The phoenix
The eighth lunar day is a fire day in one tradition and a travelling day in another. Local start and end times are below.
- Runs from the seventh 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 fire day. Burn off what the first week piled up.
Globa's table gives the phoenix, and the book puts the butterfly and the moth beside it, all three things that go into fire and come out changed. The instructions are penitential: fast, cleanse the stomach and intestines, prepare remedies. Being dissolute or self-centred is what the day punishes. The whole entry runs to three sentences, the shortest of the thirty.
The concrete texture comes from the popular layer rather than from Globa. Pankratov says the urge to sit and stare into a flame should be followed, and that fire itself wants unusual care today. One site bars marriage and recommends buying antiques and repairing old clothes, which is the same idea in household form: nothing new, everything remade. Pankratov also claims alchemists were born on this day.
- 01Fast and clean outThe day's prescription is an empty stomach and a cleansed gut.
- 02Sit with a real flameFollow the pull to a fire, and treat fire itself with extra care today.
- 03Mend, do not buy newRepairing old clothes suits the day better than anything new.
The line about the child who is not destined to be good looking and must get by on intellect and diligence runs unchanged from the medieval text into Vronsky's 2004 textbook.
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.
Globa's short table for day 8 is the shortest of the thirty, three sentences, and nearly every concrete detail here comes from the Pankratov popular layer rather than from Globa himself.
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
Lucky on the road, bad for the sick
Lucky for travellers and unlucky for anyone who falls ill. Dreams are true, and infants born today have unattractive faces.
The medieval lunary carried under his name. The attribution is traditional and not proven.
Sergei Vronsky
1915 to 1998
A day for the road, bad for illness
Vronsky makes it a travel day outright: trips, business journeys and moving house. Illness may be dangerous, complicated or drawn out. Dreams are mostly trustworthy. The child must attract attention by intellect, knowledge and diligence rather than by looks.
Classical Astrology, volume 4. His text is the old lunary in modern prose, and carries no symbols.
Pavel Globa
Born 1953
Burn it off. Fast, clean, repair.
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
First quarter, difficult, drop ambition
Zaraev has the first quarter here and calls it difficult. Old problems take longer than hoped, and his advice is to drop personal ambition and bring new partners in.
His circulating texts carry no symbols and are pegged to the phase aspects instead.
Globa's day is inward, hungry and on fire. Vronsky's is a business trip. The two entries have nothing in common except the number at the top.
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 eighth 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.