What Is a Birth Chart?

The map of your birth moment

Whenever I begin a new batch, I ask who does not know the 1st house, the 2nd house, the 12th house, and I start from the absolute beginning. I explain the paribhramana paddhati (the method of the revolving sky) and the Surya Siddhanta together, so that you can see how the sky is mapped onto your birth chart, your kundli.

The very first thing we must know to read a kundli, the most basic thing of all, is the houses: which house is which. Everything in this book is built on that, and Chapter A2 teaches it. I start every single class with it, and I will start this book with it too.

The chart is a medium, not the goal

Whenever you open a chart, you will see one shape again and again. Ask yourself: why was it made like this? Could it be drawn some other way? Could it be a circle, an octagon, a pentagon? The answer is yes.

The chart is a madhyam, a medium. It is never the goal, and it will never become the goal. It is only the way in which we are looking at the kundli. The shape changes; the information does not. The real thing is a circle of 360 degrees and the directions of that circle.

In this book we use only the North Indian chart: a square with diamonds drawn inside it. Learn this one shape well and every chart in this book, and every chart I read in class, will open for you. Chapter A2 draws it for you.

Twelve houses, because the Sun gives twelve months

The earth is 360 degrees, and it has directions: east, west, north and south. The chart carries these directions too. Our rishis made a system. They divided this circle into twelve houses and they said: these houses are fixed, because they are directions, and a direction cannot change.

Each house is a field of 30 degrees. Twelve fields of 30 degrees make the full 360. The very first house we call the lagna.

A student asked: "Why twelve?"

I always ask my class: why did the rishis divide the circle into twelve, and give each part 30 degrees? A student says, "Because 360 divided by 12 is 30." Fine, but why twelve? Another says, "Because there are twelve rashis." No. The rashis came later. You have to understand it from the basics.

Imagine you are only looking at the sky. No house has been made yet, and no system has come to the earth. You look at the sky and you observe the Sun. Watching the position of the Sun, you see that the Sun gives you the experience of twelve months. Since he gives twelve months, you divide by twelve. The division is based on the Sun.

The rishis were doing research, and the Sun was the part they kept mapping: the Sun is from here to here, then from here to here, then from here to here. The twelve months exist because of the Sun: every month he transits one rashi, he travels through one section of the sky. So every direction was given 30 degrees.

The second one the rishis mapped was the Moon. Why the Moon? Because the Moon gives a cycle of fifteen days and fifteen days, the two paksha, the bright and the dark halves of the month. When they looked again after these cycles, the Moon was back in the same state, and the same season was coming round again. On the basis of the Sun and the Moon together, they fixed the months.

It is a great amount of detail and observation. We will not make it more complicated now. Just remember that our reference is the Sun. If even 30 or 40 percent of this is clear to you today, that is fine.

The three ingredients

Learn three words and you can follow everything in this book. After the twelve houses came the twelve rashis, and after the rashis come the nine grahas.

A student asked: "Do we read from the rashi or from the lagna? Is the lagna fixed?"

Yes. The lagna is the 1st house, and the house is fixed. Think of it as one box. Sometimes we paint it red, sometimes brown. The box is the house; the colour is the rashi. The box stays the same, and the colour changes how it looks and how it behaves: the colour in it changes from person to person, and each colour, each rashi, gives its own effect. The rashis are different forms of currency, each with its own energy (Chapter A3).

A student asked: "Is the bhava important, or the rashi?"

Both are very important. The bhava, the house, is important, and the rashi is also important. In every chapter of this book you will see both together.

First the house, then the rashi, then the graha

How do we predict? First comes the house, then the rashi, then the graha. This is the order in which we read.

The house decides what event will happen. It is like a coordinate: whose house is it, in which part of life is it happening? The rashi tells you how the event will be: its nature, its style, the environment in which it is happening. The graha is who arrives in that environment: what kind of king, what kind of delivery boy, what kind of ruler or messenger comes into that rashi to deliver it.

I weigh them 40 percent, 40 percent and 20 percent. When no graha sits in a house, the rashi speaks. Chapter B0 explains this method in full.

