Extra Feature: Experimenting with the Planetary Hours
There is a good app for the Planetary Hours, which I downloaded to my phone today. It's Planetary Hours by Luigi Notaro. There is also Planetary Hours Pro which only costs two dollars! I haven't downloaded it yet but probably shall. It has extra features which sound useful.
The basic app shows the current planetary hour for the day and your location. I have not checked it carefully yet with my own calculations but have no reason to assume that it is out of kilter. It is very convenient, showing the hours in whatever format you wish and highlighting the current one so you can see it immediately.
I am not new to these hours! I have used them, on and off, for decades. I have gone for months at a time not using them at all, then gone through periods of using them quite regularly, then dropped them again. I do not disbelieve in them but sometimes feel it might be better to follow the logic of events as they unfold in their own way each day than to try to structure them mentally with this or any other system. However, at present it again makes sense to me.
The most profound interpretation of the meaning of these hours is probably Marc Edmund Jones's in How to Live With the Stars, which is I believe the last book he wrote--pretty certainly that last one he published--on astrology. It gets to the innermost essence of what these hours might mean and what they might be good for. He writes, as always, in a style which is pretty abstract for most tastes, and many read him and say "What the h is he talking about?" and just give up on him. However, I think that in this case his one-paragraph expositions of each of the seven hours are amazingly helpful, and yield more and more insight as one revisits them and ponders them during the hours themselves.
But I would also recommend reading other interpretations, more conventional ones, about what the hours are good for. If you know anything about the planets you could already figure this out. Saturn bad, Jupiter good, Mars energetic, sun proud, Venus social, Mercury intellectual, moon homey or comfy. Well, yes, that makes some sense but it is not all of the story.
I just gave them in the order in which they occur, Chaldean order. There is no beginning and no end although one usually begins with Saturn because they go from the slowest-moving of the anciently known planets, Saturn, to the fastest-moving, our moon.
Here is what I have found after years of working with them. This is my own viewpoint and yours might be very much different. Only working with the hours yourself would inform you how you get along with them and how you might best use them.
Imagine yourself either retired or on a luxurious vacation. Your time is your own, or if you have a companion she or he is willing to go along with your timing.
In the Moon hour you are at home or in your hotel room. You have things to do like eat, maybe wash clothes, take a shower, do light housekeeping, or whatnot. All very Mooney, the domestic planet. It rules water and nutrition. I find that I often feel like eating during the moon hour. It may also be just the right time for a bath or shower, and then getting dressed.
The Saturn hour comes up. You sit down with your Bible, or other scripture, or uplifting spiritual writing, or you listen to hymns or sacred music or inspiring stuff of whatever nature. Or you sit silently meditating or praying or both. I merely suggest this because to me it makes sense that the Saturn hour would be the "sabbatical" hour, the time for worship, just as for the Hebrews Saturn's day, Saturday is the day for worship. We do need to keep our link with the Highest intact. If you are a Sabian student you may study your Sabian lessons; if Catholic you may recite from the week's prayer book or do the rosary, and so on.
The Jupiter hour hits! Time for adventure! Jupiter rules Sagittarius the planet of travel, internationalism, and expanded horizons. You leave your home or hotel room to see what in the world is going on. You are up for anything. People and life are interesting. God is here in the world as well as in your solitary meditation room. Maybe you have a pre-chosen destination or maybe not. You could make it up as you go along because luck should be with you.
The Mars hour intervenes. He has a bad reputation, the planet of fighting and arguing. However, we all need some testosterone to keep us going. Maybe this hour you feel competitive or meet people who disagree with you or want to interact with you in a challenging way. That could be all for the good. Maybe you want to play a game with someone. Maybe your ambitions surge, so you think, "What am I learning which would help me in my profession or hobby to excel?" So you tune your ears and eyes to things along that line. You should not be afraid of challenge or human differences, but find them instructive and stimulating. You need to keep up with things.
Now the Sun shines. His hour brings confidence. Apollo is the sun-god. He is gloriously good-looking and feels he knows how to meet anything. So do you. You might feel unduly superior to people around you, so it is good to remind yourself that they also reflect Apollo; each of them has her or his glory to demonstrate before the world and yourself, to be appreciated. This also seems to be an excellent social hour, but not only that. If you have a special project of your own to pursue, revealing your talent and skill, you might take up with that rather than interact directly with a lot of people. Or you might choose the latter if you are on vacation. All is good; God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
Venus sneaks in. She is lovely, and you didn't expect her! One of those moments. Love at first sight? Be careful. One ought not to be presumptuous. Or ought one to be daring? Venus gives her own signals, yet one must not get ahead of oneself. She does not like presumption, but responds to kindness, admiration and appreciation. But what can I say about love? You know more about it than I. At any rate, this could be the hour for enjoyment, for a beautiful scene, or for luxuriating in a restaurant or bar or wherever destiny takes one gracefully. If with your companion, you will have a specially good time doing whatever you most like to do together.
But then Mercury of the swift-winged sandals flies through the window. He is restless. He makes you restless. Something is changing. You feel like getting up to move somewhere, maybe just another table, or maybe someone interrupts you, or your phone rings or you use your phone to connect with someone else who comes to mind, or you just start reading the latest headlines. Information hour. Thinking hour. The hour of the mind's pursuit of something or nothing. Venus may not be gone entirely but maybe your companion also is reaching for her or his phone rather than looking at you. Life is this changeable scene, and now we perceive everything in a fresh way because of the segue.
Are you going to go somewhere else, or go home? That often is the question in the Mercury hour. Luna is here, and she calls to home in one way or another. Maybe this is not literally home or your hotel room, but another place where you feel specially comfortable. Yes, the Moon hour has come back, where we began, and you may feel hungry again, or think of or wish for family, or want some privacy perhaps, or realize you need to do something at home. It's not always an outwardly domestic hour but something in it is domestic internally, maybe a sense of clinging to someone familiar.
And then, again the approach to the Highest in the Saturn hour, and then . . .
One might not want to be overly compulsive about any of this, yet I believe it is good to fast during any Saturn hour. In fact, if working with a diet, one might restrict one's eating to Moon, Jupiter, and Venus hours. The Mars, Sun and Mercury hours might be better spent in expending energy, probably, than in acquiring it through food.
This is of course oversimplified but if you were to follow out this scenario a few times, on different days, you might get wonderful insights into what the hours mean and how to respond to them. At the very least it is an excellent exercise in self-awareness and mindfulness. A hint: One such seven-hour sequence begins early in the afternoon on Saturdays, extending to early evening; another from mid-morning Sundays till mid-afternoon. In the winter months the daylight hours are shorter; in the summer months they are luxuriantly longer.
Hugh / Cosmic Piper
