Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Days of the Week

Saturday

Also Known As Saturdays

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Saturday is Saturn's day, dies Saturni in Latin, the one day of the English week that keeps its Roman planetary name entirely unchanged rather than substituting a Germanic god or, as with Sunday and Monday, keeping a name that needed no substitution. It closes the seven day cycle and, at the following sunrise, hands the first hour to the Sun, three places on from Saturn in the Chaldean order, beginning the week again with Sunday. Traditionally associated with work, structure, limitation and consequence, following the qualities classical astrology assigns Saturn, historically read as the greater malefic among the seven planets.

Facts
Observance
Observance Note
In the grimoire scheme of the planetary hours, each day is divided into twelve daylight and twelve night hours cycling through the seven planets in the Chaldean order, and the first hour after sunrise always belongs to the day's own planet; on Saturday that first hour, and the day itself, belongs to Saturn, and at the following sunrise the sequence hands the first hour back to the Sun, beginning the week again. 2
Observance Note
Saturday is Shabbat, the weekly day of rest running from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall and the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar, commemorating the completion of creation and structured around abstention from thirty nine categories of work. 3
Origins
Origin of the Name
The one weekday in English that keeps its Roman planetary name outright. 1
Identity
Position
7 of 7 1
Attributions
Ruling Planet
Saturn 1
Learn More
The One Day Latin Never Lost

Saturday is the single weekday in English that keeps its Roman planetary name completely unaltered: dies Saturni became Saturday with no Germanic god substituted in its place, unlike Tuesday through Friday. No Germanic deity was judged an adequate match for Saturn, the outermost of the seven classically visible planets and, in Roman religion, an old agricultural god of the harvest whose Germanic counterpart, if one was ever proposed, did not displace the Latin name the way Tiw, Woden, Thor and Frigg displaced Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Sunday and Monday needed no substitution because their Latin names already matched ordinary Germanic words for the Sun and Moon; Saturday is the harder case of a genuinely untranslated Roman planetary name surviving intact for reasons scholarship has not settled with certainty.

Saturday closes the seven day cycle that the planetary hours generate, and at the following sunrise the first hour passes to the Sun, three places on from Saturn in the Chaldean order, beginning the week again with Sunday. The whole seven day structure, from Sunday's opening hour to Saturday's closing one, is therefore a single continuous loop rather than seven independent days, and Saturday's position at the loop's far end is what gives it its consistent association across traditions with endings, limits and consequence.

Sources Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow with Deutsche MythologieJacob Grimm

Saturn's Day in Practice

Saturday carries Saturn's significations: structure, discipline, limitation, and the acceptance of consequence, following the qualities classical astrology assigns the outermost and slowest moving of the seven classical planets, historically read as the greater of the two malefics alongside Mars. Older astrological and magical handbooks recommend Saturday for undertakings concerned with endings, boundaries, long term commitments and any work that calls for patience and the acceptance of limits rather than expansion or pleasure.

Because Saturn was read as the sternest of the seven planets, later tradition reframed its harshness as the discipline of a teacher rather than simple misfortune, and Saturday inherited some of that reframing: a day suited to sober, deliberate work and to bringing matters to a proper close, standing at the far end of the week from Sunday's associations with vitality and new beginnings and completing the same cycle those beginnings opened.

Sources A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion with Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Source De Heptarchia Mystica (Sloane MS 3191), Joseph H. Peterson's editionJohn Dee, edited by Joseph H. Peterson
Source De Heptarchia Mystica (Sloane MS 3191), Joseph H. Peterson's editionJohn Dee, edited by Joseph H. Peterson
Cassiel, Archangels

Cassiel is paired with Saturday and Saturn in the scheme of the planetary hours that also names the weekday. Cassiel does not appear in Agrippa's own table of the seven planetary angels at all.

Source Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies
Lead, Metals

Agrippa's occult philosophy assigns lead to Saturn among the seven planetary metals, the same correspondence already recorded as lead's own ruling planet.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Saturn, Planets
Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

Corresponds To

In jyotisha, Saturday (Shanivara) is the vara ruled by Shani, the Saturn graha.

Source Brihat Parashara Hora ShastraSage Parashara (attributed)

Named For

Saturn, Planets

Saturday is dies Saturni, Saturn's day, the one weekday that kept its Roman planetary name entirely unchanged.

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

Observed In

Judaism, Religions

Saturday is Shabbat, the weekly day of rest and the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Shabbat, Rituals

Shabbat, the Jewish weekly day of rest, runs from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall, the same span this atlas's own Shabbat entry records.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Related To

6AM, Hours
Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion
Sources
1. A History of Western Astrology
Nicholas Campion, Continuum, 2009View the Source
2. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2009View the Source
3. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007View the Source
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