The days and the planetary hours

Until now the chart has been a photograph: a single moment held still. This lesson looks at time as it runs. The tradition gave each day of the week a planet, and each hour of each day another. It was the simplest way of knowing what quality the present moment had, without casting any chart. And it is still in plain sight in the calendar you use.

The starting order

Everything rests on the Chaldean order from Lesson 2, slowest to fastest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The seven repeat in this order, endlessly. It is the only thing you need to know by heart to do the sums in this lesson.

Not every hour has sixty minutes

The planetary hour is not the clock hour. The ancients divided the day, from sunrise to sunset, into twelve equal parts, and the night, from sunset to sunrise, into another twelve. They called them unequal hours, because their length changes with the season.

In London at the end of June the Sun is above the horizon for about sixteen and a half hours. Divided by twelve, each daytime hour lasts about an hour and twenty minutes, and each night hour barely forty minutes. In December it is the other way round. At the equinoxes, when day and night are equal, every hour has sixty minutes. This is how time was counted across nearly all of the ancient world, which is why “the third hour” or “the sixth hour” turn up in old texts with no clock anywhere near.

It also has a practical consequence: the planetary day does not begin at midnight. It begins at sunrise. Someone born at three in the morning on a Tuesday was born, for this reckoning, on Monday night.

The lord of the day

The first hour after sunrise belongs to the lord of the day, and it is this planet that gives the whole day its name:

From the first hour on, the following hours run in Chaldean order. On Sunday: the 1st hour is the Sun’s, the 2nd Venus’s, the 3rd Mercury’s, the 4th the Moon’s, the 5th Saturn’s, the 6th Jupiter’s, the 7th Mars’s, and the 8th returns to the Sun.

Keep counting. The 13th hour, the first of Sunday night, is Jupiter’s. The 25th, which is the first of the next day, falls to the Moon: and Monday is the Moon’s day. This is the mechanism announced in Lesson 2. Twenty-four hours always move the lord three places down the order, and that is what makes the week.

How to find the hour you are in

You need three things: the day of the week, the times of sunrise and sunset where you are, and the Chaldean order.

• Check whether it is day or night. If day, measure the time from sunrise to sunset and divide by twelve. If night, the time from sunset to the next sunrise, also by twelve.
• Count how many of those hours have passed since sunrise (or sunset).
• Start at the lord of the day and move that many places along the Chaldean order. At night, start from the lord of the 13th hour.

You do not have to do this by hand. The site’s almanac shows the planetary hour you are in now and when it changes, and your account shows it under “Today, for you”. But doing it once by hand is the best way to understand what appears there.

What it was for

Days and hours were, above all, a tool for choosing the moment. The rule follows the nature of each planet, which you already know:

• Sun: matters of authority and honour, requests to those in charge.
• Moon: journeys, moves, whatever concerns the public and the home.
• Mars: whatever calls for courage and cutting. As a malefic, it is an hour to avoid for starting things meant to be peaceful.
• Mercury: writing, study, contracts, negotiation, sending messages.
• Jupiter: justice, faith, generosity, asking for help, growth.
• Venus: love, friendship, celebrations, beauty, reconciliations.
• Saturn: long, slow labours, foundations, whatever is meant to last; also the least suitable hour for happy beginnings.

Anyone setting a wedding date looked for an hour of Venus on a day of Venus or Jupiter, the two benefics, and avoided the hours of Saturn and Mars. Anyone signing a contract preferred Mercury. This is the simplest form of a larger art, the choosing of moments, which also looks at the Moon and at the chart of the instant. But even on its own the planetary hour gives the colour of the moment.

The hour you were born

Your chart also has a lord of the day and a lord of the hour: those of the moment you were born. Some authors read in them an extra seasoning of temperament: to be born on a day and in an hour of Jupiter gave, they said, a leaning towards generosity; on a day of Saturn, towards seriousness.

It is a small factor and carries no weight against the Ascendant or its lord. But it is a lovely one, and it is yours: the week you live in every day began, for you, with a particular planet.

Remember that the planetary day begins at sunrise. If you were born in the small hours, before sunrise, your lord of the day is that of the previous day.