Reading the chart diagram

Same chart, different drawings

A kundli can be drawn several ways, and the two you will meet most often look nothing alike. This confuses beginners into thinking they are different charts. They are not — they are the same positions, drawn by different regional conventions.

The North Indian chart

A square with both diagonals drawn and a diamond connecting the midpoints of the sides, producing twelve compartments. This is the format used on this site.

The crucial rule: the houses are fixed and the signs move. The first house is always the diamond at the top centre, and the houses proceed anticlockwise from there. Because house 1 never moves, you locate a house by its position on the page.

The sign occupying each house is written as a number, one to twelve, standing for Aries through Pisces. So a "4" in the top-centre diamond means Cancer is rising.

The South Indian chart

A square grid of twelve boxes around an empty centre. Here the opposite rule applies: the signs are fixed and the houses move.

Each box always holds the same sign — Aries is always the second box along the top row, and the signs proceed clockwise from there. The Lagna is marked, usually with a diagonal line across its box, and you count houses clockwise from wherever that mark falls.

Practitioners in the south often prefer this because sign positions become memorised and instantly readable. Those raised on the northern format usually find it disorienting at first, and vice versa.

Reading the planets

Planets are written into whichever compartment they occupy, usually abbreviated: Su, Mo, Ma, Me, Ju, Ve, Sa for the seven, plus Ra and Ke for the lunar nodes. The ascendant is often marked Asc or Lg.

Some charts add the degree within the sign next to each planet. That precision matters more than beginners expect — a planet at 29 degrees behaves quite differently from one at 1 degree, and combustion and dignity depend on exact positions. We will return to it in Level 3.