Nakshatra

What it is

A nakshatra is a "lunar mansion": one of 27 divisions of the zodiac used in Vedic astrology. The Moon takes about 27.3 days to circle the zodiac against the stars, so it passes through roughly one nakshatra a day — each mansion is, in the old image, one of the Moon's nightly resting places.

The nakshatras are older than the twelve signs in India. Lists of them appear in Vedic texts long before horoscopic astrology arrived, tied to particular stars and star groups. Later they were fitted to the sidereal zodiac as 27 equal parts of 13°20′ each, beginning at 0° sidereal Aries.

How they are divided

Each nakshatra is split into four padas ("quarters" or "feet") of 3°20′, so the zodiac holds 108 padas — a number with deep resonance in Indian tradition, and the same 108 parts as the ninefold divisional chart, the navāṁśa. Each nakshatra also has a ruling planet, following the order of the Vimśottarī dasa periods: Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, three times round.

Some systems, especially for choosing moments, add a 28th mansion, Abhijit, carved from the end of Uttara Ashadha and the start of Shravana.

Several mansions are named after the bright stars they hold: Krittika is the Pleiades, whose brightest star is Alcyone; Rohini contains Aldebaran; Chitra is Spica, Swati Arcturus, Jyeshtha Antares. The stars and the equal divisions no longer line up exactly, but the names keep the memory.

How they are read

Each nakshatra has a presiding deity, a symbol and a temperament. Ashwini belongs to the Ashvins, the horse-headed twin healers, and is read as quick and self-starting; Rohini, "the red one", as lush and growth-loving; Magha, whose symbol is a throne, as regal and tied to ancestry; Revati, the last, as gentle and sheltering. Traditional texts also sort the mansions into classes — gentle, sharp, fierce, swift, fixed, moveable — used when choosing a good moment, and into temperaments used when comparing two charts for marriage.

• The birth star. The nakshatra the Moon occupied at birth, the janma nakshatra, is one of the most personal points of a Vedic chart. It is read as the tone of the emotional nature, it sets where the Vimśottarī dasa sequence begins, and it traditionally suggests the first syllable of a child's name, by pada.
• Other points. The nakshatras of the rising degree and of each planet add finer shading than their signs alone.
• Choosing a time. The Moon's nakshatra on a given day is central to muhūrta, the Indian art of electional astrology.

Other lunar mansions

Western and Arabic astrology has its own set: the 28 Arabic manāzil, the Moon's stations, used in medieval elections and talismanic magic. China likewise has 28 xiù. These traditions share the image of the Moon moving from house to house each night, but the mansions are counted and named differently, and they are not interchangeable with the nakshatras.

In a reading here

The Ayurvedic balance reading here works out the sidereal positions with the Lahiri ayanamsa and names the nakshatra and pada of the Ascendant and of the Moon, with a short note on each mansion's temperament; the lord of the Moon's nakshatra is one of the influences weighed in the dosha balance. It is read as energy style and cultural heritage, not as health advice.

Related

• Vedic astrology
• Sidereal zodiac
• Moon
• Fixed stars
• Decan
• Electional astrology