--- title: "Shatabhisha Nakshatra: All Four Padas, Lord and Meaning" slug: "shatabhisha-nakshatra" canonical_url: "https://mahadasha.com/shatabhisha-nakshatra" description: "Shatabhisha Nakshatra spans 6°40' to 20°00' Aquarius under Rahu, deity Varuna. All four padas, one of them vargottama, and the eighteen-year dasha it opens." published_date: "2026-08-04 10:00:00" modified_date: "2026-08-04 10:00:00" author: "Pawan Acharya" keywords: "shatabhisha nakshatra, shatabhisha nakshatra padas, shatabhisha nakshatra pada 3, shatabhisha nakshatra female, shatabhisha nakshatra male, shatabhisha nakshatra marriage, shatabhisha nakshatra career, shatabhisha birth star" locale: "en" --- # Shatabhisha Nakshatra: All Four Padas, Lord and Meaning > Shatabhisha Nakshatra is the empty circle, ruled by Rahu with Varuna as its deity. Its four padas, its vargottama third quarter, and the hundred healers in its name. # Shatabhisha Nakshatra: All Four Padas, Lord and Meaning Shatabhisha Nakshatra occupies 6°40' to 20°00' Aquarius and is ruled by Rahu. Its deity is Varuna, keeper of cosmic law and of the waters, and its symbol is an empty circle. In the sky it is Sadachbia and a scattered ring of faint stars in Aquarius, which is unusual: most nakshatras are named for something bright, and this one is named for a hundred dim ones. The name means a hundred physicians, or a hundred medicines. Some read it as a hundred stars. All three are defensible and the tradition uses all three. ## A hundred of something, and an empty circle The two readings pull in different directions and the star holds both. A hundred physicians means the cure exists and you will have to find the right one. A hundred medicines means the same problem from the other end of it. Either way, somebody is searching. Either way the theme is a cure that exists and is hard to locate. Shatabhisha governs the difficult diagnosis. The illness nobody has named yet. The treatment that finally worked after everything else had been tried and quietly abandoned. The empty circle is the other half, and it is the most abstract symbol in the twenty-seven. A boundary with nothing inside it. Read one way it is containment, quarantine, the enclosure that keeps a thing in or keeps a thing out. Read another and it is emptiness, the void, a wheel. Read it a third way and it is zero, which is an Indian contribution to mathematics and arguably the single most consequential empty circle anybody has ever drawn. People born here are private to a degree that other people find difficult. They are analytical, often unusually intelligent, and genuinely comfortable alone in a way that is hard to fake and harder to explain to anybody who is not. They are drawn to what is hidden: research, healing, the occult, systems nobody else has bothered to understand. They also tend to have a secret. At minimum, a compartment. All four padas sit in Aquarius, so Saturn is the rashi lord while Rahu rules the star. Both are outsider grahas. Neither is sentimental. ## Varuna, and the vargottama third quarter Varuna is the oldest of the Vedic sovereign gods, keeper of *rita*, the cosmic order, and of the waters. He binds. He is also invoked to release, from illness and from sin, and the noose is the instrument for both. That is the medical connection: in the Vedic conception disease is a binding, and Varuna is the one who unties. The third pada of this nakshatra is **vargottama**, being Aquarius in Aquarius navamsa. It is the Aquarius entry among the twelve vargottama padas in the zodiac, and anything placed in 13°20' to 16°40' Aquarius is doubled in strength. For a star this abstract, having its strongest quarter in the air pada is fitting. That 3°20' is where Shatabhisha's detachment becomes a genuine analytical instrument rather than merely a distance from other people. ## All four Shatabhisha Nakshatra padas in detail Four quarters, two lords. The navamsas are Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, which puts Jupiter at both ends and Saturn in the middle. ### Pada 1: 6°40' to 10°00' Aquarius, Sagittarius navamsa Jupiter takes the navamsa. Syllable *Go*. The most open and most principled quarter. Medicine practised as a vocation, teaching, law, and research pursued because the question matters. Jupiter gives Shatabhisha's detachment a purpose. It is the least secretive pada of the four and the most likely to explain what it is doing. ### Pada 2: 10°00' to 13°20' Aquarius, Capricorn navamsa Saturn takes the navamsa. Syllable *Sa*. The most organised and most severe quarter. Administration, public health, engineering, institutional research, and long careers inside structures. Rahu with Saturn is patient and calculating, and this pada builds systems that outlast it. Emotionally it is the coldest in the star. ### Pada 3: 13°20' to 16°40' Aquarius, Aquarius navamsa Saturn rules both, and this pada is vargottama. Syllable *Si*. Shatabhisha at full strength. Science, technology, statistics, epidemiology, astrology, and any discipline that finds a pattern in scattered data. Being vargottama, whatever sits here holds. It is the most inventive quarter and the most genuinely original, and it is also the most socially remote. ### Pada 4: 16°40' to 20°00' Aquarius, Pisces navamsa Jupiter returns. Syllable *Su*. Water navamsa under an air sign, and the healing turns compassionate rather than technical. Psychiatry, addiction work, hospice, spiritual practice, and art. This is the softest quarter of a hard star and the one most likely to be overwhelmed by what it takes on. ## Eighteen years of Rahu A Moon in Shatabhisha opens life in [Rahu Mahadasha](https://mahadasha.com/rahu-mahadasha) , eighteen years. [Ardra](https://mahadasha.com/ardra-nakshatra) and [Swati](https://mahadasha.com/swati-nakshatra) are the other Rahu stars. Eighteen years covers childhood and adolescence completely. A Rahu upbringing is rarely conventional, and for Shatabhisha it often involves illness, isolation, or a family circumstance that had to be kept private. The self-sufficiency this star is known for is usually learned in