The Vedic mirror
Jyotish reads the Moon first, not the Sun. Ask an Indian astrologer for your sign and they will answer with the sign the Moon occupied, because in this tradition the Moon carries the mind and the Sun carries the soul's outer shape. If you have only ever been told a Sun sign, this is usually the reading that lands differently.
It also measures against the actual constellations rather than the seasons, using a correction called the ayanamsa. This page uses Lahiri, the Indian government standard. The two zodiacs have drifted about 24 degrees apart, which is why roughly four people in five get a different sign here than in the Western chart. Neither is wrong. They are measuring different things.
- Nakshatra, or birth star
- The sidereal zodiac divided into 27 rather than 12. Your birth star is the one the Moon stood in when you were born, and jyotish weighs it as heavily as the sign.
- Lagna
- The Vedic name for the rising sign, measured in the sidereal zodiac. The body you walk around in.
- Rasi chart
- The main chart, drawn here as the North Indian diamond. The top diamond is the first house and the houses run counterclockwise.
- Rahu and Ketu
- The two lunar nodes, where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's. These are points rather than planets: the direction of hunger, and what you are here to release.
How to read the rasi chart
- It is a square, not a circle
- North Indian charts are drawn as a diamond inside a square. Western charts are round. Nothing else about them differs in kind.
- Twelve boxes, twelve houses
- The houses are fixed in place here, and the signs move between them. That is the opposite of the Western wheel, which is the usual thing that confuses people.
- The top centre diamond
- Your first house, the lagna. Everything is counted from there, going counter-clockwise.
- The letters in the boxes
- Your planets, abbreviated. A box with nothing in it is an empty house, which is normal and not a lack.
Start here. Find the box holding your Moon. In jyotish the Moon carries the mind, and it is read before the Sun.