Guru, Jupiter, owns Dhanu, the first of his two signs. The house Dhanu occupies is read through Guru's condition, and because Guru is counted among the most benefic of the grahas, his placement is one of the first things examined in a chart.
Dhanu carries neither an exaltation nor a debilitation. It is one of the four signs, with Mithuna, Simha and Kumbha, to which no graha's highest or lowest dignity is assigned. Assessment of a planet here rests on lordship, on friendship with Guru, on aspect and on the divisional charts rather than on any dignity supplied by the sign.
Three nakshatras cross it. Mula lies wholly within it at the start, Purva Ashadha wholly within, and the first quarter of Uttara Ashadha at the end. Their vimshottari lords are Ketu, Shukra and Surya. Mula opens the sign and it opens it immediately after the Vrishchika boundary, which makes the first degrees of Dhanu one of the gandanta junctions: the point where a water sign gives way to a fire sign, and where the nakshatra sequence also restarts. The classical literature marks these junctions as places of difficulty and transition, and the arc spanning late Jyeshtha and early Mula is the one most heavily commented on of the three. A planet, and above all the Moon, placed there is read with that in view before anything about Dhanu as a sign is brought to bear.