Punarvasu · 20°00′ Gemini – 3°20′ Cancer

Punarvasu means “the light again,” the return of the good after it has been withdrawn. Guru (Jupiter) rules it; Aditi, the boundless mother of the gods, presides. The symbol is a quiver of arrows: what is shot can be gathered and shot again. Classically this is the mansion of restoration; its puruṣārtha is artha, the worldly aim, so the return it promises is practical, a regathering of means and place.

The tradition reads Punarvasu as the capacity to come back. From loss, from travel, from a wrong turn, the native is said to arrive home lighter, carrying less than they left with. Rāma is said to have been born under this nakṣatra, and the texts offer him as its portrait: nobility that survives exile and returns intact.

Its gift is renewal and an even, generous mind, quick to forgive and slow to keep score. Its shadow, one school notes, is a certain lightness about commitment, the arrow so easy to retrieve that nothing is ever finally loosed, a life that begins many things and settles few. Spanning Mithuna into Karka, Gemini into Cancer, it carries what the road gathered home to the hearth. Its question is the returner’s: what did you bring back, and who is there to receive it?