Words Attributed
A lexiconof light
38 words that came down from the sky into ordinary speech, and the Sanskrit terms you will meet on every other page. Where scholars disagree about a derivation, the entry says so.
- AscendantLatin
- ascendere, “to climb”The sign climbing over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth.
- AyanāṃśaSanskrit
- ayana, “going, course” + aṃśa, “part”The slow gap between two ways of counting the same road, widening by about fifty seconds of arc a year.
- BhāvaSanskrit
- “state of being, becoming”A house of life. The sky as a floor plan of what happens to people.
- ConsiderLatin
- considerare, possibly “with the stars” (con + sidus)The origin is uncertain, but the old guess is a lovely one: to think carefully was to look at the stars together.
- ConstellationLatin
- con + stella, “stars together”Not a thing in the sky but a decision made by the eye.
- CuspLatin
- cuspis, “a point”The edge where one sign hands the sky to the next.
- DaśāSanskrit
- “state, condition”, later “period”A stretch of years named for the planet whose mood it carries.
- DisasterItalian
- dis- + astro, “ill-starred”Misfortune, remembered as a bad turn of the stars.
- EclipticGreek
- ekleiptikos, “of an eclipse”The road the Sun walks, named for the one thing that happens when the Moon stands on it.
- EphemerisGreek
- ephēmeris, “daily”A table of where the lights will be, day by day. A diary written before the events.
- GrahaSanskrit
- from gṛh-, “to seize, to grasp”A planet is what takes hold of you.
- HoroscopeGreek
- hōroskopos, “watcher of the hour”Originally the rising sign itself. Only later the whole chart.
- InfluenceMedieval Latin
- influentia, “a flowing in”Once meant a fluid thought to pour from the stars into the world. We kept the word and dropped the fluid.
- Janma rāśiSanskrit
- janma, “birth” + rāśiThe sign the Moon was in when you arrived. In India, what “your sign” usually means.
- JyotiṣaSanskrit
- from jyotis, “light, a luminary”The study of the lights.
- KālapuruṣaSanskrit
- “the Person of Time”The zodiac imagined as a body laid along the sky, from head to feet.
- KārakaSanskrit
- “doer, one who brings about”What a planet is said to do, as a verb to the world’s sentence.
- LagnaSanskrit
- “attached, joined”The place where the sky is fastened to the horizon.
- LunaticLatin
- lunaticus, “moonstruck”A word that remembers when the Moon was blamed for the mind.
- MagnitudeLatin
- magnitudo, “greatness”A star’s brightness, counted backward: the smaller the number, the greater the light.
- MoolatrikonaSanskrit
- mūla, “root” + trikoṇa, “triangle”The root-triangle: the stretch of a planet’s own sign where it feels most at home.
- MuhūrtaSanskrit
- “a moment”A span of forty-eight minutes, long enough to begin something in.
- NakṣatraSanskrit
- derivation debatedA lunar mansion. One of the Moon’s lodgings on the long road around the sky.
- NavāṃśaSanskrit
- nava, “nine” + aṃśa, “part”The ninth part. A sign cut into nine, to see the same chart again, closer.
- NirayanaSanskrit
- nir-, “without” + ayanaThe sidereal count, made “without” the drift of the seasons.
- PadaSanskrit
- “foot, step”A quarter of a lunar mansion. One step of the Moon.
- PañcāṅgaSanskrit
- pañca, “five” + aṅga, “limb”The almanac of five limbs: day, lunar day, mansion, yoga, half-day.
- PlanetGreek
- planētēs, “wanderer”A star that refuses to stay where it was put.
- RāśiSanskrit
- “heap, pile, mass”A sign: thirty degrees of sky gathered into one heap.
- RetrogradeLatin
- retrogradus, “going backward”A planet seeming to back up, because the Earth overtakes it. The Sanskrit word, vakra, means “crooked.”
- SāyanaSanskrit
- sa-, “with” + ayanaThe tropical count, made “with” the drift of the seasons.
- SiderealLatin
- sidus, sideris, “star”Measured against the stars, not the seasons.
- TithiSanskrit
- “a lunar day”One-thirtieth of the Moon’s cycle, as the Moon pulls away from the Sun by twelve degrees.
- TropicalGreek
- tropē, “a turning”Counted from the turning of the seasons. The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn share the root.
- VimśottarīSanskrit
- viṃśottarī, “of one hundred and twenty”The period system whose nine chapters add up to a long life of 120 years.
- YogaSanskrit
- “yoking, union”In astrology, a named combination: planets harnessed together.
- ZenithArabic
- samt ar-ra’s, “the path over the head”The point straight above you. Arriving in Latin as a misreading of an Arabic scribe’s letters.
- ZodiacGreek
- zōidiakos kyklos, “circle of little animals”A ring of creatures walking around the sky.