How to Build Relationships with the Planets

If you want to bring your astrology or your magical practice to life, there's one simple fix: stop considering the planets as abstract symbols and start relating to them as living beings.

That's the core of animism — the idea that the world isn't inert, that rivers, trees, stones, and planets all carry something like awareness, something you can actually be in relationship with. It's the foundation underneath the practice of Planetary Magic. 

So, if a planet is alive, the real question isn't whether you can talk to one. It's how to start the conversation.

There's no single right answer to that, same as there's no single right way to build a friendship. Some people talk. Some people share activities. Some people just show up quietly, again and again, until familiarity does the rest. 

Here are seven ways to start the conversation.

Sit Together

The simplest approach, and the oldest. Go outside. Find your planet — the Sun by day, everything else after dark. Sit with it. No agenda, no ritual, no goal beyond attention. This is exactly how you'd get to know a person you were drawn to but hadn't spoken with yet: you notice them. You let a texture emerge before you try to name it.

Learn their Favorite Things

Every planet has a signature — colors, foods, plants, activities, objects it's traditionally associated with. Learn them, then work them into your life. Not just as decoration, but as a dialog. Wearing red on a day you need Mars's nerve, or lighting a candle the color of Venus when you want more grace in a hard conversation. This is you speaking a language a planet already understands, even if you're just learning to use it.

Give them a Home

Build an altar. It doesn't need to be elaborate — a shelf, a candle, a stone, a physical object that reminds you of the planet in question. What matters isn't the aesthetics; it's the showing up. An altar is a standing appointment you keep with something, the physical equivalent of always sitting in the same seat at your favorite coffee shop until the barista knows your order.

Keep their Days

Every day of the week already belongs to a planet — Sunday for the Sun, Monday for the Moon, Tuesday for Mars, Wednesday for Mercury, Thursday for Jupiter, Friday for Venus, Saturday for Saturn. It’s a system baked into the calendar for over two thousand years. Use it. On a planet's day, do its favorite things. You've already got the standing appointment — you just have to remember to keep it.

Write It Down

This is where you start using your imagination. Grab your notebook, choose a planet, and ask it a question. Then write down anything that comes to you, whatever it is. Over time, you’ll get the sense of speaking to planets as people (subjects) rather than objects. 

And there's a second benefit too. A journal is proof, to yourself, that you're actually doing this — not just thinking about doing it. Magic is often called an experimental science for a reason: you don't know how something worked until you've got a record to check it against.

Go Visit

You can further extend your imagination and take a guided journey to the planet. Enter a light meditative state. Picture where a planet might live, what it might look like, what it might say if you asked it something directly. This isn't make-believe in the dismissive sense — active imagination is a real skill, the same one a novelist uses to make a character say something the novelist didn't plan. You're not inventing the planet's answer. You're getting quiet enough to let one arrive.

Invite it to Visit You

You can also use your dreams to contact planetary spirits. Before sleep, set a simple intention: tonight, I want to meet this planet. Ask for a dream, or ask the planet directly to show up in one. Keep a journal by the bed, and write down whatever comes the moment you wake — before the details evaporate, the way dreams do. This approach asks less of your control and more of your receptivity. Sometimes that's exactly what a relationship needs.

It's the Showing Up That Counts

You wouldn't expect to become close to someone by using only one of these seven methods. You wouldn't just think about them or just show up once and call it done. Relationships are built from a mix — some conversation, some memory, some ritual, some silence. A relationship with a planet works the same way.

You don’t need to wait until you've got all seven figured out. Pick the one that sounds least like homework and most like something you'd actually want to do tonight. Start there, and see what develops.