Krittika is the third of the 27 nakshatras, spanning 26 degrees 40 minutes of sidereal Aries to 10 degrees of sidereal Taurus. Its ruling planet is the Sun, its presiding deity is Agni, the god of fire, and its symbol is a flame paired with a blade or razor. Its marker stars are the Pleiades, the bright little cluster that gives the star its name: the Krittikas, the six sisters of the myth. A person born with the Moon in this span has Krittika as their janma nakshatra, or birth star, and is read in the classical tradition as sharp, bright, and determined, cutting clean through illusion with focused will. Their Vimshottari dasha, the planetary timeline of life, opens in a Sun period.
This page goes deep on Krittika alone. If you want the system itself explained, why there are 27 nakshatras and how padas and lords work, start with the guide to the 27 nakshatras and come back.
Krittika at a glance
The quick facts first. Everything in this table is unpacked in the sections that follow.
| Attribute | Krittika |
|---|---|
| Position | 26°40′ Aries to 10°00′ Taurus |
| Order | 3rd of 27 |
| Ruling planet (lord) | Sun |
| Deity | Agni, the god of fire |
| Symbol | Flame and blade |
| Marker stars | The Pleiades (brightest: Alcyone) |
| Gana (temperament) | Rakshasa (fierce) |
| Nature | Mishra (mixed) |
| Starting dasha | Sun mahadasha, 6 years |
Where Krittika sits in the sky
Krittika is the first nakshatra in the zodiac to cross a sign border. Its opening quarter sits at the very end of Aries, and its remaining three quarters open Taurus. The nakshatras run to their own measure of 13 degrees 20 minutes and pay no attention to where one sign ends and the next begins; Krittika is the textbook example.
Its marker stars need no telescope. The Pleiades are the most famous star cluster in the sky, a tight knot of blue-white points that cultures everywhere have named and counted. The crossing has a practical consequence: the Moon's point of deepest exaltation, 3 degrees of Taurus, falls inside Krittika's second pada. A Moon in the star's Taurus portion is exalted by sign, which softens the fire considerably; a Moon in the Aries portion burns with Mars behind it.
The deity, the symbol, and the myth
Krittika's presiding deity is Agni, the god of fire, the mouth of the gods who carries every offering upward and burns away whatever is impure in it. The symbol doubles the idea: a flame beside a blade, the two oldest tools for separating what stays from what goes.
The best-known story makes the star a nursery. The six Krittikas, the sisters seen in the Pleiades, became the foster mothers of Kartikeya, the infant god of war, who took his name from them. So the same star that cuts also rears: in the myth, fierce protection and tender care are one job. That doubleness is Krittika's signature. The heat is real, and it is in service of something young and worth defending.
The personality of a Krittika Moon
Classical descriptions of Krittika, in the line of the Brihat Jataka, sketch a person of appetite and lustre: energetic, proud of bearing, drawn to capable company, and famous for honesty that arrives without padding. The Sun's lordship gives a natural authority; people sense where a Krittika native stands, because the native tells them.
Because the Moon in Jyotish is the mind, the birth star colours the inner life above all. A Krittika Moon thinks like a refiner. It tests claims, trims excess, and is satisfied only when the matter is reduced to its true core. Combined with the foster-mother myth, this makes the classic Krittika role a demanding guardian: the teacher, editor, surgeon, or commander who is exacting precisely because someone vulnerable depends on the standard being kept.
The same fire has its heavier side, and the tradition is plain about it: sharpness can shade into harshness, pride into impatience with slower minds, and the critical eye into criticism as a habit. None of this is a verdict. The standard reading is that the fire serves best with something worthy to refine, and that the rest of the chart, especially a warm Moon dispositor or a steady Jupiter, shows the Krittika native where the blade is needed and where the warmth is.
The four padas of Krittika
Each nakshatra divides into four padas of 3 degrees 20 minutes, and each pada corresponds to one navamsa sign, which is how the birth star plugs into the ninth divisional chart. Krittika's padas run from Sagittarius to Pisces in the navamsa, and the first sits in a different rashi from the other three.
| Pada | Degrees | Navamsa sign | Flavour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 26°40′ to 30°00′ Aries | Sagittarius | The crusader: fire in Aries, aimed at a principle |
| 2 | 0°00′ to 3°20′ Taurus | Capricorn | The builder: contains the Moon's deepest exaltation degree |
| 3 | 3°20′ to 6°40′ Taurus | Aquarius | The reformer: exacting standards turned toward the collective |
| 4 | 6°40′ to 10°00′ Taurus | Pisces | The gentlest quarter: fire warming rather than burning |
The second pada deserves its note: 3 degrees of Taurus, the Moon's degree of deepest exaltation, falls within it. The classics read a Moon here as exceptionally strong, the mind's planet at its most stable point in the whole zodiac, held inside a star ruled by the Sun.
Krittika and your dasha timeline
The lord of the birth star opens the Vimshottari dasha, the 120-year cycle of planetary periods laid out in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra. For Krittika that lord is the Sun, so a Krittika birth begins inside a Sun mahadasha, the shortest period in the cycle at 6 years. A Moon at the very start of Krittika leaves nearly the full 6 years; a Moon near 10 degrees of Taurus leaves only a sliver before the Moon period begins.
The sequence that follows is fixed for everyone: Sun, then Moon (10 years), Mars (7), Rahu (18), Jupiter (16), Saturn (19), Mercury (17), Ketu (7), Venus (20), and around again. What differs is where you enter the wheel, and that is set entirely by your birth star and the Moon's progress through it. If you have not calculated yours, the find your nakshatra page does it from your birth date, time, and place.
Krittika in compatibility matching
In guna milan, the koota matching used for marriage, several of the 36 points are scored directly from the two birth stars. Krittika enters that arithmetic as a rakshasa gana star, the fierce temperament class, which scores differently against deva and manushya stars in the gana koota. The label describes intensity of temperament, never character; the same class holds several of the zodiac's most capable stars.
No single nakshatra makes or breaks a match, and the classical method never reads one star in isolation; the count runs across eight kootas precisely so that no one factor dominates. If you want to see a full 36-point calculation for two charts, the kundli matching tool runs the whole table.
Krittika in the classics
The attributions on this page are the stable, named ones: the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra carries the nakshatra scheme and the Vimshottari sequence seeded from the birth star, while the Brihat Jataka describes the temperament of those born under each star. For Krittika the essentials are brightness, appetite, candour, and force of will.
Reading further is best done sideways and upward: sideways to Krittika's neighbours, Bharani before it with its patient endurance and Rohini after it with its gathering abundance, whose contrast makes Krittika's clean cut clearer, and upward to the 27-nakshatra map, where the whole wheel is laid out in one table. To see where your own Moon falls, run a free birth chart and find the nakshatra column.