Śatabhiṣā occupies 6°40’ to 20°00’ of Kumbha (Aquarius). Its name — “the hundred physicians” or “the hundred healers” — is striking: not one healer but a hundred, suggesting both the vast scope of its healing knowledge and its collective, systematic approach to restoration and cure. Governed by Rāhu and presided over by Varuṇa — the great cosmic lord of the waters, of the night sky, of cosmic law (ṛta), and of both disease and its cure — Śatabhiṣā is among the most medically significant of the twenty-seven nakṣatras.
Varuṇa is one of the oldest and most complex of the Vedic deities — simultaneously the all-seeing guardian of cosmic law who catches wrongdoers in his noose and the compassionate healer who releases the sinner who sincerely repents. The night sky filled with stars (hence the “hundred stars” symbol) is Varuṇa’s domain — the vast, dark space illuminated by countless points of light. The empty circle symbol is equally significant: the void that contains, the space that is pregnant with possibility, the O that represents both zero and completion.
Rāhu’s rulership in Aquarius’s technological, systems-oriented territory creates individuals with remarkable capacity for scientific and medical research, computer science, astronomy, astrology, and any field requiring systematic investigation of complex phenomena. These natives are often ahead of their time — drawn to concepts and discoveries that their contemporaries consider fringe or irrelevant, only to see these validated decades later. They have a natural affinity for the unconventional, the experimental, and the paradigm-challenging.
Parāśara describes Śatabhiṣā natives as harsh in speech, experiencing sorrows, contemplative, possessed of original and independent thinking, and skilled in the healing arts. The harshness of speech reflects the nakṣatra’s association with the direct, clinical observation of reality without sentimental cushioning — the diagnostician who names the disease without apology. The solitary quality is notable: Śatabhiṣā natives often need extended periods of isolation for their best thinking, and can find sustained social engagement draining.
Śatabhiṣā is classified as a cara (movable) nakṣatra — auspicious for medical treatments, taking medicines, spiritual retreats, research, and visionary creative work. Varāhamihira notes that those born under this nakṣatra are “skilled in medical arts, independent in nature, fond of seclusion, and capable of enduring hardship with equanimity.”