Moon Reckoning
Third of thirty lunar days

The leopard

The third lunar day is the combat day of the set, the one the tradition frames as struggle rather than as work. Your local start and end times are below.

  • Runs from the second 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

The warrior's day. Pressure and aggression are in the air, and meant to be used.

The symbol is a snow leopard gathering itself for the leap, the stored moment before it goes. Globa's school calls this the best day of the month for martial arts and extends it to working metal, sharpening knives and, in older versions, casting silver. A sauna and a hard sweat belong here too. People who habitually avoid conflict are told to turn the day's charge deliberately into self-defence rather than sit on it.

In the book this is also the day the days of Hecate end and the Moon comes out from under the Sun, which is part of why the pressure has somewhere to go. Sensitive people are said to dream of being attacked by wild animals tonight. Pankratov's rule for that is not to shake the dream off but to replay it awake and win it.

  • 01Train, spar, sharpenThe best day of the month for martial arts and for edged tools.
  • 02Sweat it outA sauna and a long sweat are part of the day's prescribed work.
  • 03Do not marry todayOne line in the tradition rules weddings out on the leopard's day.

Spilled cooking oil today is read as the sign that you have stepped off your own path.

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 dangerous for the sick

Unlucky. Illness that starts today is dangerous, sowing and planting should wait, dreams carry meaning, 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

Unlucky, finish scraps and start nothing

Vronsky calls it an unlucky day, fit only for finishing minor leftovers. Nothing new should be started. Recovery is difficult, dreams are meaningless, and the child does not live long without strong benefics in the chart.

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

Pavel Globa

Born 1953

Fight something: metal, muscle, a habit.

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

Quarrels early, working capacity later

Zaraev sees the same aggression and reads it as a cost. His first half is unfavourable, with ambition and temper rising and quarrels between spouses, partners, parents and children. The second half settles and working capacity climbs.

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

Globa and Zaraev describe exactly the same aggression and give opposite orders. Globa says use it today. Zaraev says it will cost you a quarrel with someone close.

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 third 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.