From time to time I get questions around the magical timing I use. Various week in magic posts include some of the details, but I thought it would be useful to put everything into one place. This series will talk about how I calculate magical timing and how I use it, both personally and in my CircleThrice material.
What are planetary hours?
Planetary hours aren’t like clock hours. There are 24 of them per day, 12 daytime hours and 12 nighttime hours, but there the similarity ends. First, magical hours aren’t 60 minutes long (except by accident) but in fact change length throughout the year. Second, they don’t restart at midnight, but at dawn (along with the magical day). Third, day hours and night hours are typically different lengths. Fourth, they vary depending where where you are on the planet, not just east to west (like timezones) but north to south. Fifth, they are used not for telling time, but for working magic.
This is the aspect of magical timing that I’ve discussed the most (because it gets the most questions). So instead of reiterating the basics, I’m going to point you to this very excellent overview of the planets, hours, Chaldean order, etc. from the excellent Lunarium. Once you have a handle on what the planetary hours are and how to figure them out, you can start using them for magic.
Using Planetary Hours
I use planetary hours in several different ways. These methodologies don’t clash so much as provide different approaches to timing that can be used. They give you more options when you need to get some enchantment done.
First, I often refer to the Hygromanteia hours. As with the lunar days, these are listed in the Hygromanteia grimoire. There’s a set of hours for each day, and they vary significantly by day. The Hygro hours aren’t completely illogical. You can often see a pattern form where the planet of the day combines with the planet for each hour to create certain energies that are then expressed as the purpose of the hour. For example, the Hygro definitely focuses on the malign aspects and features of Saturn, so hours of Saturn on other days of the week are generally inauspicious and not good for anything. That said, they are also quirky and definitely have that “journal of a working magician” energy, where sometimes you just know that the hour is good for ‘X’ because ancient magician had good luck working ‘X’ during that hour and wrote it down and then it got passed around copy to copy. Still I have found them to be very useful, especially when you get a really tight alignment (like a lunar day for speaking with demons and an hour for speaking with demons).
Second, you can focus more on the energies of the planets when combining days and hours. So day of Jupiter (Thursday) and hour of Jupiter (sunrise for example) is a double dose of Jupiter energy. Day of Jupiter and hour of the Sun has a different combinatorial energy. Jason Miller’s Advanced Planetary Magic chapbook is an excellent overview of this method. When there’s not a good alignment between the Hygro hours for a particular day and the purpose of the lunar day itself, I will often use the hours in this way. For example, on a day of love that happens to fall on a Monday, for example, I might skip the Hygro hours (which are all about business dealings) and focus on the hours of Venus (hours 6, 13, and 20 on Mondays).
Third, you can work directly with the Deity associated with the planet for the hour to help with the purpose of a working. The Orphic hymns are my go to for invocations for this. This works particularly well when my goal is closely aligned with a particular Deity.
Finally, you can ignore the hours entirely. Doing magic is a process of adding auspicousness in order to improve your chances of being successful. Materia, spirit contact, ritual positioning elements, and timing all add layers of effect that can improve your odds. That said, I’ve done very successful magic with no props and materials, no consideration of position or time, and nothing buy my emotion and energy. So if the timing just isn’t working out (you’re in a meeting during the best hour) and you need to get the job done, then you just do what you can with what you have with where you are.
One of the risks of knowing a lot about magical timing is that it can become limiting. This can be at the macro level (the overall crappy astrology of June and July for example) or the micro (an hour that says “do nothing” when you need to do something). In the end, while timing is useful, it’s not everything.
