Shatabhisha

a Moon, Ascendant or other key point in Shatabhisha, the twenty fourth lunar mansion

What the tradition reads

Shatabhisha is the twenty fourth of the twenty seven lunar mansions, occupying the middle portion of Aquarius in the sidereal zodiac. Its ruling planet is Rahu, its symbol an empty circle, and its presiding deity is Varuna, guardian of cosmic law. Its name is read as meaning a hundred physicians, or a hundred stars, and it is also called the veiling star, and a Moon, Ascendant or other significant point placed here is read as producing an opinionated, deeply caring and healing oriented nature, drawn toward introspection and even toward a certain reclusive solitude. The tradition credits Shatabhisha natives with real hard work, determination and discipline, a research minded, reasoning intellect and a strong intuition that serves them well in methodical, careful work. Where the placement is less well supported, the tradition names obstinacy, a head strong adamancy, and bouts of anger or of depression as the mansion's characteristic weaknesses, along with a certain difficulty in innovating past whatever method has already been settled on. Shatabhisha is read as combining a secretive, almost mystical inclination with a genuinely scientific cast of mind, one veil and a hundred careful, curious eyes behind it.

The story

Varuna presides above all over rta, the cosmic and moral order binding both the natural world and human conduct, an ethical judge who punishes whoever transgresses that order while extending mercy to whoever repents of having done so, his own ordinances treated as fixed and unshakeable. Once a ruler of the primeval waters at the root of creation, he came in later tradition to govern all the waters of the world outright, oceans, rivers, streams and lakes, presiding from an underwater palace much as Poseidon does in the Greek telling. His omniscience is described in the most literal terms available to the tradition, a thousand gated palace on a golden throne from which he sends out spies with a thousand eyes to watch every action taken anywhere, nothing escaping his notice. A mansion named for a hundred watching stars, veiled yet counted precisely, placed under the one god the tradition gives a thousand eyes to, reads Shatabhisha's own healing, watchful reclusiveness as the smaller, human scale version of Varuna's own vast and patient surveillance.

Written from

Corpus key nakshatra:Shatabhisha.