Vedic Astrology, Decoded

A RetroGrade Guide

Vedic Astrology,

Decoded

An accessible guide to the ancient science of Jyotish — planets, charts, timing, and how it all fits together.

WRITTEN BY RETROGRADE

powered by Jothishi.com

www.retrograde.co.in

Vedic Astrology, Decoded

An accessible guide to the ancient science of Jyotish

First digital edition, 2026

Written by Retrograde · powered by Jothishi.com

© 2026 Retrograde AI. All rights reserved.

This guide is for educational and self-reflective purposes.

It does not constitute professional medical, legal, or financial advice.

www.retrograde.co.in

CONTENTS

Table of Contents

Welcome, From Retrograde 1

1. What Is Vedic Astrology? 3

2. The Four Pillars: Planets, Signs, Houses & Charts 7

3. Nakshatras — The 27 Lunar Mansions 12

4. Divisional Charts — One Chart Isn't Enough 16

5. Dasha Systems — The Astrology of Timing 21

6. Ashtakvarga — Strength, By the Numbers 26

7. Panchanga — The Five-Fold Almanac 29

8. Yogas & Doshas — When Planets Combine 32

9. How a Real Jyotish Reading Comes Together 36

10. Continue the Journey with Retrograde 39

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms 41

WELCOME

Welcome, From Retrograde

Somewhere between a science and a language, Vedic astrology has survived more than two thousand years of kings, empires, colonization, and skepticism, and it is still one of the most widely practiced systems of self-understanding on Earth. Millions of people still consult it before a wedding, a career move, or a new home. And yet, for most newcomers, it remains a locked room full of unfamiliar Sanskrit words: Nakshatra, Dasha, Varga, Ashtakvarga, Panchanga.

We built Retrograde because we wanted to hand people the key to that room, not just a horoscope. Our AI astrology engine, Jothishi, does not guess based on your sun sign. It calculates your actual birth chart, the same way a classically trained Jyotish practitioner would, drawing on the frameworks laid down by the sage Parashara and the sage Jaimini, and then answers your specific question against that chart.

This short guide exists so that, whether or not you ever open the Retrograde app, you can read your own chart with more confidence and understand what an astrologer, or an AI astrologer, is actually looking at when they answer your question. We have tried to keep the language plain. Where the tradition uses Sanskrit terms, we explain what they mean the first time they appear, and you can always find them again in the glossary at the back.

Vedic astrology is a tradition of pattern and timing, not fortune-telling. It works best when you treat it as a mirror and a map, not a verdict.

Read this at your own pace. Some of it will feel intuitive right away. Some of it will take a second read. That's normal; it took the tradition a couple of thousand years to work out, so give yourself an afternoon.

— The Retrograde team

CHAPTER ONE

What Is Vedic Astrology?

The basic premise of astrology, Vedic or otherwise, is simple to state: the sun, the moon, and the planets are in constant motion against the backdrop of the stars, and their positions at the moment you were born are believed to correlate with the pattern of your life. Whether or not you find that premise persuasive, the more interesting question is how a particular tradition turns it into something you can actually calculate and interpret. That is where Vedic astrology, and its home discipline of Jyotish, separates itself from a sun-sign column in a newspaper.

Jyotish literally means "the science of light." In the Indian tradition it is counted among the Vedangas, the six auxiliary disciplines that support the study of the Vedas, and it is often called the "eyes of

the Vedas" for its role in timing rituals correctly. Somewhere along the way, English-speaking students of the subject started calling it "Vedic astrology," and the name has stuck, even though the tradition is really its own self-contained system of calculation and interpretation rather than a direct offshoot of Vedic scripture.

The foundational text: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra

Almost every technique used in Vedic astrology today traces back, directly or indirectly, to a text called the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, commonly abbreviated as BPHS. It is attributed to the sage Parashara, and it lays out the core architecture that the rest of the tradition builds on: the nine planets and their natures, the

twelve signs, the twelve houses, how to judge planetary strength, how to read combinations of planets (called yogas), and how to time events using planetary periods (called dashas).

Think of BPHS the way a modern student of physics might think of Newton's Principia: not the only book you will ever need, but the trunk that every later branch grows out of. When we describe how Retrograde's engine, Jothishi, approaches a birth chart, we are describing a system that keeps that trunk intact rather than inventing new rules from scratch.

