What are the planetary hours?

The planetary hours are the traditional division of the day into twelve unequal daytime hours and twelve unequal nighttime hours, measured from local sunrise and sunset. Each hour is ruled by one of the seven classical planets, following the Chaldean order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The sequence gives every day its ruling planet and every hour its own character. Long before clocks made hours uniform, this was how time was read, and practitioners of the old sciences chose their hours for work, healing, letter writing, and ritual accordingly.

The hour ruler today

This tool calculates the planetary hours from your local sunrise and sunset, showing the current ruler and the full 24-hour sequence. Because the hours are unequal, they shift through the year: short in winter, long in summer, exactly as the tradition intends. The hours belong to the timing arts of the Islamic golden age, which preserved and practised them alongside the lunar mansions and geomancy. For a question of the heart rather than the hour, the tradition offers Fal-e Hafez.