Planetary hours
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The planetary hours are an ancient system in which one of the seven
classical planets In classical antiquity, the seven classical planets or seven luminaries are the seven moving astronomical objects in the sky visible to the naked eye: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The word ''planet'' comes from ...
is given rulership over each day and various parts of the day. Developed in
Hellenistic astrology Hellenistic astrology is a tradition of horoscopic astrology that was developed and practiced in the late Hellenistic period in and around the Mediterranean Basin region, especially in Egypt. The texts and technical terminology of this tradition o ...
, it has possible roots in older
Babylonian astrology Babylonian astrology was the first known organized system of astrology, arising in the second millennium BC. In Babylon as well as in Assyria as a direct offshoot of Babylonian culture, astrology takes its place as one of the two chief means a ...
, and it is the origin of the
names of the days of the week In many languages, the names given to the seven days of the week are derived from the names of the classical planets in Hellenistic astronomy, which were in turn named after contemporary deities, a system introduced by the Sumerians and late ...
as used in English and numerous other languages. The classical planets are
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
,
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
,
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
, the Sun,
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...
,
Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
and
the Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the List of natural satellites, fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth ( ...
, and they take rulership over the hours in this sequence. The sequence is from slowest- to fastest-moving as the planets appear in the night sky, and so is from furthest to nearest in the
planetary sphere The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and others. In these celestial models, the apparent motions of the fixed stars ...
s model. This order has come to be known as the "Chaldean order". As each day is divided into 24 hours, the first hour of a day is ruled by the planet three places down in the Chaldean order from the planet ruling the first hour of the preceding day; i.e. a day with its first hour ruled by the Sun ("
Sunday Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. In most Western countries, Sunday is a day of rest and a part of the weekend. It is often considered the first day of the week. For most observant adherents of Christianity, Sunday ...
") is followed by a day with its first hour ruled by the Moon ("
Monday Monday is the day of the week between Sunday and Tuesday. According to the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 8601 standard, it is the first day of the week and in countries that adopt the "Sunday-first" convention, it is ...
"), followed by Mars ("
Tuesday Tuesday is the day of the week between Monday and Wednesday. According to international standard ISO 8601, Monday is the first day of the week; thus, Tuesday is the second day of the week. According to some commonly used calendars, however, ...
"), Mercury ("
Wednesday Wednesday is the day of the week between Tuesday and Thursday. According to international standard ISO 8601, it is the third day of the week. In countries which have Friday as their holiday, Wednesday is the fifth day of the week. In countries ...
"), Jupiter ("
Thursday Thursday is the Names of the days of the week, day of the week between Wednesday and Friday. According to the ISO 8601 international standard, it is the fourth day of the week. In countries which adopt the "Sunday-first" convention, it is the fi ...
"), Venus ("
Friday Friday is the day of the week between Thursday and Saturday. In countries that adopt the traditional "Sunday-first" convention, it is the sixth day of the week. In countries adopting the ISO-defined "Monday-first" convention, it is the fifth day ...
") and Saturn ("
Saturday Saturday is the day of the week between Friday and Sunday. No later than the 2nd century, the Romans named Saturday ("Saturn's Day") for the planet Saturn, which controlled the first hour of that day, according to Vettius Valens. The day's na ...
"), again followed by Sunday, yielding the familiar naming of the
days of the week A day is the time period of a full rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. In everyday life, the word "day" often refers to a solar day, which is the length between two so ...
.


History

The astrological order of the days was explained by
Vettius Valens Vettius Valens (120 – c. 175) was a 2nd-century Hellenistic astrologer, a somewhat younger contemporary of Claudius Ptolemy. Valens' major work is the ''Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia), ten volumes in Greek written roughly within the period 150 t ...
and
Dio Cassius Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history on ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...
(and
Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
gave the same explanation in his ''
Treatise on the Astrolabe ''A Treatise on the Astrolabe'' is a medieval instruction manual on the astrolabe by Geoffrey Chaucer. It describes both the form and the proper use of the instrument, and stands out as a prose technical work from a writer better known for poet ...
''). According to these authors, it was a principle of astrology that the heavenly bodies presided, in succession, over the hours of the day. The
Ptolemaic system In astronomy, the geocentric model (also known as geocentrism, often exemplified specifically by the Ptolemaic system) is a superseded description of the Universe with Earth at the center. Under most geocentric models, the Sun, Moon, stars, and ...
of planetary spheres asserts that the order of the heavenly bodies, from the farthest to the closest to the Earth is:
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
,
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
,
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
,
Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
,
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...
,
Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
,
Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
(or, objectively, the planets are ordered from slowest to fastest moving as they appear in the night sky note however that the sun, Venus, and Mercury all advance by 360° per year, on average). In astrological theory, not only the days of the week, but the hours of the day are dominated by the seven luminaries. If the first hour of a day is dominated by Saturn (), then the second hour is dominated by Jupiter (), the third by Mars (), and so on with the Sun (), Venus (), Mercury (), and the moon (), so that the sequence of planets repeats every seven hours. Therefore, the twenty-fifth hour, which is the first hour of the following day, is dominated by the Sun; the forty-ninth hour, which is the first hour of the next day, by the Moon. Thus, if a day is labelled by the planet which dominates its first hour, then Saturn's day is followed by the Sun's day, which is followed by the Moon's day, and so forth, as shown below. According to Vettius Valens, the first hour of the day began at sunset, which follows Greek and Babylonian convention. He also states that the light and dark halves of the day were presided over by the heavenly bodies of the first hour of each half. This is confirmed by a Pompeian graffito which calls 6 February 60 a "Sunday", even though by modern reckoning it would have been a Wednesday. Assuming that this graffito used the sunset naming convention of Valens, it would follow that 6 February 60 was a Wednesday according to the sunrise naming convention used in modern astrology, suggesting that there may be an unbroken continuity of weekdays connecting the modern period to the 1st century AD at least. These two overlapping naming systems continued to be used by
Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
n Christians during the 4th century, but the days in both were simply numbered . Although names of planets (or the gods eponymous of the planets) were not used, the week beginning on Wednesday was named in
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''ton theon'' ( ayof the lanetarygods), as used by the late 4th century editor of the 328–373
Easter Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...
letters of Bishop Athanasius, and was named ''tentyon'' (a Ge'ez transcription of the Greek words) in a table of Easter dates for 311–369 that survives in an
Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...
copy. The day of the week of of the
Alexandrian calendar The Coptic calendar, also called the Alexandrian calendar, is a liturgical calendar used by the Coptic Orthodox Church and also used by the farming populace in Egypt. It was used for fiscal purposes in Egypt until the adoption of the Gregorian ...
and of of the
Ethiopian calendar The Ethiopian calendar ( am, የኢትዮጲያ ዘመን ኣቆጣጠር; Oromo: Akka Lakkofsa Itoophiyaatti; Ge'ez: ዓዉደ ወርሕ; Tigrinya: ዓዉደ ኣዋርሕ), or Ge'ez calendar ( Ge'ez: ዓዉደ ወርሕ; Tigrinya: ዓዉ ...
, the first day of their respective years, is given using the ''ton theon'' and ''tentyon'' respectively, both weeks beginning in a column of 532-year Paschal tables. In a neighboring column of those same tables, both first days are also given a day of the week called the ''Day of John'' with a week beginning . Both the ''ton theon'' and ''tentyon'' of these first days of the Alexandrian and Ethiopian years are numerically identical to the day of the week of the next in the
Julian calendar The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on , by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandr ...
using a week, which medieval computists called the ''concurrent''. These overlapping weeks are still used in the Ethiopian
computus As a moveable feast, the date of Easter is determined in each year through a calculation known as (). Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first full moon on or after 21 March (a fixed approxi ...
.


