Rahu in the Horoscope Is the North Lunar Node

The seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn have weekdays. Rahu and Ketu do not. Rahu is still given a mahadasha of eighteen years and Ketu of seven, and the nakshatras Ardra, Swati, and Shatabhisha belong to Rahu in the Vimshottari order. A Moon in one of those stars can open life under Rahu's balance. That is different from Rahu's house in the lagna chart. You can have a Rahu-owned birth star and a Rahu placed in the 4th. One fact starts the clock. The other names the room. Jyothish SI computes both from Swiss Ephemeris once the city and time set the instant. A rounded time can keep Rahu's sign, which moves slowly, and still change the house, because the house is counted from the lagna.

Count from the lagna to Rahu's sign. That count is the house. Opposite, six houses away in the usual bhava sense of the seventh sign, is Ketu. Rahu in the 2nd enlarges speech and stored money, with a risk of unstable family speech. Rahu in the 9th enlarges dharma in an unconventional direction, the combination often swept into pitra talk. Rahu in the 6th can enlarge the capacity to meet enemies and also the size of conflicts. Dignity is debated, but the common student list puts Rahu's exaltation in Vrishabha and his debilitation in Vrishchika. Use that as a school convention, and still let the house lead. A debilitated Rahu in a strong 11th is not the same sentence as an exalted Rahu in the 8th.

Natal Rahu is fixed. Transit Rahu walks backward through the signs, on average about a year and a half per sign, and is always retrograde in the mean motion of the node. That transit is judged from the Moon for gochar stories and from the lagna if you are watching a natal house. It does not replace the eighteen-year dasha. A person can be in Venus mahadasha while transit Rahu crosses the 7th. The marriage clock is still Venus and the 7th lord. Jyothish SI separates natal Rahu from transit alerts on paid plans. The horoscope's Rahu is the birth position. Everything else is a later sky.