Calendars
Calendar methods calculate not for a person but for a day: what lunar day it is today, which day sign is in the Tzolkin, what phase your biorhythms are in. This is the only section of the site where the answer changes every day, and that is why people come back to it most often.
Where to start
The most popular page here is the lunar calendar: today's lunar day, the phase, the illuminated fraction of the disk and month-by-month tables. Everything practical rests on it too: haircuts, shopping, planting.
The Mayan Tzolkin and the Aztec calendar calculate the day from a 260-day cycle: the result is a day sign and a tone that describe both the day and the person born on it. Biorhythms are the simplest calculation in the section: three sine waves from your date of birth.
The Celtic Tree Horoscope and the Slavic horoscope work differently: they tie your date of birth to a tree or a hall, which makes them closer to the zodiac than to a calendar of days.
The Chinese calendar describes a day in several systems at once: the lunar date, the year, month and day pillars, the solar term and the indicators of the Tong Shu almanac. Next to it are the Chinese hours, which convert clock time into one of the twelve double hours.
For an important undertaking, you can pick a day by the rules of the Chinese almanac: date selection finds days for moving house, a wedding, opening a business or a trip, and takes birth dates into account.
How calendars differ from horoscopes
A horoscope describes a person; a calendar describes a day. That is why calendar methods are used with a different logic: not “what am I like” but “what is appropriate today.”
This leads to a practical difference as well. A horoscope makes sense to look at once; a calendar, regularly: it changes every day and works as a planning hint, not as a description of character.
What you need for the calculation
| Calculation | What you need |
|---|---|
| Lunar day and phase | Date |
| Tzolkin and Aztec calendar | Date |
| Biorhythms | Date of birth and calculation date |
| Celtic and Slavic horoscopes | Date of birth |
| Chinese Calendar | Date |
| Chinese Hours | Date, time and city |
| Date Selection | Activity, date range, optionally birth dates |
No time of birth is required anywhere in this section except for the Chinese hours, which need a time and a city. The only caveat concerns lunar days: by tradition they begin not at midnight but at moonrise, so one calendar day can span two lunar days.
Frequently asked questions
Why do different sites show a different lunar day?
Because of the counting method and the time zone. By tradition, lunar days begin at moonrise, which happens at different times in Moscow and Vladivostok. Some sites count lunar days from moonrise; others, like ours, count them in 24-hour steps from the new moon, on Moscow time.
How accurate are the calculations on the site?
Moon phases are calculated from the true positions of the Moon and the Sun: new and full moon times are accurate to within 5 minutes, and dates are given in Moscow time. Lunar days are counted in 24-hour steps from the new moon, not from moonrise, so the day number may differ by one from calendars based on moonrise.
Does the Moon affect how you feel?
Research provides no convincing evidence of a link between the phases of the Moon and sleep, mood or childbirth. The lunar calendar is best seen as a planning tradition, not a medical tool.