Table of hours

A table of hours is shown for a sequence of seven days, with the day of the week indicated both for the sunrise (hour 1) and the sunset (hour 13) naming conventions.


Astrological significance

Calculation of the planetary hours played a certain role in
Renaissance astrology Astrology, Astrological beliefs in correspondences between Night sky, celestial observations and terrestrial events have influenced various aspects of human history, including world-views, language and many elements of social culture. Among West ...
and
magic Magic or Magick most commonly refers to: * Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces * Ceremonial magic, encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic * Magical thinking, the belief that unrela ...
. Astronomical tables published in the late 15th or during the 16th century often included a table of planetary hours with their significations, but their application was of limited importance to astrology as practiced, with
Cornelius Gemma Cornelius (or Cornelio) Gemma (28 February 1535 – 12 October 1578) was a Flemish physician, astronomer and astrologer, and the oldest son of cartographer and instrument-maker Gemma Frisius. He was a professor of medicine at Catholic University ...
explicitly stating that he accorded them little weight.Steven Vanden Broecke, ''The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology'', volume 4 of ''History of science and medicine library: Medieval and early modern science'', BRILL, 2003
p. 130
The 16th-century ''
Key of Solomon The ''Key of Solomon'' ( la, Clavicula Salomonis; he, מפתח שלמה []) (Also known as "The Greater Key of Solomon") is a pseudepigraphical grimoire (also known as a book of spells) attributed to Solomon, King Solomon. It probably dates ba ...
'' has a chapter on the topic, giving examples for the types of magic considered appropriate for the days or hours associated with each planet, for example: *In the Days and Hours of Saturn: the summoning of Souls from Hades, but only of those who have died a natural death *In the Days and Hours of Jupiter: obtaining honours, acquiring riches, contracting friendships, preserving health *In the Days and Hours of Mars: experiments regarding War, to arrive at military honour, acquire courage, overthrow enemies, etc.; in the hours of Mars: summoning Souls from Hades, especially of those slain in battle. *In the Days and Hours of the Sun: experiments regarding temporal wealth, hope, gain, fortune, divination, the favour of princes, to dissolve hostile feeling, and to make friends. *In the Days and Hours of Venus: forming friendships, for kindness and love, joyous and pleasant undertakings, travelling; in the hours of Venus: lots, poisons, preparing powders provocative of madness, etc. *In the Days and Hours of Mercury: eloquence and intelligence, promptitude in business, science and divination, etc.; in the Hours of Mercury: undertaking experiments relating to games, raillery jests, sports, etc. *In the Days and Hours of the Moon: embassies, voyages, envoys, messages, navigation; reconciliation, love, and the acquisition of merchandise by water; in the hours of the Moon: making trial of experiments relating to recovery of stolen property, for obtaining nocturnal visions, for summoning Spirits in sleep, and for preparing anything relating to Water.


See also

*
Hellenistic astrology Hellenistic astrology is a tradition of horoscopic astrology that was developed and practiced in the late Hellenistic period in and around the Mediterranean Basin region, especially in Egypt. The texts and technical terminology of this tradition o ...
*
Planets in astrology In astrology, planets have a meaning different from the astronomical understanding of what a planet is. Before the age of telescopes, the night sky was thought to consist of two very similar components: fixed stars, which remained motionless in ...


Notes


External links


Extensive information on planetary hours
(renaissanceastrology.com)
Current planetary hour and day for many cities
(lunarium.co.uk)
Planetary Hours Calculator
(astrology.com.tr)

(dearbrutus.com)
ChronosXP
- Free planetary hours software for
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Al-Saat
- Urdu/Arabic/Persian planetary hours software for
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
{{Authority control Planets in astrology Hellenistic astrology