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Planetary Correspondence Reference
The seven planets in their Chaldean order, the star that turns that order into the days of the week, and what each planet gathers: metal, square, Hebrew name, letter, colours and perfumes, with every register labelled by the source it comes from.
Seven planets in the Chaldean order
The heptagram of the week
The seven sit round the circle in the Chaldean order, slowest to swiftest. Step three places on and you reach the ruler of the next day: Mercury's Wednesday is followed by Thursday, the day of Jupiter. The star traces the whole week.
Wednesday · Quicksilver
Mercury
כוכבKokab
Its day follows Mars's and comes before Jupiter's.
Common inheritance
- Day
- Wednesday
- Metal
- Quicksilver
Agrippa
- Square
- 8 × 8, lines of 260, total 2080
- Intelligence
- Tiriel
- Spirit
- Taphthartharath
Golden Dawn, via 777
- Hebrew name and Sephirah
- Kokab, the heaven of Hod
- Letter and path
- Beth, path 12
- Colour, King scale
- Yellow
- Colour, Queen scale
- Purple
- Perfume of the path
- Mastic, white sandal, mace, storax, all fugitive odours
- Perfume of the Sephirah
- Storax
Modern practice
- Colours
- Orange, Iridescent grey
- Stones
- Agate
- Plants
- Hazel, Lavender
A working caution, from modern practiceBalance quickness with accuracy.
One register across the seven
Read a row across
Each register names where it comes from. The days and metals are the common inheritance; the squares and their names are Agrippa's; the heavens, letters, colours and perfumes are the Golden Dawn's as Crowley tabulated them in 777; the last rows are modern practice, which no single old source gives.
Agreed across the ancient, Arabic and Latin sources: the days of the week, the metals and the Chaldean order.
The tradition
The seven classical planets, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, are the oldest organising frame in Western esoteric practice. Everything visible that moved against the fixed stars was a planet, and each was read as a distinct quality rather than merely a body. Their Chaldean order, from the slowest to the swiftest, gave the planetary hours, and the hours gave the week its days.
From that came the correspondence habit of mind: a planet gathers a metal, a day, a colour, a plant, a perfume, a number. The lists are not arbitrary decoration. They are a memory system and a working vocabulary, letting a practitioner move between registers, botanical, temporal, metallic, while holding one idea.
Reading the instrument
- Choose a planet on the heptagram, or in the table. "The week" draws the star that steps three places along the Chaldean order to reach each next day's ruler; "The spheres" draws the order itself.
- Every register names its source. Days, metals and the Chaldean order are the common inheritance; the squares and their Intelligences and Spirits are Agrippa's; the Hebrew names, letters, colour scales and perfumes are the Golden Dawn's as tabulated in 777; the last registers are modern practice.
- Read a column downward to learn one planet; read a row across to see how a single register, metals say, divides the whole heaven. On a phone, choose the register and the seven are listed under it.
Where it descends from
- Three Books of Occult Philosophy
- Agrippa's 1533 compendium, the most influential single gathering of planetary correspondence material in the Western tradition; Book II, chapter 22 gives the planetary squares and their names.
- Picatrix (Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm)
- The Arabic magical compendium, later Latinised, behind much of the planetary and talismanic material Agrippa inherited.
- 777
- Crowley's 1909 tables of the Golden Dawn's attributions: the heavens of the Sephiroth, the double letters, the colour scales, and the perfumes of column XLII.
What this does not claim
This is a reference to a body of traditional attribution, not a claim that any correspondence produces a physical effect. Sources disagree, and the modern lists of stones, plants and colours vary from one handbook to the next; they are labelled as modern for that reason.
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