Vishakha nakshatra: Jupiter's star across Libra and Scorpio, what the texts say and how to check yours

Vishakha is the sixteenth nakshatra and the first of the 27 that this page series has to treat as two-signed: its first three padas lie in Libra and its last in Scorpio. Jupiter rules it in the Vimshottari scheme, so a Moon in Vishakha begins life in a Jupiter Mahadasha. This page sets out what the classical books in this app's library say about Vishakha, with chapter and page, and every figure on it comes from running the app's engine.

The series covers all 27 stars in the same order of sections, so Vishakha can be read next to its neighbours, Swati before it and Anuradha after it. The two signs it occupies have their own pages, Libra (Tula) and Scorpio (Vrishchika). The method behind the numbers is on the methodology page and the books are listed on the sources page.

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

Vishakha is the 16th 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 Vishakha runs from Libra 20°00' to Scorpio 3°20', crossing from Libra into Scorpio at the sign boundary. A planet is "in Vishakha" when its sidereal longitude falls inside that arc. When someone says "my nakshatra is Vishakha", 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.

Because Vishakha crosses a sign boundary, the star alone does not settle the Moon sign. A Moon in padas 1 to 3 is a Libra Moon, with Venus as sign lord; a Moon in pada 4 is a Scorpio Moon, with Mars as sign lord. The star lord, Jupiter, is the same throughout. That matters wherever the app reads the sign: the Moon-sign reading, the sign-based kootas in matching, and the transit counts from the natal Moon.

Two classical degree points fall on or inside this star. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 gives Saturn its deepest exaltation at 20 degrees of Libra, which is exactly where Vishakha begins, and the Moon its deepest fall at 3 degrees of Scorpio, which lies inside Vishakha's fourth pada. A Moon in that last pada is therefore in its sign of fall, within twenty arc-minutes of the deepest point; the app's dignity reading treats it as debilitated, and the rest of the chart decides how much that weighs.

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 Vishakha's own lord, Jupiter. 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 Vishakha

Three books in this app's library speak about Vishakha 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 Vishakha as a counting point and a member of groups rather than describing it. Saravali uses the name only for the lunar month of Visakha, and Advanced Predictive Astrology places the star in one of its three 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. 87-104)

Entry 16, spelt Vishaakha, describes the star as "like a torana (festoon) consisting of four stars", with two presiding deities, Indra and Agni. It associates the star with "things which are bright red or crimson; trees yielding red flowers or red fruits", and with cotton, ginger, black gram, beans, chick-peas and saffron. Unlike most entries it gives no list of occupations; the significations are goods and colours.

The prose reading is one of the least flattering in the chapter: the person "will be jealous of another's property, will be a niggard, of bright appearance, of distinct speech, skilled in earning money and disposed to bring about quarrels among men". The sloka that follows is milder in tone but makes a related point: the person "is interested in doing many things", "is befriended even by goldsmiths", but "can not be a good friend to anyone", to which the translator adds "(He is not trustworthy)". The engine's one-line reading is a softened paraphrase of the sloka, restless and wide-ranging in interests, sociable but not always easy to trust, in line with its stated policy of turning the book's harsher verdicts into tendencies.

Read with the chapter's own conditions, these are not verdicts on a person. Page 92 says the effects "will fully come to pass only if the moon is powerful", and a Moon in the fourth pada is in its fall. Page 91 gives the star's nature a timing role: Vishakha is classed "soft and hot", alongside Krittika only, and "during the period of a planet situated in a particular star, effects will be felt according to the above characteristics".

The chapter also places Vishakha in two of its short lists. It is a Sristi star (p. 88), the first of the triad it forms with Anuradha and Jyeshtha, which means the durithamsa caution for the last two padas of Laya stars does not apply to it. And it is one of the nine Adhomukha, "downward-looking", stars (p. 88), with Bharani, Krittika, Aslesha, Makha, Pubba, Moola, Poorvaashaadha and Poorvaabhaadra. The chapter does not say in this place what the downward-looking class is used for.

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

BPHS names Vishakha sixteenth in Santhanam's list after Ch. 3 Sl. 6 and gives its deity in Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26, where the Saptavimshamsa lords are the nakshatra deities: the sixteenth is Chakragni. Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara names Indra and Agni. The BPHS name contains Agni; whether it is meant as the same pair, the translation does not say, so this page reports both names without merging them.

In Ch. 46 Vishakha is a member of groups rather than a counting point. Shastihayani Dasha (Sl. 40-41), adopted where the Sun is in the Lagna, gives Swati, Vishakha and Anuradha to Budh (Mercury) for 6 years. In Kalachakra (Sl. 56-58) Parashara writes "Vishakah, Anuradha and Jyeshtha in the Apsavya", and Sl. 71-72 says that in the Apsavya chakra "Deha and Jiva would be the same for Rohini, Magha, Vishakah and Shravan, as for Rohini". The Deha and Jiva columns in the pada table below are taken from the Rohini padas that follow in Sl. 73-76.

