There are certain features that can be telltale signs of a nakshatra, even if the natives do not always look overtly similar across all features. There are a few specific features I love to check for when I'm suspecting that Punarvasu पुनर्वसु nakshatra (20° Gemini – 3°20′ Cancer sidereal) may be present. Punarvasu's beauty is explained perfectly by its presiding deity, the Vedic mother Goddess Aditi. Her name is translated as meaning 'boundless' or 'limitless' and this emphasizes the vastness & spacious quality of this nakshatra, in combination with it being the birth of the "spirit of the vast", Jupiter. Aditi and Jupiter are the unbound, nourishing expansion-impulse, the burst of new growth taking place before the cosmic birth of Saturn's restriction & limitation in Pushya. As Aditi is a personification of sprawling infiniteness, it makes sense that this energy manifests physically with Punarvasu women tending to have the largest features and faces overall. Punarvasu's highly expansive energy enlarges the eyes, chin, cheekbones, lips (which are generally medium to full), as well as (to a lesser extent) the nose tip & bridge.
Another translation of Aditi is "innocence" and their eyes remind me of the recent siren vs. doe-eyed trend. While siren eyes emphasized narrowing, lengthening, and tilting the eyes upward, "doe-eyes" celebrated a large, more rounded, thick-lidded, and downturned shape. Punarvasu's eyes are all of these things, giving a soft and innocent apperance.
Their form of beauty was also something very much celebrated in the 60's during the hippie movement and with flower child icons like Twiggy, Sharon Tate, and Joni Mitchell (all three with Punarvasu ASC). The Twiggy-inspired 60's makeup mimicked Punarvasu eyes through a cut crease (deepening the appearance of the eye socket) and extremely emphasized lower lashes (opening up the eyes in an innocent but surreal manner). In general, Punarvasu is one of the main nakshatras that can be seen utilizing colorful and experimental makeup, and during research it was apparent how much they tend to enjoy (sometimes heavy) false lashes. With such dreamy energy, it makes sense that Punarvasu was very prominent in the surrealism art movement (in my survey of 1000+ artists), which I something I explore in my ebook below.
You can watch my new Youtube-short to see Punarvasu beauty in motion (it can also be found on instagram @claire.nakti or tiktok @clairenakti). As with everything in astrology, these features to check for are a tendency not a rule for Punarvasu's physical appearance. A person's other primary placements will bring in features as well, though one will tend to come to the surface the most strongly (relating to their dominant planet); one can have a Punarvasu primary placement but be dominated by one of their other primary placements instead. In all cases, there will be some mixture of features. For example, Margot Robbie (Swati Moon, Punarvasu ASC) is frequently compared to natives of both of these nakshatras depending on which qualities of her face are being highlighted through the comparison. In this way, I seek in these posts to isolate the Punarvasu appearance influence as much as possible by finding the most consistent common physical ground amongst its natives, while having awareness that each individual you're seeing has other astrological influences at play as well that make them unique. I wanted to make these posts so that you don't have to rely on two people looking strikingly similar to know they share a nakshatra, but rather can more consciously/logically check for certain revealing features even amongst people who have many differences.
Click through the gallery below to see more visuals to the above description. You can check back here in the future for updates.
Birth time notes: Twiggy has a C-rated birth time for "the very early hours of the morning", which allows for Punarvasu ASC. Emma Mackey's birth time (from the video-short) has been changed by Astrotheme; it listed Punarvasu ASC (and still does on Astro.com) when I made this blog post, but I believe Astrotheme obtained a better source.