Revati nakshatra: Mercury's star at the end of the zodiac, what the texts say and how to check yours

Revati is the twenty-seventh and last nakshatra, the final 13°20' of Pisces, and Mercury rules it in the Vimshottari scheme. Its end is the end of the sidereal zodiac: at Pisces 30° the star, the sign and the whole cycle of 27 turn over together into Ashwini and Aries. That junction is the first of BPHS's three Nakshatra Gandanta points, and Revati's last pada also holds Venus's deepest exaltation. This page sets out what the books in this app's library say about Revati, with chapter and page, and every number on it comes from running the engine.

It closes a 27-page series laid out the same way, so it can be read beside Uttara Bhadrapada before it and Ashwini, where the cycle begins again. The sign is described on the Pisces (Meena) page. The engine's method is on the methodology page and the books on the sources page.

Where Revati sits: the arc, the padas and the engine's facts

Revati is the 27th of the 27 nakshatras. Each nakshatra is 13°20' of the sidereal zodiac, 360 degrees divided by 27, and this app measures them from 0° Aries in the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) frame. So Revati runs from Pisces 16°40' to Aries 0°00', wholly inside Pisces. A planet is "in Revati" when its sidereal longitude falls inside that arc. When someone says "my nakshatra is Revati", they mean the Moon was there at birth: the Janma Nakshatra. The Moon moves about 13 degrees a day, so it crosses a nakshatra boundary inside most birth dates, and the nakshatra calculator reports the star at both ends of the birth date when no time is given. The difference between a rashi and a nakshatra is set out separately, as is why two apps can name two different stars for the same birth.

Revati lies wholly in Pisces, so a Moon there is a Pisces Moon, with Jupiter as sign lord and Mercury as star lord. At its end, sign lord and star lord change together, Jupiter and Mercury giving way to Mars and Ketu, and the engine's longitude wraps from just under 360° to 0°. Because the whole sidereal frame hangs on the ayanamsa, a Moon within a degree of this boundary can be Revati in one app and Ashwini in another; the article on why apps disagree about the nakshatra explains the size of that effect.

BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 gives Venus its exaltation in Pisces, deepest at 27 degrees. Pisces 27° is inside Revati's fourth pada (Pisces 26°40' to 30°00'). Mercury, Revati's own lord, is in its fall sign anywhere in Pisces, deepest at 15°, which is in Uttara Bhadrapada; so in Revati the star lord is in its fall sign while Venus is near its peak.

Inside the star the engine draws nine unequal sub-divisions, one for each Vimshottari lord, each as wide as that lord's share of the 120-year cycle, and the first belongs to Revati's own lord, Mercury. These sub-lords matter most for points that move fast through the sky, above all the Ascendant, which is why the sub-lord needs a birth time to the minute. The sub-lord calculator prints this same table for your own Moon:

What the classical texts say about Revati

Three books in this app's library speak about Revati directly. Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara (Rama R. Rao, 1994) gives every nakshatra a description in Ch. IV; the corpus copy is a scan with no text layer, so the pages cited below were read as images. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS) uses Revati as a counting point and a member of groups rather than describing it. Saravali names Revati twice in its Raja Yogas, for the Sun and for Venus, and Advanced Predictive Astrology places it in one of its humour groups. The readings are reported as the texts give them, with the same omissions the engine makes: the caste label each nakshatra carries in Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara is not repeated, nor are its predictions about appearance and marriage.

Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara, Ch. IV (pp. 87-115)

Entry 27, spelt Revathi, describes the star as "in the form of a fish, consisting of thirty-two stars", with Pusha as presiding deity, "an aspect of the Sun like Bhaga and Aryama", and the Indian Olive tree (Ippe) as its plant. The people associated with it "are travellers, servants of the rulers (government servants), boatmen and those who are associated with water flowers, perfumes, salt, gems, conch-shells, pearls and creatures of water."

The prose reading: the person "will possess perfect limbs, will be liked by all people, valiant in fight, will never covet the property of other men and will be rich". The appearance clause is one the engine drops. The sloka and its translation: "reputed for his good conduct and self-restraint. He is born in a good family and is singularly attached to it. He will live like a king." The engine's line, "of good conduct and self-restraint, from a good family, carrying yourself with real dignity", follows the sloka, turning living like a king into dignity.

Revathi is one of the four soft stars, with Mrigashira, Chitra and Anuradha (p. 91), and p. 91 makes the class a timing rule for any planet placed in it during its period. It is the Laya member of its triad (p. 88), so the durithamsa caution covers its third and fourth padas, Pisces 23°20' to 30°00'. And on p. 87 it is one of the three gandantha stars that "end with a rasi", with Aasleshaa and Jyestha.

