Nakshatra Cluster · Saturn-ruled · Anuradha

Anuradha nakshatra, 3°20' to 16°40' Scorpio.

Anuradha is the 17th of the 27 nakshatras and sits entirely within Scorpio, holding 3°20' to 16°40' of the sign without touching either boundary. That places it between two neighbours that do reach a cusp: Vishakha before it spills back into Libra, and Jyeshtha after it runs out to the 30° Scorpio edge, while Anuradha alone rests in the interior. Its ruling planet is Saturn, whose 19-year Vimshottari mahadasha is the second-longest of the nine after Venus. The presiding deity is Mitra, one of the Adityas and the god of friendship and dharmic alliance, and the symbol is the lotus, read as the flowering that comes through partnership. Sanskrit anuradha means subsequent success or following spark. Sources: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Chapter 3, Phaladeepika Chapter 7, Sarvartha Chintamani.

Range, ruler, deity and classical attributes

Range	3°20' to 16°40' Scorpio
Sequence position	17th of 27 nakshatras
Ruling planet	Saturn (19-year Vimshottari mahadasha)
Presiding deity	Mitra (the god of friendship, dharmic alliance)
Symbol	lotus (also staff or archway of triumph)
Gana (temperamental class)	deva
Varna (functional class)	shudra
Yoni (animal-axis)	deer
Nadi (Ayurvedic constitution)	pitta
Macro register	dharmic friendship, organised cooperation, sustained success through alliance

Mythology and meaning

Mitra the presiding deity is one of the Adityas, the god of friendship and dharmic alliance. He blesses cooperative endeavours. The lotus-symbol reflects the flowering that comes through partnership and dharmic-friendship. Anuradha carries the alliance register: the chart owner succeeds through cooperative effort and sustained friendship.

The classical reading walks the presiding deity, the symbol and the ruling planet together to derive the nakshatra's full register. Anuradha's register is shaped by all three: the deity sets the thematic register, the symbol provides the visual-mnemonic and behavioural anchor and the ruling planet anchors the Vimshottari major-period framework and the broader chart-side reading whenever the chart owner runs the ruler's mahadasha.

What Moon in Anuradha reads as

Classical professional registers commonly associated with this nakshatra include organised business and partnership-driven enterprise, diplomatic and international-relations axis, civil society and NGO leadership, religious-organisation administration, music and harmony-axis arts, sustained cooperative endeavours. The professional list is illustrative rather than deterministic. The nakshatra produces structural capacity; the chart owner's specific application depends on the broader chart, the dasha sequence and the natal house position of the Moon within the chart.

The four padas and per-pada navamsa signs

Each nakshatra divides into four padas of 3°20' arc each, mapping to the four navamsa signs starting from the position of the first pada. Pada-level reading qualifies the broad nakshatra register with the navamsa sign that the chart owner's Moon (or natal point) actually occupies. The four padas of Anuradha.

Pada 1. Leo / Sun: dharmic friendship through authority register, alliance through leadership.
Pada 2. Virgo / Mercury: precise cooperation, detail-axis dharmic-alliance.
Pada 3. Libra / Venus: balance through partnership, the diplomat-friend register.
Pada 4. Scorpio / Mars: intense friendship register, depth-axis alliance.

The classical practice reads the pada-level register together with the natal Moon's navamsa sign for full nakshatra reading. The pada determines which navamsa sign the chart owner activates; the navamsa lord then participates in the broader chart reading as a parallel signature alongside the natal lord.

Saturn rulership and the 19-year mahadasha

A native born with the natal Moon in Anuradha opens life in the Saturn mahadasha. The 19-year window foregrounds Saturn's karaka register: Saturn's natural signification activates as the broad thematic frame for the opening phase of the life.

Combined with Anuradha's alliance register, the opening Saturn mahadasha period often produces early-life institutional or structured-cooperative formation, the slow-building friendship-axis and the durable dharmic alliances for which this nakshatra is renowned.

The exact degree of the Moon within Anuradha fixes how much of the opening Saturn mahadasha remained at birth. Moon at 0° of the nakshatra inherits the full 19-year period from birth. Moon at the closing degree of the nakshatra inherits only the residual fraction before the next mahadasha begins. The classical computation reduces this to days from the precise degree of Moon within the nakshatra range.

Born under Anuradha: what it sets in motion

A Moon in Anuradha at birth opens the life inside the Saturn mahadasha, and Saturn's nineteen years are the second-longest stretch in the whole sequence, behind only Venus at twenty. What the chart inherits of those nineteen years depends on where in the 3°20' to 16°40' Scorpio arc the Moon fell. A Moon at the start of Anuradha opens with close to the full nineteen years of Saturn; a Moon at the closing degree opens with only the residual months before the Mercury mahadasha follows.

Work one example. A Moon three-quarters through Anuradha has spent three-quarters of the Saturn period before birth, so one quarter remains; one quarter of nineteen years is four and three-quarter years, four years and nine months of Saturn still to run. A Moon halfway through inherits nine and a half years, nine years and six months. A Moon two-thirds of the way in inherits one third of nineteen, six years and four months. The birth nakshatra opens the whole hundred-and-twenty-year map because it names this first lord and, through the Moon's exact degree, sets how long that first period still has to give.

This span in the 2026 to 2028 sky

Anuradha lies wholly inside Scorpio, the sign it shares with Jyeshtha and the fourth pada of Vishakha, and across 2026 to 2028 no slow planet enters Scorpio. Jupiter passes through Cancer, Leo and Virgo in this window. Saturn holds Pisces before crossing into Aries on 23 May 2027, retreating to Pisces on 4 November 2027 and returning to Aries to stay from 11 February 2028. The nodes run the Aquarius-Leo axis to 27 December 2026 and the Capricorn-Cancer axis after it. None of that reaches Scorpio, so the only bodies to cross Anuradha's 3°20' to 16°40' arc are the Moon, about a day on each 27.3-day round, and the Sun, about a fortnight once a year through sidereal Scorpio.

The classical read for a quiet span turns to the lord. Anuradha's lord is Saturn, and Saturn is the busiest of the slow movers in this window, working the last of its Pisces stay and then the Pisces-Aries boundary across 2027 and into 2028. For a chart running a Saturn period the weather over Anuradha's alliance themes is set by that transiting Saturn and its sign change. The reading for the span itself stays honest about its limit: with Scorpio untouched, the live signal runs through the Vimshottari clock and the lord's placement.

Transit reading: when slow planets cross Anuradha

Beyond the natal-Moon reading, the Anuradha nakshatra carries reading-significance whenever slow planets transit through its 13°20' arc. Saturn at approximately 2.5 years per sign passes through Anuradha once every 29.5 years. Jupiter at approximately 13 months per sign passes through annually within each 12-year cycle. Rahu and Ketu at approximately 18 months per sign pass through every 18 years.

Transit Jupiter through Anuradha provides a benefic overlay on the nakshatra's themes for the duration of the Jupiter transit. Transit Saturn through Anuradha provides a structural-pressure overlay, often producing the consolidation or restructuring of the nakshatra's themes in the chart owner's life. Transit Rahu or Ketu through Anuradha provides an amplification or dissolution overlay depending on which node is transiting and which house the nakshatra occupies on the chart.

Computed windows, 2024 to 2040

Every pass of Saturn, Jupiter and Rahu through Anuradha's 13°20' span in this period. Sidereal positions from the Swiss Ephemeris with the PVRN Rao True Pushya ayanamsha and the mean node, the same engine that computes every chart on this site. Separate rows are separate passes, produced by retrograde motion.

Planet	Enters	Exits
Jupiter	2030-02-14	2030-04-10
Jupiter	2030-10-05	2030-12-06
Rahu	2030-10-11	2031-06-19

Compatibility attributes and Ashtakoota implications

Anuradha carries gana classification deva (the temperamental class layer, with three values: deva for divine, manushya for human, rakshasa for intense), varna classification shudra (the functional class layer), yoni classification deer (the animal-axis compatibility marker) and nadi classification pitta (the Ayurvedic constitutional axis). These attributes feed Ashtakoota compatibility scoring used in classical Vedic matchmaking. The cluster documents these for reference, not as a forward-call mechanism.

Where Anuradha sits in the 27-step sequence

In the fixed 27-step sidereal nakshatra sequence, Anuradha is the 17th nakshatra. The Moon traverses one nakshatra in approximately 24 hours (the lunar daily motion of approximately 13°10' per day matched against the 13°20' nakshatra arc). The nakshatra boundaries are therefore time-sensitive at the daily and even hourly level: birth time accuracy is the prerequisite for accurate nakshatra identification.

Calibration status

The article documents the classical Anuradha-nakshatra reading as set out in BPHS Chapter 3 (nakshatra significations), Phaladeepika Chapter 7 and Sarvartha Chintamani. The presiding-deity reading, the symbol-interpretation, the four-pada-per-navamsa framework and the gana-varna-yoni-nadi compatibility attributes are presented as the tradition's own framework. The Tempora calibrated signature library (Note 005) does not currently include nakshatra-specific event signatures. Calibrating nakshatra placements against a labelled chart-corpus is open work.

FAQ

What is the Anuradha nakshatra and where does it sit on the sidereal lattice?

Anuradha is the 17th of the 27 nakshatras, occupying 3°20' to 16°40' Scorpio. The ruling planet is Saturn (19-year Vimshottari mahadasha). The presiding deity is Mitra (the god of friendship, dharmic alliance). The symbol is the lotus (also staff or archway of triumph). The macro register is dharmic friendship, organised cooperation, sustained success through alliance. Sanskrit anuradha meaning subsequent success or following spark. Sources: BPHS Chapter 3, Phaladeepika Chapter 7.

What mythology and meaning is associated with Anuradha?

What does Moon in Anuradha read as?

Natives born with the natal Moon in Anuradha carry dharmic friendship and organised cooperation as dominant register. The chart builds through partnership, succeeds through alliance and operates with the consistency of the trusted friend. The Moon as the mental and emotional register absorbs the nakshatra's signature directly. Professional registers commonly associated: organised business and partnership-driven enterprise, diplomatic and international-relations axis, civil society and NGO leadership, religious-organisation administration, music and harmony-axis arts, sustained cooperative endeavours.

What are the four padas of Anuradha?

Each nakshatra divides into four padas of 3°20' arc each, mapping to four navamsa signs. Anuradha's padas. Pada 1: Leo / Sun: dharmic friendship through authority register, alliance through leadership. Pada 2: Virgo / Mercury: precise cooperation, detail-axis dharmic-alliance. Pada 3: Libra / Venus: balance through partnership, the diplomat-friend register. Pada 4: Scorpio / Mars: intense friendship register, depth-axis alliance. The natal Moon's navamsa sign determines which pada the chart owner activates.

What does the Saturn rulership give Anuradha?

Saturn rulership means a native with Moon in Anuradha opens life in the Saturn mahadasha (19 years). The Saturn karaka register foregrounds across the opening period. Combined with Anuradha's alliance register, the opening Saturn mahadasha period often produces early-life institutional or structured-cooperative formation, the slow-building friendship-axis and the durable dharmic alliances for which this nakshatra is renowned.

How is Anuradha read during transit?

Beyond the natal-Moon reading, Anuradha carries significance when slow planets transit through its 13°20' arc. Saturn passes through once every 29.5 years. Jupiter passes annually within each 12-year cycle. Rahu and Ketu pass through every 18 years. Transit Jupiter provides benefic overlay. Transit Saturn provides structural-pressure overlay. Transit Rahu or Ketu provides amplification or dissolution overlay depending on which node and which house the nakshatra occupies.

If my Moon is in Anuradha, how much of the Saturn mahadasha remains at birth?

The Saturn mahadasha runs nineteen years and it is the first period of the life, but the chart keeps only the part unspent at birth. The degree of the Moon inside Anuradha's 3°20' to 16°40' Scorpio arc fixes the fraction. A Moon at the start opens with close to the full nineteen years; a Moon three-quarters through opens with one quarter of nineteen, four years and nine months; a Moon halfway through opens with nine years and six months. After Saturn the sequence hands to Mercury. This is why the birth nakshatra is read as the entry point of the whole hundred-and-twenty-year map.

Does any major transit cross Anuradha in 2026 to 2028?

No slow planet enters Scorpio in that window, so Anuradha's arc takes no Jupiter, Saturn or nodal transit. Jupiter runs Cancer then Leo then Virgo, and the nodes work the Aquarius-Leo then Capricorn-Cancer axes. Only the Moon on its monthly round and the Sun on its annual fortnight cross the degrees. The live reading runs through the Vimshottari clock and the placement of the lord Saturn, which holds Pisces and then crosses into Aries on 23 May 2027, retreating on 4 November 2027 and returning to stay from 11 February 2028.