Ashlesha

a Moon, Ascendant or other key point in Ashlesha, the ninth lunar mansion

What the tradition reads

Ashlesha is the ninth of the twenty seven lunar mansions, closing out Cancer in the sidereal zodiac. Its ruling planet is Mercury, its symbol a coiled serpent, and its presiding deities are the Nagas, the serpent gods. A Moon, Ascendant or other significant point placed here is read as giving a socially graceful, polished exterior that conceals a good deal more than it reveals, natives skilled at presenting themselves acceptably in company while keeping their real intentions carefully hidden. Where the placement is difficult, the tradition warns of a coiled, watchful character capable of real deceit, dishonesty and a cold, calculating ruthlessness, using flattery and charm as tools rather than as genuine warmth. The same watchfulness, differently used, is read as a gift: sharp powers of observation and intuition, an ability to plan and to reason coolly under pressure, and a real capacity for leadership when the underlying cunning is put to constructive use rather than to manipulation. Ashlesha's serpent symbol is read as the key to the whole mansion, a creature that can either strike from concealment or shed its skin and begin again, its danger and its intelligence inseparable from each other.

The story

The Nagas are told of as the children of the sage Kashyapa and Kadru, a divine or semi-divine race, half human and half serpent, that guards treasure and makes its home in rivers, lakes, seas and wells. Their king, Vasuki, lent his own body to serve as the churning rope when the gods and the asuras together churned the ocean of milk, wound around the mountain used as the churning rod and pulled from either end until the nectar of immortality finally rose to the surface. Nagas are consistently read as ambivalent rather than simply evil, their venom and their power making them genuinely dangerous, yet the same tradition just as often casts them as benevolent, even heroic figures within its stories. A mansion named for the serpent inherits precisely this doubleness, a creature capable of guarding a treasure as faithfully as it can strike an enemy, and the tradition reads Ashlesha's own natives as carrying both possibilities coiled together rather than settled permanently on one side or the other.

Written from

Corpus key nakshatra:Ashlesha.