What are the Lunar Mansions?

The lunar mansions (Arabic: manazil al-qamar) are the 28 stations the Moon passes through on its journey around the sky, one for each day of its circuit. The classical Arabic astronomers gave each station a name, a pair of marker stars, and a character. Al-Muqaddam, the Foregoing One, and al-Muakhkhar, the Following One, sit in the Twins and teach the balance of leading and following. The stations were working knowledge: they timed agriculture, navigation, weather reading, and the choosing of hours for acts of consequence.

The station of the Moon today

This tool shows which mansion the Moon occupies right now, with the classical marker stars, the zodiacal span, and the quality of the station. The look-ahead function answers the practical question the tradition was built for: given any date and hour, where will the Moon be? A reflection accompanies each station, written to be sat with rather than consumed. The mansions belong to the same Arabic science that preserved astronomy through the golden age of the Islamic world, alongside the Fal-e Hafez oracle, geomancy, and the planetary hours.