The Lagna and the Twelve Houses

A house is space, and it never moves

Each 30-degree field of the circle (Chapter A1) is what we started calling a house. A house is nothing by itself. A house is space. Whenever I say "house", or "the energy of the space", take it as the house. The house is always space, and the house is always fixed.

If I call this one the 1st house, it will always be the 1st house. It will never become anything else. This one will always be the 2nd, this one always the 3rd, and so on up to the 12th. The houses never change, whatever number is written inside them.

Please do not get bored that I go so basic. I want you to understand everything as one connected whole from the start. In every class I point at the twelve houses again, one by one, because they remain the same in every kundli. I repeat these basics at the start of every class, because someone is always attending for the first time. It is my constant rule: whatever else happens, the framework of the kundli must be clear. Nothing will happen from this alone, but you must know which house is which.

These houses will always remain the same. Whatever number is written inside them, it represents the rashi.

The North Indian chart

In this book we use only the North Indian chart. Draw it once yourself: a square, then a diamond in the middle, and then cross it from corner to corner.

The numbers 1 to 12 in the chart above are house numbers. Remember them by position:

• 1 is the top diamond. This is the lagna.
• 2 is the top left triangle. 3 is the left-hand triangle below it.
• 4 is the left diamond. 5 and 6 are the lower left triangles.
• 7 is the bottom diamond, directly opposite the 1st.
• 8 and 9 are the lower right triangles. 10 is the right diamond.
• 11 and 12 are the upper right triangles.

The 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th are the diamonds. The 1st is opposite the 7th, and the 4th is opposite the 10th.

You will also hear me use the Sanskrit names: the 2nd is the dvitiya bhava, the 7th the saptam bhava, the 8th the ashtam bhava, the 9th the navam bhava. Ghar is simply the everyday word for a house, so the chautha ghar is the 4th house.

In the North Indian chart the 1st diamond is always at the top. It never moves. The houses are fixed, and only what we write inside the boxes changes. Houses are always counted in one direction around the chart, from the 1st (the lagna) onwards: 1, 2, 3 and so on to 12, counter-clockwise.

The house decides the event

How do we predict? First comes the house, then the rashi, then the graha. I explain the whole method in Chapter B0. Here I only want you to see what the house does.

The house is like a coordinate. It tells you what event is happening, in whose home, in which part of life. Let me take one girl and walk her through her day.

• Her foot hurts: the event is in the 12th house.
• Her head hurts: the 1st house.
• Her stomach hurts: the 5th house.
• She gets a job, and the salary must come: the 11th house has to be activated.
• She sits down and eats her food: the 2nd house.
• Her home is very big: the 4th house.

Now she and her friend start fighting. "My papa is good, your papa is not good." Where is this event? In the 9th house, of both of them. So we open both charts and look at both 9th houses.

Suppose the friend has Mesha in the 9th and she has Simha in the 9th. With Simha there, her father is authoritative and always balanced. With Mesha there, the friend's father always has to start something new, wants to do many things in one day, and keeps giving instructions to everyone. How that father talks, how he moves, how he deals with people: all of it comes from that one house.

Same house, same area of life, a different environment. You can already see why a reader needs more than the house alone.

I have not looked at a single graha yet, and already I have described two fathers. First comes the house. And if I want to read the father's life in depth, I make the 9th house the lagna and read the whole chart from there. That is the rotation of the axis, which you will learn in Chapter B0.

The twelve houses at a glance

Here is the map before we walk through it. Tap any house in the chart to read what it shows.

A first round through the twelve houses

In my first class I do not wait to finish the 1st house before showing you the other eleven. I go round all twelve quickly, to give you the flavour. I am not asking you to remember these lines. I want you to see how predictions come khat-khat, one after another, once you understand what the house is.

For each house I first tell you what the house is, in the words I use when I open that house in class. Then come the quick predictions from my first round. Every house gets its full chapter later, with every graha and every rashi.

But one thing you must do now. You must know what we see from each of the twelve houses. That much you have to remember, and that is why I am giving it to you here.

The 1st house: personality and the body

The lagna tells you the personality and the physical body. It is the takht, the simhasan: the throne of the chart. This is the most important place in the chart, because the whole chart is controlled from here.

