Pirts day
The time shifts the planetary hours and the lunar-day boundary; the sun and phase readings stay day-based.
Waning moon 19% 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 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 systemSunday · Sun ☉︎. Strength, visibility, authority — the day for showing yourself and, at the same time, for resting. What needs authority goes well: speaking up, addressing those above you, starting what needs to be noticed. Fine, quiet work and requests where you must look small go less well. The shadow side is pride and the wish to be watched.
Current planetary hour: ☿︎ Mercury — hour 3 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: Miķeļi
Next: Mārtiņi, in 43 days
7% through this eighth of the year
The sun
- Sign
- ♎︎ in Libra, 3.0° air
- Day of the solar month
- day 4
- Next turning point
- the winter solstice, in 87 days
- Day length
- 11.9 h · sunrise 07:16 · sunset 19:12
With the sun in Libra, day and night stood equal, and the body was said to sit at its own balance point too — neither the heat of summer nor the cold of winter had the upper hand. It was held a good season to settle accounts, physical and otherwise, before the year tipped toward the dark. Overdoing anything now unbalanced what the season itself had steadied.
The day, read as one
Lunar day 26 and the waning moon agree on the quiet reading of this day: both the numbered corpus and the Latvian phase-lore point toward pirts, water, and the shedding of surplus rather than toward anything begun fresh, and the folk caution about swimming and tooth-work echoed the day's own warnings about the hips and overreach. The sky complicates the mood, though — Moon in Leo and a Sunday ruled by the Sun both pull toward visibility and being seen, a pride that the marsh-day explicitly warned against mistaking for real strength. The Libra sun added a steadying note underneath it all, favouring balance and the settling of accounts over any excess. Taken together, tradition held that this was a day better suited to a quiet, unhurried pirts than to anything performed for an audience — the washing mattered more than the watching.
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.