The Navami tithi

a birth on a Navami tithi, in either fortnight

What the tradition reads

Navami is the ninth of the fourteen shared tithi names, one of the three Rikta tithis, a class myzodiaq.in reads as withdrawn and introspective, suited to meditation, fasting, spiritual practice and the clearing of debt or obstacles, but disfavoured for marriage, for beginning a business or for travel undertaken for material gain. Clickastro.com names the Naga, the serpent, as Navami's ruling deity, and reports that the tithi is likewise not considered good for auspicious activities, but favours competitions, debates, physical exercise, the elimination of an enemy and hunting. The two readings reinforce each other despite naming different classes and deities: Navami is a day the tradition sets apart from ordinary celebration, given over instead to contest, confrontation or inward discipline, its energy read as real but better spent against an obstacle or turned within than offered to a new bond or a new venture begun in the open.

The story

The Nagas, clickastro.com's deity for Navami, are described by Wikipedia as the children of the sage Kashyapa and his wife Kadru, serpent beings capable of taking human, part serpent or wholly serpent form, who dwell in an underworld realm of hidden treasure and stand locked in an eternal rivalry with Garuda, the eagle. Despite that history of enmity and confinement, the same tradition gives the Nagas a role of real consequence in the world's own making: it is Vasuki, king of the nagas, coiled around Mount Mandara as the churning gods and demons pull him back and forth, who serves as the very rope by which the ocean of milk is churned for the nectar of immortality. A day ruled by beings who are at once dangerous, hidden and, when the world requires it, indispensable to its most important undertaking fits Navami's reading as a tithi unsuited to open celebration but well suited to a contest, a hunt or a private discipline where that same buried strength can be put to proper use.

Written from

Corpus key tithi:Navami.