A second voice: the sage Jaimini

Alongside Parashara's system, a parallel body of work is attributed to the sage Jaimini, expressed in a set of terse verses known as the Jaimini Sutras. Jaimini's system is often described as "faster" and more condensed. It uses fewer planets and simpler rules to arrive at a reading, but it introduces some genuinely distinctive tools: karakas (planets that signify a specific role, such as who is likely to be your spouse, based on their degree within a sign, rather

than which planet owns a particular house), arudha padas (a way of describing how a situation actually looks to the outside world, as opposed to how it is structured on paper), and its own family of dasha systems, most famously the sign-based Chara Dasha.

A quick note on a common misconception: people sometimes talk about "Parashari astrology" and "Jaimini astrology" as if they were two competing schools you have to pick between. In reality, BPHS itself discusses many of the techniques that later got labeled "Jaimini," and Jaimini's own sutras assume the reader already knows Parashara's basic framework. The two are better understood as complementary lenses on the same chart than as

rival systems. Retrograde's engine deliberately uses both, cross-checking a question like marriage timing against a Parashari technique and a Jaimini technique before forming an answer.

Vedic astrology vs. Western astrology

If you have ever compared your "sign" in a Vedic context to your sun sign in a Western horoscope and found they don't match, there is a precise, non-mystical reason: the two traditions measure the zodiac differently.

• Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, which is fixed to the seasons — 0° Aries is defined as the spring equinox point, regardless of which constellation the sun is actually in front of that day.

• Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, which is fixed to the actual backdrop of stars.

Because of a slow wobble in the earth's axis (called precession), these two zodiacs have drifted apart over the centuries. Today they are separated by roughly 24 degrees, a gap astrologers call the ayanamsha. That's large enough to shift most people's moon

sign, ascendant, and house placements when you move from a tropical chart to a sidereal one. Neither system is "more correct" in an absolute sense; they are simply two different conventions for slicing up the same sky, and each has its own internally consistent rulebook. Vedic astrology also leans much more heavily on dashas (planetary timing periods), nakshatras (lunar mansions), and divisional charts than mainstream Western astrology does — all of which you'll meet properly in the chapters ahead.

What's ahead: The next eight chapters walk through the building blocks Vedic astrology uses to read a chart — planets, signs, and houses; nakshatras; divisional charts; dasha timing; Ashtakvarga strength scoring; the Panchanga almanac; and common yogas

and doshas — before Chapter 9 shows how a real reading pulls all of it together.

CHAPTER TWO

The Four Pillars: Planets, Signs, Houses

& Charts

Parashara describes Vedic astrology as resting on four pillars: grahas (planets), rasis (signs), bhavas (houses), and varga chakras (divisional charts). Everything else in the tradition is really an elaboration on how these four interact. This chapter introduces the first three; the fourth gets a full chapter of its own.

Grahas — the nine planets

Vedic astrology considers nine grahas. Seven are the classical visible bodies; two are mathematical points rather than physical objects.

Rahu and Ketu are not physical planets; they are the two points where the moon's orbit crosses the sun's apparent path (the ecliptic), always exactly opposite each other. Despite being mathematical points, classical Jyotish treats them as full planetary forces with their own significations.

Rasis — the twelve signs

The zodiac spans 360° and is divided into twelve equal 30° segments called rasis. These carry the same familiar names as in Western astrology (Aries through Pisces), though because of the sidereal-vs-tropical difference described in Chapter 1, the degrees they occupy in the sky are not identical to their Western counterparts. Each rasi has a temperament, a ruling planet, and an element, and every planet's placement in a particular rasi colors how that planet's significations play out.

Bhavas — the twelve houses

While rasis are fixed divisions of the sky, houses (bhavas) are drawn relative to you — specifically, relative to your ascendant (lagna), the exact point of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon at your moment of birth. The first house always begins at your ascendant; the rest follow in order around the chart. Each house governs a department of life:

This is why the same planet gives noticeably different results for different people: Jupiter in the 10th house says something about your career, while the same Jupiter, for someone with a different ascendant, might fall in the 4th house and say something about their home life instead. A chart reading is really the story of which planets have landed in which houses, in which signs, and how they relate to one another from there.

A chart is not a list of traits. It's a map of relationships — between planets, signs, and houses — and the reading is the story those relationships tell together.

There is one more pillar to introduce before this framework is complete: divisional charts, which take this same rasi-and-house logic and apply it again at a finer resolution for a specific life topic. That's the subject of Chapter 4 — but first, a chapter on the piece of the chart that quietly runs through almost every calculation that follows: your Nakshatra.