that period. Sixteen years of Jupiter follow and generally arrive as a considerable relief. Check the balance with the [dasha calculator](https://mahadasha.com/dasha-calculator) . ## The syllables Shatabhisha gives a child Shatabhisha's four are *Go*, *Sa*, *Si* and *Su*. The first completes the *G* vowel series that ran through [Dhanishta](https://mahadasha.com/dhanishta-nakshatra) , and the remaining three open an *S* sequence that continues into [Purva Bhadrapada](https://mahadasha.com/purva-bhadrapada-nakshatra) . The one-to-three shape means an approximate birth time usually lands on *S*. Only a child born in the first 3°20' takes *Go*, and that pada is also the one with the most open temperament, so the naming boundary happens to mark a real division in the star's character too. ## When Shatabhisha is active in a chart The transiting Moon re-enters Shatabhisha every 27.3 days and stays about a day. Rahu, the star lord, moves backwards and takes roughly eight months to cross the arc, returning about every eighteen years. Those long passages are when the star's themes surface most strongly, and they tend to coincide with a period of withdrawal followed by something genuinely original. The Sun crosses in about thirteen days in late February. Saturn, ruling the rashi, takes thirteen months every twenty-nine and a half years, and for this nakshatra that is usually the transit that turns private research into public work. ## Work that suits Shatabhisha Medicine in its investigative forms: diagnostics, epidemiology, research medicine, pharmacology, psychiatry and rare disease work. The classical association with healing is strong and specific. Beyond that, science and technology of every kind, statistics and data work, astrology and the occult, aviation and space, and anything involving water management, from irrigation to hydrology, through Varuna. Confidential work suits it: security, intelligence, and roles where discretion is the requirement. Shatabhisha is Chara, a movable nakshatra, so muhurat practice favours it for travel and relocation. ## Marriage, gana and compatibility Shatabhisha is Rakshasa gana, Ashwa yoni, Adi nadi. The horse yoni is shared with [Ashwini](https://mahadasha.com/ashwini-nakshatra) , and its natural enemy is the buffalo, which puts [Hasta](https://mahadasha.com/hasta-nakshatra) and [Swati](https://mahadasha.com/swati-nakshatra) at a disadvantage. ### Which nakshatras actually match Shatabhisha Shatabhisha is Rakshasa gana with a horse yoni and Adi nadi. Add Tara and that is 21 of the 36 settled without a birth time. Shatabhisha's best partners on those 21 are [Krittika](https://mahadasha.com/krittika-nakshatra) , [Chitra](https://mahadasha.com/chitra-nakshatra) and [Vishakha](https://mahadasha.com/vishakha-nakshatra) , all at 18. All three are Rakshasa gana, which scores the full six against itself, and none shares Shatabhisha's Adi nadi. The weakest are [Ardra](https://mahadasha.com/ardra-nakshatra) and [Hasta](https://mahadasha.com/hasta-nakshatra) , both at 2 of 21. Ardra is the instructive one: it shares Shatabhisha's ruling planet and its Adi nadi, and sharing the nadi is exactly what forfeits eight points. A common star lord is not an argument for a match. What the horse yoni cannot decide, the rashis do, and [Kundali matching](https://mahadasha.com/kundali-matching) works it out. ## Reading Shatabhisha for planets other than the Moon Rahu in its own nakshatra is at its most inventive and least social, and it is the placement most associated with genuine originality in science or the occult. Saturn in the vargottama third pada is in its own sign twice over and is formidable. The Moon here is private and analytical, and it is one of the harder Moon placements for family life. Jupiter in the first or fourth pada gives the star warmth it otherwise lacks. Mercury in the third is exceptional at pattern-finding. Venus in Shatabhisha is detached and often unconventional about relationships. Mars is uncomfortable, since there is nothing here for it to attack. ## The difficult side of Shatabhisha Isolation chosen, and then regretted. This star is comfortable alone. That holds right up to the point where the comfort has quietly become an inability, Shatabhisha natives often construct lives with very few people in them and are surprised, later, by how few people are in them. The second difficulty is secrecy. A compartment is useful. A compartment that has been sealed for twenty years is something else, and the classical texts note both the healing gift and the withholding as belonging to the same star. Varuna's own remedy applies: water rituals, and the practical version, which is to tell one person the thing. Shatabhisha's third quarter is the zodiac's Aquarius vargottama and the strongest 3°20' of the four. Locate yours in the [birth chart calculator](https://mahadasha.com/birth-chart-calculator) , and see the [27-nakshatra guide](https://mahadasha.com/27-nakshatras-in-vedic-astrology) for the others. ## Frequently asked questions ### What does Shatabhisha Nakshatra mean? A hundred physicians, or a hundred medicines, or a hundred stars, depending on the reading. All three are used. The common thread is a cure that exists but has to be searched for among many options. ### Which Shatabhisha pada is vargottama? The third, from 13°20' to 16°40' Aquarius, where rashi and navamsa are both Aquarius. It is the Aquarius entry among the twelve vargottama padas and the strongest quarter of this star. ### Why is the symbol an empty circle? It is the most abstract symbol in the twenty-seven and it carries several readings at once: containment or quarantine, emptiness or void, a wheel, and zero. All of them fit a nakshatra concerned with boundaries, secrecy and what is not visible. ### Is Shatabhisha Nakshatra good for medicine? It is the strongest healing indicator among the twenty-seven, particularly for diagnostics, research medicine, pharmacology and rare or difficult conditions. Its deity Varuna is invoked to release people from illness, and the name itself means a hundred physicians.