Slavic Horoscope
The Slavic horoscope divides the year into the sixteen halls of the Svarog Circle, from the Hall of the Maiden to the Hall of Ras. Each has a patron animal or bird, a god, a tree and an amulet.
How the Circle Works
The year is split into sixteen segments of 21–25 days each. The count starts not in January but at the end of August, with the Hall of the Maiden coming first. The boundaries of the halls don't match the calendar months, so a transition almost always falls in the middle of a month.
Each hall has a patron from among the Slavic gods, a tree and an amulet sign. These are what get interpreted as a description of the character of someone born during that period. Full list of halls.
Where It Came From
This is an important part, and there's no getting around it. The Svarog Circle of sixteen halls, in the form it's popular in today, appeared in the second half of the 20th century, in texts associated with the Rodnover (Slavic Native Faith) movement and with the "Slavic-Aryan Vedas" published in the 1990s.
Historians and philologists regard these sources as a modern reconstruction rather than a tradition that has come down to us: neither the chronicles, nor archaeology, nor 19th-century ethnographic records know anything of sixteen halls. Genuine information about the calendar beliefs of the Slavs is far more modest and concerns mainly the agricultural cycle and holidays.
We present the horoscope as a modern tradition that has its own audience, and we don't pass it off as ancient.
What the result means
The calculator shows your hall, its dates, patron and tree, and if your date of birth lies right at a boundary, it names the neighboring hall as well. The interpretations build on the image of the animal: the caution of the fox, the persistence of the aurochs, the keen eye of the eagle.
Unlike the zodiac, the boundaries here float: between publications they differ sometimes by a day or two, and sometimes by as much as a week. If your date falls on a boundary, look at both neighboring halls.
Frequently asked questions
Are the Slavic horoscope and Slavic totems the same thing?
Usually, yes: a "totem animal by date of birth" most often means precisely the halls of the Svarog Circle.
Why does the circle start at the end of August?
In this system the year is counted from the autumn New Year, a tradition that really did exist in the Russian lands until 1700, although in a different form.
Can the hall be calculated using the Old Style calendar?
There's no single rule: some sources use the modern calendar, others shift the dates by 13 days. We use the modern calendar.