Magha is the tenth of the 27 nakshatras, opening sidereal Leo from 0 degrees 00 minutes to 13 degrees 20 minutes. Its ruling planet is Ketu, its presiding deities are the Pitris, the honoured ancestors, and its symbol is a throne. The name means "the great" or "the mighty", and its marker star earns it: Regulus, the heart of the lion, known across cultures as the king star. A person born with the Moon in this span has Magha as their janma nakshatra, or birth star, and the classical tradition reads them as regal, proud, and traditional, drawing strength from ancestry and legacy. Their Vimshottari dasha, the planetary timeline of life, opens in a Ketu period.
This page goes deep on Magha alone. For the system itself, why there are 27 nakshatras and how padas and lords work, start with the guide to the 27 nakshatras and come back.
Magha at a glance
The quick facts first. Each row is unpacked in the sections that follow.
| Attribute | Magha |
|---|---|
| Position | 0°00′ to 13°20′ Leo (Simha) |
| Order | 10th of 27 |
| Ruling planet (lord) | Ketu |
| Deity | The Pitris, the ancestors |
| Symbol | Throne |
| Marker star | Regulus (Alpha Leonis) |
| Gana (temperament) | Rakshasa (fierce) |
| Nature | Ugra (fierce, forceful) |
| Starting dasha | Ketu mahadasha, 7 years |
Where Magha sits in the sky
Magha opens the sign of Leo and lies entirely inside it. Its marker star is Regulus, the brightest star in Leo and the closest bright star to the ecliptic, the path the Sun, Moon, and planets all travel. The name Regulus means "little king", and the star sits at the lion's heart.
The royal theme is not decoration; it runs through every layer of the placement. The Sun, the planet of kingship, rules Leo, so a Magha Moon carries solar dignity by sign. The sickle of stars that forms the lion's head and mane rises above Regulus, and watchers across India, Persia, and Greece independently read this region as the seat of kings. Magha's throne symbol describes the sky it sits in.
The deity, the symbol, and the myth
Magha's presiding deities are the Pitris, the ancestral fathers who watch over their descendants from the world of the forefathers. Its symbol is a throne. Read together, they say something precise: a throne is never built by the person sitting on it. Authority here is inherited, carried, and passed on, and the seat outlives every occupant.
The Pitris hold a defined place in Indian tradition. They receive the tarpana and shraddha offerings made in honour of the dead, and they are invoked as the source of lineage, name, and inherited duty. Magha inherits that gravity: questions of where you come from, what your family carries, and what you owe the line that produced you are this star's native territory. Ketu's lordship deepens the theme, since Ketu in Jyotish points to the past, to roots, and to what is carried over rather than newly made.
The personality of a Magha Moon
Classical sketches of Magha, in the line of the Brihat Jataka, describe a person of dignity and command: proud, generous in the manner of a patron, respectful of elders and tradition, and happiest where rank and role are clear. The star's ugra, or fierce, classification gives the bearing weight; this is presence, not noise.
Because the Moon in Jyotish is the mind, the birth star colours the inner life above all. A Magha Moon tends to feel responsibility to something larger than itself, a family name, an institution, a tradition, and measures its own conduct against that standard. Ceremony comes naturally, and so does loyalty to the people under its care. Many Magha descriptions in the classics emphasise wealth, attendants, and honour, the outward signs of a life organised around standing.
The heavier expression is the one every throne risks: pride can shade into arrogance, tradition into rigidity, and command into the need to be deferred to. The tradition pairs the fault with its remedy in the same breath: the Pitris are honoured by service to the line, not by self-regard, and a Magha Moon that directs its dignity toward duty rather than display is the placement working as designed. The rest of the chart, especially the condition of the Sun as Leo's lord and Ketu as the star's lord, sets the register.
The four padas of Magha
Each nakshatra divides into four padas of 3 degrees 20 minutes, and each pada corresponds to one navamsa sign, the ninth divisional chart used for marriage and the inner life. Magha begins a fresh navamsa cycle, so its padas run Aries to Cancer.
| Pada | Degrees of Leo | Navamsa sign | Flavour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0°00′ to 3°20′ | Aries | The pioneer king: drive and initiative; the gandanta arc |
| 2 | 3°20′ to 6°40′ | Taurus | The established king: wealth, stability, and patronage |
| 3 | 6°40′ to 10°00′ | Gemini | The learned king: counsel, letters, and articulate command |
| 4 | 10°00′ to 13°20′ | Cancer | The father of the house: lineage felt as care and belonging |
The first pada deserves its note. The opening degrees of Magha sit at the gandanta, the junction where the water sign Cancer hands over to the fire sign Leo. The same calm reading given on the Ashlesha page applies from this side of the seam: a threshold placement, read with extra care and judged by the whole chart, with a well-supported Moon carrying it comfortably.
Magha 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 Magha that lord is Ketu, so a Magha birth begins inside a Ketu mahadasha of 7 years. The balance remaining at birth is proportional: a Moon at 1 degree of Leo leaves nearly the full period, while a Moon near 13 degrees leaves only months before the Venus period begins.
The sequence that follows is fixed for everyone: Ketu, then Venus (20 years), Sun (6), Moon (10), Mars (7), Rahu (18), Jupiter (16), Saturn (19), Mercury (17), and around again. A Magha birth therefore spends childhood and much of young adulthood inside the long Venus period that follows its short opening Ketu years. If you have not calculated yours, the find your nakshatra page does it from your birth date, time, and place.
Magha in compatibility matching
In guna milan, the koota matching used for marriage, several of the 36 points are scored from the two birth stars. Magha enters that arithmetic as a rakshasa gana star, the fierce temperament class, and its pairings score differently against deva and manushya stars in the gana koota. A full match also weighs nadi, yoni, and the Moon-sign relationship between the charts.
The gana classes describe temperament intensity rather than virtue, and the method spreads its 36 points across eight kootas so that no single factor, gana included, can decide a match alone. To see the full calculation for two charts, the kundli matching tool runs the whole table.
Magha 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 sketches the temperament of those born under each star. For Magha the classical notes converge on honour, wealth, devotion to elders and gods, and the enjoyment of rank.
Magha reads best against its neighbours. Behind it lies Ashlesha, the coiled depths of late Cancer; ahead lies Purva Phalguni, where Leo's royalty relaxes into pleasure and play. The full wheel is laid out on the 27-nakshatra map, and a free birth chart shows which star your own Moon occupies.