The 1st house keeps you alive. Whoever owns it, the rashi there and its lord, keeps the person alive. When does a person die? When his 1st house is destroyed. So the energy of the lagna must be maintained and given poshan, nourishment. Every lagna rashi needs a different nourishment, and not every person is hurt by the same thing. Illness comes when the energy of the lagna becomes weak. When we stop watering the rashi of the lagna, the lagna dies.

The owner of the rashi in the 1st is the lagna lord, and I call him the king of the chart. He is the manager of your personality's development, and wherever he goes, you put most of your energy. A graha that physically sits in the 1st has sat on the throne, and it stamps your body and your nature.

Now the quick round. When we say "his personality never grew", "he is egoistic", "he is very timid", "he does not want to face anyone", "he is always finding faults in others", we are talking about the 1st house. When we say "he is always ill", "his body is weak", "he never takes a stand for others", "he is not absorbed in himself", that is also the 1st house.

Read Chapter B1 for the nourishment each lagna needs, the lagna lord in all twelve houses, and every graha on the throne.

The 2nd house: speech, family and wealth

The 2nd house is your resource, your sampada: the foundational resources available to sustain you. The lagna is the personality and the things a person starts. Whether those things are able to remain, we see from the 2nd house. How much resource you have, and how valuable you are, is the 2nd house.

From the 2nd we see how a person talks: the voice, the tone, the speed, the vocabulary, and how much weight and truth his words carry. We see which family he belongs to, the lineage and ancestry he is born into, and the kutumb, the household, and what its people are like. We see how much wealth he can accumulate and how many tangible assets he can build, and how much power there is in his vachan, his word.

We also see how many people a person can feed: for how many he can do bharan-poshan, food and upkeep. And we see his food: whether he eats sattvic food (the way sadhus eat, three times a day, peacefully), rajasic food (chaat and pakodi, eaten heartily), or tamasic food (non-vegetarian food, liquor, cigarettes, intoxication). The 2nd is the door of the mouth. It also gives face value, how good you look, and the face and neck. (The inner machine of the throat belongs to the 3rd.)

Counted from other houses, the 2nd shows your father's faults and misfortunes, his roga, rina, shatru (disease, debt and enemies); your mother's desires; and your grandfather's karma. There is a saying about this house: when a person has everything, many people gather around him, and when the resource starts to run out, that same kutumb becomes marak, a killer.

Now the quick round. A child who cannot speak: the problem is in the 2nd house. A broken family, a person who never got love in the family: the 2nd house. No wealth in the family: the 2nd house. A child is born and Lakshmi arrives, money starts raining on the family: the 2nd house. "Your ancestors were giants": the 2nd house. How you speak, which words you choose, how much you say wrong, bad or false things: the 2nd house.

Read Chapter B2 for how every graha and every rashi speaks, eats and saves.

The 3rd house: courage, effort and the subconscious

The 3rd is the house where children play and jump about, the house of the subconscious brain. How do we think? How do we drive? How do we hurl abuses? What makes us angry, and what do we like? All of this is the 3rd. It is the child inside us. It represents what we enjoy doing naturally, and how we deal with our immediate surroundings. Whatever you are enjoying, we see from the 3rd house.

From it we see the neighbour and the surroundings: the area around your house and the condition of its main gate. We see the central processing unit: your analytical skill, how well you process and calculate, how well you understand your environment. We see the subconscious brain, the thoughts that run through your mind, and your intellectual capability: book reading, and how you respond.

It holds the vocal cord, so how well you speak, write and sing, and the thyroid gland, which releases the hormones. It holds your younger brothers and sisters, your hobbies and what you do in your free time, your dedication in sadhana and your mantra japa, and the medals and recognition you get. It is parakram, how brave you are. And it gives self-awareness, exploration, short travel and driving: a trip somewhere in a day, roaming in a mall.

Now the quick round. How brave are you? Can you fight for yourself? Can you suppress someone? How do you talk, and how do you sing? Your vocal cord is the 3rd house.

• Someone sings heavy, like a Punjabi singer: Martian energy.
• Someone sings very sweetly: the Moon.
• Someone does Vedic chanting beautifully: Jupiter in the 3rd.
• Someone chants the Gayatri: the Sun in the 3rd.
• Someone sings romantic songs well: Mercury and Venus.
• Someone writes very well: Mercury.

