably related to “fertility” and June/Juno being related to the partnership of marriage, and the coming to fruition of childbirth.

After that, July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Caesar. You could go into some thing about Julius Caesar as the symbolic consort of Juno, who was also protectress of the State, but another time perhaps. September, October, November and December are all derived from numbers, 7-10 - because the Roman calendar had 10 months, before July and August were added.

I haven’t even gone into the significance of all the major holidays and the solstices, history of the Gregorian calendar, lunar vs. solar time, the zodiac signs, or any of that stuff. I just wanted to flesh out the basic idea, and inspire an understanding that perhaps our own experiences are literally encoded right into the way we measure time.