The 28 Lunar Mansions of the Moon

The Moon crosses the whole zodiac in about twenty-seven and a third days, and the older astrologers marked her nightly progress by the stars she lodged among. They cut her path into twenty-eight stations, one for roughly each night of the sidereal month, and called them al-manazil al-qamar, the mansions or resting places of the Moon — the same word a caravan used for the halt where camel and rider stopped for the night. This is the map of those stations: what they are, how they divide the sky, where they come from, and what a practitioner does with them.

What are the 28 mansions of the Moon?

The 28 mansions are an equal twenty-eight-fold division of the zodiac that tracks the Moon night by night, each mansion carrying its own traditional nature and its own list of works it favours or spoils. Where the twelve signs divide the circle by the Sun’s year, the mansions divide it by the Moon’s month, and they were used to time undertakings and, above all, to make astrological talismans.

They reached medieval Europe through Arabic astrology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and were fixed in the handbooks that shaped Western practice, the Picatrix and Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Renaissance Astrology). Every mansion below is drawn from that Western, Agrippan line, the same significations the Lunar Punk engine carries.

How wide is a mansion, and where does it begin?

Each mansion spans exactly 12°51′26″ — three hundred sixty degrees divided by twenty-eight — and the first begins at 0° Aries, so the mansions run around the circle in step with the tropical signs. That single starting point sets everything else: the second mansion opens at 12°51′ of Aries, the third at 25°43′, and so on around the wheel.

The arithmetic hides a tidy fact worth keeping. Seven mansions measure 90° to the degree, so the mansions of the Moon fall into step with the quarters of the Sun’s year: seven from the spring equinox to the summer solstice, seven to the autumn equinox, seven to the winter solstice, seven back to spring. The lunar month and the solar year, cut the same way, meet cleanly four times around the ring.

Where do the mansions come from?

The system is Arabic in the form the West received, though older lunar zodiacs stand behind it in India and perhaps Babylon. The Arabic astronomers named each station for the stars that held it — a forehead, a claw, a heart, an ostrich — and the manzil itself named the desert halt where a traveller rested for one night before moving on. That image, the Moon lodging one night in each house of stars before she moves, is the whole idea in a phrase.

From Arabic sources the mansions passed into Latin and settled into the two texts that carried them to every later magician and astrologer: the Picatrix, with its long instructions for mansion talismans, and Agrippa. The modern authority who reconstructed the practice for working astrologers is Christopher Warnock, whose Mansions of the Moon restores the tropical, talismanic tradition (Renaissance Astrology; Lunarium).

Are these the same as the nakshatras?

They share an ancestor but are not the same system. The Indian nakshatras number twenty-seven, divide the sidereal zodiac, and belong to a living Vedic practice; the Arabic mansions number twenty-eight, divide the tropical zodiac in the form Europe inherited, and carry their own electional and talismanic significations. Twenty-seven against twenty-eight, sidereal against tropical, and two distinct bodies of meaning: treat them as cousins, not as one tradition under two names.

What are the mansions used for?

Traditionally the mansions did two kinds of work: they timed undertakings, and they empowered talismans. For timing, you chose the mansion whose nature suited the act — a mansion of union for a marriage, a mansion of gain for a venture, a mansion of healing for medicine — and elected the moment when the Moon was there and well placed. For talismans, the dominant use, the Picatrix pairs each mansion with images and suffumigations for making a charm under its power.

The nature of a mansion is specific and often blunt. Some favour love, gain, healing, and safe travel; others exist for revenge, siege, division, and the ruin of things. The tradition is candid that not every station is kindly, and a mansion good for “driving away” or “sowing discord” is exactly what its name says. Read the significations as the old authors’ own verdicts, framed in their terms, not as counsel for how anyone should act.

Which mansions favour what?

Roughly half the ring is favourable — mansions of love, gain, health, and benevolence — while a smaller set is frankly difficult, given over to discord, siege, and destruction, and the rest are mixed or martial, useful for hard work and poor for gentle ones. Knowing a mansion’s temper at a glance is the first cut in choosing one for an election.

The 28 mansions at a glance

Below is the full round, drawn from the Lunar Punk dataset, with each mansion’s opening degree, its nature, and the works the tradition assigns it. The starting degrees are tropical and exact; the significations follow the Agrippan line. Use it as a map: each mansion opens onto its own fuller reading in the pages to come.

