Ritual timing
There are specific timing considerations for ritual operations that are worth using for your rituals. These allow you to hold rituals at propitious times in relation to your ritual intention, enabling you to improve the effectiveness of your rituals.
You may well be familiar with timing considerations such as:
Long term timing derived from systems such as numerology (multi-year cycles)
Annual timing such as The Wheel of the Year (festivals tied to the solar cycle)
Astronomical events
Timing of rituals related to Moon phases
Astrological considerations
Use of lunar mansions (the movement of the moon through a sidereal month)
Weekly timing related to days (and correspondences such as planets)
Intraday timing like planetary hours (calculated from sunrise/sunset at a location)
All of these enable you to find the best time to hold rituals with reference to the long, medium or short term, with planetary hours giving you exact timing to the nearest minute for the start and end of hours that are particularly good for your ritual intention.
Here we look at a method to calculate ritual timing considerations for the year allowing us to look at targets for specific ritual intentions related to a combination of the lunar calendar, astronomical events, astrological signs, and planetary rulers for the Moon and days. This combines the solar and lunar calendars and gives you the big picture for long term planning of ritual activities. You can easily do this once a year with a spreadsheet.
To calculate a ritual calendar for each day in the year you have to do the following:
Calculate the lunar calendar for the year (giving Moon phases and zodiac signs)
Overlay astronomical events and solar calendar festivals (which may coincide)
Overlay the Sun zodiac signs
Find the planetary rulers for a moon zodiac sign and days of the week
Look for alignment of Sun and Moon signs and/or Moon and planetary rulers
The first step is to find the lunar calendar for the year. This varies by your location on the Earth and so you have to use an application to calculate the calendar that includes longitude and latitude, such as the Astro Seek moon phase calendar or the Lunarium calendar.
From this you can see the lunar calendar for each day of 2022. This allows you to see for each day the Moon phase, any astronomical events, and the Moon sign. In the examples below I am using my location of Hong Kong (the calendar will vary slightly based on your location so you will have to calculate your own equivalent).
It is easy to overlay the sun signs and solar festivals to give us a basic calendar. From this we can find key days where the Sun and Moon signs align, which would be good days for intentions related to that sign. For example, here are relevant dates for 2022 (which often occur around the time of the New Moon):
This gives us days for each zodiac sign that we can potentially use for relevant intentions. You could then do more fine-grained analysis using standard astrological techniques.
We also need to note times at which the Moon signs change. For instance, on June 1st the Moon sign changes from Gemini to Cancer at 13:49, so any ritual looking to coincide with the Sun and Moon sign alignment of Gemini would have to occur before then.
Note that two of the solar festivals coincide with alignment of the zodiac signs and May 1st is also a solar eclipse. These are potentially significant times.
The next step is to overlay the planetary rules for the Moon zodiac sign and the day concerned. You can do this with reference to a standard table of correspondences between the Moon sign and Moon planetary ruler which is as follows:
From this we can find alignment of the planets which show that these would be good times to consider for relevant rituals. Here are relevant dates for 2022:
Note that the Litha festival coincides with Mars being the planetary rule for the Moon and day.
There are Full Moons on May 16th and November 8th which coincide with lunar eclipses, but which do not have an alignment of zodiac signs or planetary rulers. The festivals of Ostara, Lammas, Mabon, Samhain, and Yule do not coincide with any significant alignment of zodiac signs or planetary rulers or astrological events.
Again we need to consider timing. On July 8th, the Moon sign changes from Libra to Scorpio at 13:15 (making the Moon ruler Mars not Venus), so any ritual looking to coincide with the Moon and day planetary ruler alignment of Venus would have to occur before then.
An edge case is March 18th on which the Moon zodiac sign changes from Virgo to Libra at 19:26 at which point the planetary rules for both the Moon sign and day are Venus. This would seem to align well with the Full Moon that occurs that day. Technically the New Moon is in Virgo, although you could argue that the energy of the Full Moon extends over a multi-day window and acknowledge this alignment.
So far so good. The holy grail though is to look for days in the year where there is alignment of the Sun and Moon signs as well as the Moon rulers and planetary days. This also means of course that there would be alignment between the zodiac sign and planetary ruler. The following days fulfill these criteria in 2022:
These four days are clearly the main ones on which we would look to conduct rituals related to the planets concerned. The New Moon on March 3rd is particularly significant for business related rituals. I am planning a ritual related to a new business on that date. For the other planets concerned, Mercury and Saturn would be good for rituals related to communication and transformation.
An edge case is October 25th on which the Sun and Moon zodiac signs align at 15:19 at which point they are both Scorpio, and the planetary rulers are then both Mars. This would seem to align well with the solar eclipse on the New Moon that occurs that day. Technically the New Moon is in Libra, although you could argue that the energy of the New Moon extends over a multi-day window and acknowledge this alignment.
This should give you an idea of timing considerations that you can include when planning your own rituals if zodiac sign and planetary correspondences are relevant for your work.
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