Glossary

The ascendant is the zodiac sign that was climbing over the eastern horizon when you were born. On a Western wheel it sits on the left and the chart is read from there. It is the same point Jyotish calls the lagna — which is why an accurate birth time matters in both traditions.

An aspect is the angle between two planets on the wheel. Certain angles are read as significant: a 120° trine tends to flow easily, a 90° square tends to create tension. Aspects are central to a Western reading — the round wheel is drawn the way it is partly to make these angles easy to see. (Jyotish reads planetary "sight", drishti, in its own distinct way.)

The twelve bhavas are the areas of life a chart maps — House 1 is the self, House 7 is partnership, House 10 is career, and so on. Learn what each one governs in The twelve bhavas.

The Brahmasthan is the heart of a space — the centre of the Vastu Purusha Mandala. Its element is space (akasha), so the tradition keeps it open: no heavy furniture, no clutter, ideally a little light and air. Think of it as the room a building needs to breathe.

The court cards are the four figure cards in each suit of the Minor Arcana: Page, Knight, Queen and King. Four suits × four courts gives sixteen in all. Readers often take them as people in a situation, or as styles of acting — the Page as a learner or messenger, the King as mature authority — coloured by the suit they belong to.

A dasha is a span of years governed by one planet, after which the next planet takes over in a fixed sequence. Tracking which dasha is running — and the sub-periods within it — is how Jyotish answers "when?". Try the Dasha calculator to see your current period.

A dosha is a named pattern the tradition treats as a difficulty — for example Mangal Dosha (a Mars placement weighed before marriage). Crucially, a dosha is rarely the last word: the classics also list cancellations (bhanga) that reduce or remove it, which is why a single check is only a starting point.

The four elements group the twelve signs by temperament: fire (drive), earth (steadiness), air (ideas) and water (feeling). Three signs belong to each, spaced evenly around the wheel. Reading which elements a chart leans on is a quick, useful first glance — see The twelve signs and four elements.

The nine grahas are the moving bodies a chart reads. Seven are the classical planets; the last two — Rahu and Ketu — are the points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's, not physical planets. Where each graha sits among the houses is a core part of any reading.

Jyotish is the traditional astrology of India, with a written tradition stretching back two millennia. It uses the sidereal zodiac (measured against the fixed stars) and is especially strong at timing — when events are likely to unfold — through systems like the dasha.

Your kundli freezes the heavens at your moment of birth and flattens them into twelve houses. South, North and East Indian styles are the same map in different handwriting. See What a kundli is.

Your lagna is the sign climbing over the eastern horizon when you were born. It decides which rashi sits in House 1, and therefore how every other sign falls across the houses — which is why an accurate birth time matters so much.

Lal Kitab ("the red book") is a school of astrology set down in a series of Urdu volumes in the mid-20th century. It is known for two things: a fixed-house kundli where the 1st house is always Aries, and its famous simple, inexpensive remedies. It is a folk tradition with several editions that do not always agree, distinct from classical Parashari Vedic astrology. See Lal Kitab foundations.

The Lal Kitab kundli is drawn in the familiar North Indian square-and-diamond style, but with one big difference: the signs are fixed to the houses. The 1st house is always Aries, the 2nd Taurus, around to the 12th, Pisces so unlike a standard chart, the houses do not depend on the ascendant. Lal Kitab therefore reads a chart largely by house position. See What makes Lal Kitab different.

Your life path number comes from your date of birth alone: add all its digits and reduce to a single figure, keeping the master numbers 11, 22 and 33 if you land on them. It's the headline theme of a numerology reading — see Your life path number.

The Lo Shu grid is an ancient Chinese magic square (4-9-2 / 3-5-7 / 8-1-6), adopted into Vedic numerology. You place the digits of a birth date into their home cells and read which numbers are present, repeated or missing — see The Lo Shu grid.

The Major Arcana are the 22 headline cards of a tarot deck — from The Fool (0) to The World (21). They stand for the large movements of a life: beginnings and endings, love, change and completion. When one appears in a reading it usually points to a major theme rather than a passing detail. Their sequence is often called the Fool's journey. The other 56 cards are the Minor Arcana.

When reducing a number you would normally keep going until one digit is left but 11, 22 and 33 are left as they are. They are read as intensified versions of the digit they reduce to (11 → 2, 22 → 4, 33 → 6), carrying both more potential and more pressure.

The Minor Arcana are the 56 everyday cards of a tarot deck, much like an ordinary playing-card pack. There are four suits — Wands (fire), Cups (water), Swords (air) and Pentacles (earth) — and each has fourteen cards: Ace through Ten plus four court cards. They speak to the practical, day-to-day side of a reading, where the Major Arcana speak to its big themes. See The structure of a tarot deck.

In Lal Kitab, each planet has a pakka ghar — a "permanent" or pukka house where it is considered to give its strongest, most settled results. For example, the Sun's pakka ghar is the 1st house and the Moon's the 4th. The full table differs between Lal Kitab editions, so it is best learnt as a concept rather than a fixed list. See What makes Lal Kitab different.

The pancha mahabhuta are the five elements: earth (prithvi), water (jal), fire (agni), air (vayu) and space (akasha). Vastu maps four of them to the diagonal corners — water North-East, fire South-East, earth South-West, air North-West — and keeps space at the centre. See The five elements at home.

Pythagorean numerology assigns 1–9 to the letters of the alphabet in order (A=1, B=2 …). Chaldean assigns 1–8 by sound, treating 9 as sacred. The choice changes a name number, but it makes no difference to numbers drawn purely from a date — your life path and Lo Shu grid come out the same either way.

The twelve rashis are the signs of the zodiac. In Jyotish they are measured sidereally (against the fixed stars), so your rashi can differ from the sign a Western horoscope gives you. Which rashi sits in House 1 is set by your lagna.

A spread is the pattern you lay tarot cards in. Each position has a fixed role — "the past", "the challenge", "the outcome" — so the same card means different things depending on where it lands. The simplest is the three-card past / present / future line; the best-known large one is the ten-card Celtic Cross. See Reading a spread.

A transit is a present-day planet's position measured against your birth chart — for example, where Saturn is today relative to where it was when you were born. Both traditions use transits for timing; Jyotish calls them gochara, and the Transit Today calculator shows yours.

The tropical zodiac anchors 0° Aries to the spring equinox. Because the equinox slowly shifts against the stars, the tropical signs drift from the sidereal rashis used in Jyotish — which is why your Western sign and your Vedic sign can differ. Neither is wrong; they measure different things.

An upay is a Lal Kitab remedy: a simple, often very inexpensive, symbolic act tied to a planet or house — offering to flowing water, feeding animals, giving in charity, keeping a space clean. Their accessibility is much of why Lal Kitab became so popular. We describe them so you understand the tradition; they are not prescriptions, guarantees, or a substitute for professional advice. See The spirit of Lal Kitab remedies.

The Vastu Purusha Mandala is the diagram at the root of Vastu: the cosmic being Vastu Purusha laid face-down over a square plot, his body dividing it into zones. Each zone carries a direction, a deity and an element — which is how the eight directions and the five elements get their meanings, and why the centre is kept clear.

Vastu Shastra ("the science of dwelling") is the traditional Indian approach to designing and arranging buildings so they sit well with their surroundings — the path of the sun, the eight directions, and the five elements. It is a design philosophy, not a predictive system; we teach it for understanding, not as a rule to obey.