Yildizname — Your Ottoman Star Book Reading

Yildizname means "star book": it joins the Turkish word for star (yildiz) and the Persian word for a letter or book (name). It is a genre of astrological manuscripts from the Ottoman and Persian worlds that explained the signs, the planets and their influence on character, travel and favourable times. Palace astrologers and scholars copied and prepared them for centuries.

In Turkish folk practice, a "yildizname reading" was often done from a person's name and their mother's name, using the numerical values of Arabic letters (the abjad system). That letter table only works for names written in Arabic script, so this tool does not use it — it works for any name and needs only your birth date.

It combines your Western Sun sign with your Life Path number from numerology. Each number from 1 to 9 is linked to a ruling planet (1 the Sun, 2 the Moon, 3 Jupiter, 4 Rahu, 5 Mercury, 6 Venus, 7 Ketu, 8 Saturn, 9 Mars), which gives your lucky colour, day and stone, your friendly and challenging numbers and the way your planet expresses itself.

Rahu and Ketu are the North and South Nodes of the Moon — the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's path. Indian (Vedic) astrology treats them as "shadow planets", and number-planet correspondences in numerology often assign them to 4 and 7.