Japanese Days of the Week and Correspondences

Kobo Daishi

Japanese Days of the Week

In the 800’s, the Japanese adopted their “official” calendar system from the Chinese.  One of the major aspects of the Chinese calendar was the seven day week.  The Chinese, in turn, had adopted the seven day week from the West.  However, they changed the week day names to match the elements instead of the original names of various Roman Gods.

The Japanese copied the Chinese calendar including the “Seven Luminaries” which consists of the Sun, Moon, and the planets: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.  In addition, the Japanese named their days of the week to reflect Chinese conventions.  In English, Japanese weekday names are “Sun day”, “Moon day”, “Fire day”, “Water day”, “Wood day”, “Gold day”, and “Earth day”.  This order actually reflects the traditional Babylonian system, which was transferred through China to Japan.  In their correspondences of elements, the Chinese and Japanese usually list “water” before “fire”.

The Japanese monk, Kobo Daishi is credited with introducing the Chinese calendar into Japan in 804 CE.  Traditional Japanese months were twenty-nine or thirty days, and were divided into five groups of six days.  The Rokuyo (six days) was a system of “good luck” and “bad luck” days.  Also in the old calendar, the first day of each month was assigned a Rokuyo “day” (such as the first and seventh months were Sensho.) Kobo Daishi decided that Mitsubi (secret day) which starts the Rokuyo was “Sun day”, the first day of the seven day week.  However, since Rokuyo are six days, they repeat every seventh day, starting on days other than “Sun day”.  Modern Japanese calendars still list the days of Rokuyo to aid Japanese in tracking these days.

Traditional Correspondences for Japanese Days of the Week

(Missing correspondences are added by me, and labeled “mine”.)

Sunday: Nichiyoubi: Sun day

Traditional elements: One listed

Direction: Top (Mine)

Color: Gold (Mine)

Season: Midsummer (Mine)

Time of day: Morning (Mine)

Planet: Sun

Monday: Getsuyoubi: Moon day

Traditional elements: One listed

Direction: Bottom (Mine)

Color: SIlver (Mine)

Season: Midwinter (Mine)

Time of day: Evening (Mine)

Planet: Moon

Tuesday: Kayoubi: Fire day

Traditional elements: All listed

Direction: South

Color: Red

Season: Summer

Time of day: Midday

Planet: Mars

Wednesday: Suiyoubi: Water day

Traditional elements: All listed

Direction: North

Color: Black

Season: Winter

Time of day: Midnight

Planet: Mercury

Thursday: Mokuyoubi: Wood day

Traditional elements: All listed

Direction: East

Color: Green

Season: Spring

Time of day: Dawn

Planet: Jupiter

Friday: Kinyoubi: Gold (metal) day

Traditional elements: All listed

Direction: West

Color: White

Season: Autumn

Time of day: Dusk

Planet: Venus

Saturday: Douyoubi: Earth day

Traditional elements: some listed

Direction: Center

Color: Yellow

Season: 18 days at the end of each season

Time of day: Afternoon (Mine)

Planet: Saturn

Rokuyo – Six Days of good and bad luck.

Sensho (Senkachi, Sakigachi):

Good luck in morning

Bad luck between 2 and 6 PM

Good day for urgent tasks and lawsuits

Tomobiki:

Good luck in morning

Bad luck in afternoon

Bad day for settling affairs

Senbu (Senpu):

Good luck in afternoon

Bad luck in morning

Bad day for urgent tasks and lawsuits

Butsumetsu:

Bad luck all day

Taian:

Good luck all day

Shakko (Shakku):

Good luck between 11 AM and 1 PM

Bad luck rest of day

Works Used:

“Bathrobe” (Greg Pringle), “Bathrobe’s Days of the Week in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese”, Bathrobe’s Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese Language Site, 2007, http://www.cjvlang.com/index.html

 Chamberlain, Basil, “Japanese Things”, Charles Tuttle: Tokyo 1905 (reprint 1971)

Kakuta Haruo, “Rokyo”, Kakkun’s Workshop, blog, 04, Feb 2010, http://kakkun.blogspot.com/

Renshaw, Steve and Saori Ihara, “The Lunar Calendar in Japan”, Astronomy in Japan, 2010, http://www2.gol.com/users/stever/calendar.htm

---, “ROKUYO – Lucky and Unlucky Days in Japan”, Seiyaku, 2011, http://www.seiyaku.com/customs/rokuyo-about.html

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Dyads and Dualities

To understand dyads and dualities, I labeled twelve pennies with the dyads listed on Table One.  I chose a variety from several groupings to discern any emerging patterns.  After testing by different manners of throwing – all at once, one at a time, and so forth, I recorded the results on Table Two.

