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Astro*Dictionary by Michael Erlewine

 

 

 

 

1 article for "Mansions of the Moon"

Mansions of the Moon [DeVore]

A series of 28 divisions of the Moon's travel through one complete circuit of 360 degrees, each Mansion representing one day's average travel of the Moon (12° 51' 25.2", or roughly 13 degrees), beginning apparently at the point of the Spring Equinox, or 0° Aries. In the Hindu system they are called Asterisms, and are measured from the beginning of the Hindu Zodiac. The result is this series of cusps:

 

Cardinal Signs:0'0"  The nearest even degree:
12512513
25425026
Fixed Signs:834159
21254021
Mutable Signs:41754
1783017

 

Fragmentary interpretations of the Lunar Mansions have come down to us from Arabia, India and China. The precise manner in which they were employed has been lost, but it is known that great importance was attached to them. Sepharial considers that the entrance of the progressed Moon into a Mansion presaged important changes involving affairs pertaining to that Mansion; but it is probable that they had more to do with the transits of the planets, and with the Mansion in which fell the current Lunation and Full Moon. Particular attention was paid to the Mansion in which fell the Lunar Day - the day of the Full Moon.

In a later period the cusps were known as Crucial or Critical Degrees, with particular reference to the prognosis of a crisis in the progress of an acute disease; also the days on which the Moon forms inharmonious aspects — the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days — are said to be Critical Days. These coincide with the cusps of the First, Eighth, Fifteenth and Twenty-second Mansions.

Except in Horary questions the Hindu system uses only 27 of these asterisms — omitting the 22nd. Each of these groups of 9 representing the following period in years, are ruled in this sequence:

 

South Node  Venus  Sun  Moon  Mars  North Node  Jupiter  Saturn  Mercury
720610718161917

 

The periods total 120 y, the Hindu idea of normal life span. 120/9 gives 13 1/3 years, or the same number of degrees, showing the 1° per year unit of progression, and the probability that the Mansions were largely a device for use in computing progressed influences. Nevertheless the Hindu would state your birth date in terms of the asterism much as we give it in terms of your Sun Sign.

Another Series of Mansions from an Ancient Chinese source indicates that it was chiefly to determine the requests which one propitiates the gods to grant.

See also:
♦ Lunar Mansions

 

Astro*Index Copyright © 1997 Michael Erlewine