Pillar article
How a Vedic Chart Is Built and Timed
Vedic astrology reads nine grahas through twelve houses and twenty-seven nakshatras, then times the result with a 120-year Vimshottari cycle. Learning starts there, before remedies and before matching scores. The nine grahas are Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Rahu, and Ketu. Their mahadashas are 6, 10, 7, 17, 16, 20, 19, 18, and 7 years.
The three layers
A rashi is a 30-degree sidereal sign. A house is a place counted from the lagna, so the same planet can be in Vrishabha and in the 10th. A nakshatra is a 13-degree-20-minute lunar mansion, twenty-seven of them around the sky. The Moon's nakshatra at birth chooses the first mahadasha lord. Ashwini starts with Ketu, Bharani with Venus, Krittika with the Sun, and the nine lords repeat in that order through Revati. Jyothish SI uses the Lahiri ayanamsa, so these signs are sidereal, measured from the star-based zodiac rather than the tropical calendar dates people see in newspaper columns.
Houses worth learning first
The 1st is the body and the self. The 4th is home and mother. The 5th is intelligence and children. The 7th is marriage. The 9th is the guru, the father, and dharma. The 10th is karma and the public post. The 2nd and 11th are wealth and gains. The 6th, 8th, and 12th are the dusthanas: dispute, breakage, and loss or foreign stay. Karakas sit on top of houses. Venus karakas marriage, Jupiter karakas children and the guru, Saturn karakas labor and longevity, the Sun karakas the father and authority, the Moon karakas the mind. A beginner who learns karakas and houses together stops treating the Moon sign as the whole chart.
Timing is the second half of the subject
A yoga does nothing on a calendar until its graha's dasha or antardasha is running. Antardasha months scale by multiplying the two lords' years and dividing by 120. Sun mahadasha with Venus antardasha is 6 times 20 divided by 120, which is one year. That arithmetic is the heart of prediction and the part most popular summaries skip. After dasha, gochar is read from the Moon, especially Saturn and Jupiter. A free account on Jyothish SI can cast a practice chart and chat with the AI astrologer. Paid plans add PDF reports and further divisional charts such as D9.
Frequently asked questions
What should a student memorize first?
The twelve houses, the nine grahas and their dasha years, and the twenty-seven nakshatras in order from Ashwini. Remedies come after you can name the house a graha occupies.
Why does the first dasha differ for people born on the same day?
The first lord follows the Moon's nakshatra, and the remaining balance follows how much of that nakshatra was left at birth. Two times can fall in different nakshatras.
Which ayanamsa does Jyothish SI use?
Lahiri, with Swiss Ephemeris. The birth city is geocoded and the zone offset is applied before the Julian day.
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D1, D9, D10, dashas, yogas, and transits, the same calculations referenced in this article.