Ars Notoria - Serious Practitioners

[Borealis]

Hello,
I actually bought the dr. Skinner's book of Ars Notoria the method, I'm about to start the practice:
from what I understood there are 15 days of preparatory time after which you start the practice on the next new moon but the new moon doesn't coincide with the actual starting date stated in the book for the relevant subject for which the procedure is intended.
It's not so clear actually, can someone clarify or does someone have a clear diagram in chronological order of the procedures and prayers orations to recite?

 

[A.Nox]

I like Skinner a lot myself so I just pulled the book off the shelf and had a look. The way I read it: (but… I'm not sure which version of the book you have)…
The Method doesn't lay this out as a tidy chart anywhere … you kind of have to piece it together from passages scattered across the text. What threw me at first too was thinking the day for the subject meant an actual calendar date. It doesn t. Every "day" in the operational instructions is a day of the Moon counted from the new moon as Day 1. (that's how I understand it)..
Once you flip that mental switch the whole thing slots into place:

1. The 15 days of preparation just need to land you ready for the next new moon. The civil date you finish on doesn t matter in itself.
2. The new moon = Day 1 of the operation. From here the secular calendar drops out completely.
3. Two schedules then run on top of each other. There's the universal Lunation rubric — operative days are the 4th, 8th, 12th, 13th, 16th, 24th and 28th of the Moon (look for the "Expositions of the Lunation" section). And there's the subject-specific window inside the same cycle. For Grammar for instance the text says: "do this from the first day of the Moon to the 14, and from the 14 to the 17."

So the "date for the subject" you found in the book is a day of the Moon, not a Gregorian date. There's no actual collision the two systems just live in different reference frames.

If you want to double check look at the Lunation rubric and then the chapter for whichever Art you want to start with. Peterson's transcription at esotericarchives.com is also handy for cross-referencing against the Latin.

Hope that helps