Pirts day
The time shifts the planetary hours and the lunar-day boundary; the sun and phase readings stay day-based.
Waning moon 22% 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 Virgo earth
Order, detail, health, work. The best sign for cleaning, setting things straight, treatment, and anything that calls for precision. The risk is excess criticism of yourself and others.
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 systemMonday · Moon ☾︎. Mood, home, memory, family. Sensitivity is higher than usual — toward people and toward food. A good day for housework, for caring for a mother and elders, for water treatments, for anything that calls for gentleness. A poor day for important decisions and public steps: plans tend to change. The shadow side is emotional unsteadiness and taking offence.
Current planetary hour: ♃︎ Jupiter — hour 3 of the day.
Growth, learning, law, travel, generosity. An hour for large questions: strategy, institutions and courts, long-term agreements, asking and giving. What is begun now tends to grow. The shadow side is exaggeration and promises beyond your strength.
The year wheel
Last: Miķeļi
Next: Mārtiņi, in 14 days
71% through this eighth of the year
The sun
- Sign
- ♏︎ in Scorpio, 1.6° water
- Day of the solar month
- day 2
- Next turning point
- the winter solstice, in 58 days
- Day length
- 9.7 h · sunrise 08:17 · sunset 17:56
The sun's passage through Scorpio was felt as the cold taking real hold — warmth withdrew inward, and the body was said to conserve rather than spend. Old lore treated this as a season for going quiet, for keeping close what mattered, not for open display. Illness caught now was thought to run deeper and linger longer than at other turns of the year.
The day, read as one
Four quite different traditions agreed, for once, on the same quiet note: this was a day for retreat rather than show. The lunar day's warning against vanity and overreach, the waning moon's logic of release, Virgo's call to order and careful attention, and Monday's gentler, home-turned sensitivity all pointed toward pirts and water treatments taken slowly and without fuss. Scorpio's sun, drawing warmth inward, only reinforced the sense that this was a day to conserve rather than spend. The one dissenting note was the lunar day's own caution about the hips and thighs, and its warning that illness taken on this day ran deep — a reason, tradition held, to favour calm and unhurried care over anything strenuous. Taken together, the old counsel was simple: go in quiet, stay unhurried, and let the day's work be finishing rather than beginning.
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.