Nakshatra 24 of 27
Shatabhishaశతభిషం
The hundred healers — solitary, unconventional, curative.
- Ruling planet
- Rahu
- Deity
- Varuna, lord of cosmic waters and of oaths
- Symbol
- An empty circle, a hundred stars, a hundred physicians
- Gana
- Rakshasa (fierce)
- Nature
- Chara — movable
- Sidereal span
- Kumbha 6° 40′ – 20° 00′
About Shatabhisha
Shatabhisha means 'a hundred physicians' or 'a hundred stars', and its symbol is an empty circle: enclosure, isolation, and the boundary within which healing happens. Its deity Varuna presides over the cosmic waters and over oaths, and punishes their breach with disease — so the nakshatra governs both affliction and cure. It is the most solitary of the twenty-seven, strongly associated with medicine, with mysticism, and with people who arrive at the truth by an unorthodox route.
What it traditionally favours
Medicine and healing, solitary practice and retreat, astrology and esoteric study, and research into what others have overlooked.
The four padas
Every nakshatra is divided into four quarters called padas, each three degrees twenty minutes wide. The pada refines the reading: two people born under the same nakshatra but in different padas are held to differ meaningfully, because each pada falls in a different navamsa and so carries a different sub-influence.
The pada also decides the first syllable of a child's name. Where the moon stood at birth gives the nakshatra; which quarter of it gives the syllable. The four syllables below are in pada order — a child born in the first pada takes the first, and so on. This is the naming convention used at namakaranam across most of southern India.
- 1Go6° 40′ →
- 2Sa10° 00′ →
- 3Si13° 20′ →
- 4Su16° 40′ →