My first reflex was to mock earlier, but after thinking it over I think I can actually contribute, strictly from info from various posts in this thread. (not a great understanding of game lore)

It is interesting that the cycle becomes irregular when they begin talking about the years. It's cool that there are twelve gods and twelve years, as here in Asia so many calendars are setup with the twelve animal zodiac.

It gets more interesting when you notice that the order in which the gods are listed under the years of the epochs (seemingly out of order from the "ice-first" method) matches up with the order of the eras. 6th pair of gods being water and the 6th era being linked to water.

And now for the very interesting part~~

You would assume that each god holds more sway over their own era. But there are 7 pairs of eras and only 6 pairs of gods. Are the astral and umbral eras just times of lawlessness, where no god holds sway? Do half of the gods hold sway for each era? Are there two secret gods we don't know about?

Anyway, back to my suggestion. I believe we need to know more about the creation myth to make the final call on the orders being out of sync. Since the system breaks down when man enters the picture, it seems like maybe the first few systems are going off natural law and the later systems are anthrocentric. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the humans were created in the era of wind, and thus started their era-counting on wind.