Following up from the last post about Cosmic Witchcraft in business, here’s a look behind the scenes of how I use it in practice to run my entire life, actually. Time management is one of the most valuable skills for business owners, and this post is about how astrology can help you with it.
As a freelancer with ADHD, my sense of time is loose at best, and if I don’t have a lot of fixed items on my calendar to force me to keep the date at the forefront of my mind, it’s easy for me to flow from task to task from my Notion brain dump, not even realising that my most played band is ZOOL. What helps me to put some structure to the potential chaos of running a business without the hard boundaries that come from having a family is tuning in with the rhythm of the cosmos. This is how I do it, but it’s for inspiration and not as a hard and fast rule.
Take what you resonate with, and feel free to add your take in the comments.
Working seasonally
Witches and modern pagans most commonly use a combination of the solar and lunar calendars used in antiquity, the Wheel of the Year of the neo-pagan religion of Wicca. Many of us who live in parts of the world with four obvious seasons find it the most convenient option.
This calendar (which many begin on Oct 31st, the last harvest festival and beginning of winter, half-way between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice) combines the solar festivals (two solstices and two equinoxes, which demarcate the seasons) with four cross-quarter days derived from the agrarian holidays of the Celtic calendar. It also marks all the full moons, known as the Esbats.
Tropical Astrology and the Rhythm of the Seasons
In Astrological terms, the four solar holidays coincide with the beginning of the seasons of the Cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn). The quarter from Libra to Capricorn season (end of the year) is one that I take to slow down and do the kind of backend work that sometimes slips to the backburner unless it’s urgent. This is both in line with the season, as winter is the time when everything dies down and goes inwards to prepare for Spring, but also the themes of the astrology of the period.
I’m a Scorpio Rising, so this quarter covers my 11th to 3rd houses (in Placidus), so connections, my interior life, myself (and my brand), my values and material possessions, and finally communications and commerce. But even if these signs fall into other houses, the energies of the four signs are really good to focus on planning for the year ahead rather than forcing yourself to end the year strong (if it happens, great).
As the holidays come, and people are busy with parties and presents, few people are looking to get photoshoots unless the photoshoot is a last minute present for someone. While I have the books open if someone enquires, I have signed up for 3 courses to further my professional development while my calendar has this space naturally created by the time of year we’re in.
Making Space for Rest
From January to October I have a cycle that builds up to a climax, then slows down during the Summer months a little (but not to the extent it does in winter) and picks up momentum again in the Late Summer and Autumn. Your particular niche will have a lot to say about the months where you will be more or less in demand, but it’s unlikely that people will need what you offer 100% of the time.
And even if they do, you need to prioritise your rest and wellness and build a cycle for how you serve your people that does not require your energetic input all the time. Even medical doctors go on holidays and cover for each other.
Monthly Cycles
I’m a cisgender woman off hormonal birth control, so I also organise my monthly calendar to work in cycles. I use Stardust for my period tracker, so it syncs my cycle to where the Moon is in her cycle. I try to keep any people-facing activities for the weeks of my Follicular and Ovulation phases, and anything that I can do from the comfort of my bed for the Luteal phase, and have the option to take time off entirely for my period itself if I need it.
It’s not a perfect system, nothing ever is because we don’t control all our circumstances even as business owners, but it’s a system that allows me to be as consistent and predictable as possible. After all, while the female body is not predictable for the 24h cycle we try to force on ourselves due to our societal structures built around men, it is predictable on this larger timeline.
Women can still somewhat predict the cycle, at least during the respective phases of the cycle, as well as daily in the case of cortisol (which peaks at around 8-9am in order to wake us up).
Weekly Timelines
I use different levels of focused work to manage my ADHD. On top of doing deep work dives (shoutout to Flown for facilitating this while providing a community of like minded people to body-double as well), I organise my week according to the planetary days (and sometimes hours too). I organise my life around it, so my business falls into it.
Making space for rest
I focus on rest and self-care, perhaps out of habit from Catholicism growing up, on Sundays. The Sun rules the day. He corresponds to the Self in Magic, and rules the 5th house through the sign of Leo. Awareness and creative expression, especially artistic expression is one of the themes of this house (as are play, children and the inner child, and sex and love affairs), so at times I work on personal projects, but mostly it’s my main rest day unrelated to health needs.
Mondays, ruled by the Moon, are a fairly slow day for me, as I don’t like to switch gears at the quick pace that the corporate world has decided we should follow. The Moon governs our emotions and intuition, as well as divination, so Mondays tend to be my days to plan the month and week ahead, as well as ideally write for the blog, although lately I have been a bit more lax the way I am with my Substack (which is channelled from inspiration whenever it comes within the month).
I also catch up with the newsletters that my AI inbox organiser has set aside in a folder during the week before, so that my inbox is clean and easy for me to handle day to day.
Peak productivity
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are governed by Mars (the ruler of Aries and planet of action), Mercury (the ruler of Gemini and Virgo, logical and communicative), and Jupiter (the ruler of Sagittarius, expansive and philosophical).
They are the days where most of the work happens. I tend to keep Wednesday for my podcast, Tuesday for tasks that I can power through on my own, and the lucky planet of wisdom and abundance for those that require people, of course as long as I can control things (I have recorded two guest interviews on Friday nights, flexibility is a necessity even for witchy business owners).
Winding down the week
Fridays and Saturdays are my joker days, in that they are open for whatever needs to be done, be it a photoshoot or catching up with some tasks because I had time off on a weekday. I also tend to reserve any chores and life admin to any free time I have on these days, although it’s not too unusual for me to have a batch of laundry going on Monday morning before I start working.
I try not to mix chores and business too much just because I work from home, as a way to respect my role as a CEO of my business. A CEO in the office does not put on laundry while at work, and neither will I. But the beauty of organising my week in a more fluid and spiral-like way, as well as starting my work day later than when I wake up to work with my circadian rhythm, means that I have some wiggle room to remain on top of my life as well.
Friday is ruled by Venus, who rules the signs of Taurus and Libra, both which have heavy themes around material possessions, aesthetics, making things pleasant, and in the case of Taurus the home specifically.
Saturday is ruled by Saturn, so the ruler of Capricorn, perfect to support any endeavours requiring boundaries, discipline, long-term thinking and responsibility.
Daily Schedule
It has been proven by research that we have enough focus for 5 hours of hard work a day, and that’s about the amount of time that I guarantee as a work day (my office hours 12-6pm). There are days when I have enough energy to extend that, and days when that’s asking for the impossible, and I listen to my body because what would be the point of having a business if I treated myself like an employee?
My circadian rhythm still tends towards being a night owl, with my mental energy peaking later than the average (with morning people peaking earlier) and the average having peaks in the late morning and late afternoon.
I have a slow start to the day, needing less time to wind down to sleep once tiredness finally catches up to me than I need to wake my brain up, so I end up having a work day that looks more like I’m in New York City than London in order to maximise my energy input.
Integrating the Planets
My tasks align to the planetary hours whenever I’m doing something that I feel like it could do with the extra boost of a certain energy, whether I will just set an intention (which I guess is like sending up a quick prayer to the deity associated with the planet) or actually do a spell with all the bells and whistles (which I tend to reserve for the start of a project rather than day to day affairs, just to lower your expectations of how much work it takes to be a witch in business).
I hope this post has been helpful in thinking of how you can bring more magic into your time management. If you want to dive deeper into working with the Moon and the Planets, I have covered it in season 1 of the podcast, episodes 2 (Moon Magic) and 3 (Planetary Magic).