CHAPTER THREE

Nakshatras — The 27 Lunar Mansions

If rasis slice the zodiac into twelve 30° pieces, nakshatras slice it into twenty-seven finer, 13°20' pieces. The word is often translated as "lunar mansion" or "constellation," and historically the system is older than the twelve-sign zodiac itself — early Vedic timekeeping tracked the moon's roughly 27-day journey around the earth by which nakshatra it occupied each night.

Every planet in your chart sits inside one of the 27 nakshatras, but the one that matters most for everyday reference is the moon's: your birth nakshatra, sometimes called your "Jyotish moon sign." Each nakshatra is further divided into four padas (quarters) of 3°20' each, giving 108 padas in total — the same number, not coincidentally, that shows up throughout Indian spiritual tradition.

Why Nakshatras matter

Three things make nakshatras more than a trivia layer on top of the twelve signs:

• They set your dasha sequence. The most widely used timing system in Vedic astrology, Vimshottari Dasha (covered in Chapter 5), is calculated entirely from which nakshatra the moon occupied at your birth.

• They're used in compatibility matching. Traditional Vedic matchmaking (Ashtakoot or "Guna Milan") compares two people's birth nakshatras across eight factors to gauge compatibility.

• They add texture to personality reading. Each nakshatra has its own ruling deity, symbol, and temperament, which is layered on top of the broader sign-based reading.

Notice the pattern in the "ruling planet" column: it cycles through the same nine planets, in the same order, three times over. That fixed sequence (Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, then repeat) is precisely what makes it possible to calculate the Vimshottari Dasha sequence directly from a birth nakshatra, as you'll see in Chapter 5.

In practice: When Retrograde's engine analyzes your chart, it identifies the nakshatra and pada of every planet, not just the moon. A planet's nakshatra placement can shift how it behaves almost as much as its sign does — two Jupiters in the same sign

but different nakshatras can read quite differently.

CHAPTER FOUR

Divisional Charts — One Chart Isn't

Enough

Your main birth chart, technically called the Rasi chart or D1, plots where every planet sits among the twelve signs at the moment you were born. It's the foundation of every reading, but on its own, Parashara considered it too coarse a tool to answer specific

questions with confidence. His solution, laid out in BPHS, was to subdivide each 30° sign into smaller slices and re-map the result onto a fresh set of twelve signs, producing an entirely new chart, a

divisional chart or varga chakra, that can be read independently

and is dedicated to one particular department of life.

The logic is easier to grasp with an example. Take the Navamsa, or D9 chart, used above all others for marriage. To build it, each 30° sign is divided into nine equal parts of 3°20' each, and each part is mapped to one of the twelve signs following a fixed classical rule.

A planet's exact degree within its sign, information the D1 chart doesn't use at all, now determines which sign it falls into on the D9. Two people can have the same planet in the same sign on their D1 chart and completely different placements on their D9, which is exactly why a good reading checks both.

The sixteen core charts, and beyond

Classical texts describe a standard set of sixteen widely used divisional charts (the Shodashvarga), and go on to define finer subdivisions all the way out to sixty (D60) for the most granular analysis. Here are the ones you'll encounter most often:

Two habits are worth building if you want to read your own chart more carefully. First, always check the relevant divisional chart alongside the D1 rather than instead of it — the D1 tells you the overall shape of a theme, and the specialized varga chart refines it. Second, resist the temptation to treat any single divisional chart

as the final word; Parashara's method is cumulative, and a well-supported theme should show up consistently across several charts, not just one.

Think of divisional charts less like separate horoscopes and more like different lenses on the same telescope, each one bringing a different part of the picture into focus.

In practice: This is one of the more labor-intensive parts of a traditional reading to do by hand, since each divisional chart requires its own recalculation and its own house-by-house

interpretation. It's also where an engine like Jothishi earns its keep

— every question you ask Retrograde is checked against the full set of relevant divisional charts automatically, not just the D1.

CHAPTER FI VE

Dasha Systems — The Astrology of

Timing

A chart can tell you a great deal about the shape of a life — what kind of career suits you, what your relationships tend to look like, where your strengths and blind spots sit. What it cannot do on its own is tell you when. That's the job of dasha systems: a way of dividing your life into a sequence of planetary periods, each one

"ruled" by a particular planet, whose themes and house placements color whatever happens while that period runs.