Vishakha appears once more, in Ch. 94, a chapter of remedies, which attaches a marriage-related warning to a girl born in its fourth pada. The app prescribes no remedies and does not repeat predictions of harm to relatives, so the line is named here only so a reader who meets it elsewhere knows its source. It is not used anywhere in the app's readings or matching.

Vishakha is not one of BPHS's Gandanta junctions (Ch. 92 Sl. 3), even though it crosses a sign boundary: those junctions are where a nakshatra boundary and a sign boundary coincide, at the ends of Revati, Ashlesha and Jyeshtha, whereas Vishakha's sign change falls in the middle of its own arc. For the Moon itself as a graha, see the Moon in Vedic astrology page.

Saravali and Advanced Predictive Astrology

Saravali never treats Vishakha as a nakshatra. The name appears in Ch. 7 (Planetary Indications), Sl. 4, which defines the Savana month: "each month, viz. Chaitra, Visakha etc., commences with the first day of Bright half". The lunar month and the star share the name, but nothing in this library explains the link, so the page does not offer one.

Advanced Predictive Astrology (Vol. II, p. 225) puts Vishaka in its Kapha group of "Humour Producing Asterisms", with Krittika, Rohini, Ashlesha, Makha, Swati, Uttarasada, Sravana and Revati. The book uses the grouping in a chapter on health; any such reading is the author's and is not medical advice.

Where the sources disagree

The deity is given as Chakragni in BPHS and as Indra and Agni in Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara. Inside Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara the two readings agree in substance, both describing a busy person with many interests and doubtful loyalty, but the prose adds avarice and quarrel-making that the sloka does not. The engine follows the sloka, softened.

The engine's Gana for Vishakha is Rakshasa. No book in this library gives a nakshatra Gana list, as the engine's header says, so the classification cannot be checked against a source here. The engine's muhurat lists leave Vishakha off all six; Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara's "soft and hot" class is not tied to any activity in the pages read, so there is no source to compare that choice with either.

The four padas of Vishakha

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 Vishakha's first pada: 15 nakshatras have passed, 15 divided by 3 leaves 0, times 4 is 0, plus 1 is 1, and the 1st sign from Aries is Aries. The engine's computeNavamsa, which uses the sign-based rule from Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara Ch. II, returns Aries too. The Navamsa calculator shows the whole D9 chart, and the Navamsa article explains why it needs an accurate birth time.

The padas run Aries, Taurus, Gemini in Libra and then Cancer in Scorpio, because Vishakha opens a new group of three stars and the navamsa count restarts at Aries. None of the four is vargottama. The fourth pada is unusual twice over: it changes the Moon's sign from Libra to Scorpio, and it puts the Moon in Cancer, its own sign, in the navamsa while it is in its sign of fall in the birth chart. A reading that looks only at the D1 sign will miss that second fact; the Moon sign calculator gives the sign directly, and the Navamsa calculator the D9.

Each pada also has a navamsa lord that the app reads as the Moon's D9 dispositor: Mars for the Aries pada, Venus for Taurus, Mercury for Gemini and the Moon itself for the Cancer pada. Kalachakra, which BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 6-11 says the sages recognised as supreme and which the app computes, gives Vishakha the Rohini pattern, so its four padas carry four different Deha and Jiva pairs, listed above as the text gives them.

The sign boundary inside the star also means a Moon near Libra 30° can change sign with a small change of birth time while staying in Vishakha. The nakshatra calculator's 00:00 and 23:59 readings show when that has happened on a birth date.

Vishakha 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, Vishakha is 14; 14 divided by 9 leaves 5, and that is Jupiter. The engine reaches the same lord from its own table. Sl. 15 gives Jupiter 16 years. A Moon in Vishakha therefore starts life in a Jupiter 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 16 years.

Run on a sample birth of 1 January 2000 with the Moon a quarter of the way into Vishakha, the engine leaves three quarters of the Jupiter period, 12 years, and dates the next periods from there:

What a Jupiter period is classically held to bring is on the Jupiter Mahadasha page and the Jupiter 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 Jupiter as a graha, see the Jupiter page.

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. Vishakha is the last of Mars's run of four, Hasta, Chitra, Swati and Vishakha, so a Vishakha Moon starts in a Mars period of 8 years. Under Sl. 21-22 a malefic's period is shared a quarter per star, so Vishakha carries the final two years: at the very start of Vishakha six years of Mars are taken as already over, the arithmetic Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara (p. 121) works through for Aslesha. Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara Ch. V (p. 120) prints the same grouping as a table. The app computes Ashtottari this way, with the balance and every period dated, on the Alternate Dashas calculator and the Kundali screen.

