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, DR. MARTIN W. FLECK activities were based on fact. Any astrological prediction has about the same value as a lottery ticket held by a Negro in Ahoskie, N.C. If all the astrologers of the world were laid end to end, it would be a good thing. Superstition has no place in an educated world and should be relegated to the same trash heaps reserved for racial, religious or political prejudice. This writer has absolutely no superstitions - well, I do have one to which I will admit. I absolutely refuse to sleep I3 in one bed. For our purposes here we will take a quick look at three different calendars. The origin of playing cards is obscure. But one story tells us that they are direct descendants of an old Egyptian calendar. At any rate, it is true that if one counts the pips on a deck of playing cards (ace-I, deuce-2, Jack-II, Queen-12, King-I 3) it will be found that they total to 364. But the story goes that the Egyptians knew there were 365 days in a year so they added an extra card to represent the 365th day. This extra card was said to be a lucky card, and anyone who has drawn it to an inside straight knows that the joker is a lucky card. There are 52 weeks in a year, and the Egyptians had one card for every week. The King and Queen stand for the mythological Egyptian deities, Osiris and Isis. The Jack represents Horus, son of Osiris and Isis. In clubs and diamonds, he holds a rod as in Egyptian mythology he was required to measure the rising of the Nile. In spades, he holds an hourglass as he was also god of time. In hearts, he holds a leaf, or originally a lotus flower, which blooms along the banks of the Nile, I L l The Egyptian calendar has 13 months with four weeks to a month. There are 13 cards to a suit to represent the months and the four suits are the four seasons of the year. Egyptian priests used the cards to make predictions. Some of these fellows took their card calendars and hit the road. These itinerant fortune tellers came to be known as "gypsies", the word being a corruption of "Egyptians". The very early Roman calendar contained only ten months, the first month being March. The Romans were a nation of warriors and felt it only proper that the first month of the year should be named to honor their most important god - Mars, the god of war. April was the second month and came from a word which meant "opening", so named because at this season the buds opened. May was named to honor the goddess Maia, and June perpetuated the name of Juno, the consort of Jove. Perhaps some have wondered why our tenth month should have a root meaning eight. The answer is because it was the eighth month of the primitive Roman year. The same sort of reasoning holds for September, November and December. Later, the Romans added January and February at the end of the year. January was named for Janus, the two-headed god of gates and doors. Our word janitor comes from the same root. The origin of the word February is obscure. It was the month dedicated to the dead. Because of a Roman superstition that odd numbers were good as they signified birth, the Ro- man calendar had months alternating 29 and 31 days, except for February which had 28. This gave the early Roman calendar only 359 days. By the year 50 B. c., the Roman calendar was completely out of time with the sun. Julius Caesar was no astronomer, but he had a weekend' attraction down in Egypt. While down there he learned a little astronomy plus what he learned from Cleopatra. So, in 46 B. c., Julius changed the calendar, decreeing that there should be one year of 445 days to bring the first day of spring back to March 21. History reports this as the year of confusion. He set the length of the year at 365Y. days, adding a leap year every fourth year. At the time Caesar changed the calendar there was no seven-day week in the Christian world. As Christianity spread, it adopted the seven-day week of the Jews which was finally legalized by Con- stantine in 321 A. D. , The week has seven days because the ancients recognized seven "planets". These "planets" were associated with the gods of primitive peoples and so our days are named for mythological charac- ters. -21-