Chart

A chart (chakra) is a picture of one moment seen from one place: each graha (planet) and the lagna (ascendant) written into the rasi (sign) it occupies. A full chart also holds the upagrahas (sub-planets) and special lagnas (special ascendants), which the book teaches how to calculate in later chapters; hora does not calculate them yet.

Twelve areas

A chart is drawn as twelve areas, one for each rasi, and every point is written into the area of its rasi. Where a point stands inside its rasi does not move it to another area; a label can still give its degrees.

The chart drawn straight from the longitudes is the rasi chart (rasi chakra). The book goes on to build other charts by dividing each rasi into parts, the varga chakras (divisional charts); hora draws only the rasi chart so far.

Rasi-based and bhava-based

A chart style has to decide which area holds which rasi, and there are two ways to decide it.

• Rasi-based: each rasi owns an area for good. Learn the layout once, and you can name the rasi of any area in any chart drawn that way. To find the bhavas (houses), find the lagna and count on from its rasi.
• Bhava-based: each bhava owns an area for good, and the rasis move round from chart to chart. Since the place of an area no longer tells its rasi, each area carries its rasi's number, from 1 for Aries to 12 for Pisces.

The three styles

hora draws the three styles most Indian astrologers use; the Chart style field on the home page chooses one.

• South Indian (rasi-based): a square of twelve boxes round an empty centre. Pisces takes the top-left corner and the rasis run clockwise from it: Aries, Taurus and Gemini fill the rest of the top row, Virgo takes the bottom-right corner and Sagittarius the bottom-left one.
• East Indian (rasi-based): a three-by-three grid with an empty centre. The middle cell of each side holds one rasi, and each corner cell is cut along its diagonal into two triangles, one rasi each. Aries takes the top middle cell and the rasis run counter-clockwise from it: Taurus and Gemini in the two halves of the top-left corner, Cancer in the left middle cell, and so on round.
• North Indian (bhava-based): a square crossed by both its diagonals, with a diamond drawn through the midpoints of its sides. That makes four diamonds and eight triangles. The top diamond is always the 1st bhava, and the bhavas run counter-clockwise from it. hora counts these bhavas from the same reference point as the table, chosen in the Count bhavas from field; with the lagna, the default, the lagna is always in the top diamond.

Reading hora's labels

Each point in an area is one label, such as Sa R 16°32′:

• Two letters name the point: the lagna is La, in bold, and each graha has the letters in the graha page's table. They follow the page's language, so Saturn is Sa in English and Sz in Hungarian.
• A raised R after the letters marks a retrograde graha, one that seems to move backward along the zodiac.
• Small lowered numbers after them are the degrees and minutes inside the rasi, cut off, not rounded: 16°32′ is 16°32′ and some seconds.

Several labels in one area are ordered by those degrees: the earlier label is the point less far along the rasi.

A worked example

Take hora's chart for 1 January 2000 at 06:00 UT, at Greenwich, six hours before the example of the rasi and bhava pages. Its lagna is at 17°14′ in Scorpio, with Venus at 7°25′ in the same rasi. The Sun and Mercury are in Sagittarius, the Moon in Libra, Mars in Aquarius, Jupiter and Saturn in Aries, Rahu in Cancer and Ketu in Capricorn. Saturn, Rahu and Ketu are retrograde.

hora draws it in each style:

• South Indian: Ve and La are in the second box from the left on the bottom row, Scorpio's box in every South Indian chart.
• East Indian: Ve and La are in the bottom-right corner, in the half beside the bottom middle cell, which is Libra's. That half is Scorpio's in every East Indian chart.
• North Indian: Ve and La are in the top diamond, because the lagna is, and the diamond carries 8, Scorpio's number.

Read the North Indian chart in the order of its bhavas, counter-clockwise from the top diamond:

1. The top diamond, 8 (Scorpio): Ve, La.
2. The top-left triangle, 9 (Sagittarius): Me, Su.
3. The upper triangle on the left, 10 (Capricorn): Ke R.
4. The left diamond, 11 (Aquarius): Ma.
5. The lower triangle on the left, 12 (Pisces): empty.
6. The bottom-left triangle, 1 (Aries): Ju, Sa R.
7. The bottom diamond, 2 (Taurus): empty.
8. The bottom-right triangle, 3 (Gemini): empty.
9. The lower triangle on the right, 4 (Cancer): Ra R.
10. The right diamond, 5 (Leo): empty.
11. The upper triangle on the right, 6 (Virgo): empty.
12. The top-right triangle, 7 (Libra): Mo.

Walking the bhavas in order, the rasi numbers go up by one each step, 8 to 12, then on from 1 to 7. That is the quickest check of the order on any North Indian chart: find the next number, and you have found the next bhava.

In the chart

The Chart heading of the chart page links here. Under the drawn chart, a caption repeats how to read its labels and, for the North Indian style, where the 1st bhava is and what the numbers mean.

Next come the varga chakras: further charts drawn from the same moment by dividing each rasi.

Book reference: P.V.R. Narasimha Rao, Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach, chapter 1, § 1.3.4. Where to get the book