Black Witch

First, before I start, are you aware of the Ustream chat that will be on June 9^th at 6 PM EST celebrating Black Witch turning three? If you weren’t, now you are. See you there!

So, I have been working on some magick and me being my impatient self, I didn’t want to wait for the appropriate day to cast it. I prefer using planetary associations to help improve my magick workings but since each day represents a different planet and I’m not up for being patient, I felt a bit frustrated. And then a thought struck me, I had forgotten that I could use planetary hours since each hour also has a ruler as well.

Onward to le Google machine of happiness! From that, I have learned of this nifty nifty website provided by astrology.com.tr where they pinpoint whatever particular hour you need and a chart outlining the day’s lineup. It looks like this:

This is entirely useful because it can add another level of energy to working. Say you want to prolong your career, you could cast on Saturday because that’s the planet of time and longevity and careers (in opposed to having a job) but you want it to be successful and lucky in the long run financially as well so you could cast in the hour of Jupiter, the planet of money, wealth and luck. You just put in your selected day of practice, the current hour it is and look at the chart. Since it uses military time, you can try to put in that time to make sure that you have the right hour. There are even little descriptions for each planet to help you understand which planet is good for what workings.

Now, it is important to note that you can just use the hour as a replacement for the day. That’s kind of what I did because, like I said, I’m really impatient. But also it’s important to not go overboard. It’s okay to point out the best hour and day for magick working using planetary hours and zodiacs but don’t fasten your whole life to them.

It is incredibly annoying to hear someone go, “Mars is in retrograde, don’t sign that contract!” or go “The Moon is in Scorpio and void of course, you should not start a relationship right now, try when it is in Cancer and aspecting Venus in a Trine.” That’s terribly ridiculous. Life is very random and you can’t really determine the future of someone or something based off of one thing only. That’s why it’s really ridiculous when someone tries to think they have a person figured out because they know their one and only sun sign. These planets and zodiacs definitely provide influence but in such a complex way that the average person would not be able to understand it. The best one can do is use the bit of influence they know of somehow in their favor through magick and/or action. So it’s fine to do a spell to promote action on the day of Mars (Tuesday) during the hour of Mars to really amplify the original intent but to wait around for Mars to be in Aries and in the first house all the while?  No way. Perhaps for ceremonial magick/high magick but those guys practically need a stage manager to get a simple spell out so they’re a whole ‘nother ball game. Just use the little bit that you’re aware of to curry favor but don’t fasten your life to it because unless you can keep mindful of all planets, asteroids and zodiacs like a walking expanded ephemeris and fully, deeply understand every possible complexity that those interactions can create, it’s best to simply live life and use what you can to edge it into your favor when you need to.

I am glad I found the planetary hours but will I apply it to every notion in my life? Good gods, no. That’s too much thinking to micromanage every nanosecond based on a range of planets. And it ignores the fact that there are things that happen out of my control. Life is not a television show (which is probably a good thing given that most tv shows in the West are Whitewashed, poorly written using tired tropes based on 19^th century sexist and racist ideals and made mainly by White, older guys who have very slanted ideas about how the world works period) and it would be ridiculous to assume it as such. Life isn’t some perfect thing that just has some little, cute quirks in it, nope. It really is quite random and filled with gratuitous forms of nonsense that does not always make sense.

So, I highly recommend the Planetary hours to use for ritual and practice but remember, there is more to life than finding out you didn’t take an important phone call at Mercury o’clock but at half past Saturn instead.

See you Sunday!