The chapter's list of birth-star cautions (p. 113) includes: "Two ghatis (48 minutes) during the end of Aasleshaa and the beginning of Makha and during the end of Revathi and the beginning of Ashwini are considered to be inauspicious." It also lists Revathi's fourth quarter in connection with a relative (p. 115), which the app does not use or repeat. The book opens the list by saying birth in these stars "cannot be the sole factor; the horoscope as a whole has to be assessed", and that Guru in the lagna or aspecting it "will cancel the ill-effects of the nakshatra".

BPHS: Revati as a deity, a count and a group

BPHS lists Revati twenty-seventh, and Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 ends its list of nakshatra deities with "Pushya" for the twenty-seventh. That is the translation's spelling of Pusha, Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara's name, and not the nakshatra Pushya; the books agree.

Ch. 92 defines the junction. Sl. 3: the Nakshatra Gandanta includes "the last two Ghatikas of Revati and first two Ghatikas of Ashvini". Sl. 4 adds the Lagna version: "the last half Ghatika of Meen and first half Ghatika of Mesh". The chapter and the two after it are remedy chapters; the app prescribes no remedies and does not repeat the chapter's warnings, so only the definitions are used here. Unlike the Jyeshtha-Mula junction, BPHS defines no wider Abhukta band at Revati-Ashwini.

Revati is a counting point twice in Ch. 46. Dwadashottari (Sl. 27-28), for a Lagna in Venus's navamsa, says "Count from Janm Nakshatr to Revati"; a Revati Moon counts 1 and starts with the Sun, 7 years. Shatabdik (Sl. 33-34), for a vargottama Lagna, says "Count from Revati to the Janm Nakshatr"; a Revati Moon again counts 1 and starts with the Sun, 5 years. The engine agrees on both. In the same chapter Shastihayani (Sl. 40-41) gives "Pushya, Aslesha, Magha, Revati" to Mangal, 10 years, and Kalachakra puts Revati in the Savya chakra and reads its padas "as the Padas of Ashvini" (Sl. 56-58).

For Mercury as a graha, see the Mercury page; for the Moon, the Moon in Vedic astrology page.

Saravali and Advanced Predictive Astrology

Saravali Ch. 35 names Revati twice. Sl. 147: "The sun in Revati, Poorva Phalguni, Uttara Phalguni, or Moola identical with Ascendant will make one the head of a country extending to only hundred yojanas" — for Revati, a Pisces Ascendant with the Sun in Pisces 16°40' to 30°00'. Sl. 148: Venus in the Ascendant makes one a ruler "provided the planet in question simultaneously occupies one of the asterisms, viz. Krittika, Revati, Swati, Pushyami and Aswini". Venus in Revati in the Ascendant means a Pisces Ascendant with Venus in its exaltation sign, and in the fourth pada near its deepest exaltation. Both verses describe combinations; neither concerns the Moon.

Advanced Predictive Astrology (Vol. II, p. 225) puts Revati in its Kapha humour group; the book's health readings are the author's and are not medical advice.

Where the sources disagree

The deity agrees. On the junction, BPHS gives two ghatikas either side (Ch. 92 Sl. 3) and Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara gives two ghatis across the boundary in total, "48 minutes during the end of ... Revathi and the beginning of Ashwini" (p. 113), which reads as shorter; the wording does not settle whether each side gets 48 minutes or both together. At Jyeshtha-Mula the books disagree more widely, with a separate Abhukta band; here neither defines one.

The engine's Deva gana and Elephant yoni for Revati have no source in this library, as its header says; the Antya nadi has the partial anchor in the humour table, where Revati is Kapha. The engine does not flag Gandanta at all.

The four padas of Revati

Each nakshatra splits into four padas of 3°20', and each pada is one navamsa, so the 108 padas of the zodiac walk through the twelve signs nine times. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 gives the rule as arithmetic: take the number of nakshatras already passed, divide by 3, multiply the remainder by 4, add the pada, and count that many signs from Aries. For Revati's first pada: 26 nakshatras have passed, 26 divided by 3 leaves 2, times 4 is 8, plus 1 is 9, and the 9th sign from Aries is Sagittarius. The engine's computeNavamsa, which uses the sign-based rule from Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara Ch. II, returns Sagittarius too. The Navamsa calculator shows the whole D9 chart, and the Navamsa article explains why it needs an accurate birth time.

Revati is the last star of its group of three and of the zodiac, so its navamsas are Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, and the fourth, Pisces 26°40' to 30°00', is vargottama: Pisces in both charts. The next pada, Ashwini's first, begins the navamsa count again at Aries and is itself vargottama in Aries, so the zodiac's junction is flanked by two vargottama padas, one in each sign.

