William Lilly was one of the most mysterious and influential astrologers of all time and infamous for his early prediction of the Great Fire of London in 1666. Lilly was so accurate in foretelling this catastrophe (down to the hour) that he was accused of setting the fire to make his predictions manifest!

Author of many books and almanacs, Lilly is most recognized for his 1647 text, Christian Astrology which has proven timeless for modern day astrologers. In this book, Lilly describes a method for determining exactly what planet rules the moment one is in. His system is based on the number of daylight hours in each day. Because each day of the year has sunlight for a different amount of time (there are more daylight in the summer than winter) , he deemed this theory - UNEQUAL HOURS.

According to Lilly's thinking, each day begins at sunrise and ends at the next sunrise - creating 24 planetary hours. The first hour of the day is ruled by the planet of that day, and the entire day carries that influence. However, there are seven planets who are given rulership over the Zodiac and these planets also have influence over their respective hours of the day. The order in which they are lined is: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon.

Magically speaking, one may choose to use the planetary hours for added influence in their workings. In order to determine which hour is ruled by which planet, one must first find the time of sunrise or sunset off the news, from an almanac or newspaper or on the Internet.

Calculating Planetary Hours

Let's say you want to calculate the planetary hours for a given Sunday. You have determined that sun rises at 5 AM and sets at 7 PM.

Next, find the difference. In this example it's 14 hours. Multiply that number by 60 (the number of modern day minutes in an hour). You need to know how many minutes exist between sunrise and sunset. In this instance, the result is 840 minutes.

Now divide the number of minutes (840 ) by 12 (1/2 the number of hours in a modern day) to determine the daytime hours. In our example the result is 70 minutes or 1 hour and 10 minutes.

We know that Sunday is ruled by the Sun. So the first hour of the day is owned by the Sun. In our example, 5 AM until 6:10 AM is the "sun hour". As you can see, using planetary hours does not mean working within modern day 60 minute intervals. From 6:11 AM until 7:21 AM, one experiences the influence of Venus on this day. You would continue calculating the hours using the 70 minutes intervals and the above mentioned planetary order from sunrise to sunset.

To determine nighttime hours, one would make the same calculations from sunset to the next sunrise on Monday.

In this example we have 10 hours between sunset at 7PM and sunrise at 5 AM. When we multiply 10 hours with 60 minutes we see there are 600 minutes between sunset and sunrise the following day. By dividing 600 minutes by 12 hours we can then determine that every 50 minutes the planetary influence will shift this particular Sunday. Therefore, from 7:00 PM until 7:50 PM, the influence of Jupiter is felt (Saturn was the last daylight hour - so continue naming hours in the proper sequence)

A Timing Example

Say you need to do a love work. Love is ruled by Planet Venus (see Day of Week Page). You know you want to DRAW love, so you do it when both hands are moving UP THE CLOCK . You can do it from either 6 AM to Noon or 6 PM to Midnight. You see it is best to do this work on Friday but you can’t do it because of your job. So, you select Sunday (a day for Success work) evening as the best time for you to conduct your prayers or spell. For this exercise we will use the calculations from the "Sunday" worked on above to determine our timing.

Go to the NIGHT chart listed below and see what hours on this Sunday evening are ruled by Planet Venus. It's the fourth hour and the eleventh hours. These are the BEST time to do your work. But the eleventh hour will be at the crack of dawn! So you must do your spell in the 4th night time hour.

From our above calculations, we know on this particular Sunday evening, every 50 minutes the planetary hour changes. The 4th night time hour of Sunday is 200 minutes past sunset (4 x 50). You now know to begin your work 200 minutes or 3.33 hours past sunset.(200 minutes divided by 60 modern minutes in an hour). That's three hours and twenty minutes past sunset - or at 10:20 PM

Check to make sure it is the WAXING MOON to better your outcome!

Daytime Hours

Nighttime Hours

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