cooper@pbsvax.DEC (TOPHER COOPER DTN-225-5819) (12/17/85)
You may be interested in an astrological scheme which may describe the process
by which a particular day of the week was associated with a particular planet.
I have inferred this scheme from the book "The Magus; or The Celestial
Intelligencer" by Francis Barrett. This is a textbook to "occult sciences"
first published in 1801. University Press published a facsimile addition in
1967. Barrett was knowledgeable about classical, post-classical, medieval and
modern occult and mystical works in English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Where
he got this scheme I don't know. I've never seen it elsewhere (though my
expertise is limited, it may be commonly known to scholars).
We start by taking the astrological "planets" in order from slowest moving
to fastest moving (geocentric, of course): Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun,
Venus, Mercury and the Moon. We treat this as a cyclic ordering.
Traditionally, an hour was not a fixed amount of time. Rather, the daytime
was divided into 12 equal segments as was the nighttime. The lengths of
each hour depended, therefore on the time of year and whether it was a night
hour or a day hour. Anyway, Barrett starts each day at sunrise with the 12
day hours, then goes onto the 12 night hours. This differs, of course, from
the Jewish system which starts each "day" at sunset. I don't know whether
Barrett got this wrong, or whether it simply represents a different system.
As you'll see, it doesn't really matter for these purposes, the results would
be the same with either way.
Anyway, each hour of each day is ruled over by a planet, as follows: The
first day is ruled by the Sun, for reasons that someone has already posted.
Hence the first hour of that day is ruled by the Sun. Using the above cyclic
ordering the second hour is ruled by Venus, the third by Mercury, the fourth
by the Moon, the fifth by Saturn and so on through the twelfth also being
ruled by Saturn. Then we continue through the hours of the night with the
first being Jupiter and the twelfth being Mercury. That makes the first hour
of the second day, and hence the day as a whole, ruled by the Moon.
Continuing the pattern (the arithmetically minded can assign numbers and add
3 modulo 7) the third day is ruled by Mars, the fourth by Mercury, the fifth
by Jupiter, the sixth by Venus and the last by Saturn.
This pattern of "rulership" of the days, is of course, the association between
the names of the days of the week in various languages and the planets which
has already been posted. This scheme could, of course, be a coincidence
discovered later, but it works rather too well for this to be likely. Another
possibility is that the relationship of "plus 3 modulo 7 on the speed ordering
of the planets" could have been generated some other way, but I haven't been
able to think of one.
Topher Cooper
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