The Planets in Magic: A Beginner's Guide to Planetary Correspondences
Long before anyone talked about Mercury retrograde on social media, witches and magicians were timing their work by the planets. The system they used is one of the oldest in Western magic, and it is beautifully simple: each of the seven visible “wanderers” in the sky governs a day, a metal, a color, and a whole family of intentions. Learn the seven, and you will never again wonder which candle to light or which day to cast.
The classical scheme comes down to us through texts like the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, published in 1531 by the German scholar Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Agrippa organized the entire magical universe into correspondences, and the planets were his crown jewels. You do not need to read all three books (though they are a magnificent rabbit hole). You need the table below, a little practice, and the willingness to look up.
The seven, and what each one wants
The Sun rules Sunday. Metal: gold. The Sun is vitality, success, visibility, and the confident self. Work with solar energy when you need to be seen: job interviews, performances, leadership, creative launches. Gold or yellow candles, sunny herbs like chamomile and St. John’s wort, and workings done at noon, when the Sun is at its height.
The Moon rules Monday. Metal: silver. The Moon is intuition, dreams, emotion, and the inner life. Lunar magic is the witch’s home turf: divination, dreamwork, emotional healing, and anything involving cycles and receptivity. Silver or white candles, mugwort and jasmine, and workings timed to her phases (more on that in our moon magic articles).
Mars rules Tuesday. Metal: iron. Mars is courage, action, protection, and healthy aggression. Call on Mars when you need to start the hard thing, defend your boundaries, or cut something out of your life. Red candles, protective herbs like nettle and thistle, and iron objects like nails or a cast iron pan on the altar.
Mercury rules Wednesday. Metal: quicksilver. Mercury is communication, travel, commerce, and wit. Wednesday is for sending the email, signing the contract, launching the shop, or studying for the exam. Yellow or orange candles, lavender and fennel, and a special note: Mercury’s retrograde periods, when the planet appears to move backward, are traditionally better for review and revision than for launches.
Jupiter rules Thursday. Metal: tin. Jupiter is abundance, luck, expansion, and benevolence. This is the planet of the big, generous spell: prosperity, growth, legal matters, and blessings. Blue or purple candles, oak and cinnamon, and the most optimistic day of the week to ask for more.
Venus rules Friday. Metal: copper. Venus is love, beauty, harmony, and pleasure. Friday workings cover romance, friendship, self-love, art, and making your home beautiful. Green or pink candles, rose and vanilla, and copper jewelry worn to carry the current with you.
Saturn rules Saturday. Metal: lead. Saturn is boundaries, banishing, discipline, and endings. The stern teacher of the planets, Saturn helps you cut ties, break habits, set limits, and do the unglamorous work. Black or dark purple candles, cypress and patchouli, and workings for protection and release.
A modern footnote: the outer planets
You may notice the classical scheme stops at Saturn. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, invisible to the ancients, were folded in by modern astrologers: Uranus for sudden change and rebellion, Neptune for dreams and mysticism, Pluto for transformation and the underworld. Folk witchcraft uses them lightly, if at all; their cycles are generational rather than personal. If one calls to you, work with it, but the classical seven will cover nearly every working you ever do. They have had a few thousand years of practice.
Putting it to work
The easiest way to begin is to match your intention to the day. Need courage for a hard conversation? Tuesday. Want to bless a new creative project? Sunday, or Thursday for extra expansion. Writing a love letter to yourself? Friday, obviously.
Then layer in the details. Choose a candle in the planet’s color. Dress it with an herb the planet favors. Wear the metal if you have it, even just a ring. None of these steps is mandatory; each one is a thread, and the more threads you weave, the stronger the cord. That layering is the entire art of correspondences: everything in the ritual pointing the same direction, like iron filings lining up around a magnet.
One more thing worth knowing: the planets also rule the hours of the day, in a rotating sequence called the Chaldean order that has been used since Babylonian times. You can absolutely learn planetary hours later (we have a whole article on timing your spells with the sky), but do not let perfectionism stop you from starting. A Thursday candle lit with a clear heart will always outperform a perfectly timed ritual done with a distracted one.
The sky has been keeping this schedule for millennia. You are simply learning to dance to music that was already playing.
Keep walking the path: explore the Astrology hub for the full discipline, read The Cosmic Witch Starter Guide if the planets feel like old friends, or take What Kind of Witch Are You? to find where you belong.