Someone listens to sad songs: Saturn in the 3rd. Romantic sad songs: Saturn and Venus. His wife left him, his girlfriend left him, and now he only listens to heartbreak songs: Ketu with Venus, Ketu with Rahu, or Rahu with Venus. Someone wins many medals: Mars and the Sun dominating. Someone teaches very well, like a principal: the Sun in the 3rd. When he speaks, people go mad to listen: the Moon with some graha in the 3rd.

His younger brother is useless: the 3rd house. His younger sibling was killed, or the mother had an abortion and the sibling was never born: Mars, Ketu or Saturn, or Mars with Rahu, in the 3rd. There is no younger sibling after him at all: the 3rd is damaged.

"You do nothing to make me happy. Your effort is zero. You are donkey number one. You never work hard. In team work you are zero. You always copy-paste. You never do anything on time." This is a damaged 3rd house.

You are not getting opportunities, the job is not coming, you are completely drained, you keep thinking negatively without knowing it, and you have filled my mind with negativity too. The 3rd house is also the subconscious mind. What do you listen to? Whose company do you keep? Whose thoughts do you take in? All of this is the 3rd house.

Use it like an IIT exam. His wife beats him with a slipper: Mars in the wife's 3rd house. With a stick: Saturn in the wife's 3rd. With a shoe: the Sun in the wife's 3rd. She calls the police or some authority, or keeps quoting the court: Saturn in the 3rd. Even the threats you give come from the 3rd house, so you can predict how a client threatens people.

"Whatever happens, God will see. I am in God's hands. Keep doing your karma, keep singing the glories of Hari." That is Mina and Jupiter in the 3rd.

"I fell asleep, I could not study." Someone lives in illusion: he heard from somewhere that his wife is having an affair, and does not even know from whom he heard it. That is the Moon in the 3rd, listening to rumours.

Nobody asks about him, and he is always getting other people's work done, acting as a catalyst: Mercury in the 3rd. He got someone's papers lost, arranged a forgery, tells lies, spreads false rumours: Rahu in the 3rd.

Now derive one more. The younger sibling's married life is bad: count the 7th from the 3rd. The younger sibling keeps finding small mistakes: the 3rd house again. I am not telling you to memorise any of this. See how the predictions come khat-khat once you understand the 3rd. I will not make you a rote astrologer. You will derive from the basics.

Read Chapter B3 for the neighbourhood, the mind, the voice and every graha in this house.

The 4th house: home, heart and mother

The 4th house is naturally the house of the mother, and it is naturally given to Chandra, the karaka of the mind. When a person is very troubled, when all his hope and despair stay locked inside the house, when he is so hurt that he does not feel like going out: that is the 4th house.

It is your own home, where there are no rules. Nobody is judging you. You are in your natural clothes. Everything that gives you joy is there. A person fights in the world anyway: in the 6th house with rog, rin, shatru, in the 10th for position, in the 5th for fame, in the 9th for dharma, and in the 7th he wants happiness from the partner. But the 4th is not for showing anyone. It is our heart, our privacy, home sweet home, where we rest.

It is our emotional body. When someone has a breakup, the pain is so great because he had given the key of this house to his partner: "I gave my heart to my partner." A physical injury heals quickly. But when the blow lands on the heart, from the one you love and trust, the pain is very, very great.

From the 4th we see home sweet home; the emotional body, how we feel and whom we like; the public, and whether the common people accept you; your core, your moral values, your bhaaripan (gravity, weight), and how far you can fall morally; the heart, and the diseases of the heart; and the mother. A mother does not love with logic or for profit and loss. She feeds you, washes your clothes and gives you things on time. So the 4th also gives loving service, the kind for which no money is received.

It shows land and wealth, everything in your home from the bed to the washing machine and the stove; peace, where you find shanti; your childhood and your memories with your mother; the mother's karma; what triggers you at home; and your depth of realisation, how much of what you study you have actually experienced and how well you understand yourself.

In the dasha of the 4th house many people end up sitting at home, and the job goes. The 4th also represents food and rest: if a graha sits there and you do not eat properly, the job goes and health issues come. The 4th and the Moon are the karaka of happiness. Man ke haare haar hai, man ke jeete jeet: lose in the mind and you have lost; win in the mind and you have won.

Now the quick round. A big house: Jupiter in the 4th. Vastu defects in the house: Rahu in the 4th. A transformer near the house, a big drain near the house: Rahu in the 4th. Barren land beside the house: Ketu in the 4th.