TABLE ONE

Dyads/ Dualities

Chinese Taosim

Yin         Yang

Earth                    Heaven

Feminine              Masculine

Negative              Positive

Darkness              Light

Wiccan

Goddess              God

Mother                Father

Isis                        Osiris

Artemis                Apollo

Moon                   Sun

Crescent              Horns

Spiral                    Staff

Cat                        Stag

Dog                       Wolf

The results from the various throws are on Table Two.  I refer to the receptive side as “Yin” and the dominant one as “Yang”. This duality seems fitting in this exercise. The Yin side appeared more than the Yang side.  The most throws were “Artemis”, “Isis”, and “Darkness”.  It is notable that the two Goddesses appeared with “Darkness”.  The three mesh well together, since both Goddesses deal in shadows.  In contrast, Apollo, one of the least throws, is my “shadow” God Patron, since He pushes me beyond my comfort zone.  He is associated with “Sun”, and “Light” in mythology.  (These two Gods have been two dualities in my life.  In my life, Artemis (as Diana) is “Light”, while Apollo is “Shadow” even though in myths, They have the opposite attributes.

The balanced pairs pointed to a male-female balance which seems to be stable.  “Artemis”, who represented by “Stag” was partially balanced in this way.  However, “Apollo” was neither “Light” nor “Sun”, and therefore remains imbalanced.

TABLE TWO

All Throws

Yin: 56

Yang: 40

(Total: 96)

Appeared Most: Artemis, Isis, Darkness (All Yin)

Appeared Least: Apollo, Osiris, Light (All Yang)

Balanced Pairs:

Feminine/Masculine

Negative/Positive

Mother/Father

Cat/Stag

Unbalanced Pairs:

Darkness/Light

Iris/Osiris

Artemis/Apollo

I decided to explore further whether handedness affected what side appeared.  As a left-handed person, I am aware that “left” is receptive, while the opposite is true for me.  Of course, the right hand would pose the same dichotomy.  The results are listed in Table Three and Table Four.

For the throws of each hand, the results of these throws mirror the other.  The Left hand had twenty-four “yang” throws while the Right hand had twenty-four “yin” throws.  This to me indicated balance within myself between the two dualities (left/right and dominant/recessive).

Looking deeper at the throws done by the Left hand, it revealed an interesting pattern.  “Artemis”, which received the most throws, was paired with “Father”.  The male and female duality was still retained in this odd pairing.  Moreover, “Artemis” in my case matched the dominant and recessive qualities of a dominant left hand.  (However, the least amount of throws did not include “Apollo”.) The male/female duality was retained.

TABLE THREE

Left Hand (dominant)

Yin: 15

Yang: 24

(Total: 39)

Appeared Most: Artemis (Yin), Father (Yang)

Appeared Least: Negative (Yin), Mother (Yin), Masculine (Yang)

Balanced Pairs:

Darkness/Light

Cat/Stag

Unbalanced Pairs:

Mother/Father

Artemis/Apollo

Examining the Right hand showed another surprise.  None of the sides which had the most throws were among the main list of Table Two.  No dualities appeared.  They simply reinforced the “Yin” aspects of my right hand.  However, the balanced pairs did reflect the duality that “Earth/Heaven” has with “Darkness/Light”.  The Right hand had less to with the male/female than with the yang/yin dyad.

TABLE FOUR

Right hand (recessive)

Yin: 24

Yang: 15

(Total: 39)

Appeared Most: Negative, Spiral, and Dog (all Yin)

Appeared Least: Staff, Wolf (all Yang)

Balanced Pairs:

Earth/Heaven

Darkness/Light

Unbalanced Pairs:

Negative/Positive

Spiral/Staff

Dog/Wolf

I conclude from this exercise that the dualities try to assert themselves in subtle ways.  In the micro-sense of the Left hand/Right hand, “Mother” and “Masculine” asserted themselves through the “Artemis” and “Father” results.  Looking at Left hand versus Right hand, “Negative” which received no throws for the Left hand appeared the most for the Right hand.  In the macro-sense, the two hands mirrored each other.  Only when both hands (eighteen throws) were used in throwing did the “Yin” throws outnumber the “Yang” throws.  I have no idea as to why unless it was in reference to my sex and handedness. 

Being a Singularity

In pondering the concept of “singularity”, it is hard for me to imagine “All is One and One is All.”  My primary experiences are of the Self and the Other.  To be a “Monad” means there is only the Self, the point of Non Dimensions.  However, reading Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland” helped me to conceive of a singularity.

Abbott writes in the following passage about the Universe of the “Point in Pointland, the Abyss of No Dimensions”.  “It fills all Space,” continued the little soliloquizing Creature, “and what It fills, It is.  What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All.  Ah, the happiness, the happiness of Being!”  He continues, “Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of Thought! What can It not achieve by thinking!  Its own Thought coming to Itself, suggestive of Its disparagement, thereby to enhance Its happiness!”(1)

With Mr. Abbott’s prose, I could enter Pointland and ponder “singularity”.  Because there is no Other, you have everything you want and need.  You have no desires that you cannot fulfill.  Because there is nothing to disturb you, you are happy and content.  What you create comes true.  With your will, you can create anything for your well-being and happiness.  Singularity is satisfying.

I can apply this concept to my current life.  Because of my brain injury, I prefer my own company.  Like the Point, I think happy and creative thoughts.  Since I constantly find things to delight me, my level of contentment is great.  I find joy in being.