The fourth pada collects labels from several sources: vargottama (engine), durithamsa (Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara p. 88), Venus's deepest exaltation at Pisces 27° (BPHS Ch. 3), and, in its last minutes, the Gandanta junction (BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 3). They come from different rules and do not combine into a single verdict in any text here. The app computes only the first.

The Kalachakra columns are the Ashvini pattern of BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 60-64: Aries and Sagittarius as Deha and Jiva in the first pada, Capricorn and Gemini in the second, Taurus and Gemini in the third, Cancer and Pisces in the fourth. The app computes Kalachakra from them, reading the second pada's row, printed only as nine signs from Makar to Mithun, as the exact reverse of Mrigashira's third pada (85 years). The last sub-lord, Saturn's, runs from Pisces 27°53' to the end of the sign.

Revati and the dasha sequence

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-14 finds the first Vimshottari dasha by counting from Krittika to the birth star and dividing by nine; the remainder picks a lord from the sequence Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus. Counting Krittika as 1, Revati is 25; 25 divided by 9 leaves 7, and that is Mercury. The engine reaches the same lord from its own table. Sl. 15 gives Mercury 17 years. A Moon in Revati therefore starts life in a Mercury Mahadasha, and Sl. 16 says how much of it remains: the part of the nakshatra the Moon has still to cross, as a share of the whole, times 17 years.

Run on a sample birth of 1 January 2000 with the Moon a quarter of the way into Revati, the engine leaves three quarters of the Mercury period, 12.75 years, and dates the next periods from there:

What a Mercury period is classically held to bring is on the Mercury Mahadasha page and the Mercury in Vedic astrology page; the Vimshottari dasha calculator gives your own dates, and the sub-periods article explains why those dates move when the birth time moves. For Revati the second period is Ketu's 7 years and the third Venus's 20, the same sequence as for Jyeshtha and Ashlesha, the other two Mercury stars.

Ashtottari is the 108-year system BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 17-20 offers as an alternative "when Rahu is not in Lagn, in any other Kendr, or Trikon to the Lord of the Lagn". It assigns stars in alternating runs of four and three from Ardra. Revati is the second of Rahu's run of four, Uttara Bhadrapada, Revati, Ashwini and Bharani, so a Revati Moon starts in a Rahu period of 12 years. Under Sl. 21-22 a malefic's period is shared a quarter per star, three years each, so at the very start of Revati three years of Rahu are taken as already over. Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara Ch. V (p. 120) prints the same grouping as a table. The engine computes Ashtottari in full, so the app shows the Rahu balance and dates every Ashtottari period.

The engine does compute six other nakshatra-based systems from the same chapter, each with its own starting star and condition. For a Moon in Revati (sampled at the middle of the star) the alternate dashas calculator returns:

Revati is the reference star for two of the engine's six systems, Dwadashottari and Shatabdik, and for a Revati Moon both start with the Sun. Across the Revati-Ashwini boundary the lords change in every system: in Shatabdik, for instance, an Ashwini Moon counts 2 and starts with the Moon.

Revati in compatibility and muhurat

Ashtakoot matching, the 36-point Guna Milan the match tool runs, reads four of its eight kootas from the two Moon nakshatras: Tara, Yoni, Gana and Nadi. The engine places Revati in the Deva gana, the Antya nadi and the Elephant yoni. Its own header is candid that none of the classical books it works from contains the Ashtakoot rules, no nakshatra gana list and no koota point scale, so these tables are carried as they are rather than cited. One partial anchor exists: Advanced Predictive Astrology (p. 225) prints "Humour Producing Asterisms" in three groups of nine, Vata, Pitta and Kapha, and that grouping coincides star for star with the engine's Aadi, Madhya and Antya nadis. Revati sits in its Kapha group. The book does not call this Nadi koota, and this page does not claim it does.

Two people with the Moon in Revati score 28 of 36 in the engine: full marks on seven kootas and 0 of 8 on Nadi, because the same star always means the same nadi. The other stars sharing Revati's Antya nadi, and so also scoring 0 on Nadi against it, are Krittika, Rohini, Ashlesha, Magha, Swati, Vishakha, Uttara Ashadha, Shravana. On Yoni, Bharani shares the Elephant and scores the full 4; the engine treats the Lion as the Elephant's enemy, so Dhanishta and Purva Bhadrapada score 0; every other pairing scores 2.

Tara counts from each partner's star to the other's. The engine marks a count as unfavourable when it leaves 3, 5 or 7 after division by 9, and BPHS Ch. 44 Sl. 15-21 does name the 3rd, 5th and 7th stars from the birth star Vipat, Pratyak and Vadh, though in a chapter on longevity this page does not reproduce. Counted forward from Revati, the unfavourable stars are Bharani (3), Rohini (5), Ardra (7), Purva Phalguni (12), Hasta (14), Swati (16), Purva Ashadha (21), Shravana (23), Shatabhisha (25). The score is 3 when both directions are clear, 1.5 when one is, and 0 when neither is. The compatibility feature shows every koota with its points, so a low total can be traced to the factor behind it.

