Getting the Chart Right

Whole Signs & Bhava Chalit

The house system this app uses, the one other sites draw, and why a graha can "move house" between them.

What this app does

Foundations and the Bhavas chapter taught whole-sign houses: the lagna's sign is the whole 1st house, the next sign the whole 2nd, and so on.

That isn't only how charts are drawn here. Every Parashari calculation in this app counts whole signs: house numbers, house lords, graha drishti, yogas, doshas. The lagna's degree decides which sign is rising. After that, the entire sign is the 1st house.

PVR's class notes put the principle plainly: in Parashara's scheme, the whole rashi becomes the house.

Bhava chalit: houses from the degree

A bhava chalit chart builds houses around the lagna's exact degree instead of whole signs.

In the usual construction, the lagna degree marks the middle of the 1st house, and each house boundary, the sandhi, falls halfway between two house middles. Sripati's method goes a step further and makes the houses unequal, splitting the arc between the lagna and the midheaven into thirds.

The chalit chart then redraws each graha into whichever house its degree falls in. That's the chart many sites show beside the rasi chart, and it's where "my Moon moved to the 12th" comes from.

Watch a graha shift

Lagna at 25° Aries. For simplicity, use equal 30° houses centred on the lagna degree.

The 1st house runs from 10° Aries to 10° Taurus, the 2nd from 10° Taurus to 10° Gemini, and so on. Every boundary sits at 10° of a sign.

• Moon at 4° Aries. Whole sign: 1st house. Chalit: 4° is before the 10° boundary, so the 12th house.
• Venus at 6° Taurus. Whole sign: 2nd house. Chalit: before 10° Taurus, so the 1st house.
• Mars at 20° Gemini. Whole sign: 3rd house. Chalit: between 10° Gemini and 10° Cancer, so still the 3rd.

The pattern: with the lagna at 25°, anything in the first 10° of a sign drops back one house. With the lagna at 15°, the boundaries fall on the sign edges and nothing shifts. The further the lagna degree sits from mid-sign, the more grahas "move". Sripati's unequal houses shift the boundaries a little further.

What a chalit doesn't change

When a graha "moves house" in a chalit, only its house number changes. Its sign, degree, nakshatra, dignity and navamsa stay exactly the same.

Whole signs also keep one thing simple that a chalit complicates: each house has one sign and one lord. A chalit house can contain parts of two signs.

Which one to use

The Parashari techniques in this curriculum, including lordship, drishti and the yogas, are taught and computed on whole signs, so learn to read those first. Some traditions consult a chalit as a secondary refinement of how fully a graha delivers a house's results. KP uses a third system, Placidus cusps, in its own framework.

The practical rule: when two sources put a graha in different houses, check the house system before you check the interpretation. Usually neither source is broken. They're answering two different questions.

Remember it

Whole sign: the sign is the house. Chalit: the degree draws the house. A graha can change house between them. It never changes sign.

Terms introduced here

Whole-sign houses

Every Parashari calculation in this app counts whole signs from the lagna's sign. The sign is the house.

Bhava chalit

Houses built around the lagna's exact degree. A graha near a house boundary can land one house earlier or later than in whole signs.