Lunar Mansions

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Lunar Mansions." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/categories/lunar-mansions.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Lunar Mansions. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/categories/lunar-mansions

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-lunar-mansions,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Lunar Mansions},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/categories/lunar-mansions},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

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 Grouping

The 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

28 manazil 1

Status

Standing as a Comparative Category

The 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 Origin

Arabia: the mansions grew out of the pre-Islamic anwa star-calendar. 1

Attestation

Era of Attestation

Systematised 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.

Cross-Tradition Connections