Pirts day
Every layer is read at this time; sunrise and sunset are the chosen day's.
Waning moon 97% 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 butterfly and the dove
One of the pure days. Moderation is its whole symbol — a balance between the physical and the astral. It was to be kept even if someone gives offence.
- + Cleaning in every sense
- + Quiet housework, solitude
- + Exercise, travel
- − Shouting, envy, aggression
- − Meat (fish aside), mushrooms
- − Operations on the bones and the thyroid
- Symbol
- a butterfly, a dove, a ladder
- Body
- the spleen; the renewal of the blood
- Stones
- spinel, tourmaline, pearl
Health — a divinatory system, not medicine
Bone complaints were thought possible; operations on the bones and especially the thyroid were not advised.
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 systemFriday · Venus ♀︎. Relationships, beauty, pleasure, art, peace. A good day to meet, to reconcile, to tend to yourself, to shop for beauty, to make and to enjoy. Agreements reached on a Friday tend to hold, because they rest on liking rather than pressure. A poor day for rough work and confrontation. The shadow side is idleness, indulgence, waste.
Current planetary hour: Mercury ☿︎ — hour 6 of the night.
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: Ūsiņi
Next: Jāņi, in 12 days
75% through this eighth of the year
The sun
- Sign
- ♊︎ in Gemini, 18.6° air
- Day of the solar month
- day 20
- Next turning point
- the summer solstice, in 12 days
- Day length
- 17.7 h · sunrise 04:31 · sunset 22:15
The sun in Gemini brought a lighter, quicker warmth — days stretched long and the body wanted movement rather than stillness. Old lore warned that this restlessness could tip into a chill caught from too much running about before the season had fully turned. Rest was taken in short spells, never long ones.
The day, read as one
Several threads agreed on this one: both the lunar day and the waning phase pointed toward cleansing, quiet, and letting go, and Latvian folklore's own moon-phase reading echoed the same call for pirts and water as a way of casting off the surplus. The mood ran cooler and more contained than usual, though — Capricorn's sober, work-minded chill sat a little at odds with Venus's Friday warmth toward ease and company, so the day leaned more toward solitary release than social pleasure. The lunar day's own caution about the bones and thyroid was worth noting rather than heeding as advice, simply a thread of old lore running alongside the rest. Gemini's restless, quick-moving sun suggested that whatever stillness was found was better taken in short spells than long ones.
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.