ASHTAMI? WHY ROHINI? WHY MIDNIGHT?
ASHTAMI? WHY ROHINI? WHY MIDNIGHT? Nothing about Shri Krishna's Janma is ordinary. Tradition places his manifestation on Krishna Paksha Ashtami, under Rohini Nakshatra, at midnight. Read these merely as calendar details, and you miss the poetry. But read them through the language of Jyotisha and Sanatan philosophy, and an extraordinary pattern begins to emerge. The significance seems to lie not merely in when Krishna was born, but in the deeper symbolism carried by each of these three circumstances: the waning half of the Moon, Ashtami, Rohini, and finally, the darkest hour of the night. Together, they seem to tell a story even before Krishna speaks a single word. To understand this, we must first understand the Moon. In Jyotisha, Chandra represents Manas—the mind. The mind receives, reflects, remembers, desires, fears, loves and changes. Surya, by contrast, represents Atman, vitality, authority and the central illuminating principle. The Moon has no light of its own; astronomica...