Meaning of the Rahu
Rahu represents the following: North Node of the Moon — the Dragon’s Head, renunciation, detachment, loss, crime, impurity, arrogance, untruth, poisons, incarceration, hypnotism, epidemics, transition, insecurity, upheaval, serpents, searching and wandering, the quest, dereliction, vagabond, homelessness, foreign things, air element, secrecy, anti-social behavior and alienation, jealousy and hatred. Rahu is commonly understood to reflect the same qualities as Saturn.
RAHU, the North Node of the Moon, the Dragon’s Head
Rahu is not a member of the planetary cabinet as such but can more accurately be regarded as an outcast. Rahu represents the following: fear, untruth, illusion, self-doubt, deception, confusion, lack of direction, diffidence, hard labor, difficulties, suffering, anxiety, enmity, bad karma, insatiable worldly desires, ignorance, insecurity, transition, change and transformation, abandonment, rejection, betrayal, impurity, crime, anti-social behavior, secrecy, alienation, jealousy and hatred, cunning, scheming, revolution and rebellion, terrorism, searching and wandering, homelessness, dereliction, addiction, impulse, loss of control, hedonism, poisoning, epidemics, incarceration, hospitalization, institutionalization, anything foreign, hypnotism, renunciation, detachment, serpents, the feet and the southwest direction.
However, when conjoined with a powerful planet, Rahu can bring about a rapid rise to fame and great success.
Rahu presides over machinery operators, photography, painting, hunting, violence and aggression, navigators and travelers. It forces people underground and makes them withdraw from others. It also rules over detectives, spies, criminals, revolutionaries, anarchists and terrorists.
Rahu instigates physical and mental illnesses that cannot be diagnosed or easily cured. It causes phobias, poisonous bites, murder, theft, imprisonment and diseases like cholera, dysentery, rheumatism, colic, skin diseases, leprosy, rheumatic tumors, swelling of the uterus and constipation.
In Ayurvedic medicine, Rahu rules vata or the physical constitution dominated by the elements of air/ether.
Rahu is depicted as a disembodied head riding upon a chariot and shouting obscenities. The chariot is pulled by a black tiger representing the mind roaming in the forest of desires.