The lamp
The first lunar day is the one the month is conceived in, and the only one that does not begin at moonrise: it starts at the exact new Moon, so it can last minutes or many hours. The times below are calculated for your location.
- Runs from the new Moon to the first moonrise
- Day of Hecate
- Right now, lunar day
P. Globa, Avestan Lunar Calendar, and the short table that circulates from it. Tradition, not a measured effect.
What Globa says
The month is conceived here. Plan it, and take one symbolic step.
Globa's school gives this day an oil lamp on an altar and treats it as planning time rather than working time. The instruction is to lay out the whole month and take only the first symbolic step, leaving the real action for later. It is a day for going back to origins: childhood, family, the history of your own people. Group work, alcohol, and very hot or spicy food are all held off.
Nina Strelkova names the lamp the altar of Hecate, and the book agrees: this is one of the four dark-moon days, when the Moon is not in the sky and Hecate has the road. The old practice was to set her altar at a crossroads so she would not send nightmares. The book adds a warning that fits the altar. A person may feel pulled today to make a sacrifice of themselves, and the pull is not to be trusted.
- 01Plan, do not launchLay out the whole month and take only the first symbolic step.
- 02Sit in front of a flameA live flame, a candle or a fire, is the day's one recommended practice.
- 03Skip the group and the bottleGroup work, alcohol and hot spicy food all wait until tomorrow.
A vengeful plan made today is said to come back on the planner, and one line holds that a haircut on the first lunar day shortens your life.
Where the sources disagree
Four author lines stand behind the lunar days and they are not one tradition. They run left to right in the order they were written, oldest first, and each one carries its date. This site names which line it is quoting every time.
Albertus Magnus
Medieval, before 1500
Bad for the sick, long life for the child
The oldest layer calls it unlucky for anyone who falls ill, though it says the illness is long rather than fatal. Dreams promise joy, and the child born today lives to great age.
The medieval lunary carried under his name. The attribution is traditional and not proven.
Sergei Vronsky
1915 to 1998
The best day of all for beginnings
Vronsky reverses it. He calls it a day of happiness and the most favourable day of all for any beginning, fit for anything that lifts the spirit. Recovery is certain even if slow, dreams promise joy, and the child lives to extreme old age unless Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto or sometimes Neptune sits badly in the chart.
Classical Astrology, volume 4. His text is the old lunary in modern prose, and carries no symbols.
Pavel Globa
Born 1953
Plan the month. Start nothing yet.
The reading above is his. The thirty symbols, the satanic days, the stones and the omens all come from this line.
Avestan Lunar Calendar, and the school that follows it.
Alexander Zaraev
Born 1954
New Moon, low vitality, no grand plans
Zaraev pegs the day to the new Moon and calls it unfavourable for work in company and work alone alike. Vitality is at its lowest, chronic conditions can flare, and he advises against both overload and grand plans.
His circulating texts carry no symbols and are pegged to the phase aspects instead.
Vronsky and the Albertus line call this the luckiest day of the month for starting something. Globa and Zaraev both say start nothing at all. Same hours, opposite instructions.
Set out in full on the sources page
How old is this
Old in part, and much younger than it is said to be.
Books of lunar days circulated in Europe from the twelfth century, and the Albertus and Vronsky lines sit in that tradition. The thirty symbols in their present form, and the satanic days, are a twentieth century Russian arrangement presented as ancient Persian. That claim is asserted and not documented.
Calculated in your browser, and true to the minute for the city at the top
How the day is counted
Lunar days are not equal, and they do not begin at midnight.
The first runs from the exact moment of the new Moon to the next moonrise where you are, and is usually short. Every day after that runs from one moonrise to the next, about twenty four hours and fifty minutes. A lunation holds twenty nine or thirty of them.
Because moonrise depends on where you stand, the lunar day is the one figure on this site that genuinely differs between two cities on the same evening.
The next four first lunar days
| Begins | Time | Ends | Time | Lasts |
|---|
All thirty lunar days
The hours of this lunar day come from the new Moon and from the moonrises in the city named at the top, worked out in your browser with an open astronomy library.
The lunary attributed to Albertus Magnus; S. Vronsky, Classical Astrology, volume 4; P. Globa, Avestan Lunar Calendar; A. Zaraev. Every claim on this page carries the author it comes from.
None of the readings is a measured effect, and where the authors disagree this site says so rather than choosing for you.