The unicorn
The fifth lunar day is about food, and about what the body and the mind do with it. Local start and end times are below.
- Runs from the fourth 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 food day. The month starts digesting what it took in.
The short table gives the unicorn, standing for loyalty to principle and to duty. The book gives two symbols: the unicorn, which it calls an alchemical figure, and Food itself. Milk and curd cheese are preferred and slaughtered meat avoided, with curd, butter and honey called sacred. Herbs are gathered, dried and made into a tincture. Fussing is ruled out and so, oddly for a food day, is fasting.
The book extends the eating instruction to spiritual food and makes it the point of the day: choose one tradition and stay inside it rather than grazing across everything. The other instruction is to part with something you no longer need, and to do it with tears. It is the only assigned weeping in the thirty days.
- 01Eat milk, not meatCurd, butter and honey are called sacred; slaughtered meat is avoided.
- 02Give something up, and cryPart with what you no longer need, and the tradition wants tears with it.
- 03Do not fast and do not fussNeither an empty stomach nor a busy one suits the fifth day.
A craving for meat today is read as a predator living in you, and one line has a haircut today bringing money.
Named openly, because a gap is more useful than filler
Where the sources are thin
This is one of the five days the older lines barely cover.
The Albertus entry for day 5 is a duplicate of day 4 on two independent Russian sites, and Globa's short table runs to four sentences, so only the book and Zaraev carry real weight on this page.
This page stays short rather than filling the gap. Inventing is the thing this site exists not to do.
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
Text corrupt, no verdict
The Albertus text for the fifth day cannot be trusted. Two independent Russian sites print the fourth day's entry here word for word, so there is no separate medieval verdict to report.
The medieval lunary carried under his name. The attribution is traditional and not proven.
Sergei Vronsky
1915 to 1998
Unlucky, and fatal for criminals
Vronsky calls it unlucky and final: what is lost today is lost for good. He makes it fatal for criminals, saying any crime committed today is uncovered and punished. Illness can be fatal and needs attention at once, and the child is short lived without serious help, offset in part by a strong Jupiter, Venus or Sun.
Classical Astrology, volume 4. His text is the old lunary in modern prose, and carries no symbols.
Pavel Globa
Born 1953
Eat well. Choose one path and hold 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
Shaky first half, much better second
Zaraev's first half is unfavourable, with indecision, a drop in self-belief and strained contact with bosses and partners. The second half is much better, and he notes sexual potential rising.
His circulating texts carry no symbols and are pegged to the phase aspects instead.
Globa reads the day as sacred food and a quiet goodbye. Vronsky reads it as the day a loss becomes permanent and a crime gets caught. The medieval column here is a copying error, not a 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 fifth 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.