7 Days a Week, Pt. 1: Planets & Deity Names

Hello, Readers,

As I've been reading through some beginner-Witch material again lately, I've started thinking again about basics--building blocks of magick, timing, simple things we can do everyday--and one of the things that came to my mind was timing and intention based on the day of the week. Many people know where our English names for the weekdays came from, but many people also still do not. I remember years ago, when I was first studying Paganism and Witchcraft, mentioning the origin of the days of the week to my mother, who had no idea! So I figure in 2019, maybe some other people still haven't had this come up for them, either. And even if you do know this naming origin stuff, a Part 2 of this post will be going up next, talking about using the planetary and/or Deity associations with the days of the week for deciding what kinds of magick to do on what days. If that is a sort of magickal timing you're interested in, look out for that post next.

Image by me, using symbol images from solarsystem.nasa.gov

Days of the Week: Planets & Deities

There are seven days in our calendar weeks, and this has been the case for centuries although it was not always that way. The Roman Empire was responsible for the shift sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries, according to the Wiki article which I will link below with other sources. There were also seven "classical planets", or moving celestial bodies that, at the time, could be seen with the naked eye and were known to the astronomers of classical antiquity. We would not use the term "planet" for all of them today, as the definition has changed over the years. One of them is our Sun, which we know as a star. The other is our Moon, which we consider a "satellite" today because a planet would have to be orbiting the Sun directly, whereas our Moon orbits Earth.

These seven classical planetary bodies were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Earth was not included because, well, we live here. It was all about what we could see up in space from where we were.



I'm not sure why the order of the days of the week is as it is, and I'm not sure if anyone really knows. The articles I'm reading mention the fact that even people in the era in which it originated wondered why the order was different than the order of the planets known by astronomers and astrologers, but I haven't seen an answer given. In any case, we all know the order of our days of the week at this time. The question is whether the area in which you live starts the week with Sunday or Monday as standard. In international standard, Monday is the first day of the week. The USA, however, makes calendars that begin with Sunday at the far left. I live in the USA so I've gotten used to those calendars, but I prefer datebooks that begin with Monday and when I draw schedules for myself, I begin with Monday.

In any case, we have the days of the week associated with these planets:

• Sunday - The Sun
• Monday - The Moon (so far, easy to follow)
• Tuesday - Mars
• Wednesday - Mercury
• Thursday - Jupiter
• Friday - Venus
• Saturday - Saturn (back to an easy one here)

The Sun, the Moon, and Saturn translate pretty directly into Sun-day, Moon-day, and Saturn-day. For the others, there are a couple more steps to follow. First, we have to look at languages that aren't English. I took French in high school, so the French names are the ones my brain normally goes to as a reminder, and many others follow a similar pattern.

Names in French and Latin, listed Monday-Sunday:

• French - Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi, Dimanche.
• Latin - dies Lunae, Martis, Mercurii, Iovis, Veneris, Saturni, Solis.

We can see the names look a bit more like the planets associated with our weekday names, Luna being the name for our Moon and the Goddess associated with the Moon (at least, Luna was her name in some languages). The Latin names also refer more directly to the Sun with Solis, whereas French and other "romance languages" have a name for Sunday beginning with D, like dimanche, domenica (Italian), or domingo (Spanish). These D-names refer to the "Lord's Day", with the word for "God" being things like Dieu in French, or Dio/Dios (Italian/Spanish). Saturday also has names that connect it to the "Sabbath" in many languages, like sabato in Italian.


Here's where we get into Deities.

The Roman deity names were mainly the same as the names we know for the planets. It wasn't so much that they named the days after planets, as they named them after deities. Their gods and goddesses were actually called Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and so on. The planets were named after the deity who ruled over each of them.

When we look at the names given to deities by different cultures, we see some that are similar to the names we have for the weekdays in English, and some names are not so familiar. Here are just a few fairly common examples, starting with Sunday so we have the Sun- and Moon-related names first:

• Roman - Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn.
• Greek - Helios, Selene, Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Kronos.
• Germanic - Sunna/Sól, Mona/Máni, Tiw/Tyr, Woden/Odin, Thunor/Thor, Frige/Freya, Saturn.

The Germanic names have a couple variations, because it depended on the area. Our modern English language has mainly Germanic roots--while we have certainly taken words from other languages, if you look at the "family trees" of language development, English came from West Germanic--and those are the names our English weekdays were named after. We can see the similarities of the names that don't look like they came directly from the names of the planets as we know them: Tiw's Day/Tuesday, Woden's Day/Wednesday, Thor's Day/Thursday, and Frig's Day/Friday. The Greek names would have given us MUCH different names for the days of the week!

So there we have it. The days of the week were named after deities, and so were the planets, but our English weekday names look somewhat different than the planets' names because of Germanic roots, and Germanic gods and goddesses. The names used in different languages depend on the names that were given to those deities, though many are similar to the Roman names we still know today.

Sun . Moon . Mars . Mercury . Jupiter . Venus . Saturn

In a second post here, we'll talk about how we can use these planetary and deity associations in magick, for timing purposes, setting intentions, and more! If that's something you're interested in, be sure to look out for the next post. When it's up, I'll link this post to it.

Thanks for reading! Check out the resources below.

Blessings~
-C-



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Resources:

Classical Planets - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet
Names of the days of the week - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week
West Germanic languages - https://www.britannica.com/topic/West-Germanic-languages

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