Pirts day
The time shifts the planetary hours and the lunar-day boundary; the sun and phase readings stay day-based.
Waning moon 91% illuminated
The waning moon was long held as the best time for a pirts visit. This was when cleansing and letting go were most encouraged — heavier whisking and a longer, more thorough visit were favoured.
The mirror
The world reflects your true nature. Whatever unpleasant thing is said of you today is true — not to take offence at, but to take into account.
- + The best fasting day of the cycle
- + Pirts, cleansing the skin and the gut
- + Massage with plant oil, nuts
- − Vanity, imitating others
- − Alcohol, smoking, sleeping late
- − Serious practices done alone
- Symbol
- a mirror, ice, a monkey
- Body
- the skin, the kidneys
- Stones
- white agate, opal, amethyst
Health — a divinatory system, not medicine
The kidneys weaken today. Skin complaints that appear now, or old wounds that reopen, were read as a sign of breaking a cosmic law.
Moon in Leo fire
Visibility, making, celebration, children. You want to be appreciated — and it works. Take care: pride and drama rise higher today than you notice yourself.
Latvian folk tradition
a separate layer · by moon phase, not by numbered day- On the waning moon — pirts, water treatments, casting off the surplus.
- Trees felled on the old moon rot less.
Source: Pēteris Šmits, Latviešu tautas ticējumi. Not the numbered-day corpus above.
Planetary week
a third, independent systemTuesday · Mars ♂︎. Action, sport, conflict, surgery. There is much energy and it wants an outlet: physical effort, repairs, the garden, casting off surplus. Whoever lies idle on their side today feels poorly by evening. A good day to stand your ground and to finish what needs pressure. A poor one for delicate talks and matters of love. The shadow side is quarrels, haste, injury.
Current planetary hour: ☉︎ Sun — hour 7 of the night.
Strength, health, visibility, authority. The hour for showing yourself: speaking up, addressing someone higher, starting what needs to be noticed. Quiet requests and work where you must stay in the shadow go poorly.
The year wheel
Last: Ziemassvētki
Next: Meteņi, in 29 days
35% through this eighth of the year
The sun
- Sign
- ♑︎ in Capricorn, 15.6° earth
- Day of the solar month
- day 16
- Next turning point
- the spring equinox, in 74 days
- Day length
- 7.0 h · sunrise 08:59 · sunset 15:58
The sun turned at its lowest in Capricorn, and the shortest day was kept as the year's true hinge — the cold was at its hardest, but so, tradition insisted, was the promise that light was about to grow again. Endurance, not comfort, was the virtue of this season; a fire lit now was lit in hope rather than in need alone. The body was told to bear with the cold rather than fight it.
The day, read as one
Four traditions, and most of them leaned the same way today: lunar day 18 named pirts outright as a cleansing favour, the waning moon in both its numbered and Latvian folk reading called for letting go and casting off surplus, and even Mars' restless, effort-seeking energy found an outlet in that same work of finishing old business. Moon in Leo added a wish to be seen and appreciated, though the mirror of day 18 warned against vanity and pride — worth noting rather than indulging. The Capricorn sun asked only for endurance through the season's cold, no conflict there. Taken together, the day read as well-favoured for pirts and cleansing, provided it was done without preening over it or isolating oneself in serious practice.
Generated with Claude · cached for this day and updated when the corpus changes
Your lunar birth day
computed on your device · only the day (1–30) is used, never the dateThis is folk and divinatory material, not health advice. It is written in the past tense on purpose — "was avoided", "was considered" — and describes what tradition held, not what you should do. A pirts visit is a real load on the heart and circulation; judge heat, duration and frequency for your own body.