Reading “Flatland” further, I discover that Mr. Abbott also details the disadvantages of being a Monad.  He writes from the viewpoint of a Sphere lecturing to a Square about the Point.  “He is himself his own World, his own Universe: of any other than himself can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; … for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing.  Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant.” (2)  To know the disadvantages of being a singularity, the Other must be introduced.  Being a singularity means you cannot conceive of anything outside of yourself.

Because a singularity has no other knowledge outside of itself, you cannot expand but instead start to shrink.  You become stale and ignorant.  You do not know what you need to know to survive or to thrive.  You do not know what you do not know.  Being self-contained can become boring.  You eventually cease to create and then entropy sets in. In “Flatland”, the Point is stale and ignorant.

As a recluse, I do become discontented in my life.  I need outside stimulation to grow and change.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is about entropy, applies to all things.  To continue to exist, new material needs to be continually introduced.  New energy is constantly needed to achieve the status quo or decay happens.

The singularity of oneness is a two-edged sword.  On one hand, you are complete and need nothing else.  On the other hand, without newness, entropy sets in.  Then the singularity ceases to exist.  In my life, the Other creates tension for me to change and develop.  I do not think that I could live as a monad, and simply be self-contained.

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Work Cited:

1. P.94 – 95, Abbott, Edwin, “Flatland”
2. Ibid.

Work Used:

Abbott, Edwin, “Flatland”, Dover, New York, 1884, (1953, ed.).

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Mapping of the Universe

To explore and navigate a territory, we need a map.  Most maps have correspondences, of which the most notable are the cardinal directions.  Going north may take us by a school and later a group of stores.  Afterwards, in our minds, “North” corresponds to the high school and the local strip mall.  If we go east, we will not encounter those particular landmarks but instead other ones.  A map preserves these landmarks for us and sets the correspondences for us to follow.

In magick, correspondences act as a map to the Cosmos.  By aligning a direction with an element, color, animal, et al., we can move from place to place in the Universe.  With each correspondence, we can come closer to the particular place where we want to be.  

It is similar to taking a bus to a destination.  Each stop along the way informs us of where we are.  Sometimes, we have to change buses at transfer stations to reach our destinations. Like certain correspondences which serve more than one direction or purpose, we can move through the Cosmos changing at their point of nexus.  At other times, we end at the terminus, which can be the major correspondences of the Upper or Lower Worlds.

Metaphors that I often use in magick are Roman or at least Indo-European in nature.  The most important is the Pomerium (the boundary between sacred space (the Templum) and profane space.  Like most Roman sacred space, this boundary is usually a square.

Within the Pomerium is the Focus (the Fire), which crosses all the worlds.  Supported and fed by the Earth, the Focus reaches up to the Celestial Realm and down to the Celestial Waters.  Fire exists in all the Worlds from the magma of the Earth to the stars of the Sky. The Focus sets the Cosmic Center of the Universe for us.  

The Hearth Fire of the Middle World welcomes the Gods and other Kindreds to rest and partake of our hospitality.  The Hearth Fire offers our sacrifices to the Gods, and carries our words to Them as well.  The Focus as the Hearth Fire becomes the center that we can orient ourselves in the Cosmos, when doing our rituals.

The Mundus (the Pit) opens to the Lower World of the Chthonic Gods and Lemurs (chaotic spirits).  The Mundus also connects us to the Well of Wisdom, from where the waters flow.  In the Mundus are the treasures of the Earth as well as the dwelling places of the Dead and Other Kindreds.  Removing the lid of Mundus is fraught with danger, and care must be taken lest an unfriendly spirit or entity comes into the Middle World.  Offerings are made to the Mundus to keep the entities from leaving.

The Portus (Door) creates the portal between all the Worlds.  Because of the Portus, within the Templum, all the worlds at once come together at one place.  Unlike the Circle which for many Neopagans moves through space and time, the Portus opens the Gate to all the Worlds.  Guarding the Portus is the Gatekeeper, Janus of the Two Faces.  Like the Janitor of old at the door, Janus watches the comings and goings of the beings, protecting Middle World from harm.

The Mundus (Pit), Portus (Door) , and Focus (Fire) are the triple axis of the Sacred Center.  At the Center burns the Focus (which is for Romans is the living flame of Vesta).  The Door is the sacred portal, and the Mundus the eye and mouth of the earth.  These are the magickal metaphors that work for me.

Works Used.

Dangler, Michael (Rev.), “Nine Central Tenets of Druidic Ritual”, Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship (ADF), http://www.adf.org/articles/cosmology/nine-tenets.html .

-------, “The Druid’s Cosmos”, ADF Dedicant Path Manual, http://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/dp-manual-web/01-druids-cosmos.htm, 2008 .

Newberg, Brandon, “Ancient Symbols, Modern Rites”, PDF, ADF Publications, 2007.

Scheid, John, “An Introduction to Roman Religion”, Indiana University Press, Indiana, 2003.

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