Reading Fertility Questions in the Chart

Fertility questions in a horoscope are read from the 5th house of children, its lord, and Jupiter. Jupiter is the putrakaraka, the natural significator of offspring, whether or not he rules the 5th. The Moon is examined because the mind and the fluids of the body are lunar themes, and the 5th lord's condition shows whether the house can speak. A Lahiri sidereal chart fixes which sign falls in the 5th. That sign is counted from the lagna, so two people born in the same month do not share a 5th house.

The Saptamsa, the D7, is the division classical texts use for progeny. A 5th house that looks open in the birth chart and blocked in the D7 is a different reading from a 5th house that is open in both. Affliction has a specific shape here: the 5th lord in the 6th, 8th, or 12th, or Saturn and Mars pressing the 5th, asks for a slower reading. It does not hand down a verdict. The Vimshottari dasha already running decides whether this is the stretch of life in which the 5th is due to operate. A quiet 5th during a dasha of an unrelated planet can become active when the 5th lord's period arrives.

A physician names a medical cause. The horoscope does not. There is no degree of Jupiter, and no transit date, that turns a chart into a diagnosis or a promise of conception. Couples asking this question still need the marriage factors beside it, because the 7th house and the D9 Navamsa describe the bond in which a child is hoped for, while the 5th describes the child. Mixing those houses produces a love reading when the question was progeny, or a progeny reading when the question was the marriage itself.