#	Arabic name	English	Begins	Nature	Traditionally good for
1	Al-Sharatain	The Two Signs	0° Aries 00′	beginnings, the first cut	journeys, taking medicine, letting blood
2	Al-Butain	The Belly	12° Aries 51′	hidden things, retention	foundations, sowing, finding what is lost, retaining captives
3	Al-Thurayya	The Swarm (Pleiades)	25° Aries 43′	abundance, gathering	alchemy, hunting, sea voyages, favour of the great
4	Al-Dabaran	The Eye (Aldebaran)	8° Taurus 34′	discord, destruction	revenge, separation, causing enmity, ruining buildings
5	Al-Haqa	A White Spot	21° Taurus 26′	favour, learning	learning, friendship, favour, safe travel, healing
6	Al-Hana	The Scar	4° Gemini 17′	siege, revenge	hunting, besieging, the revenge of princes
7	Al-Dhira	The Forearm	17° Gemini 09′	gain, love	gain, friendship, love, travellers, well-being
8	Al-Nathrah	The Nursery	0° Cancer 00′	affection, society	love, friendship, society, healing, the company of others
9	Al-Tarf	The Gaze	12° Cancer 51′	hindrance, blight	causing discord, cutting short
10	Al-Jabhah	The Forehead	25° Cancer 43′	building, benevolence	strengthening buildings, love, benevolence, defence
11	Al-Zubrah	The Mane	8° Leo 34′	release, gain	voyages, gain, freeing captives, harvests
12	Al-Sarfah	The Changer	21° Leo 26′	harvest, redemption	harvests, plantation, redeeming captives, building
13	Al-Awwa	The Barker	4° Virgo 17′	benevolence, increase	benevolence, gain, voyages, harvests, freeing captives
14	Al-Simak	The Unarmed	17° Virgo 09′	union, cultivation	marriage, love, journeys, sowing, the goodwill of married folk
15	Al-Ghafr	The Cover	0° Libra 00′	digging, extraction	extracting treasure, digging wells, sowing, sailing
16	Al-Zubana	The Claws	12° Libra 51′	profit, redemption	profit for merchants, harvests, redeeming captives
17	Al-Iklil	The Crown	25° Libra 43′	fortune, love	improving fortune, love, friendship, besieging enemies
18	Al-Qalb	The Heart (Antares)	8° Scorpio 34′	discord, conspiracy	sowing discord, conspiracy, revenge, undermining
19	Al-Shaulah	The Sting	21° Scorpio 26′	capture, expulsion	besieging cities, taking, driving away, imprisoning
20	Al-Na’am	The Ostriches	4° Sagittarius 17′	taming, restraint	taming beasts, strengthening prisons, building
21	Al-Baldah	The City	17° Sagittarius 09′	increase, safety	harvests, gain, buildings, travellers, health
22	Sa’d al-Dhabih	The Fortunate Slayer	0° Capricorn 00′	healing, escape	healing, curing disease, the escape of servants, divorce
23	Sa’d Bula	The Fortunate Swallower	12° Capricorn 51′	release, cure	freeing captives, healing the sick, divorce
24	Sa’d al-Su’ud	The Luckiest of the Lucky	25° Capricorn 43′	benevolence, health	benevolence, health, freeing captives, marriage
25	Sa’d al-Akhbiyah	The Butterfly	8° Aquarius 34′	siege, division	besieging, revenge, divorce, sowing discord
26	Al-Fargh al-Awwal	The Upper Spout	21° Aquarius 26′	union, healing	union, love, friendship, health, favour
27	Al-Fargh al-Thani	The Lower Spout	4° Pisces 17′	increase, gain	increase of harvests, revenue, gain, marriage, building
28	Batn al-Hut	The Belly of the Fish	17° Pisces 09′	trade, safe passage	increase of merchandise, safe voyages, marriage, health

Find tonight’s mansion

The mansions are meant to be watched, not just read. The Lunar Punk mansion tracker shows which station the Moon lodges in right now, with its degrees, its nature, and what the tradition holds it good and ill for, updated as she moves. Learn the ring by following her through it for a month; by the second lap the temper of each mansion starts to feel less like a list and more like weather you can read.

Sources

• Lunar Punk dataset, data/lunar_mansions.json — 28 mansions, tropical, 12°51′26″ from 0° Aries, Agrippan significations.
• Christopher Warnock, The Mansions of the Moon, Renaissance Astrology — https://www.renaissanceastrology.com/mansionsmoon.html and the Picatrix list https://www.renaissanceastrology.com/mansionslistpicatrix.html
• “The Mansions of the Moon,” Lunarium — https://www.lunarium.co.uk/articles/lunar-mansions/
• “Lunar Mansions,” Medieval Astrology Guide — https://www.medievalastrologyguide.com/lunar-mansions