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Method

How a reading is made

We read your chart across its planets, houses, signs and nakshatras, find the planets that have a say in the part of life you chose, and build one practice for modern life from what classical astrology holds for them. This page sets out how, step by step.

The tradition it rests on

The method comes from the classical texts of Vedic astrology, above all Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and Uttara Kalamrita. Classical astrology gives each planet its own domain in a person’s life: the Sun is the tradition’s name for the soul, the Moon for the mind, Mars for strength, Mercury for speech, Jupiter for knowledge and happiness, Venus for desire and beauty, and Saturn for grief and what endures it. Rahu and Ketu, the two shadow planets, have no domain of their own: classical astrologers read them through the planet they sit with, or the house they occupy. Every reading starts from those domains.

Every link in a reading is checked against the classical texts before it reaches you. What you read is not a list of references. It is what we found in your chart, and how we arrived at it, in plain words.

The five steps

  1. Your chart is calculated. We compute where the nine planets stood when you were born (the seven visible planets, and Rahu and Ketu, the two points where the Moon’s path crosses the Sun’s), in the sidereal zodiac (Lahiri) with whole-sign houses, to within a small fraction of a degree of the standard Swiss Ephemeris. That places each planet in a sign, a house and a nakshatra, one of the 27 lunar mansions. Rahu and Ketu are shown in your chart. When one sits in the part of your chart your reading looks at, or beside the planet in charge of it, the reading names it and follows the planet it works through.
  2. The planets with a say are found. For the area you choose (career, love, wealth or daily habits) we look at the house that governs it, the planet that rules that house and any planet sitting in it, the planets that rule where that house’s ruler sits, and the planets we read for that area in every chart. Each is then weighed by how strongly it is placed: its sign, its closeness to the Sun, its motion, the planets aspecting it and your rising sign. When the two strongest are within 15% of each other, we name both rather than pretend one is the answer; an exact tie is settled by classical astrology’s six-fold measure of planetary strength.
  3. The sign and nakshatra shape the practice. The planet your reading turns on sits in one of the twelve signs and under one of the 27 nakshatras, each of which has a ruling planet. The sign sets the character of the practice (a Venus in Aries, for example, does short and brisk better than long and slow), and the nakshatra’s ruler adds one finishing detail. Two people with the same planet at the centre receive different practices.
  4. You check it against your own life. With an exact birth time, when the chart is unsure between planets, you first answer three short questions about your life as it is now, with no planet named. The planet your answers point to is the one your reading turns on; if they point nowhere, it follows the strongest. Then short statements you mark True or Not me show whether that planet is under strain or working for you. The chart narrows it down, your life chooses, and your answers pick the side. Nothing is concluded for you that you have not recognised yourself.
  5. The practice is built for modern life. Classical astrologers described what each planet governs, and what honours it, in the life of their own time. We work out what that same principle looks like now (at a desk, in a marriage, in a monthly budget) and write it as one practice with a day, a time, a place and an ending. We write the practice itself for today, and never present it as something the classical texts prescribe. When a part of it is symbolic rather than practical, we say so.

How accurate it is

The rules were tested one layer at a time on 100,000 birth charts before they were fixed in place. A layer was kept only if it earned its place in the numbers. The rules are now frozen, version 1.3.0, and every future change must pass 100 locked test charts or carry a new version number.

What the testing showed, stated plainly: if your birth time is 15 minutes out, the answer changes completely in about one reading in ten. If it is an hour out, it changes completely in more than a third of all readings. That is why we ask how sure your time is. Without an exact time we read only what the date can support, leave out everything that depends on the exact time, and mark the reading clearly as less accurate instead of guessing.

A reading describes tendencies, not predictions: what a chart leans toward, in statements you can check, never what will happen to you.

What we will never do

See a complete sample reading, from the chart to the ritual.

Credits