Moon Reckoning
Twelfth of thirty lunar days

The chalice

The twelfth lunar day is the mercy day of the set, and the one Vronsky warns hardest about. Your exact local hours are below.

  • Runs from the eleventh moonrise after the new Moon
  • Right now, lunar day
Ends
Lastsfrom moonrise to moonrise

P. Globa, Avestan Lunar Calendar, and the short table that circulates from it. Tradition, not a measured effect.

What Globa says

Love and mercy switch on, and prayers are said to be answered.

The short table gives a chalice. The book makes it the Cup of the Holy Grail and sets a skull beside it. The instruction is mercy in concrete form: give gifts, give alms, and grant the request that someone actually makes of you rather than the one you would prefer to grant. Anger is out, so is collapsing into tears, and so is coarse food. Juices are recommended, with one exception.

The exception is apple juice, and the popular layer explains it: the apple stands for enrichment, which is the one thing the day is not for. The book makes the twelfth the catharsis that the thirteenth depends on, so a day skipped here is said to show up tomorrow as the same mistakes repeating.

  • 01Grant the actual requestGive what is asked of you, not what you would rather give.
  • 02No anger and no wallowingBoth rage and collapsing into crying are ruled out.
  • 03Juice, but not appleApple juice stands for enrichment, which this day is not for.

Broken dishes and spilled liquid today are read as a sign of suffering and loneliness.

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

Unlucky, start nothing

Unlucky. Undertake nothing, illness is dangerous, dreams come true, and children born today are good.

The medieval lunary carried under his name. The attribution is traditional and not proven.

Sergei Vronsky

1915 to 1998

Unlucky, and beware of blood

Vronsky is blunt and grim: thoroughly unlucky, undertake nothing, everything turns to loss, and beware of blood categorically. An illness starting today can be fatal, almost all dreams come true, colour ones especially, and the child may end up lame, whether from a birth defect, an accident or an illness.

Classical Astrology, volume 4. His text is the old lunary in modern prose, and carries no symbols.

Pavel Globa

Born 1953

Be merciful, and be specific about it.

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

Unfavourable, a test of self-restraint

Zaraev calls it unfavourable and describes it as an examination in firmness of spirit, honesty and restraint. Emotion and sensuality rise, and love can turn into quarrels and unmet expectations.

His circulating texts carry no symbols and are pegged to the phase aspects instead.

The day Globa reserves for divine love and answered prayer is the day Vronsky tells you to beware of blood. One English site rates the same hours the worst possible time of the month.

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 twelfth lunar days

BeginsTimeEndsTimeLasts

All thirty lunar days

Calculated

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 readings

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.

The rule here

None of the readings is a measured effect, and where the authors disagree this site says so rather than choosing for you.