Talk:Planetary hours

Asian connection?
Almost assuredly, there must be some historical connections to Chinese, as Sunday was "Sun Day" and Monday was "Moon Day" long before the current western calender came into existence. Anyone know? --Smoove K 01:24, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The Ancient Chinese system of naming days did indeed use the 7 planets for day names of the week, but it's not used in China for a long time, since it was replaced by the 10-day week hundreds of years ago... though Japan still uses the system. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 03:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Agrippa References?
Although I do not presently have Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books Of Occult Philosophy, I believe there are references to the Planetary Hour calculations in that work. I've introduced a reference from Barrett's The Magus, but my understanding is that most of that book is lifted from Agrippa. --webbj74 (talk) 01:58, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Wrong link?
I think the link to the arXiv paper of Michael Falk is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmiszcz (talk • contribs) 10:52, 26 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, the arXiv is wrong. The doi is also wrong. So I'll remove them. But the bibcode is correct. — Joe Kress (talk) 17:09, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Sunset or sunrise naming convention used in ancient Pompeii?
According to Vettius Valens, the first hour of the day began at sunset, which follows Greek and Babylonian convention. He also states that the light and dark halves of the day were presided over by the heavenly bodies of the first hour of each half. This is confirmed by a Pompeian graffito which calls 6 February 60 a "Sunday", even though by modern reckoning it would have been a Wednesday. Assuming that this graffito used the sunset naming convention of Valens, it would follow that 6 February 60 was a Wednesday according to the sunrise naming convention used in modern astrology, suggesting that there may be an unbroken continuity of weekdays connecting the modern period to the 1st century AD at least.

The above cited part of the text on "Planetary hours" seems to me to assume without any sound reason - and without anything at all written about it in the given source (Hannah, 2013) - that the writer of this Pompeian graffito used the sunset naming convention, when it would be much more reasonable to believe that this Pompeian writer used the sunrise naming convention; if so, the same nychthemeron as "dies Solis ['Sunday']" (counted from sunrise) would be a "dies Mercurii [Wednesday]" (counting from the previous sunset), the same feria as by our "modern" convention for Wednesday, 6 February 60 C.E. (Julian calendar; cJDN 1743009). /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.202 (talk) 10:00, 18 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I just added a comment on the wikipedia Planetary Hours page, asking for clarification of some of the text. I thought that I would reach out to you, since you seem to know something about the subject. Thanks. Sara de Rose (talk) 19:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Please help: better description needed
The page says "These two overlapping naming systems continued to be used by Alexandrian Christians during the 4th century, but the days in both were simply numbered 1 to 7."

clarification is needed: 1) What two overlapping systems: the sunrise naming convention and the sunset naming convention?; Or the "Jewish" week with days numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and the planetary week, with days numbered (relative to the sphere numbers of the planets) 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7?

2)Are the days in the weeks generated by the "two overlapping naming systems" numbered using two different inversions of the "week-day sequence" (i.e., 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7), one starting with the number 4 (i.e., Sunday) and one starting with the number 2 (i.e., Wednesday/Mercury)? Or are the days in both these weeks numbered sequentially from 1 to 7, like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? Sara de Rose (talk) 19:45, 2 May 2024 (UTC)