The neighbour is poor, the people at home are always ill, there is conflict at home: Kanya in the 4th. You have to use the rashis too. He donated land: a Mars and Ketu combination.

His mother left him: an afflicted 4th. His mother gave him to an orphanage in childhood: a damaged 4th, with an 8th-house dasha running. He never got the mother's love: a damaged 4th. Constant quarrels at home: malefics in the 4th. That one line, that in the 4th house we look at the malefics, has helped me a lot. You will always have the doubt: will he get beaten at home or not? Look at the malefics in the 4th.

At home she always gets others to do the work and becomes the big boss: the Sun in the 4th. There is beating and fighting at home: Mars in the 4th. A lot of junk and garbage lies around the house: Saturn in the 4th. The house is full of electronic items: Mercury in the 4th. The house is on the third floor, or they live in an apartment: Mercury in the 4th.

There is a neem tree near the house: Mars. Lots of small, beautiful plants around the house: Mercury, in the 3rd or the 4th. They live in a very good society: the Sun in the 4th. There are guards and security around the house: Mars.

Read Chapter B4 for the accounts of Chandra, the heart and every graha at home.

The 5th house: intelligence, education and children

The 5th is the Sun's house, and it is the house of the previous birth, the purva janma. From the 5th you can make predictions that you cannot make from anywhere else. And today, when people are so independent and want to arrange their own marriages, it matters more than ever, because it shows the love life and what kind of partner you are sexually attracted to.

From the 5th we see your vision: how big and how deep you can think, how big you can see yourself. We see education and school life: who was the topper, who did very well, who was heavily bullied, and in some charts the trauma and sexual abuse of school years. We see mantra siddhi: God is only Bhagavan Sri Krishna, Bhagavan Vishnu, but on which form should this person meditate, which mantra should he chant, which deity should he worship?

It holds your punya karma, the merit consolidated from past lives. That is why the partners we like, the ones we desire, the ones we want to marry, come from the 5th: they come from the previous birth. It shows the love life, and, from the 5th house and its lord, what type of partner attracts you sexually.

It shows which stream of education suits the person: technical or non-technical, doctor or engineer, science, biology, mathematics, arts, finance or commerce. (We see career from the 10th, but the field of study from the 5th.) Whose aspect falls on the 5th? With the aspect of Mars or Saturn, I say technical degrees; with Venus, an interest in biology.

It gives the chair and position: every promotion, from Software Engineer 1 to Software Engineer 2, from manager to senior manager, every officer's post, IAS, IPS, a PO, a post in the RBI, a constable. A connection of the 5th with the 10th, the 11th or the 2nd is good, because the 5th's job is to give you a chair. That is why the 5th house of an IAS, an IPS or any big officer must be good. And because from a chair you can fall as well as rise, the 5th also shows allegations: only when the 5th is in good condition can a person stay in a good position.

It shows your grandfather, and your mother's family: her face, her speech and her wealth. It is the energy of maintenance, what keeps you performing in a job and keeps improving your status, physique, appearance and social acceptance. It is your social life and social status: the 4th was the common public; the 5th is society, how society sees you. In my first round I put it simply: the 5th is status.

It shows children: how many, whether you can conceive, whether to try IVF. Many times, even when the sexual life is bad, children still happen; that too we see here. At an advanced level, the children's Sun and lagna come from the 5th house of the mother and the father, so from there we can even check whether a child is yours. And the 5th, which keeps processing and connecting you to the past life, together with the 8th, shows the depth of realisation.

Now the quick round. This boy studies like Brihaspati himself: Jupiter in the 5th. "His respect is like Surya Narayana's; when he comes, everybody becomes happy": good grahas in the 5th. His girlfriend comes from a very royal family: a very good graha in the 5th. He was defamed after a relationship: the 5th lord in the 8th.

You cannot even tell whether he is in a relationship or not; he thinks about his girlfriend every night: Vrischika in the 5th. He searches for girls on Instagram: Rahu in the 5th.

He solves problems very well: Mars in the 5th. He solves problems with the back of his hand, sideways, effortlessly: Rahu in the 5th. He has so many contacts there is nothing more to say: Mercury in the 5th. He believes only in hard work, nothing else: Saturn in the 5th. He got everything by inheritance: a strong Sun or Jupiter in the 5th.

