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Theoretically, a king's reign should begin whenever he took office. Rav Hisda explains that "for kings" means for dating contracts. It was common practice under a given monarchy that the year that would appear in a contract was not the number of years since creation or from an arbitrary point in history, but how many years into the current king's reign. Rashi explains that this was done for reasons of shalom malkhut-- to stay on good terms with the king by honoring him in every matter.
As we begin the new masechta and the new Mishnah I was haunted by the notion that kings not only began their reign on the same day of the year but just how we manipulated our calendrical cycle so as to fit their reign dates. It is as if the earthly king paralleled the divine king. As we internalize the mythic structures as archetypes of the inner soul we come to the greatest psychologist and how he dealt with kingship and maturing using Jungian analytic techniques.