Planetary Hours & Days
Correspondences / Planetary
The planetary day-and-hour system is one of the most practical and historically documented timing systems in Western magic. It predates the current calendar by centuries, with roots in Hellenistic astrology, was preserved through the medieval period in grimoires and medical-magical texts, and remains in active use in contemporary practice. The system assigns each day of the week and each hour of the day to a planetary ruler, and the ruler determines what kinds of work are appropriate, well-timed, or amplified.
Unlike many magical correspondences, which are primarily symbolic, the planetary hour system has a practical use case that doesn't require a specifically magical worldview to find interesting: it's a timing framework that asks you to think about what you're doing and when, which produces a quality of attention that benefits magical work regardless of whether you believe the planets are literally influencing events.
Days of the Week
The planetary rulers of the days of the week are embedded in their names, particularly visible in languages other than English but recoverable in English too:
| Day | Planet | English Name Origin | Intent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | Sun | Sun's day | Success, authority, clarity, confidence, healing, solar power |
| Monday | Moon | Moon's day | Intuition, psychic work, dreams, water magic, feminine mysteries, beginnings |
| Tuesday | Mars | Tiw's day (Tiw = Mars equivalent in Norse) | Protection, courage, banishing, physical strength, conflict resolution |
| Wednesday | Mercury | Woden's day (Woden = Mercury equivalent) | Communication, travel, divination, contracts, magic itself |
| Thursday | Jupiter | Thor's day (Thor = Jupiter equivalent) | Abundance, expansion, legal matters, wisdom, prosperity |
| Friday | Venus | Frigg's day / Freya's day | Love, beauty, pleasure, creativity, the arts, relationships |
| Saturday | Saturn | Saturn's day | Binding, endings, discipline, long-term work, ancestors, death |
Calculating Planetary Hours
The planetary hour system divides each day into twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night. These are not fixed sixty-minute hours; they stretch or compress to fit the actual length of the day. In summer, daylight hours are longer than sixty minutes; in winter, shorter. The night hours compensate in the opposite direction.
To find the length of a planetary hour:
- Look up sunrise and sunset for your location on a given day.
- Calculate the total minutes of daylight. Divide by 12. That is the length of a daylight planetary hour.
- Calculate the total minutes of night (midnight to sunrise plus sunset to midnight). Divide by 12. That is the length of a night planetary hour.
To find the ruler of each hour: Each day begins (at sunrise) with the hour of its planetary ruler. The subsequent hours follow the Chaldean order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, then repeating. For Sunday: the first hour is Sun, the second Venus, the third Mercury, the fourth Moon, the fifth Saturn, the sixth Jupiter, the seventh Mars, then the eighth Sun again. Each weekday has a different starting point in this sequence.
Apps and websites can calculate planetary hours automatically. Lunarium and Astro-Seek both offer free planetary hour calculators.
Planetary Correspondences in Full
| Planet | Day | Colors | Intent | Metals | Herbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun | Sunday | Gold, yellow, orange | Success, health, authority, clarity | Gold | Bay, St. John's Wort, chamomile |
| Moon | Monday | White, silver, pale blue | Intuition, dreams, water, cycles | Silver | Mugwort, jasmine, moonwort |
| Mars | Tuesday | Red, scarlet | Courage, protection, war, physical power | Iron | Rue, thistle, basil |
| Mercury | Wednesday | Orange, mixed | Communication, travel, intellect, trickery | Quicksilver | Lavender, dill, fennel |
| Jupiter | Thursday | Blue, purple | Abundance, expansion, wisdom | Tin | Sage, hyssop, nutmeg |
| Venus | Friday | Green, copper, pink | Love, beauty, pleasure, creativity | Copper | Rose, apple, myrtle |
| Saturn | Saturday | Black, dark brown, grey | Binding, endings, discipline, death | Lead | Comfrey, elm, mullein |
Modern planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) don't fit neatly into the Chaldean system, which predates their discovery. Many practitioners work with them as additional layers over the classical seven: Pluto for transformation and the underworld (supplementing Saturn), Neptune for dissolution and mysticism (supplementing the Moon), Uranus for sudden change and the transgressive (supplementing Mercury).
Using the System in Practice
Simple day selection: Choose the day whose planetary ruler aligns with your intention. Working a knot spell for protection? Tuesday (Mars) or Saturday (Saturn) are both appropriate. Love working? Friday (Venus) is the natural choice. Abundance? Thursday (Jupiter).
Hour refinement: Within a day, work at the hour of the ruling planet for maximum alignment. A love working on Friday at the hour of Venus is doubly aligned.
Cross-day workings: Some complex workings benefit from spanning multiple days. A nine-day working begun on Sunday (Sun) that progresses through each planetary day covers the full planetary range.
Dyeing by planetary timing: The Grimoire post on lunar and solar dyeing explores this in more depth, but working in the dye pot at a specific planetary hour is a way to imbue the process with specific intent. A deep-black dye session at Saturn's hour on Saturday has a different quality of attention than one done without timing consideration.
For sabbat timing overlaps, see the individual sabbat pages under The Wheel. For number correspondences that connect to planetary timing, see Number & Knot Correspondences.
Continue reading: Number & Knot Correspondences · Elemental Correspondences · Color Correspondences