The new episode of Media Astra Ac Terra is now available! I’ve got a couple of links to things I mentioned in the show, as well as a little summary of the main show to either refresh your memory or make it easier to follow along.
First of all, I did mention that I’m on Twitter now. You can find my feed at http://twitter.com/oraiasphinx. I definitely “Tweet” more often than I blog, so feel free to follow me there for updates in between shows!
In the Astra segment I mentioned the Eskimo Nebula in the constellation Gemini. Here’s a link to that picture of it from the Hubble Space Telescope. Pretty neat, eh?
I also played a promo for Chris Orapello’s podcast, The Infinite and the Beyond, which has a great new episode out. So I hope you’ll give him a listen if you haven’t already!
Now for the main section of the show… The topic was how to calculate and use planetary hours and planetary days. The easiest way to “calculate” them is to let your computer do it for you. 
The program I mentioned in the show is ChronosXP, but there are others out there. I also mentioned the book Practical Planetary Magick, by David Rankine and Sorita d’Este. There’s a great discussion of this subject, including pictures, here at the Renaissance Astrology site.
But the basics are these:
Each day is ruled by a different planet: the Sun for Sunday, the Moon for Monday, Mars for Tuesday, Mercury for Wednesday, Jupiter for Thursday, Venus for Friday, and Saturn for Saturday.
A planetary day goes from sunrise to sunrise, and is broken into 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night. The “day” goes from sunrise to sunset, and the “night” goes from sunset to the following sunrise. The number of minutes in the day (or night) divided by 12 gives you the length of an “hour” of the day (or night.)
The first hour of the “day” is ruled by the planet that rules that planetary day. After that, the planetary rulerships go according to the Chaldean order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. So if it’s Friday, the first hour is ruled by Venus, the second hour by Mercury, the third by the Moon, then it loops back to Saturn, and so on. The rulership of the hours of the night simply continues on from where the hours of the day left off.
So now you have your planetary hours! These can be used to schedule magickal workings to best take advantage of the appropriate planetary influences (or at least avoid contrary ones.) They may also help you to navigate the various energetic “currents” of influence caused by transits and other astrological patterns. For more details on that, I hope you’ll listen to the podcast!
As always, thanks for listening to Media Astra Ac Terra.
Bright and dark blessings,
–Sphinx–
May 25, 2009 at 9:44 am
Just wanted to say thank you for the info on Practical Planetary Magick, it helped introduce me to the work of Sorita and David and is probably one of the most lucid books on western magic I have read, great to have found something which is free from the bonds of the old aeon schools and lodges, which makes material available for those willing to put some work in. I just ordered their book on Hekate too, as I work with Hekate in astrology and thought I would be interesting to find out more about the goddess.
May 25, 2009 at 10:27 am
Hi, thanks for your note – and thanks for letting me know about the Hekate book! I wasn’t aware of it, and although I don’t work with Her myself one of my friends might be very interested.
May 26, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Its a pleasure. There is info about the Hekate book on the Avalonia Books website. I enjoy reading your blogs