Vimshottari Dasha, the default system

The dasha you'll meet most often is Vimshottari Dasha, a 120-year cycle divided among the nine planets, calculated directly from your birth nakshatra (see Chapter 3). Each planet governs a period of fixed length: Ketu gets 7 years, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, and Mercury 17 — always in that same fixed order, cycling back to Ketu once Mercury's period ends.

Within each planet's major period (Mahadasha), the same nine-planet sequence repeats again at a smaller scale, giving sub-periods called Antardashas (and, within those, further sub-sub-periods called Pratyantardashas). This is what lets an astrologer, or Jothishi, narrow a broad multi-year theme down to a specific window of months. Someone in a Jupiter Mahadasha isn't simply "in a Jupiter period" for sixteen straight years of uniform

experience; the Antardasha running at any given moment blends Jupiter's themes with whichever planet is currently sub-ruling, and that combination is what actually gets interpreted.

Jaimini's contribution: Chara Dasha

Where Vimshottari is planet-based, Jaimini's Chara Dasha is sign-based: instead of asking which planet rules a period, it asks which sign does, with the length of each sign's period derived from a calculation involving that sign's ruling planet's position. Because it

is built on entirely different math, Chara Dasha makes an excellent independent check on a Vimshottari-based timing conclusion — if both systems point to the same window for, say, a marriage or a career shift, that convergence carries real weight.

Other systems worth knowing

• Yogini Dasha — a shorter, 36-year cycle across eight periods, often used to refine short-term timing.

• Ashtottari Dasha — a 108-year alternative to Vimshottari, which classical texts recommend using under specific chart conditions.

• Kalachakra Dasha — a more intricate system that Parashara himself called the "most respectable" dasha, built directly from

nakshatra pada positions rather than the simpler nakshatra-lord sequence.

In practice: When you ask Retrograde a timing question — "when will X happen" — Jothishi is running your Vimshottari Mahadasha and Antardasha, cross-checking against Chara Dasha, and looking at which houses and planets are activated during the

relevant window, rather than giving you a single system's answer in isolation.

CHAPTER S I X

Ashtakvarga — Strength, By the

Numbers

Most of what we've covered so far is qualitative: this planet, in this house, in this sign, means this. Ashtakvarga is the part of the tradition that turns strength into arithmetic.

The method, in outline: for each of the seven classical planets (excluding Rahu and Ketu), Parashara lays out a table of which houses, counted from each of the eight reference points (the seven planets plus the ascendant), that planet considers auspicious. Going through the chart and marking a point wherever one of those favorable conditions is met produces a personal scorecard of 0 to 8 points for every sign, for every planet — a system called Bhinnashtakavarga ("individual Ashtakvarga"). Add all seven planets' scorecards together, and you get the Sarvashtakavarga ("combined Ashtakvarga"), a single set of twelve numbers, one per sign, typically ranging from around 20 to 40 points, that reflects the overall supportiveness of each sign in

your particular chart.

What the numbers are used for

Ashtakvarga rarely drives a reading on its own; instead, it's used to adjudicate between two placements or two time periods that look similar on paper. If your Vimshottari Dasha is entering a Saturn period, and Saturn happens to sit in a sign with a strong Sarvashtakavarga score, that period is generally read as more likely to deliver on Saturn's themes constructively. The same Saturn period, with a weak score, suggests more friction along the

way. Ashtakvarga is also used to compare planetary transits against the natal chart — a transiting planet moving through a sign with a high score in your Sarvashtakavarga tends to be gentler than the same transit through a weak sign.

Ashtakvarga doesn't change what a planet means. It tells you how much support the chart is giving that planet to deliver on its meaning.

In practice: Jothishi computes the full Ashtakvarga table for every chart it analyzes and uses it as a quantitative tie-breaker whenever a question involves comparing two time windows or two possible outcomes.

CHAPTER S EVEN

Panchanga — The Five-Fold Almanac

Panchanga means "five limbs," and it refers to the five ingredients traditional Vedic astrology uses to describe any given day, independent of anyone's personal birth chart. Where everything up to this point has been about reading an individual's chart,

Panchanga is about judging the quality of a moment in time itself, which is why it sits at the heart of choosing an auspicious date, a practice called Muhurta.

