Plain-language reference

Glossary

Every term this site uses in a reading, defined without assuming you already know the tradition. Terms link to each other where one explains another.

The chart

Lagna (ascendant)

The sign rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth.

The lagna is the anchor of the whole chart: it fixes which sign counts as the first house, and every other house is numbered from it. Because the horizon moves through all twelve signs in a day, the lagna changes roughly every two hours — which is why an accurate birth time matters more than an accurate birth date. Two people born the same day in the same city can have entirely different charts if their births were four hours apart.

Rasi (sign)

One of the twelve 30-degree divisions of the zodiac.

A rasi is a fixed slice of the sky, not a season. This site uses the sidereal zodiac, measured against the stars, which is why a planet's sign here often differs by one from the tropical sign used in Western horoscope columns. When a reading says "Moon in Dhanu", it means the Moon occupied that slice at the moment of birth.

Bhava (house)

One of twelve segments of the chart, each governing an area of life.

Houses are counted from the lagna and carry the subject matter: the 2nd concerns wealth and speech, the 7th partnership, the 10th work and standing. A planet is read twice — once for the house it sits in, and once for the houses it rules. Most of the reasoning behind a prediction is some version of "the lord of this house is placed in that one".

Graha (planet)

The nine moving bodies a Vedic chart is built from.

The nine are the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the two lunar nodes, Rahu and Ketu. The nodes are not physical bodies but the points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's; they are read as full participants. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not used, which is one of the clearer differences from Western practice.

Varga (divisional chart)

A second chart derived by subdividing each sign.

A varga takes the same planetary positions and re-maps them at higher resolution, one chart per area of life — the tenth-part chart for career, the ninth-part for marriage and fortune. It is a magnifying glass, not a second opinion: a promise that appears in the main chart and repeats in the relevant varga is read as much stronger than one that appears only once.

Navamsa (D9)

The ninth-part divisional chart, read for marriage and inner strength.

Each sign is cut into nine parts of 3°20' each, and the resulting chart is the one most consulted after the birth chart itself. A planet strong in the birth chart but weak in the navamsa is read as promising more than it delivers; the reverse — weak at birth, strong in the navamsa — is read as strength that arrives later in life.

Retrograde (vakri)

A planet appearing to move backwards against the stars.

Retrograde motion is apparent, not real — it happens when the Earth overtakes an outer planet, or is overtaken. Classical texts treat a retrograde planet as unusually strong but turned inward, delivering its results late, indirectly, or through a return to something already begun. The Sun and Moon are never retrograde; Rahu and Ketu always are.

Timing and periods

Dasha (major period)

A span of years ruled by one planet, setting the tone of that stretch of life.

The system used here divides a life into nine consecutive periods of fixed length — Venus rules for twenty years, the Sun for six — cycling in a set order over 120 years. Which planet you start with, and how much of its period remains at birth, is decided by the Moon's nakshatra. The dasha is what makes a chart a timeline rather than a static description: the same placement stays quiet for decades and then becomes the whole story when its period arrives. In Tamil this site writes the period as தசா; if you know it as திசை or தசை, see the entry below on why those are kept apart here.

Antardasha (sub-period)

A subdivision of a major period, ruled by a second planet.

Each major period is divided among all nine planets in the same order, in proportion to their own period lengths. The pairing is what a reading actually works with: the major period sets the subject, the sub-period sets the events. A supportive planet running inside a difficult major period is read as relief within a hard stretch, not as a reversal of it.

Dasha balance at birth

How much of the first period was already spent when you were born.

Nobody starts life at the beginning of a period. The Moon's exact position within its nakshatra says how far through the first planet's period the birth occurred, and the remainder is carried forward. This is why an error of a few minutes in birth time shifts every future period boundary — a small change in the Moon's degree moves the whole sequence by months.

Gochara (transit)

Where the planets are now, read against where they were at birth.

Transits are the moving layer over the fixed birth chart. They are read relative to the natal Moon rather than the lagna in most South Indian practice. A transit alone rarely decides anything: the usual reading is that the dasha grants or withholds a result, and the transit chooses the week it lands.

Sade Sati

The roughly seven-and-a-half years Saturn spends crossing the natal Moon's neighbourhood.

Saturn takes about two and a half years per sign, so its passage through the sign before the natal Moon, the Moon's own sign, and the sign after runs about seven and a half years in total. It has a heavier reputation than it deserves: the classical reading is a period of consolidation and reduced margin for error, and its severity depends on Saturn's own condition in the birth chart.

தசா and திசை (period and direction)

Two Tamil words one vowel apart. தசா is a planetary period; திசை is a compass direction.

