Resources / Celestial timing
Celestial Timing Instruments
The clocks the tradition reads a moment by, set side by side: the planetary day and hour, the Moon's phase and mansion, the faces the Sun and Moon stand in, the zodiacal period and the nearest of the reference stars. Each opens in full on its own page.
Every reading is computed in your browser for the place and moment you choose, from the same astronomy as the site's other instruments.
Preparing the instrument for your time and place
The tradition
Traditional timing reads one moment by several clocks at once: the day by its planet, the hour by the unequal division of light and dark, the Moon by her phase and her mansion, the Sun and Moon by the faces they stand in. Each instrument of this bench reads one of them; this page sets them side by side.
None of these clocks was meant to be read alone. The electional authors judge the Moon first and then the day and the hour, and the magical literature pairs a planet's day with its hour and the Moon's mansion with the work.
Reading the instrument
- The wheel sets the Sun and Moon on the tropical zodiac, Aries rising at the left, with the thirty-six faces and the twenty-eight mansions round them and the Moon at her phase in the centre.
- Each reading under the wheel opens its own page on the same place and, when one is fixed, the same moment.
- The coming thresholds list when each reading next turns over: the hour, the sunrise that begins the next planetary day, the Moon's next mansion, face and sign, the Sun's next face and the next quarter of the Moon.
Where it descends from
- Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, book II
- The planetary hours, the mansions and the faces as the Latin magical tradition received them.
- Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (1998)
- The series the Sun and Moon are computed from.
What this does not claim
The Sun and Moon are computed from standard series (Meeus): over 1990–2060 the Sun agrees with a reference ephemeris to a few arcseconds and the Moon to about 15″; sunrise and sunset to within seconds below 65° of latitude. The correspondences are traditional, for study and planning, and claim no effect.
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