Traditional almanacs (also called Panchangas) publish all five values for every day of the year, and a Muhurta specialist cross-references them against the birth chart of the person or event in question to identify favorable windows — a wedding date, a house-warming, the launch of a business, or the first day of a journey. Some tithis, weekdays, and yoga combinations are traditionally considered inauspicious for certain categories of

events regardless of whose chart you check against, which is why Muhurta is treated as a discipline in its own right, distinct from natal chart reading.

In practice: When you ask Retrograde about timing an event rather than reading your own chart — "is this a good date for my wedding?" — Jothishi pulls the Panchanga for that date and checks it against your natal placements together, rather than relying on either one alone.

CHAPTER EI GHT

Yogas & Doshas — When Planets

Combine

Individually, a planet in a house tells a partial story. Classical Jyotish devotes enormous attention to specific combinations of planets, houses, and signs, called yogas when they're considered

supportive and often labeled doshas when they flag a condition

worth paying attention to. Neither word translates cleanly to "blessing" or "curse" — they're closer to "combination" and "flaw," and both are meant to be read in the context of the whole chart, not as an isolated verdict.

A few classical yogas

• Raja Yoga — broadly, any combination that links a chart's "trine houses" (1st, 5th, 9th — associated with fortune and dharma) to its "quadrant houses" (1st, 4th, 7th, 10th — associated with power and action). Charts with well-formed Raja Yogas are traditionally read as carrying the potential for authority, achievement, or status.

• Dhana Yoga — combinations linking wealth-related houses (2nd and 11th, primarily) to other strong points in the chart, associated with financial gain.

• Gaja Kesari Yoga — formed when the moon and Jupiter sit in a quadrant from each other, traditionally associated with wisdom, respect, and a well-regarded reputation.

A few well-known doshas

• Mangal Dosha (Manglik) — a specific placement of Mars in certain houses relative to the ascendant or the moon, traditionally associated with friction or delay in marriage. It's one of dozens of factors astrologers weigh when discussing marital compatibility, not a standalone disqualifier, and several

classical exceptions (called Mangal Dosha cancellations) reduce or remove its effect depending on the rest of the chart.

• Sade Sati — a roughly seven-and-a-half-year period during which slow-moving Saturn transits the sign your natal moon occupies, plus the sign before and the sign after it. Popularly feared, it's more accurately described as a phase of restructuring, responsibility, and discipline — its intensity depends heavily on where Saturn sits in your natal chart and how it's aspected.

• Kaal Sarp Dosha — occurs when all seven classical planets fall on one side of the Rahu-Ketu axis. Traditionally read as a source of obstacles or a feeling of being "hemmed in," though, as with Mangal Dosha, its real-world severity varies enormously from

chart to chart.

A dosha is a flag to examine more closely, not a sentence. Every classical dosha comes with classical exceptions, and a chart is always read as a whole.

In practice: Retrograde's engine checks for common yogas and doshas as part of a full chart analysis, but always in context — it will tell you a Manglik placement exists and what traditionally offsets it, rather than stopping at the label.

CHAPTER NI NE

How a Real Jyotish Reading Comes

Together

Each of the last seven chapters introduced one tool in isolation. A real reading uses all of them together, in a fairly consistent sequence. Here's a walk-through of how a trained Jyotish practitioner, or Jothishi, approaches a typical question: "When am I likely to get married?"

1. Start with the relevant house and its lord. Marriage lives in the 7th house. The practitioner checks what sign the 7th house falls in, which planet rules that sign, and where that ruling planet itself is placed.

2. Bring in the specialized divisional chart. The D9 (Navamsa) is checked next, since it governs marriage specifically and shows

the underlying strength of every planet, refining the picture the D1 gave.

3. Identify the natural significator. Venus (for a male chart) or

Jupiter (for a female chart) is the traditional general significator of a spouse, and its condition — sign, house, aspects — is weighed alongside the 7th house itself.

4. Layer in Jaimini's karaka. The Jaimini system identifies a

specific "Darakaraka" planet (the planet at the lowest degree in the chart) as a more individualized signifier of the spouse, adding a second, independent angle.

5. Turn to timing. With the relevant houses and planets identified,

the practitioner scans the Vimshottari Mahadasha and Antardasha sequence for windows where those planets are

active, then cross-checks the same windows against Chara Dasha.

6. Weigh it with Ashtakvarga. Among the candidate windows, the

ones where the relevant houses carry strong Sarvashtakavarga points are favored as more likely to deliver smoothly.

Check for supporting or complicating yogas and doshas. A

Mangal Dosha, if present, is noted along with whatever classically offsets it; a supportive yoga involving the 7th house adds confidence to the window identified.

