The 27 Nakshatras

A nakshatraThe star the Moon is passing through. There are twenty-seven, and yours decides your naming letter and much of a matching score. is one of the 27 equal segments — each 13°20′ wide — into which Vedic astrology divides the band of sky the Moon travels. Together they tile the whole zodiac, and the one the Moon occupied at your birth is your janma nakshatra, the star that a Vedic reading treats as more personal than your rashiA sign, one twelfth of the zodiac. In Indian practice your rashi is the sign the Moon was in, not the Sun..

Each nakshatraThe star the Moon is passing through. There are twenty-seven, and yours decides your naming letter and much of a matching score. has a ruling grahaOne of the nine: the seven visible bodies plus Rahu and Ketu, the two lunar nodes. A graha is read as a force at work, not as a lump of rock., a presiding deity and its own character. Below are all twenty-seven in classical order, grouped into the three rounds of the Vimshottari dashaThe main dasha system, a 120 year cycle shared out among the nine grahas. Which one you are born into depends on your birth nakshatra. lord cycle — KetuThe south lunar node, the other shadow graha. It cuts away rather than adds, and it points at detachment, sharp insight and work already finished. through BudhaMercury. Speech, trade, calculation and everything learnt by reading. It takes on the colour of whichever graha it happens to sit beside., repeated three times.