Ketu Ji

Ketu is one of the Navagraha, personifying the descending lunar node, astronomically the point where the Moon's orbit crosses the ecliptic moving southward, and is held responsible in myth for lunar eclipses.

Paired inseparably with Rahu, he is understood as the other half of the demon Svarbhanu, specifically his headless body, in contrast to Rahu, the severed head.

He is typically depicted as a torso without a head, or with a body ending abruptly, sometimes shown with a serpent's tail, an image directly reflecting his origin as the decapitated remainder of Svarbhanu after Vishnu's beheading.

During the Samudra Manthana, Vishnu beheaded the asura Svarbhanu after he disguised himself as a deva to steal a share of the amrita; the severed head became Rahu, and the headless, still-immortal body became Ketu. As the two halves of one being, always opposite each other in the sky, they jointly cause eclipses, Rahu of the sun, Ketu classically associated with the moon.

Rahu and Ketu together form the two halves of the single asura Svarbhanu, an orbital pair fixed permanently 180 degrees apart from one another in both the sky and astrological charts.

As a headless "shadow planet," Ketu is associated in Vedic astrology with detachment, spirituality, karmic residue from past actions, and sudden loss balanced against spiritual insight, considered both malefic and, through the very sorrow it brings, ultimately redirecting toward spiritual growth.

Like Rahu, he is worshipped almost exclusively within the standard Navagraha temple set rather than through independent shrines, with a small number of dedicated Ketu temples forming part of regional Navagraha pilgrimage circuits, particularly in Tamil Nadu.