The nine grahas as chart actors

Scan the teaching chart for circles containing two-letter labels. Leave La aside: it marks the lagna, not a graha.

Choose an Indian kundli drawing style

South IndianNorth IndianEast Indian

South Indian

Signs sit still. House 1 is whichever cell holds the rising sign — here Leo, the default drawing on Astroyana.

North Indian

House 1 is the top-centre diamond and never moves. The signs rotate around that frame, counter-clockwise.

East Indian

Another grid. Same twelve rooms, same lagna. Only the handwriting changes.

Chart placements and drawing guide

Every drawing below represents the same Leo-lagna teaching chart. South Indian fixes the signs, North Indian fixes the houses, and East Indian uses a regional grid. Only the drawing convention changes; the placements do not.

• South Indian: Signs sit still. House 1 is whichever cell holds the rising sign — here Leo, the default drawing on Astroyana.
• North Indian: House 1 is the top-centre diamond and never moves. The signs rotate around that frame, counter-clockwise.
• East Indian: Another grid. Same twelve rooms, same lagna. Only the handwriting changes.

Complete placements in the sample Leo-lagna chart

Label	Body or point	Sign	House
Su	Sun	Aries (sign 1)	House 9
Mo	Moon	Taurus (sign 2)	House 10
Ma	Mars	Capricorn (sign 10)	House 6
Me	Mercury	Pisces (sign 12)	House 8
Ju	Jupiter	Cancer (sign 4)	House 12
Ve	Venus	Pisces (sign 12)	House 8
Sa	Saturn	Libra (sign 7)	House 3
Ra	Rahu	Gemini (sign 3)	House 11
Ke	Ketu	Sagittarius (sign 9)	House 5
La	Lagna	Leo (sign 5)	House 1

There are nine chart actors here. Seven correspond to visible celestial bodies; two are the calculated points where the Moon's path crosses the ecliptic, the Sun's apparent annual path.

Read the labels before the character

The first seven teaching handles condense recurring classical significations. The two node handles are later, school-dependent shorthand rather than one uniform classical rule.

• Su — Sun: classically associated with authority, vitality, visibility, and the centre of command.
• Mo — Moon: mind, receptivity, fluctuation, care, and daily experience.
• Ma — Mars: initiative, force, severing, conflict, and technical action.
• Me — Mercury: speech, calculation, exchange, learning, and adaptation.
• Ju — Jupiter: counsel, knowledge, judgement, growth, and support.
• Ve — Venus: relationship, pleasure, art, agreement, and value.
• Sa — Saturn: restraint, duration, labour, limits, and persistence.
• Ra — Rahu, the ascending lunar node: later teaching often uses appetite, amplification, unfamiliarity, and crossing boundaries as provisional handles.
• Ke — Ketu, the descending lunar node: later teaching often uses separation, narrowing, discontinuity, and release as provisional handles.

The Sanskrit category graha is broader than the modern astronomical word “planet.” Rahu and Ketu are not physical planets. They are opposing lunar nodes and always form one axis in a geocentric chart calculation.

These short associations are a reading vocabulary, not personality diagnoses. A graha's role changes with house lordship, rashi, condition, relationship, and context. At this stage, accurate identification is enough.

Two actors, one address

In the synthetic chart, Me and Ve share Pisces, sign 12, in House 8.

The observable part is identical for both:

Mercury is in Pisces in House 8. Venus is in Pisces in House 8.

The traditional functions are not identical. A later reader might investigate how Mercury's functions of analysis and exchange differ from Venus's functions of agreement and value, even in the same rashi and bhava. The conjunction does not merge them into one planet, and it does not tell us an event will occur.

Identify, then stop

Find Mo in the teaching chart. Before revealing, name the graha, rashi, and bhava only. Do not add a prediction.

Try it before you reveal it

What three observable labels belong to Mo in the synthetic chart?

Your attemptI made the attempt mentally instead.

Compare your attempt

Worked answer

Mo is the Moon, placed in Taurus (sign 2), in House 10 of the Leo-lagna sample. “Moon means emotions, therefore career will fluctuate” would be an interpretive jump, not another observation.

A likely mix-up

The printed sign number is not the house number, and La is the lagna marker rather than a graha.

Try a fresh case

Locate Ma, expand its abbreviation, and name its sign and house without interpreting it.

If you called Taurus “House 2,” return to the previous lesson: 2 is the rashi number, while the house is counted from Leo. If you treated La as a graha, remember that it is the lagna anchor. Both mistakes come from reading every short label as the same kind of thing.

For transfer, locate Ma. Expand the abbreviation, name sign 10 as Capricorn, and count its house from Leo. You should obtain Mars in Capricorn in House 6. Keep the result factual; condition comes next.