Jyotiṣa — Indian Astrology

What Jyotiṣa is

Jyotiṣa is a traditional Indian system of astrology and celestial timekeeping — the word means the science of light. Unlike the tropical zodiac commonly used in modern Western astrology, which begins at the March equinox, many contemporary Jyotiṣa traditions use a sidereal zodiac, measured against the stars. The two have drifted about twenty-four degrees apart, and that gap — the ayanāṃśa — is why one birth can carry one sign in a Western chart and the sign before it here.

A Jyotiṣa birth chart may consider the Moon's rāśi (the sign it occupied), the rising sign or Lagna, the twenty-seven nakṣatras — the lunar mansions the Moon passes through in a month — and the positions of the nine grahas: the seven bodies visible to the eye, with Rāhu and Ketu, the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's.

Everything below is calculated for the moment and place of birth from the sidereal sky, using the Lahiri (Citrapakṣa) ayanāṃśa that Indian almanacs have used officially since 1955. The positions are facts anyone can check against an ephemeris. What the tradition has made of them is a separate matter, and this page keeps to the first.

The same birth in the tropical zodiac, with houses, aspects and the classical dignities, is on Your Birth Chart.