The wheel
The thirteenth lunar day is the month's magic day in one text and a dead loss in three others. The hours below are worked out for your location.
- Runs from the twelfth moonrise after the new Moon
- 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
A day for reworking the past, and for turning the same wheel again.
Globa's short table gives a wheel with a clockwise swastika inside it. The book does not use that word: it gives the wheel, which at its highest becomes a talisman and at its lowest a snake biting its own tail. The day is for working on karma and correcting the past, and for accumulation: spin yarn, make round talismans, bake bread. Load the stomach and do not fast. Medicines and cosmetic procedures are said to work unusually well today.
The swastika detail is worth labelling rather than reprinting. A wheel with a clockwise swastika in it is a late nineteenth and twentieth century esoteric emblem, not a motif of the medieval lunary genre, and English pages copy it across without noticing what it dates the list to. The book's own reading of the wheel is quieter and better: eternal return, boredom and longing, the same mistakes repeating, unless the mercy of the twelfth day actually happened.
- 01Make something roundRound talismans, bread, coins, wells; the day likes the shape.
- 02Eat, do not fastA loaded stomach suits the day, and remedies are said to work better.
- 03Redo, do not collectRework something old rather than gathering information you will not use.
One line says wear new clothes today and do not travel.
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, and the illnesses are dangerous
Unlucky. Undertake nothing, illness is dangerous, dreams soon come true, and infants born today are short lived.
The medieval lunary carried under his name. The attribution is traditional and not proven.
Sergei Vronsky
1915 to 1998
Failure in everything, start nothing
Vronsky says the day brings failure in everything and ends in loss and disappointment, so start nothing. Anyone hospitalised today may lie there a long time. Almost all dreams come true. If the child survives childhood and youth, it will live to deep old age.
Classical Astrology, volume 4. His text is the old lunary in modern prose, and carries no symbols.
Pavel Globa
Born 1953
A magical day for reworking the past.
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
Bad first half, workable second
Zaraev splits the day hard. His first half is very unfavourable and carries the twelfth day's problems forward. His second half, if you passed the test of pride, strengthens the aura, opens creative possibilities, and lets you win partners over cheaply.
His circulating texts carry no symbols and are pegged to the phase aspects instead.
Globa's magical day for correcting karma is everyone else's write-off. Zaraev is the only one who splits the difference, and he splits it by the hour rather than by the verdict.
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 thirteenth lunar days
| Begins | Time | Ends | Time | Lasts |
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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.