He weighs everything in money and brings everything into the family: Venus in the 5th. Whenever this girl runs short of money, she makes a boyfriend: Tula in the 5th. The house always gives you the event; the rashi and graha give the flavour.

Read Chapter B5 for the love life, children and every graha in the house of past merit.

The 6th house: disease, debt and enemies

All rog, rin, shatru, disease, debt and enemies, come into our life from the 6th house. Every obstacle comes from it, and pending karma is seen from it.

It is the house of a set of procedures and of rules and regulations. Think of an office. Someone creates a ticket, the ticket is assigned to you, you work on it, you resolve it, feedback comes, and from the feedback you get a rating. That is a procedure, and it belongs to the 6th house and to Kanya. Government rules, the paperwork an office demands: the 6th.

It is working under someone: your colleagues, your workplace, the corporate in which we all work, and your wages. It shows servants: the maid, the home help, and everyone who reports to you and whom you manage. If aggressor grahas, very strong malefics, sit in the 6th, the workplace becomes a battlefield.

It shows disease. The 6th holds kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, matsarya (lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride, envy), and from these a person falls ill. Disease also comes from debt: when you take someone's money and do not return it, when you create trouble in someone's life, or when you do not take care of your own body. So in the dasha of the 6th, work on your body: yoga and meditation, food on time, pure vegetarian food. In the body it is the kidney, which purifies, the urinary tract, and the area below the navel.

It shows debt, lawsuits and court cases. When 6th-house troubles are running, remember Narasimha Bhagavan and Bajrangbali. The graha in your 6th also gives physical help: the Sun there, and the father helps; the Moon, and the mother helps. A weak 6th means less help, and a person who cannot work under someone.

It shows enemies, and enemies give you feedback. Whatever graha goes into the 6th keeps correcting you. It wants to improve you, and it makes your skin thick. It holds your anarthas, the unwanted things in the heart, the desire under whose influence you took this body. It holds what you can neither swallow nor speak: you know someone is doing wrong, and you cannot say it.

See how the anarthas work. Lust, kama, is intense desire: you must come first, someone else comes first, you get angry, and now you have an enemy. Greed, lobha: "I have to make a lakh in the stock market", so you borrow, and now you have debt. Envy, matsar: you keep grinding your teeth over someone, cursing and abusing him, and from that hatred disease comes. To activate the 6th, compete. And in the 6th you have to do seva, service, even when you do not want to.

From the 6th, and from Mercury, we see the maternal uncle and the bua, the father's sister. It shows the father's karma: the disease, debt and enemies a son suffers come, somewhere or other, from what his father did. So a father should be very careful not to do anything in society that makes his son suffer. In the charts of those who regularly take bribes, you will see the son's 6th completely spoiled: a disabled son, a son always ill, stomach ulcers, no doctor to be found, a son regularly blowing money on Dream11. It shows the grandfather's family, the father's siblings and kin, who keep competing with you. And it shows competitive exams.

Now the quick round. A kidney problem: Venus in the 6th. A prostate problem: Mars in the 6th. Problems in the private parts: Ketu in the 6th. Liver, backbone, vertigo: the 6th house, with Jupiter for the liver. Pain in the legs all the time, arthritis: Saturn in the 6th.

A doctor has a very prominent 6th and 8th. A lawyer has a very prominent 6th. Someone in IT has a prominent Kanya, because he has to solve problems. You get paid to solve problems.

Read Chapter B6 for the anarthas, the workplace and every graha in this house.

The 7th house: spouse and partnership

When we study the 7th house, many things become clear, because the 7th is how people see you. It shows partnership of every kind, marriage and business both: should this person go into partnership at all? Some grow enormously through a partner; some partners turn out to be frauds.

It shows how the world sees you, your perception. It shows the private parts, the genitals. Counted from the mother's house, it is the 4th from the 4th, so it shows your mother's moral values, her inner core and her happiness. Counted from the father, it shows the father's income and his desires.

The 7th is opposite to your personality. If 9 is in your 1st, 3 is in your 7th (the numbers are rashis, Chapter A3): Dhanu, a mute sign, faces Mithuna, a sign of chatter. The one who attracts you in the 7th has a personality opposite to yours. It shows the spouse and the business partner.

