Uttara Bhadrapada nakshatra: traits, lord, deity and name letters

Character

Uttara Bhadrapada is the twenty-sixth nakshatra, entirely within Meen Rashi, from 3°20′ to 16°40′ of Meena. Purva Bhadrapada comes before it and Revati after. The sign is Jupiter’s and the nakshatra is Saturn’s, which sets a planet of expansion and faith over a nakshatra of limits and endurance. A Moon here is read as calm, deep and slow to react, a mind with a long memory that does not hurry to show what it feels.

The nakshatra is described as one of patience and endurance, with a bent toward contemplation, discipline and quiet service. Saturn adds a sense of duty and the capacity to carry a burden for years, and Meena adds an inward, imaginative tone. Together they are read as a temperament more concerned with depth than display. The cost of the same disposition is a reserve that can look like coldness, and a habit of shouldering more than one has to.

Uttara Bhadrapada belongs to the manushya gana and has the dhruva, fixed, nature. Both point to concerns that are human, steady and slow to change: loyalties, obligations and long projects.

Lord and dasha

Saturn is the lord of Uttara Bhadrapada, as it is of Pushya and Anuradha, the other two nakshatras nine places apart in the cycle. Saturn is given 19 years in Vimshottari, the second longest portion after Venus’s 20, so a Moon here begins life inside a long Saturn mahadasha, reduced by however far the Moon had advanced.

After Saturn the sequence passes to Mercury (17 years), then Ketu (7), Venus (20), the Sun (6), the Moon (10), Mars (7), Rahu (18) and finally Jupiter (16).

A long opening dasha is read as slow, sober early years in which responsibility arrives young. Jupiter, whose sign this is, comes last in the sequence.

Deity and symbol

Ahir Budhnya is the deity. Both the Brihat Samhita and the Muhurta Chintamani spell the name ahirbudhnya. It can be read as paired with the deity of the nakshatra before, Aja Ekapada, in the way the two nakshatras pair as the front and back of one image. The nakshatra under him can be read as deep and quiet.

The symbol is the back legs of a funeral cot. De Fouw and Svoboda’s Light on Life gives the back legs of a funeral cot as the symbol, and Harness lists two legs of a bed, a two-headed man and twins. The Muhurta Chintamani names the shape as twins, which can be read as the pairing with Purva Bhadrapada, whose symbol is the cot’s front legs. The two pieces together make a cot, so the nakshatras are read as halves of a single figure.

Gana, yoni and nature

The cow is the yoni of Uttara Bhadrapada. Its partner under that animal in the Muhurta Chintamani is Uttara Phalguni, and B. V. Raman’s Muhurtha makes Uttara Bhadrapada the female and Uttara Phalguni the male. The gana is manushya, the human class, and Ashtakoota matching scores gana at 6 of its 36 points and yoni at 4.

Dhruva, fixed, is its nature, shared with Rohini, Uttara Phalguni and Uttara Ashadha. Works meant to stand are what the Muhurta Chintamani gives the fixed nakshatras: sowing seed, building a house and laying out gardens. The Brihat Samhita lists planting trees, founding towns and the crowning of kings besides.

Padas and name letters

All of Uttara Bhadrapada is in Meena, and its padas of 3°20′ end at 6°40′, 10°00′, 13°20′ and 16°40′. Their navamsa signs are Simha, Kanya, Tula and Vrishchika.

Du, Na, Jha and Tha are the letters, one per pada, set down in that order by the 1954 print of the Piyushadhara’s naming table, so the order is that edition’s and should not be taken as universal. The child’s first sound at the naming ceremony is the syllable of the pada that held the Moon at birth. The syllable is a custom of naming and not a statement about the child.

In Prashna and muhurta

A question about something slow, deep or long-standing, or one the asker has carried for a time, fits the way a Moon in Uttara Bhadrapada can be read in a Prashna chart. There the Lagna stands for you as asker and the Moon for your mind and where the matter is heading, and she is in Meena throughout this nakshatra. Meena is Jupiter’s sign, and the chart’s account of Jupiter is read for it.

Uttara Bhadrapada is one of the four fixed nakshatras, and muhurta gives that class the works meant to last.

Curious how such a chart is judged? The horary astrology guide sets it out, and the AstroGPT app works from a sidereal chart cast for the minute and place of your question.