Nakshatra Shakti

sanskrit: Śakti

Definition

A nakshatra's shakti is the particular power or capacity that its lunar mansion carries and expresses. Modern nakshatra writers give each one a named Sanskrit power — Ashvini's shidravyapani shakti (the power to quickly reach a goal), Krittika's dahana shakti (the power to burn), Rohini's rohana shakti (the power to make things grow), Mula's barhana shakti (the power to break apart). Several writers tie the shakti to the nakshatra's presiding deity.

In Tradition

In the modern Jyotish (Vedic) writing on nakshatras, the shakti is treated as a defining attribute: each lunar mansion is held to carry its own named power, which it exercises in the wider scheme of things, rather than being just a group of stars. Authors differ on the exact power they assign to each nakshatra and on how they frame it, but they agree that every nakshatra has a characteristic shakti expressing what it does.

In Practice

Writers use the shakti as a compact label for what a nakshatra fundamentally does, so the named power can be read into placements that fall in that mansion. Trivedi works through the nakshatras one by one, giving each a shakti within its "universal scheme of things" — for example Punarvasu the vastuva prapana shakti (power to gain or retrieve objects or objectives), Pushya the brahmavarchasa shakti (power to harness the creative powers of Brahma), and Ashlesha the visasleshana shakti (power to inflict poison). Harness, following David Frawley's "Shaktis of the Nakshatras," likewise lists per-nakshatra powers such as Swati's pradhvamsa shakti, Vishakha's vyapani shakti, Jyeshtha's arohana shakti, and Revati's kshiradyapani shakti (power of nourishment). Bhagat reads the shakti as the power of the ruling deity, through which the nakshatra dispenses the fruits of karma.

Historical Origin

The sources behind this entry are modern nakshatra works rather than classical texts. Trivedi's The Book of Nakshatras gives a per-nakshatra shakti inside each mansion's "universal scheme of things" discussion. Bhagat's Significance of Nakshatras (Stellar) in Astrology presents the shakti as the deity-power of the nakshatra in his Chapter 3. Harness's The Nakshatras lays out a recurring per-nakshatra shakti convention that he explicitly credits to David Frawley's "Shaktis of the Nakshatras" (1998).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading