What this tool adds to the hora page
The hora page explains the rule and shows today’s horas in 49 cities. This tool does the same work for any town or city and any date from 1951 to 2074. Choose the place and the date, and it gives the twelve day horas and the twelve night horas with their times. You can also say what the time is for, and it shades the horas that tradition links with that kind of task, and lists them for the following seven days. When the date is today at your chosen place, the current hora is marked.
How a hora is worked out
The tool takes the sunrise, the sunset and the next sunrise at the place. The daytime is split into twelve equal parts and the night into twelve equal parts. The first hora of the day, which starts at sunrise, belongs to the lord of the weekday: the Sun on Sunday, the Moon on Monday, Mars on Tuesday, Mercury on Wednesday, Jupiter on Thursday, Venus on Friday and Saturn on Saturday. After that the lords follow in a fixed order, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and round again, through the day and the night. Because the cycle carries straight on, the first hora of the next sunrise belongs to the next weekday’s lord.
A hora is therefore not always an hour. It is one twelfth of the daytime or of the night, so in summer a day hora is longer than an hour and a night hora shorter, and in winter the reverse. Near the equinoxes the horas are close to an hour each. In a place where the Sun does not rise or set on the date, the tool says so, because the rule needs sunrise and sunset.
What the uses mean
Each planet’s hora has traditional uses. The Sun’s is linked with authority and official matters, the Moon’s with travel and the home, Mars’s with tasks needing energy, Mercury’s with study, trade and signing agreements, Jupiter’s with learning, worship and ceremonies, Venus’s with arts, relationships and purchases for the home, and Saturn’s with patient, serious work. These are customs. Almanacs word them a little differently, and none of them is a promise. Many people use hora together with choghadiya and Rahu kaal, and they do not always agree, so no one needs to follow all of them. Your family’s custom comes first.
How we checked it
The tool uses the same arithmetic as the daily panchang engine. We recomputed the hora table for all 49 cities as the hora page prints it today and found every one of the 343 planet cells identical. We also compared the sunrise, sunset, day length and night length with the Drik Panchang day pages we saved for New Delhi, New York and London on six dates each. Sunrise and sunset agree within a minute, and the day and night lengths within six seconds, so every hora is within a few seconds of what those inputs give. Drik’s day pages do not print a hora table, so that is the part we could check against them. For a fuller day, see the panchang for any place and date.
Frequently asked questions
↳ Why is a hora not exactly one hour?
Because the day and the night are each split into twelve equal parts. A day of 13 hours gives day horas of 65 minutes, and the night horas are then shorter. Only a day of exactly twelve hours of light gives horas of an hour.
↳ Which hora is used for what?
Tradition links Mercury with study and trade, Jupiter with learning and worship, Venus with arts and comforts, the Moon with travel and the home, the Sun with authority, Mars with energy and Saturn with patient work. These are customs for choosing a calm moment, not guarantees.
↳ Does the hora change with the city?
Yes. The horas start at the local sunrise and sunset, so two cities have different times on the same date, and the length of each hora changes with the length of the day.
↳ Why does the first hora of the day depend on the weekday?
The weekday is named for its first hora, which belongs to the planet that gives the day its name. The sequence then runs on without a break, so each day opens with the next planet in the weekday order.
↳ Is this the same hora as the one used in Shadbala?
Not quite. The Hora bala of Shadbala counts one clock hour from sunrise. This tool uses the unequal hora of the hora page, one twelfth of the day or night.