Pirts day
The time shifts the planetary hours and the lunar-day boundary; the sun and phase readings stay day-based.
Waning moon 15% 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 toad in the marsh
One of the more perilous days — not satanic but critical. A misleading enchantment with one's own achievements is the risk; energy was said to drain out through the mouth.
- + Silence, rest, fasting
- + Considered, unhurried work
- + Pirts and massage
- − Chatter, vanity, haste
- − Starting anything — you sink into the marsh
- − Swimming, pulling teeth
- Symbol
- a toad, a marsh
- Body
- the hips, the thighs
- Stones
- orpiment, blue nephrite
Health — a divinatory system, not medicine
The hips and thighs. Hip-joint injuries taken on this day were considered especially serious. Illness was thought dangerous.
Moon in Capricorn earth
Work, responsibility, career, limits. Emotion quiets, the mind turns cold and clear. The best time for serious, sustained work; the worst for seeking warmth and comfort.
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 systemThursday · Jupiter ♃︎. Growth, learning, law, travel, generosity. A day for large questions: strategy, study, courts and institutions, long-term agreements, helping others. What is begun on a Thursday tends to grow. A good day to ask and to give — money included. The shadow side is exaggeration, promises beyond your strength, and the wish to teach others how to live.
Current planetary hour: ☿︎ Mercury — hour 4 of the day.
Words, documents, roads, trade, talks. The best hour to write, study, buy and sell, bring people together, sort papers. The mind is quick but shallow — a large decision is better not settled right now.
The year wheel
Last: Meteņi
Next: Lieldienas, in 17 days
63% through this eighth of the year
The sun
- Sign
- ♓︎ in Pisces, 13.5° water
- Day of the solar month
- day 14
- Next turning point
- the spring equinox, in 17 days
- Day length
- 10.9 h · sunrise 07:09 · sunset 18:02
With the sun in Pisces the cold began to loosen into damp and thaw, and the body was said to grow porous along with the ground — easily chilled, easily moved to feeling. It was held a poor season for firm decisions and a good one for rest before spring's demands began. Old lore warned against trusting the weather here more than the calendar.
The day, read as one
Lunar day 26 and the waning moon agreed without contradiction: this was a day for silence rather than talk, for letting go rather than beginning, and pirts itself was explicitly favoured by both the numbered day and the phase, with Latvian folk tradition affirming the same waning-moon pull toward cleansing and casting off surplus. The moon's passage through Capricorn reinforced the cooler, inward mood, favouring quiet, composed effort over anything seeking comfort or warmth. Thursday's planetary character, with its pull toward growth, teaching, and new undertakings, sat awkwardly against a day better suited to rest than to starting things — best kept to small, grounded matters rather than large plans or promises. The sun in Pisces added a note of bodily porousness and emotional ease, consistent with a day for gentleness rather than exertion. Taken together, the traditions pointed toward a subdued, cleansing pirts visit, unhurried and quiet, with no great undertakings asked of it.
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.