Lesson 5 of 14
The lagna and the twelve houses
The rising sign becomes the first house, and every area of life is counted from it.
Houses
The is the rasi rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. It turns the chart from a picture of the sky into a picture of a life, because it fixes where the twelve houses begin. The lagna sign is the first house, the next sign the second, and so on round the circle. This is the whole-sign method used in the South and on this site: a graha’s house follows directly from its rasi.
Because the whole sky turns once a day, the lagna passes through all twelve signs every day. That makes it the most personal point in a chart. Twins born fifteen minutes apart can share a Moon star and still have different lagnas.
The twelve houses
- : the self, the body and character.
- : wealth, family and speech.
- : brothers and sisters, courage and effort.
- : the mother, the home, vehicles and schooling.
- : children, intelligence and the merit of the past.
- : health, work, debts and rivals.
- : marriage and the spouse.
- : longevity, obstacles and hidden matters.
- : the father, fortune and faith.
- : career and standing.
- : gains and friends.
- : expenses, rest and faraway places.
Groups of houses
The houses fall into families. The first, fourth, seventh and tenth are the , the pillars; a graha there acts strongly. The first, fifth and ninth are the , the houses of fortune, and their lords are the chart’s natural helpers. The sixth, eighth and twelfth are the , the difficult houses, read with care rather than fear. A graha that owns both a kendra and a trikona is a for that lagna and does double good.
Lords carry houses around the chart
Every house has a lord, the ruler of its sign, and the lord carries that house’s matters wherever it sits. In the sample chart the lagna is . Counting on, the seventh sign is , so the seventh house, marriage, is ruled by , and Sevvai sits in , the twelfth house. An astrologer reads that as a link between marriage and the twelfth house’s matters: faraway places, expenses, and the private life. For this lagna owns the ninth and tenth houses, a trikona and a kendra, so Sani is the yogakaraka.
The Moon as a second lagna
Tamil practice reads the chart twice: once from the lagna and once from the Moon’s sign, the . The daily rasi readings and the transit readings are counted from the Moon, and when the birth time is not known the Moon’s sign is the only first house there is. The two readings are compared: a matter supported from both is held to be firmer.
The in the diagram makes the houses easy to see, because it keeps them in fixed places and moves the signs instead. House one is always the top diamond; the numbers written inside are the rasis, counted from Mesham as 1.