Mantras

Budh is the fastest of the visible grahas and the hardest to pin down — the graha of speech, calculation, wit, and the g…

Chandra is the only graha that visibly changes shape, and Jyotisha gives him the part of us that does the same — the min…

Guru is the graha the tradition trusts most and rushes least. Nineteen thousand repetitions is the second-heaviest count…

Ketu is the other half of the same severed asura — a body with no head, moving on and never quite knowing why. Where Rah…

Mangal is the graha of the first move — the one who acts before the committee reconvenes. His mantras are short, hard-ed…

Rahu is a head without a body — the severed half of an asura who drank the nectar and never got to digest it, and that i…

Twenty-three thousand repetitions is the largest count in the navagraha set, and it is the first thing Shani teaches — b…

Shukra is the graha of everything worth coming home to — love, beauty, comfort, music, the meal that took four hours. Hi…

The Sun mantras are among the oldest prayers still in daily use in India — recited standing ankle-deep in water, facing …