The 7th is the killer of your personality, and so it is called maraka. It kills your aloneness, your individuality, your pride, your ego. Here you lose individuality and become ready to go along with someone. Here you get corrections, and you start going out a little dressed up.

It shows the possibility of marriage: "Sir, will my marriage happen, or will I stay like this?" And in kundali matching we check three things here: divorce, downfall after marriage (you married, and then everything sat down), and cheating.

For marriage I look at four things. The 7th house: whether marriage will happen. Shukra: its quality and flavour, whether the one you marry will love you. The 7th lord: what happens after marriage, gains or losses, a career made, a promotion, a new house, living apart from the family, or a marriage that happens and breaks. And the lagna of the Navamsa, the D9: whether fortune rises, and the overall picture.

Now the quick round. "Her husband is gay. How will you see it?" A student said Mercury and Saturn. Mercury with Saturn will not make him gay, but it gives sexual problems, and it can give tendencies.

Her husband is very violent: Mars with Rahu. Husband and wife sleep separately: a student said Saturn; I said ego issues, the Sun. Her husband left her and lives with someone else; he has two families: Mercury.

See, you are not remembering anything. You are making combinations. That is what I will teach you through the whole course. We do not memorise big things.

Read Chapter B7 for marriage, partnership and every graha in the house of the spouse.

The 8th house: secrets, sudden change and the occult

The 8th is the house of the occult: astrology, numerology, vastu, healing, every secret that tells you the future or tells you about yourself. It shows the in-laws, the sasural paksh, the spouse's side of the family. It shows the hidden secrets of your life, what you never tell anyone, what is very close to you. Assault, rape and child abuse come in here: stains that nobody can erase, which need healing.

Counted from the father, it shows the father's bedroom, his sleep and his dreams. In the body it is the anal area. It shows badnami, disrepute; research; death; the decay of relationships; the sexual life; rock bottom; and prolonged illness. It shows fear and anxiety, whatever you are afraid of; negativity; depression; and stuck situations where you are trapped.

It shows the past life, your past-life attachments and regrets, and the past-life pending karma that comes into your life to lay it waste and to teach you something. It shows your condition in your mother's womb, the qualities you got there, and the stomach and genetics you carry from the mother, because you are born out of her past karma. And since it is the 5th from the mother's 4th, it shows the mother's fantasy.

It is the house of decay: whatever slowly rots, goes bad, converts and transforms. So it is also the house of transformation. It shows unsolvable disputes, fights that can never be settled. It shows darkness, tantra and siddhi. And it shows sudden gain of money, what we call money buried in the ground. The 8th has been called "roots and ashes": the place where nothing can survive.

Now the quick round. He has been earning for ten years and nobody knows where the money comes from. He received an inheritance. His LIC policy matured and he got a lot of money. A property was sold and a lot of money came. He won a lottery. All of this is sudden: the 8th house. Sudden changes, sudden illness, obstacles, depression, molestation: the 8th house. It is the house of longevity, sudden change and obstacles.

Read Chapter B8 for the in-laws, the womb, the hidden and every graha in this house.

The 9th house: dharma, fortune and the father

The 9th is your bhagya, your fortune, and it is ruled by Devaguru Brihaspati. Fortune is something every person needs, so understanding the 9th house, and living life according to the 9th house, is very important. It shows the level of luck and divine support you receive in this life, and the blessings of the guru, of Bhagavan and of the deities who are your vigraha, the forms you worship. Mare Krishna rakhe ke, rakhe Krishna mare ke: if Bhagavan Sri Krishna is bent on killing someone, who can save him, and if he is bent on saving someone, who can kill him? So we stay sharanagata, surrendered.

It shows the father, the guru and the acharya, and even what kind of bosses and teachers you will get. It shows long-term goals and the higher vision: how big your goals are, how far ahead you can dream, how high you can go. Guru thinks beyond birth and death. That is why, in the chart, he is the biggest elephant: the projection he sets, he sets very big. And so the 9th is also higher studies: universities, degrees, PhDs and deep philosophy. (For a PhD look at the 8th too, because research is done in the 8th.)

It shows the long journey: going abroad, shifting from one city to another, long trips, and pilgrimage to Vaidyanath, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Vrindavan or Mathura. It is the discomfort zone. It challenges your peace of mind and pulls you out of the comfort you are settling into, because it always inspires you to move forward. So the dasha of the 9th house is never a comfortable one. It is always building your ribs, your character, and trying to make you stand up.