For choosing a time, the muhurat feature and the muhurat calculator add 16 points to a window when the transiting Moon is in a star on the activity's list and take 6 away when it is not. Revati is on the Marriage, Property purchase, Travel lists. Revati is on three lists, Marriage, Property purchase and Travel. Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara (p. 89) also calls the 22nd star from one's birth star the vainasika nakshatra, "to be avoided for auspicious events"; for a Revati native that is Uttara Ashadha. The engine does not apply that rule.

Checking Revati in your own chart

1. 1.Open the nakshatra calculator with your birth date and, if you have it, time and place. It returns the Moon's star, its pada and its lord. Without a time it also shows the star at 00:00 and 23:59, so you can see whether Revati held all day.
2. 2.Check the pada against the table above. The pada fixes the Moon's navamsa, which the Navamsa calculator shows in full.
3. 3.If your Moon is within a few arc-minutes of a sub-lord boundary, the sub-lord calculator prints the distance to the next one. An error of a few minutes in the birth time can move it.
4. 4.Open the Vimshottari dasha calculator to see the Mercury balance at birth and every period after it.
5. 5.Look at the whole chart in the birth chart calculator. A star describes the Moon's placement; the houses, the Ascendant and the other planets are read from the full chart.
6. 6.For matching, enter both birth details in the match tool; it computes both stars itself, so nothing has to be typed in by name.

For a Revati Moon the decisive check is the distance to Pisces 30°. Within a degree of it, the birth time decides the star, the sign, the dasha lord and whether either book's Gandanta band applies; the unknown birth time article explains what can be settled without a precise time, and the kundali feature shows the full chart.

Common misreadings of Revati

• "All of Revati is Gandanta." BPHS confines it to the last two ghatikas, and Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara to a 48-minute span at the junction. Most of Revati lies outside both.
• The deity "Pushya" in BPHS Ch. 6 is the translation's spelling of Pusha, not a link to the nakshatra Pushya.
• Venus's exaltation in Revati's fourth pada concerns Venus. A Moon there is not exalted; the Moon's exaltation is in Taurus.
• The app does not flag Gandanta. A reading that does not mention it is not saying the birth is clear of it.
• Being the last star does not make Revati an ending in any interpretive sense the texts here state. Its readings in Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara are uniformly favourable.

Questions about Revati

Which sign is Revati nakshatra in?

Pisces, entirely: Pisces 16°40' to 30°00'. Its end is the end of the sidereal zodiac.

Who is the lord of Revati?

Mercury, with a Vimshottari period of 17 years. The deity is Pusha. See the Mercury Mahadasha page for what the period is held to bring.

Is Revati a Gandanta nakshatra?

Its last part is. BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 3 puts the Nakshatra Gandanta at the last two ghatikas of Revati and the first two of Ashwini, and Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara names Revathi among the stars that end a rasi. The app does not compute it.

Which pada of Revati is vargottama?

The fourth, Pisces 26°40' to 30°00', with a Pisces navamsa. It also holds Venus's deepest exaltation at Pisces 27°.

What gana, nadi and yoni does the app give Revati?

Deva gana, Antya nadi and the Elephant yoni, shared with Bharani. The engine's header says these tables have no source in this library.

How does a Revati Moon match with an Ashwini Moon in the app?

Run with Moons at Pisces 25° and Aries 5°, the engine gives 24.5 of 36. Nadi is full, 8 of 8, because the nadis differ; Bhakoot is 0 because the signs are second and twelfth from each other; Yoni gives 2. The match tool shows each koota.

Is Revati good for travel in the app?

Yes, it is on the Travel list, and on Marriage and Property purchase. The muhurat feature adds the other factors.

When is Sade Sati for a Revati Moon?

The engine defines Sade Sati as Saturn in the 12th, 1st or 2nd sign from the natal Moon. A Revati Moon is in Pisces, so the band is Saturn in Aquarius, Pisces and Aries. The Sade Sati calculator gives the dates.

Which star is the vainasika star for a Revati native?

By Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara's rule (p. 89), the 22nd star from the birth star is to be avoided for auspicious events; counted from Revati it is Uttara Ashadha. The app's muhurat engine does not apply the rule.

Which dasha systems count from Revati?

Shatabdik (count from Revati, BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 33-34) and Dwadashottari (count from the birth star to Revati, Sl. 27-28). For a Revati Moon both begin with the Sun.