The lunar mansions listed here are the manazil of the Arabic tradition (Al Sharatain, Al Butain, Al Thurayya and the rest), twenty-eight divisions marking the Moon's daily progress against the stars. They were used for weather prediction, agriculture and the election of times, and passed into Latin Europe through translations of Arabic astrological and magical works, where each mansion acquired talismanic images. Comparable twenty-eight-fold schemes exist in India and China; the historical relationship between them is disputed.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe twenty-eight manazil al-qamar of the Arabic tradition, and only those: the Indian naksatras and the Chinese xiu are separate systems and have their own categories here. 1 Size of the Traditional Set Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryThe relation between the Arabic manazil, the Indian naksatras and the Chinese xiu is disputed. No direction of borrowing is established, and the atlas asserts none. 1 Origins
Place of OriginArabia: the mansions grew out of the pre-Islamic anwa star-calendar. 1 Attestation
Era of AttestationSystematised in Arabic anwa and astronomical literature from the ninth century CE, on older Arabian star lore. 1 Learn More
The Mansions of the Moon
The lunar mansions are the divisions marking the Moon's daily progress against the stars, so that the Moon occupies a new mansion each night through its cycle. The set treated here is the manazil of the Arabic tradition (Al Sharatain, Al Butain, Al Thurayya and the rest), twenty-eight divisions used for weather prediction, agriculture, and astrological magic.
Several cultures developed lunar-mansion systems independently or in contact (the Arabic manazil, the Indian nakshatras, and the Chinese xiu), reflecting the Moon's roughly twenty-seven-to-twenty-eight-day sidereal cycle. The atlas treats the Arabic mansions here.
Timing and magic
The Arabic lunar mansions were used above all for electional and magical timing: each mansion favours or forbids certain actions, and talismans were made when the Moon stood in a suitable mansion, a practice set out in works such as the Picatrix and by Agrippa. Each mansion has a name, an image and a range of things it governs.
The atlas gives each mansion its stars, its image, and its favourable and unfavourable uses. The related Indian nakshatras are treated under Vedic Astrology and the Chinese xiu under Eastern Systems, as parallel divisions of the same lunar path.
All Lunar Mansions
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Sources
1. The Arabs and the Stars
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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