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Al Naaim, the Ostriches

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Al Naaim, the Ostriches

Al Naaim is the twentieth lunar mansion, spanning roughly 244 to 257 degrees within Sagittarius. Its name means the ostriches, two groups of stars imagined as birds at a river. In the manazil tradition its planetary ruler is Mercury, and its traditional talismanic virtue is taming and petitions, the subduing of beasts or people and the granting of requests. Each of the manazil carries a fixed magical property from the Arabic tradition, transmitted through the Picatrix and Agrippa for the timing of talismans. These are the conventions of that talismanic tradition rather than statements about the stars, which here are the groups in Sagittarius, near the Milk Dipper, that the twenty-eight-mansion scheme counts at this station of the Moon in its monthly passage through the ecliptic.

Al Naaim's two groups of ostrich-stars, going to and returning from a river in the traditional Arabic image, are identified with stars in Sagittarius near what later Western atlases call the Milk Dipper, an asterism formed from the same stars that make up part of the modern constellation's familiar teapot shape. The pairing of taming and petitions as this mansion's virtue, the subduing of beasts or people alongside the granting of requests, connects the practical Bedouin association of ostriches as creatures to be hunted or domesticated with the more abstract magical theme of bringing something wild or resistant under control, whether an animal, a person, or a request awaiting a favourable answer.

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