The photo
Give your birth date, time, and place. From that we can work out exactly where every graha stood in the sky. That picture, drawn as a chart, is your kundli. It never changes. What changes is the sky moving above it. That is where daily readings and dashas come from.
The lagna - the starting point
The lagna is the sign rising in the east when you were born. It moves through all twelve signs in one day. That is why your birth time matters so much. The lagna becomes your first house. Every other house is counted from it. Same planets, different lagna - a very different life.
The North Indian chart
In the diamond chart used across North India, the top middle diamond is always house 1. That is the lagna. The houses count anti-clockwise. The signs move. The houses stay in place.
South Indian charts do it the other way. They fix the signs and let the lagna move. Same sky, two ways of drawing it.
What the twelve bhavas hold
- Self - your body, your nature, how you see everything
- Wealth - family, speech, what you own
- Courage - brothers and sisters, hard work, talking
- Home - mother, roots, peace inside
- Creativity - children, learning, love
- Service - health, daily routine, problems you beat
- Partnership - marriage, deals, the other person
- Depth - big change, shared money, secrets
- Fortune - dharma, teachers, long trips
- Karma - work, public life, what you build
- Gains - friends, networks, hopes
- Release - rest, quiet, far places, letting go