Rudraksha Selection
The Śiva Purāṇa on where the bead came from and what sits in each of its fourteen faces, and then the four ways a chart says which face is being asked for.
Rudrākṣa is rudra and akṣa, the eye of Rudra. The Śiva Purāṇa tells where it came from: Śiva, after a penance of a thousand divine years, opened his eyes for the good of the worlds, and from the tears that fell the rudrākṣa trees rose of themselves. The trees spread through Gauḍa, Mathurā, Laṅkā, Ayodhyā and Kāśī. Vidyeśvara Saṃhitā 25.5–10
The same chapter opens by saying the bead purifies three times over, by the sight of it, by the touch of it, and by the recitation made upon it. 25.1–2 It divides the beads four ways by colour, white, red, yellow and black, one for each varṇa 25.11–12, and it grades them by size: the largest is the best and the smallest the least, yet even the smallest, it says, gives its benefit in full. 25.14–16 Whoever wants both the world and release from it, the text says, should wear one. 25.13
The faces of the bead, the mukhi, are set out later in that chapter, one face to fourteen, each with its deity 25.64–80; the table below gives them. The Rudrākṣajābāla Upaniṣad of the Sāmaveda treats the same subject, and the Devī Bhāgavata, Padma, Skanda and Liṅga Purāṇas each carry their own account of it.
Scripture says which deity sits in a face. Astrology says which face a particular chart is asking for. The Purāṇa's own list comes first below; the four tables after it answer the second question from four directions, and the method at the foot resolves them into one bead.
The fourteen faces, as the Śiva Purāṇa gives them
This is the authority. The Śiva Purāṇa, Vidyeśvara Saṃhitā 25.64–80, names the deity seated in each face and what the wearing of it is said to bring. Everything after it on this page is application: how a chart says which of these faces a particular person is being asked for.
| Mukhi | Deity of the face | What the verse gives |
|---|
By planet
From here the reading is astrological: which of the Purāṇa's faces a chart is asking for. This is the core mapping, with the household offering that stands in for each planet when a bead is not to hand.
| Planet | Mukhi | Worn | Simple offering |
|---|
By moon rashi
Read from the sign the Moon occupied at birth.
| Rashi | Mukhi |
|---|
By janma nakshatra
The longest table in the notes, and the one worked in most detail. Two nakshatras carry a pada subdivision.
| # | Nakshatra | Mukhi | Lord | Yoni |
|---|
By profession
| Field | Mukhi |
|---|
Special combinations
| Condition | Bead |
|---|
The Mandeep Saini Method
The tables above answer the same question from several directions, and they rarely all name the same bead. The method resolves them into one. It is the working rule Dr. Mandeep C Saini teaches, and its principle is simple: a bead that two independent readings both name is worth more than any single table's answer.
Work it out
The same method runs on the numerology page, where it also reads your birth number, destiny number and name compound: a number names a planet, and a planet names a bead.