[File:DeepTimeRosary.jpg|thumb|right|500px| [Eric's Deep Time Rosary]]
I've had this Deep Time Rosary for years now and I have never really done anything with it. Just read a file AProsary.pdf on the Atheopaganism closed facebook group. In it, the author (I won't name him; it may be a closed group for a reason) described his daily practice of saying his rosary. He says a specific set of words for each bead as he handles it. The words focus on important concepts like self-love, caring for the Earth, love for all and awe toward the Cosmos. I want to come up with words for mine and add them to my daily practice. My Rosary was built based on Michael Dowd's concept of a rosary that links the Great Story to a linear set of beads. The colours of beads on mine each represent a period in geologic time. The first orange one in the center represents the beginning of the Ediacaran, the yellow striped beads represent the Neogene. The last bead, the lone white pearl, represents now and the length of bare chain after it represents the future. It is the Canadian Thanksgiving statutory holiday as I write this. It seems appropriate to write words for each bead that talk about something that evolved at that time and why I am grateful for it.
Brandon's Rosary
I'm inspired by this to create a rosary of my own to incorporate into my daily meditative practice. I think I'm going to start from the cosmic calendar to mine for note-worthy events. Do you have a list of your events Eric? It would be cool to standardize so that when I'm doing my meditation I can feel a sense of connection with you and others who have adopted this practice.
- 13.8 Ga ... Big Bang
- 11 Ga ... Milky Way Disk forms
- 4.5 Ga ... Sun and planets form
- 3.8 Ga ... first life (prokaryotes)
- 3 Ga ... photosynthesis
- 2.4 Ga ... oxygenation of atmosphere
- 2 Ga ... complex cells (eukaryotes)
- 1 Ga ... multicellular life
- 670 Ma ... simple animals
- 550 Ma ... arthropods
- 500 Ma ... fish and proto-amphibians
- 450 Ma ... land plants
- 400 Ma ... insects and seeds
- 360 Ma ... amphibians
- 300 Ma ... reptiles
- 200 Ma ... mammals
- 150 Ma ... birds
- 130 Ma ... flowers
- 65 Ma ... asteroid kills dinosaurs, primates
- 15 Ma ... apes
- 12.3 Ma ... hominids
- 2.5 Ma ... stone tools
- 400 ka ... fire
- 200 ka ... anatomically modern humans
- 5.5 ka ... first writing
It seems obvious that this thing can't be to scale given how compressed in-time are the events that inspire me as we move toward the present. Furthermore, the future of the universe is so huge compared to the past. If each link is 100 million years, then the past alone would require 138 links.
Perhaps I'll use loops to "zoom in" on periods of particular interest? In that case we could make each link on the outer loop be 13.8 billion years and have 100 links in the chain, postulating that the universe will last at least 1.38 trillion years.
- 1.38 trillion years ... 100 links of 13.8 billion years each ... a chain, not a loop
- 13.8 billion year ... 138 links of 100 million years each ... loop that starts and ends on the first link in the chain
- 200 million years ... 100 links of 1 million years each ... loop that starts on the penultimate link of the 13.8 billion year loop and ends on the last link of the 13.8 billion year loop
- 1 million years ... 50 links of 20 thousand years each ... loop starts and ends on the last link of the 200 million year loop
- 20 thousand years ... 20 links of 1 thousand years each ... loop starts and ends on the last link of the 1 million year loop
- 1 thousand years ... 10 links of 100 years each ... loop starts and ends on the last link of the 20 thousand year loop
The finest interval of time would then be about the length of a very long human life.