It gives the guidelines of moral principles: wake up early, eat after bathing, eat sattvic food, respect elders, go to the temple, do yoga daily, make a timetable. These are guidelines, not rules. There is a difference between Jupiter and Saturn: in Jupiter you have free will. You express, you breathe, and so deep breathing belongs to the 9th and to Jupiter.

The 9th house is your temple. It is also the house of theory and philosophy: logic runs in the 5th house and in the 10th, but the 9th is the house of theory. That is why Mangala, the karaka of logic, gives trouble here: he wants to understand the dharmashastra, the scriptures of dharma, by logic.

Counted from other houses, the 9th is the 6th from the 4th, so it shows the mother's death, disease, debts and problems. And it is the 5th from the 5th, so it shows your children's education.

Whichever graha sits in the 9th will make you uncomfortable, and it strongly shapes your guidelines and moral values. It dictates your relationship with your gurus and your father, your religious inclination, and how your fortune manifests. If the 9th is very good, with good, sattvic grahas there, a person gets great support from fortune. If its lord sits in the lagna or in a kendra, that is a very good yoga. Fortune always comes from the 9th house; karma is assigned from the 10th.

Now the quick round. He is very egoistic and fanatic about his religion: Mesha in the 9th, or Jupiter in Mesha in the 9th.

Read Chapter B9 for the guru, the father and every graha in the house of fortune.

The 10th house: career, karma and public standing

The 10th is a hard house. Whatever happens, a person must not give up karma. This is what Bhagavan Shri Krishna told Arjuna: whoever stands in front of you, you have to perform your dharma; for the sake of dharma you will have to fight this war.

This house burns everybody. Here every person is helpless. Some fight here for power, some for position; some want money, some want respect. And some want nothing: they do their work as servants of Bhagavan, which is nishkama karma yoga. According to the dasha, the direction, past karma and the gunas, every person is assigned his karma, and that karma is the 10th house.

From the 10th we see the karma assigned to the soul. We see how much strength you have: how much sacrifice, how much tapa, austerity, you can give, because it is Shani's house. We see your father's financial condition and your father's family; your career and job; your mother-in-law; and fame, the place just above the head. This is not the fame of the 5th. It is the fame you get for your work.

Whatever rashi or graha sits in the 10th will burn you 110 percent. When the dasha of the 10th runs, it heats you and puts you through tapa: through insult, through pressure from your father, a mother who scolds you, a guru who gives you too many instructions. But whatever graha sits there will keep trying to take you to the top of the ladder.

Now the quick round. He is a CA: Mercury and Saturn in the 10th. He does communication work: Mercury, or Mithuna, in the 10th. He handles a lot of resources: Vrishabha in the 10th.

Read Chapter B10 for every rashi's field of work and every graha in the house of karma.

The 11th house: gains, desires and the network

The 11th is the house of ichchha-purti, the fulfilment of desire. It shows your obsessive nature, what you are mad about, and the rules you would break: it gives desire with such madness that you will smash any rule to get what you want.

It is the destroyer of peace. It is the 8th from the 4th, so it sets fire to the home and eats the peace and happiness of the 4th. It shows the elder sibling, the brother or sister just above you. As the 8th from the mother, it shows the mother's hidden matters: not bad things, but things about her you do not know, her interest in the occult or research, and the desires of hers that were never fulfilled. It shows the chacha, your father's brother, and the grandfather's business or married life.

Seen from the 9th, it is the 3rd from the father, his subconscious brain. So the mother shows you a picture of what she could never achieve, and the father puts in front of you, as your desire, whatever seems right to him. The grandfather's energy, the uncle's and the elder sibling's all enter here. In the 11th you are being heavily programmed. That is why it is such a karmic house, with so much frequency in it. Listen to this part two or three times.

Now the quick round. His desires keep getting fulfilled from childhood: Mercury or the Moon. His social circle is huge, everybody knows him: Jupiter in the 11th. He earns so much that it looks as if he prints notes: the 11th house.

Read Chapter B11 for where your money comes from and every graha in the house of desire.

The 12th house: expenses, losses and liberation

The 12th is the house of mukti, liberation, the place where you are freed. From it we see sleep and rest, how sleep comes to you; isolation and loneliness; daan, the giving nature; and letting go of things.