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 Vishakha (sampled at the middle of the star) the alternate dashas calculator returns:

In the table, Panchottari is the line where Vishakha's position matters most. That system counts from Anuradha, the next star, so Vishakha is the 27th and last in its count: the remainder after dividing by 7 gives the Moon, 17 years. Chaturashiti-sama counts from Swati, the star just before, so Vishakha is 2 and gets the second lord, the Moon, 12 years. Neighbouring stars can sit at opposite ends of a count, which is why the alternate dashas calculator lists each system's reference star.

Vishakha 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 Vishakha in the Rakshasa gana, the Antya nadi and the Tiger 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. Vishakha 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 Vishakha and in the same sign 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 Vishakha's Antya nadi, and so also scoring 0 on Nadi against it, are Krittika, Rohini, Ashlesha, Magha, Swati, Uttara Ashadha, Shravana, Revati. Because Vishakha straddles Libra and Scorpio, a pair with one Moon on each side of the boundary scores 16: Vashya 1/2, Graha Maitri 1/5, Bhakoot 0/7, Nadi 0/8. On Yoni, Chitra shares the Tiger and scores the full 4; the engine treats the Cow as the Tiger's enemy, so Uttara Phalguni and Uttara 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 Vishakha, the unfavourable stars are Bharani (14), Rohini (16), Ashlesha (21), Purva Phalguni (23), Hasta (25), Jyeshtha (3), Purva Ashadha (5), Shravana (7), Revati (12). 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. Vishakha is on none of the six lists, so a window with the Moon there always takes the 6-point deduction. Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara does not put Vishakha in its fixed, movable or soft classes; its "soft and hot" label is not linked to an activity in the pages read, so nothing in the library contradicts the engine leaving it off every list. 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 Vishakha native that is Magha. The engine does not apply that rule.

Checking Vishakha 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 Vishakha 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 Jupiter 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 Vishakha the sign check matters as much as the star check. If your Moon is in the fourth pada, the kundali feature shows it in Scorpio, and the dignity, the sign-based kootas and the transit counts all follow from that. If the birth time is uncertain, the unknown birth time article explains what the date alone can and cannot settle.

Common misreadings of Vishakha

• "Vishakha is a Libra star." Three-quarters of it is; the fourth pada is Scorpio, and a Moon there is a Scorpio Moon in its sign of fall. Always check the pada.
• Crossing a sign boundary does not make Vishakha a Gandanta star. BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 3 reserves that term for the three points where a nakshatra and a sign end together.
• The Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara prose about envy and quarrels is a classical description of a star, given with the condition that the Moon be strong, not a finding about any individual. The app reproduces only a softened tendency and it is one line among many in a chart.
• A Rakshasa gana in the matching table is a label in an unsourced table, worth 0, 3 or 6 points in one of eight kootas. It is not a description of character.
• The Ch. 94 warning about the fourth pada belongs to a remedy chapter. The app uses no remedies and does not let it touch a match score or a reading.
• Saturn at the very start of Vishakha is not "in Vishakha's exaltation". Exaltation belongs to signs and degrees, not to stars: BPHS places Saturn's deepest exaltation at Libra 20°, and that degree happens to be the Swati-Vishakha boundary. A Saturn a few minutes either side is equally close to that point, whichever star it is in.

Questions about Vishakha

Which sign is Vishakha nakshatra in?

Two: Libra from 20°00' to 30°00' (padas 1-3) and Scorpio from 0°00' to 3°20' (pada 4). Which one applies depends on the exact longitude.

Who rules Vishakha?

Jupiter, in the Vimshottari scheme, for 16 years. The deities named in the texts are Chakragni (BPHS) and Indra and Agni (Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara). For what a Jupiter period is held to bring, see the Jupiter Mahadasha page.

What are the navamsas of the four padas?

Aries, Taurus and Gemini for the three Libra padas, and Cancer for the Scorpio pada. None is vargottama.

Is the Moon debilitated in Vishakha?

Only in the fourth pada, which is in Scorpio. BPHS puts the Moon's deepest fall at Scorpio 3°, inside that pada. In padas 1 to 3 the Moon is in Libra and not in fall.

What gana, nadi and yoni does the app use for Vishakha?

Rakshasa gana, Antya nadi and the Tiger yoni. These are the engine's Ashtakoot tables; its own header says no classical book in this library contains them.

Does a Vishakha-Vishakha match score badly?

Two Moons in the same sign of Vishakha score 28 of 36 in the engine, losing all 8 Nadi points. If one Moon is in Libra and the other in the Scorpio pada, the sign-based kootas change as well, and the score drops to 16: Vashya 1 of 2, Graha Maitri 1 of 5 and Bhakoot 0 of 7, on top of the Nadi loss.

Is Vishakha good for a muhurat?

It is on none of the engine's six activity lists, so a window with the Moon there takes a 6-point deduction on the nakshatra factor. Other factors, tithi, weekday, Rahu Kaal and the Moon's house, still count.

Why does the app's description of Vishakha sound gentler than older books?

The engine paraphrases the Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara sloka and, by stated policy, turns its harsher character judgements into tendencies; it drops caste, appearance and marriage material entirely.