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Chitra Nakshatra · Lord Mars · Virgo and Libra · Astrovene
Chitra crosses from Virgo into Libra, from one hundred and seventy-three degrees twenty minutes to one hundred and eighty-six degrees forty. Mars lords it and Tvashtar, the craftsman of the gods, presides. Its symbol is a bright jewel, and the name means variegated.
Mars is the hand on the tool; Tvashtar is the maker who gives form. Put together they make Chitra a nakshatra of production, and specifically of things produced to be looked at. Virgo's precision and Libra's sense of proportion support that same idea from two different directions.
A jewel is not beautiful when it comes out of the ground. The faces cut into it are what let it carry light, and cutting is removal. Design, proportion and the nerve to take away what does not belong all come out of the symbol directly. It is a nakshatra about structure rather than about ornament.
Two padas fall in Virgo and two in Libra, and the third begins at one hundred and eighty degrees exactly, the halfway point of the circle. The navamsa moves through Leo, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, so the second quarter is Virgo in both rasi and navamsa and the third is Libra in both, two consecutive quarters where sign and navamsa agree.
In the Vimshottari cycle Mars carries seven of the hundred and twenty years, one of the shorter spans. A Moon in Chitra opens the sequence in a Mars mahadasha and moves next into Rahu's eighteen. That is the order the cycle takes from this point, and nothing more.
Chitra is counted in the rakshasa gana, one of the tradition's three groupings. Lord, deity and gana are identical in every source. The tiger yoni and the bird and tree assigned to Chitra vary between schools, and are given here as attributions.