A student asked: "And if no planet sits in the house?"

There is no problem. The planet will go somewhere or other, won't it? Wherever it has gone, we will look at it there. And the empty house is read from its rashi: the rashi alone tells you the environment of that house. You will see an example with Kanya in Chapter A3.

The title of this book is Dwadash Bhav Rahasyam. Dwadash is twelve, bhav is house, rahasyam is secret, inner knowledge. We are studying the twelve areas in which your whole life happens.

Making a chart in software

You do not draw a chart by hand. You make it in software. Go to Google; you can use anything there to make a kundli. With beginners I use a free kundli website, because that is what most of you already use and it is good enough for making a kundli. Open it, enter the birth details (date, time and place, with AM or PM written correctly), and it gives you the birth chart.

For my own work I generally use Jagannatha Hora, which is a very good software. But you are new right now, and you do not need that much. A free kundli website is enough to learn on.

Why the birth time matters so much

The rashi chart, the chart you make in software, is a two-hour chart. Everyone born within those two hours gets the same rashi chart, and a baby born a few hours later gets a different one. So the time of birth changes the whole chart.

That is why the birth details must go into the software correctly: the date, the time and the place. In one basics class a young man's time was first entered as afternoon. On that chart, with lagna number nine, I began: the lagna lord has gone into the 8th, so you will harm yourself. Then it turned out the time was wrong. In the software you have to write AM or PM: it was 00, not 12. I made the chart again on my own software with the correct time and place, and now the reading came out right.

And because so many people share one two-hour chart, the rashi chart alone tells you only so much. For more precise predictions we use the divisional charts, which come later (Chapter B10). First we learn to read the rashi chart.

Remember

• A birth chart, the kundli, is a map of the sky at the minute and place of your birth. Its shape is only a medium; the real thing is a circle of 360 degrees and its directions.
• The rishis divided that circle into twelve houses of 30 degrees. The houses are fixed because they are directions, and a direction cannot change.
• The division into twelve is based on the Sun's twelve months; the rashis came later. The Moon's two fortnights helped fix the months.
• Three ingredients: the house is the fixed box, the rashi is the colour painted on it, the graha is the character who comes into it.
• Read in the order house, rashi, graha: what, how and who. House 40, rashi 40, graha 20. An empty house is read from its rashi.
• Make the chart in software: a free kundli website to begin; I use Jagannatha Hora.
• The rashi chart is a two-hour chart, so the time must go in correctly, with AM or PM.

Check yourself

1. Why did the rishis say the twelve houses are fixed?

• aBecause the planets never move
• bBecause the houses are directions, and a direction cannot change
• cBecause the rashis are always in the same houses

2. Why is the circle divided into twelve, according to this chapter?

• aBecause there are twelve rashis
• bBecause the Sun gives twelve months of experience
• cBecause 360 is easy to divide

3. How many degrees wide is one rashi?

• a12 degrees
• b30 degrees
• c60 degrees

4. In the order of reading, what does the rashi decide?

• aWhat the event is
• bHow the event is
• cWho delivers the event

5. In what order do we read a chart?

• aGraha, then rashi, then house
• bHouse, then rashi, then graha
• cRashi, then graha, then house

6. How is a prediction weighted in my method?

• aGraha 60, house 20, rashi 20
• bHouse 40, rashi 40, graha 20
• cRashi 80, graha 20

7. Which part of the chart is fixed?

• aThe house; the rashi in it changes from person to person
• bThe rashi; the houses change
• cBoth change with every chart

8. Why does the time of birth matter, not only the date?

• aBecause the Moon changes every minute and nothing else does
• bBecause the rashi chart is a two-hour chart, so a few hours give a different chart
• cBecause the date alone cannot be written in a chart

9. Which software do I suggest you start with?

• aA free kundli website, though I myself generally use Jagannatha Hora
• bOnly Jagannatha Hora, from the first day
• cNone; draw the chart by hand

10. What does the word *rahasyam* mean in the title of this book?

• aA rule
• bA secret, inner knowledge
• cA chart