திசை is the ordinary Tamil word for a compass direction, and that is the only sense it carries on this site: the directional strength a planet gains in the quarter it rules, and the quarters of the Kalachakra wheel. தசா is the planetary period the Vimshottari sequence divides a life into — the Sanskrit daśā the tradition borrowed. Everyday Tamil and much traditional astrology use திசை for the period as well, and "ராகு திசை" is what an astrologer is most likely to have said to you. It is idiomatic and it is widely understood; what it cannot survive is a page that shows a real direction and a real period side by side, where one word for both leaves a reader no way to tell which is meant. A third spelling, தசை, is in circulation for the period too, and is also the everyday word for muscle. So if you arrived knowing ராகு திசை, what this site calls ராகு தசா is the same thing, and nothing about the reading has changed with the spelling.

Panchang

The five limbs describing the quality of a given day.

The five are tithi, nakshatra, yoga, karana and the weekday. Together they are the traditional almanac used to decide whether a day suits a particular undertaking. Unlike the birth chart, the panchang is about the day rather than the person — two people consulting it on the same day in the same place read the same values.

Tithi (lunar day)

The gap between Sun and Moon, in steps of twelve degrees.

There are thirty tithis in a lunar month, fifteen in each half. Because the Moon's speed varies, a tithi is not a fixed number of hours — it can run short of a day or well past one, which is why festival dates shift against the calendar year. Full moon and new moon are the two boundary tithis.

Paksha (fortnight)

The waxing or waning half of a lunar month.

The waxing half runs from new moon to full moon, the waning half from full moon back to new. A tithi is always named with its paksha, because the same number occurs once in each half. The waxing half is generally read as favouring growth and beginnings, the waning half as favouring completion and release.

Nakshatra (lunar mansion)

One of twenty-seven star groups the Moon passes through each month.

The nakshatras divide the same circle as the twelve signs, but into twenty-seven parts of 13°20' each, so they are finer-grained. The Moon's nakshatra at birth is the single most-used value in South Indian practice: it decides the dasha sequence, drives marriage matching, and is what is meant by a person's "star" in everyday conversation.

Yoga (panchang limb)

One of twenty-seven values from the combined positions of Sun and Moon.

This is a daily almanac value and has nothing to do with the planetary combinations also called yogas — the same word covers two different things, which is a common source of confusion. Here it is a single number derived by adding the Sun's and Moon's longitudes and dividing the result into twenty-seven parts.

Karana (half-tithi)

Half of a lunar day; two run within every tithi.

Eleven karanas cycle through the lunar month, four of them appearing only once and the other seven repeating eight times each. It is the finest-grained of the five limbs and is consulted mainly for choosing an hour rather than a day.

Strength and combinations

Yoga (planetary combination)

A named pattern of placements that carries a result of its own.

A yoga is a recognised configuration — a particular pair of house lords exchanging places, a planet in a specific relationship to the Moon — that the classical texts treat as more than the sum of its parts. Hundreds are named. A yoga present in a chart still needs its planets' period to arrive before it does anything, which is why a chart can carry a strong combination that stays dormant for decades.

Dignity (exaltation and debilitation)

How comfortably a planet sits in the sign it occupies.

Each planet has one sign where it is strongest and the opposite sign where it is weakest, plus signs it owns and signs owned by friends or enemies. Dignity does not make a result good or bad — it decides how cleanly the planet delivers whatever it was going to deliver. A debilitated planet in its own period tends to produce its results with friction and delay rather than not at all.

Upachaya (houses of growth)

The 3rd, 6th, 10th and 11th houses, which improve with effort and time.

These four houses are read differently from the rest: a difficult planet placed in them is strengthened rather than weakened, because their subject matter — competition, obstacles overcome, work, gains — rewards exactly the pressure such a planet applies. It is the reason a reading can call a placement in the 6th house supportive when the 6th house itself covers debt and disease.

Arudha (projected position)

How a matter appears to others, as distinct from what it is.

An arudha is calculated by reflecting a house's lord back across the house, and it is read as the perceived version of that house's subject. The arudha of the lagna is the reputation a person carries rather than the person; where the two diverge sharply, the classical reading is someone widely misjudged in one direction or the other.

Marriage matching

Porutham (compatibility factor)

One of the tests compared between two charts before marriage.

South Indian matching checks ten poruthams, most of them derived from the two nakshatras rather than the full charts. They are not scored equally — a few are treated as decisive and the rest as advisory — and a match failing one of the minor tests is routine rather than disqualifying.

Koota (matching unit)

The North Indian counterpart of a porutham, scored out of thirty-six.

The koota system groups eight tests with different weights adding to thirty-six points. It overlaps with the porutham list without matching it, so the same pair of charts can score well under one system and poorly under the other. Neither is a verdict; both are inputs.

Unfamiliar term in an answer? The glossary defines every one of them.