Mrigashira (मृगशिरा) is the fifth of the 27 nakshatras, spanning 53°20' to 66°40' of the nirayana zodiac. It is ruled by Mars, its deity is Soma, the Moon and its symbol is a deer's head. Mrigashira nakshatra spans two rashis, with padas 1 to 2 in Vrishabh (Taurus) and padas 3 to 4 in Mithun (Gemini). Children born with the Moon here are traditionally named with the syllables Ve, Vo, Ka, Kee.
Mrigashira is the searching nakshatra, a deer's head turned, listening. Mangal rules it, so the search has urgency, but the manner is gentle rather than forceful. It is associated with curiosity, travel, and a certain difficulty in being satisfied.
Tradition sums Mrigashira up as “the seeker with a scent to follow”. A person whose Moon is here begins life in the Mars mahadasha, and the nakshatra's Deva gana is read as the gentle, giving temperament the texts call divine. Its symbol, a deer's head, and its deity, Soma, the Moon, are the images the texts use to describe it. Read these as the nakshatra's character rather than a portrait of a person: the rest of the chart, the Moon's strength and the running dasha shape how it shows.
Each nakshatra is split into four padas of 3°20'. The pada a birth falls in decides the navamsa and, in the naming tradition, the first syllable of the child's name. For Mrigashira those syllables are Ve, Vo, Ka, Kee.
The baby name letters calculator marks the syllable for a chosen pada, and the rashi by name calculator works the other way, from a name to its rashi.
Guna Milan reads three of this nakshatra's classifications directly. Its gana is Deva, compared with the partner's for temperament. Its nadi is Madhya (pitta): partners who share a nadi score zero on the largest koota, worth 8 of the 36 points. Its yoni animal is the serpent, compared for instinctive compatibility. The South Indian nakshatra porutham reads the two birth stars in its own ten tests, and kundli milan gives the full 36-point match.
Only if the Moon was in Mrigashira when you were born. The Moon crosses a nakshatra in about a day, so a birth date narrows it to two candidates at best and the birth time settles it. Mrigashira nakshatra spans two rashis, with padas 1 to 2 in Vrishabh (Taurus) and padas 3 to 4 in Mithun (Gemini). That is why two people can share a nakshatra and have different Moon signs. Find your birth nakshatra, check your Moon sign, or make the full kundli.
Short answers about Mrigashira: its lord, rashi, name letters, symbol and gana.
Your own birth star takes a date, a time and a place.
Find my nakshatraMars is the lord of Mrigashira nakshatra. The nakshatra lord decides which Vimshottari mahadasha a person is born into, so someone with the Moon in Mrigashira begins life in the Mars mahadasha. How far the Moon had already travelled through the nakshatra sets how much of that first period is left.
Mrigashira nakshatra spans two rashis, with padas 1 to 2 in Vrishabh (Taurus) and padas 3 to 4 in Mithun (Gemini). A nakshatra is 13°20' wide and a rashi 30°, so most nakshatras cross a sign boundary and the pada decides which Moon sign applies. The pada is fixed by the birth time, which is why two people with the same nakshatra can have different rashis.
The name letters for Mrigashira nakshatra are Ve, Vo, Ka and Kee, one for each pada in order. Traditional namkaran gives the child a name beginning with the syllable of the pada the Moon occupied at birth, so the pada is needed as well as the nakshatra.
The symbol of Mrigashira nakshatra is a deer's head and its presiding deity is Soma, the Moon. Tradition sums the nakshatra up as "the seeker with a scent to follow", and the symbol and deity are the starting point for reading its nature. Its yoni animal, the serpent, is a separate classification used in marriage matching.
Mrigashira is Deva gana and Madhya (pitta) nadi, and its yoni animal is the serpent. All three are used in Guna Milan, the 36-point marriage match. Nadi carries the most weight at 8 points, and partners who share a nadi score zero on it; gana carries 6 points and yoni 4.
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