Planetary Magic

Twenty-two pieces: twelve refillable oil lamps for ten planets, Lilith and a second Sun; eight Cosmos incense listings, seven of them a weekday each; a mango-wood dish with a brass constellation; one celestial pendant. The incense follows the week, the lamps do not. Every planet costs the same.

Seven small glass oil lamps burning in an arc on dark green marble beside a fan of unlit incense sticks and a plain brass ring, lit only by candlelight

What planetary magic actually is

It is timing. In late antiquity each of the seven classical planets was given a day of the week, and the names are still in the calendar: Sunday is the Sun's, Monday the Moon's, Saturday Saturn's, and the French mardi, mercredi, jeudi and vendredi are Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Working with a planet traditionally means doing the relevant thing on the relevant day. One of the two makers on this page puts it plainly: planetary timing is the oldest scheduling system we have — its value is practical rather than mystical: it makes a practice regular.

Two makers, and only one of them is a calendar

The incense is a calendar. Seven Cosmos boxes, one planet each, $26.95 a box, and every box names its day and its aroma: citrus for Sunday, yagra for Monday, red fruits and palo santo for Tuesday, hindu kush for Wednesday, basil and frankincense for Thursday, rose and sandalwood for Friday, myrrh and cypress for Saturday. Buy the day you will actually use.

The candles are not a calendar. Twelve refillable oil lamps cover the same seven bodies and then add Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — which have no weekday at all, because they were discovered in 1781, 1846 and 1930, more than a thousand years after the planetary week was fixed. So: if you want to light something on its own day, that is the incense. If you want a planet standing on the shelf regardless of the date, that is a lamp.

How to choose

The planet is free. Every one of the twelve oil candles is $25.95 at 3 oz, $37.95 at 6 oz and $63.95 at 12 oz. Every single-planet incense box is $26.95. Saturn costs exactly what Venus costs. The only variable is the scent, so choose by what you want the room to smell like on the day you light it.

The scents are arguments, not decoration. Saturn is Volcano Blue in the lamp and myrrh and cypress in the stick — dry, resinous, faintly funereal; the listing says outright that a sweet fragrance would undercut the whole idea. Venus is rose and lavender in oil, rose and sandalwood in smoke. Mars is nectarine and white ginger. Neptune is lavender and ocean breeze. Mercury is jasmine and green apple. Read the scent before the planet.

Then decide how long you want it to last. A stick is about sixty minutes and can be put out and relit. A lamp is ten to twelve hours at the small size, thirty-five to forty at the large, and it is built to be refilled rather than replaced.

Honestly named

Two of the twelve candles are not planets. Helios is the Greek personification of the sun and duplicates the Sun candle; Lilith, in astrology, is a calculated point — the lunar apogee — and not a body at all. Both are good candles and neither is an eighth planet. The Cosmos range is also listed twice, once as seven separate boxes and once as a single listing carrying the same seven planets as variants plus a seven-box set at $182.95: same boxes, same $26.95 each, no difference except which page you land on. Beyond the two burnable formats, the planets barely exist in this shop — one $17.95 stainless pendant carrying sun, moon, stars, eye and moon-phase designs, and one $20.99 mango-wood dish with a brass constellation inlaid into it, named for Jyotisha, the Sanskrit for Vedic astrology. There is no planetary oil, spray, stone or talisman, and no refill fuel for the refillable lamps.

From the magazine: Planetary incense by day of the week · The seven planetary metals and their weekdays · Best time for a spell: moon, day and hour · Black Moon Lilith in your chart · Vedic astrology (Jyotish) explained. For the rest of the refillable lamps, see Oil Candles.

Frequently asked questions

Which planet goes with which day?

Sunday belongs to the Sun, Monday to the Moon, Tuesday to Mars, Wednesday to Mercury, Thursday to Jupiter, Friday to Venus and Saturday to Saturn. The names survive in English for three of them and in French for the rest — mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi. The seven Cosmos incense boxes on this page each state their own day on the listing, so you do not have to memorize the table.

Do I have to burn it on the right day?

No. The day is a scheduling aid, not a rule, and the makers describe it that way. Its real use is that it makes a practice regular: one stick on one morning a week is easier to keep up than an open-ended intention. If the day matters to you, buy the incense, which is built around it. If it does not, the oil candles work on any date.

What is the difference between the incense and the oil candles?

Length of attention, mostly. A Cosmos stick is roughly sixty minutes of smoke and can be extinguished and relit for shorter sessions, so it is used up. A LOGOS oil candle is a refillable glass lamp with dried botanicals set into clean bio fuel — about 10–12 hours at 3 oz and 35–40 hours at 12 oz — and it stays on the shelf. One is an occasion, the other is a fixture.

Why is there no Uranus, Neptune or Pluto incense?

Because the incense line follows the seven-day week and those three planets have no day in it. Uranus was found in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930, more than a thousand years after the planetary week was set. The oil candle line includes all three, which is the only way to work with them here.

Does buying all seven incense boxes save anything?

A little. The seven single boxes are $26.95 each, which is $188.65 bought one at a time; the One of Each set of seven boxes is $182.95, so it saves $5.70. That is a genuine saving rather than a rounding, but it is small — the reason to buy the set is to have the whole week from the start, not to save money.

What do I refill the oil candles with?

Not with anything sold here. Thirty-six products in this shop describe themselves as refillable and the shop stocks no lamp oil, no refill bottle and no wick — we would rather say so than let you find out after the first bottle runs down. The makers specify a clean, soot-free bio fuel for indoor use; source it from the maker or a lamp-oil supplier and keep the original bottle.