Counted from other houses, it shows the spouse's roga, rina, shatru, the 6th from the 7th; the happiness and peace of your father, the 4th from the 9th; and the mother's bhagya, the 9th from the 4th, along with your mother's guru. It shows your nana, the maternal grandfather.

It shows independent decisions and independent thinking, and an independent profession: in the 6th you work under someone, in the 12th under nobody. It shows spirituality, dreams, dhyan (meditation), and jail, hospital and liberation. Wherever you become uncomfortable, we see it from the 12th house. Look at your father: the calmer and happier he is, the better your 12th.

So is your 12th good or bad? See whether you sleep peacefully. People come to you who cannot sleep: the job has gone, the EMI is due, the father is troubled. A good 12th lets you sleep, lets you give ("Here, take it, leave me alone"), lets you walk on the bank of the Ganga absorbed in meditation, moving towards liberation. If you do not do these things, it will take you to the jail and the hospital.

The 12th is also the bedroom, so domestic violence is seen from here. With many malefics in the 12th, the person does not sleep, and there is beating and fighting. Malefics here do not let you be free.

Until you understand what we see from the 12th, you cannot predict. You cannot rest, you are lonely, things will not leave you, you cannot donate, you cannot let go or move on, your spouse stays ill or drowned in debt, your father is unhappy, your mother's fortune is bad, you do not get along with your nana, you cannot take independent decisions: you have to work on the 12th house.

Now the quick round. He had to go to jail. He had to be admitted to hospital. His expenses are very high. He is very good in spirituality. He lives alone, talks to nobody, keeps walking on the roof. All of this is the 12th house.

Read Chapter B12 for sleep, the bedroom, giving and every rashi and graha in the house of mukti.

Houses counted from other houses

You will have noticed that many of these meanings come from counting. The 7th is the mother's 4th, so it shows her inner core. The 9th is the 6th from the mother and the 5th from your children. The 11th is the 8th from your home and the 3rd from your father. The 12th is the 6th from your spouse, the 4th from your father and the 9th from your mother.

This is not a list to learn. It is a method: make any house the lagna and count from it. I teach it fully as the rotation of the axis in Chapter B0, with a table of every relative and derived matter I use in class.

Remember

• A house is space. It never moves, whatever number is written in it.
• In the North Indian chart the top diamond is always the 1st house, the lagna. Count counter-clockwise to the 12th.
• The diamonds are the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th. The 1st faces the 7th; the 4th faces the 10th.
• The house is the coordinate of the event: what is happening, and in whose life. First comes the house.
• Same house, a different rashi: Simha in the 9th gives an authoritative, balanced father; Mesha a father who keeps starting new things.
• Know what each of the twelve houses shows. That much you must remember.
• The lagna is the throne; the owner of its rashi is the king of the chart.
• Many meanings come from counting one house from another: the rotation of the axis.

Check yourself

1. What is a house, in my words?

• aA planet's home
• bSpace, always fixed
• cThe number written in the box

2. In a North Indian chart, which box is the lagna?

• aThe top diamond
• bThe bottom diamond
• cThe left diamond

3. Which four houses are the diamonds?

• a1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th
• b1st, 4th, 7th and 10th
• c2nd, 5th, 8th and 11th

4. A girl has a pain in her stomach. Which house is the event in?

• aThe 12th
• bThe 1st
• cThe 5th

5. Two friends fight over whose father is better. Where do you look?

• aThe 9th house of both charts
• bThe 4th house of both charts
• cThe 7th house of one chart

6. From which house do we see how many people a person can feed?

• aThe 4th
• bThe 2nd
• cThe 11th

7. Whatever we enjoy doing naturally is seen from which house?

• aThe 3rd
• bThe 5th
• cThe 12th

8. Why is the 7th house called maraka?

• aIt causes accidents
• bIt kills your individuality, aloneness and ego
• cIt is the house of death

9. Why does the 11th house disturb peace at home?

• aIt is the house of the mother
• bIt is the 8th from the 4th
• cIt is the 12th from the 12th

10. How do you test whether a person's 12th house is good?

• aSee whether he sleeps peacefully
• bSee whether he travels abroad
• cSee whether he has many friends

11. Why is the dasha of the 9th house never comfortable?

• aBecause Saturn rules it
• bBecause it pulls you out of the comfort zone towards higher goals
• cBecause it destroys wealth