Saturn's Ashtakvarga: Basic Understanding

The benefic and malefic houses for Saturn with respect to all the 8 references (7 planets and Lagna i.e. Ascendant) are given in the table below;

Basics about entries in each cell of the table:

As explained in one of the previous posts, an entry of 0 denotes a malefic position or a bindu (dot), and an entry of 1 denotes a benefic position or a rekha (line). A bindu (dot) is also called as a "karana", and a rekha (line) is also called as a "sthana".

How to read the table:

To get a quick and easy understanding of this ashtakvarga chart, let us take few examples.

Let us refer to the column titled “Sun” in the table. This column reveals the benefic and malefic houses for Saturn to occupy, with respect to Sun.

The 3rd, 5th, 6th, 9th and 12th houses have 0. So these house from Sun are malefic for Saturn i.e. if Saturn is placed in one of these houses (with respect to Sun), it would exert malefic influence.

Similarly for rest of the houses (1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th houses) 1 is placed, ensuring that if Saturn is placed in these positions (1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th houses) from Sun, it would behave as a benefic influence due to its positional array in ashtakvarga chart. 

The similar principle applies for all the 7 planets and the Lagna (Ascendant).

Hidden Secrets of Vedic Astrology

Moon is a significator of mother (in terms of relation), temperament (in terms of body part), water (in terms of element), as per astrology. Astrological importance of moon varies according to where is moon located in the natal chart in vedic astrology. Moon has been allotted a position equal to, if not higher, than the ascendant sign. 

Vedic astrology is lunar based astrology. The combination of stars around the moon are defined in vedic asdtrology as nakshatras. North and south nodes of the moon are given the rank of shadowy planets called as rahu and ketu respectively. The importance of these nodes cannot be overemphasized in predictive astrology.

The transit of moon which occurs every 2 and 1/4th of a day, across the twelve houses of the natal birth chart can have great implications over the future happenings and events, not only in a persons life but sometimes the life cycle of nations and the world as a whole, as has been described in mundane astrology.

Western astrology is more dependent on sunsigns hence has less flexibility owing to the long period of transit of sun across the natal birth chart as compared to the vbery short duration of time that the moon stays in one house of the natal chart as a representative example (certainly not exhaustive) the combination of moon and venus, either during the transit or in the natal birth chart can mean significant damage to love life / marriage. The logic behind this has to be appreciated rather than blindly believed.

Both Moon and Venus have been allotted white color, feminine gender and a cool aura (as per the rules of vedic astrology), still they are not friendly if placed together in the same house. It is not uncommon to see 2 persons of the same caliber vying for the same post of power inimical to each other. In the same way an overactive moon (emotional behavior) can not take care of passionate relationships over a long period of tuime and hence is the recipe of disaster.

I hope even this illustration is a small but concrete representation that vedic astrology is based on logics and not surmises and conjectures. The forthcoming post wil shed more light on such planetary combinations which you will realize are effective but still not rocket-science.

I wished to keep it simple but not simpler.