Rohini

ro-HEE-nee

sanskrit: रोहिणी (Rohiṇī)

Definition

Rohini is the fourth nakshatra, spanning 10°00'–23°20' of Taurus and marked in the sky by the bright reddish star Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri). Its name means the "Reddish One," or the "Growing One," carries a feminine tone, and its principal symbol is an ox-cart, or chariot, drawn by two oxen (Harness also lists a temple and a banyan tree). Its presiding deity is Brahma the creator — also called Prajapati, lord of creatures — and its planetary ruler is the Moon, with Venus connected as the lord of the sign Taurus.

In Tradition

Across the sources, Rohini is read as a fertile, creative, prosperous mansion whose essential power is growth and material productivity. Trivedi calls it the seed of lunar energy and the most materialistic nakshatra, Rath ties it to the creation of the body and to wealth, and Harness names its shakti the power of growth. Rath and Sutton both note a sensory, material attachment here — a pull toward earthly illusion, an absorption in the senses.

In Practice

In practice a jyotishi reads Rohini chiefly through where the Moon sits — said to be in its moolatrikona, a planet's most comfortable home ground, here — and through any planet falling in this nakshatra. Trivedi frames it as a portal for the material expression of shakti and the most alluring of the nakshatras. Rath relates it to comfort, freedom from disease, and a mind that loves to rest, and warns that planets in the fourth nakshatra from the lagna (the ascendant) or the arudha can produce obsessions — though he says such attachments are absent in saints; he also pairs Rohini with the eighth nakshatra as caturasra. Sutton reads the Moon's combination with Venus as great beauty and a striving toward feminine essence, and reads the Moon's infatuation with Rohini as the soul's entanglement with matter — an involvement with the senses she sees as essential to its growth.

Historical Origin

The sources here are modern works on the nakshatras and Vedic astrology rather than verbatim classical texts. Sutton recounts the traditional myth in which Rohini is the Moon's favourite among his twenty-seven wives, the jealousy of the others leading Brahma to curse the Moon with the cycle of waxing and waning. The rest is drawn from contemporary authors: Trivedi's The Book of Nakshatras, Rath's Brhat Nakshatra, Raman's Notable Horoscopes, and Harness's The Nakshatras.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading