Days of the week and colors

Many months ago, may be even more than a year ago, the Yoga Farm had hosted Komilla Sutton for one of their astrology courses.  So that evening, following the meditation and daily chants, she had talked to us in the context of Vedic astrology about several things pertaining to the days of the week including the ruling planet, favorable colors, and auspicious activities for the day.  Somehow that lecture has surfaced in mind, so I thought I'd document the part about the ruling planet and the colors.  So here goes.

• Sunday - Sun - Pink/Maroon.
• Monday - Moon - White.
• Tuesday - Mars - Red.
• Wednesday - Mercury - Green.
• Thursday - Jupiter - Yellow/Beige.
• Friday - Venus - Light Blue/White.
• Saturday - Saturn - Black/Purple.

I wish I could say that I remembered all of this, but I didn't.  I had to google around and found this article which contains all of this and some more.

Planets and days of the week

The western calendar also follows the planets in a similar way.  I found this tidbit lying around in one of my folders from my days in graduate school, about 20 years ago.  I don't know who the author is.

It's Tuesday. But WHY is it Tuesday? Because many moons ago, there was a warlike Norse god called Tiw. His equivalent in Greek mythology was Ares who, in turn, was known as Mars by the Romans. Each of our days of the week have a strong link to the seven traditional "planets."  Monday is a corruption of "Moon-day". Wednesday is Odin's (or Wodin)'s-day.   Odin links up, symbolically with Mercury. Thursday is Thor's day - and Thor equates to Jupiter. Friday is Freia's day. Freia was, to the ancient Norse-folk what Venus is to us today. Saturday is Saturn's day and Sunday... is self-explanatory.

This matches up perfectly with the days of the week in Hindi (Sunday through Saturday) -- Ravivar (Sun), Somwar (Moon), Mangalwar (Mars), Budhwar (Mercury), Guruvar (Jupiter), Shukrawar (Venus), Shanivar (Saturn).

Wikipedia contains a lot of information on this.