Skyscript Astrology Forum

It occurred to me that we have this detailed method for finding planetary hours, but when it comes to planetary days we just take the calendar at face value and call it good.
But is Saturday really a Saturn-Day?
Shouldn't the first planetary "Sun"day begin sunrise on the day the Sun enters Aries?
Has the Gregorian Calendar taken this into account?
Does anyone have any older sources' opinion on this?
If anyone does have ideas or information on this I would enjoy the discussion.

Estebon Duarte

Hi Edward

I commented on a similar question in a previous post (see here) but since then I?ve read Geminos?s Introduction to the Phenomena, translated by J. Evans and J. Lennart Berggren. Geminos goes into detail about the connection between the calendar and the solstices, start of the week, etc, in his eight chapter ?On Months?. In a nutshell, the calendar needs to combine the Solar and Lunar cycles together, and the week is determined by the month, which is determined by the Moon?s cycle. If you can get access to this book, I strongly recommend it. It?s a great text to have anyway, being one of the oldest sources currently available regarding the Hellenistic understanding of planetary cycles. Currently, you can get it from Amazon.com for about $37, which is very reasonable for such a well researched and heavily annotated translation, in hard-back.

Deb

The planetary days are derived from the planetary hours, without the latter the former wouldn't exist. Here are tables
http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/pla ... ticle.html
The first 'hour' determines the planetary day. The order of the hours is according to the 'Chaldean' concept of planetary order (furthest to closest, Saturn to Moon) Put along the heptagram as is illustrated in the link and then tracking the lines as shown gives the order of the planetary days.

Some years ago I saw a reprint of an old calendar, there where even planetary years. I use none of them. As can be read in the discussion link Deb mentions the problem is where to start with the first day and why. The seven day week is clearly derived from the 4 phases of the Moon but isn't synchronized anymore. Other cultures had 5, 6, 10 and other kinds of 'weeks' so it could be disputed being rather a human choice than a natural division. Same could be said of 0? Aries, the Australians might rather have 'their' spring and thus 0? Libra as the starting point. Others could prefer one of the solstice points.

That's the problem with every mixing of cycles, (quarter parts of) months vs. days or lunar months and the years. A good example is the Muslim calendar. It uses 12 lunations with a total of 354 days. Unlike the Jewish calendar the Muslim calendar doesn't intercalate with a 13th months now and then, so it has nothing to do anymore with the solar year, just like the week has nothing to do anymore with the quarter lunar month. The first month (Muharram) is connected to Muhammad's leaving Mecca and nothing especially natural.

Others prefer to use the symbolic value of these special days, hours and months but I personally feel less attracted to these divisions.

As the 'hours' depend on the twelvefold divison of the day and the night they are different in every place and time of year. Here's a calculator http://www.astrology.com.tr/planetary-hours.asp

interesting, thank you both. I can see the logic in planetary hours and how they are derived. And it would seem that we are just "calling it good" when it comes to planetary day rulers.
It states on Wikipedia that the Gregorian Calendar was started on a "Friday" 10 days after the last day of the Julian, which was a "Thursday" (so "Friday" was technically a Julian Sunday).
I use the day ruler in the calculation of the Almutem Figuris and it plays a rather large part in determining the outcome, so it got me thinking about the day and hour rulers. The outcomes are usually extremely accurate so I have rarely gave it much worry, it occurred to me however that someone here would have a more informed opinion

thank you for the link to the other discussion deb!

Estebon Duarte

Estebon_Duarte wrote:the Gregorian Calendar was started on a "Friday" 10 days after the last day of the Julian, which was a "Thursday" (so "Friday" was technically a Julian Sunday).

Although familiar with some hisorical details around the calendar reform, I never asked myself what had happened to the weekdays. Thanks for mentioning this Estebon. Interesting to see that decisions affecting the date number must have been considered less disturbing than the idea of affecting the week order. I assume this was done for religious reasons.

I'm reminded of a proposal made once of a year of 364 days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform

Wikipedia wrote:The World Calendar, favored by the UN in the 1950s, and the International Fixed Calendar, quite popular among economists between the World Wars, are proposals that start each year on a Sunday. The remaining 364 days then form 52 weeks of 7 days. The World Calendar has every third month beginning on the same day of week. In the World Calendar, the 365th and 366th day are considered holidays and named Worlds Day and Leap Year Day. These "off-calendar" days stand outside the seven-day week and caused some religious groups to strongly oppose adoption of The World Calendar. Such concerns helped prevent the World Calendar from being adopted. Supporters of the World Calendar, however, argue that the religious groups' opposition overlooked every individual's right to celebrate these holidays as extra days of worship, or Sabbaths. This option, they reason, maintained the seven-day worship cycle for those who share that concern, while allowing benefits of a perpetual calendar to be shared by all.

It may be of interesting to remember that the matter is not only of the western calendar, as jyiotish astrologers also use the same attributions for days of the week and planets.

Here's some interesting info on the introduction of the week and other astronomical cyclic issues in India but also in other parts of the world.

http://web.nickshanks.com/history/sixthousandyears/

based on the available information on calendrics I would say that the names of the days are largely symbolic and have no real anchor to a starting point. In light of that it would seem logical that we as Astrologers would derive the planetary days from some Astrological root or starting point.
I'm pretty sure the only authority I have on the subject is Ibn Ezra, but that I believe is in relation to planetary hours.
again, I haven't encountered any real problems using the standard days, I was just wondering if the subject was ever broached by any of the traditional sources.[/i]