If a specific date is on the table, bring in Panchanga. Once a

general window is established, choosing the actual day draws on the five-limbed almanac from Chapter 7.

Notice that no single step "answers" the question by itself. The confidence in a conclusion comes from how many independent techniques converge on the same answer. This is exactly the design principle behind Jothishi: rather than picking one method and stopping there, it runs the full stack, chart, divisional charts, both major dasha families, Ashtakvarga, and relevant yogas and doshas, for every question you ask, and gives you an answer built from where they agree.

The depth of Vedic astrology isn't in any one clever trick. It's in how many independently derived techniques are expected to agree before a conclusion is trusted.

CHAPTER TEN

Continue the Journey with Retrograde

Everything in this guide is the background knowledge our engine, Jothishi, applies every time you ask it a question. You don't need to remember any of the Sanskrit terms or run any of the calculations yourself — that's the entire point of building Retrograde. You ask a question the way you'd ask a knowledgeable friend, in plain language, and Jothishi does the chart work in the background: your Rasi chart, every relevant

divisional chart, your Vimshottari and Chara Dasha timelines, your Ashtakvarga scores, and the Panchanga for any date in question, then gives you a personalized, plain-language answer.

What's included

• Full birth chart (Kundli) calculation from your date, time, and place of birth

• All divisional charts, D1 through D60

• Multiple dasha systems, cross-checked against each other

• Ashtakvarga strength scoring

• Panchanga and Muhurta support for event timing

• 700+ specialized bots covering specific life topics, from career to compatibility

Simple, pay-as-you-go pricing

No subscriptions, and questions never expire. See current plans and full feature details at retrograde.co.in.

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Retrograde AI, powered by Jothishi.com, provides insights based on the traditional principles of Vedic astrology (Jyotish) for guidance and self-reflection. No system of astrology can guarantee specific outcomes. This guide, and the readings generated by Retrograde, are not a substitute for professional medical, legal, or financial advice.

REFERENCE

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Ascendant (Lagna)

The zodiac point rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth; the anchor point for all twelve houses.

Antardasha

A sub-period within a Mahadasha, ruled by a second planet.

Arudha Pada

A Jaimini technique showing how a house or matter appears to the outside world.

Ashtakvarga

A point-based system for scoring the relative strength of signs and houses.

Ayanamsha

The angular offset between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs.

Bhava

House; one of twelve life departments measured from the ascendant.

BPHS

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, the foundational text of Vedic astrology attributed to sage Parashara.

Chara Dasha

A sign-based timing system from the Jaimini tradition.

Dasha

A planetary or sign-based timing period used to sequence life events.

Dosha

A chart condition traditionally flagged as needing closer attention (e.g. Mangal Dosha).

Graha

Planet, in the astrological sense — includes Rahu and Ketu.

Jaimini Sutras

A terse verse text attributed to sage Jaimini, source of karakas, arudhas, and Chara Dasha.

Jyotish

"Science of light"; the traditional Sanskrit name for Vedic astrology.

Karaka

A planet that signifies a specific person, role, or matter.

Kundli

Birth chart.

Mahadasha

The main, longer planetary period in a dasha sequence.

Muhurta

The practice of selecting an astrologically favorable date and time for an event.

Nakshatra

One of 27 lunar mansions the zodiac is divided into.

Navamsa (D9)

The divisional chart used primarily for marriage and planetary strength.

Pada

A quarter-division of a nakshatra, spanning 3°20'.

Panchanga

The five-limbed Vedic almanac: Tithi, Vara, Nakshatra, Yoga, and Karana.

Rasi

Zodiac sign; one of twelve fixed 30° divisions of the zodiac.

Sidereal zodiac

A zodiac measured against the fixed backdrop of stars; used in Vedic astrology.

Tithi

Lunar day, based on the angular distance between the moon and sun.

Tropical zodiac

A zodiac fixed to the seasons; used in Western astrology.

Varga Chakra

Divisional chart; a subdivided chart focused on one life topic.

Vimshottari Dasha

The most widely used dasha system, a 120-year cycle calculated from birth nakshatra.

Yoga (combination)

A specific planetary combination traditionally read as significant, often auspicious.

✧

"Vedic astrology is a tradition of pattern and timing, not

fortune-telling. Read it like a map, not a verdict."

Written by Retrograde · powered by Jothishi.com www.retrograde.co.in