What is a Kundli? Your Vedic birth chart explained

A Kundli is a map of the sky at the moment and place you were born. It is also called a Janam Kundli, a Janam Patri or a birth chart. Vedic astrology, known in India as Jyotish, reads this map to describe a person and the periods of their life.

What goes into a Kundli

Three facts are needed to draw one:

• Your date of birth. It fixes where the Sun, the Moon and the planets were.
• Your time of birth. It fixes which sign was rising in the east. That sign is your Lagna.
• Your place of birth. The rising sign depends on where on Earth you were.

The time matters more than most people expect. The rising sign changes about every two hours. If the time is wrong by an hour, the whole chart can shift by one house.

The three building blocks

Every Kundli is made of the same three things.

12 houses

A house is an area of life. The 1st house is you. The 4th is home and mother. The 7th is marriage and partners. The 10th is career. There are always 12 and they always cover the same areas.

12 signs

A sign is a style. Aries is direct and quick. Taurus is steady. Each house holds exactly one sign. Which sign lands in which house depends on your Lagna.

9 planets

A planet is the one that acts. Vedic astrology uses nine: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and the two shadow points Rahu and Ketu. Each planet sits in one house and one sign in your chart.

A short way to hold the three together: the house says where in life, the sign says how and the planet says who is acting.

The Lagna comes first

The Lagna is the sign that was rising on the eastern horizon when you were born. It becomes your 1st house. The next sign becomes your 2nd house and so on around the zodiac.

This is why two people born on the same day can have very different charts. The planets are in the same signs for both. But a few hours apart, the Lagna is different and so every planet falls in a different house.

Lords: how houses and planets are tied

Every sign is owned by one planet. Mars owns Aries and Scorpio. Venus owns Taurus and Libra. The owner is called the lord of the sign.

If Aries is your 1st house then Mars is the lord of your 1st house. Wherever Mars sits in your chart, it carries the matters of the 1st house with it. Much of chart reading is following these links from a house to its sign to its lord.

What a Kundli is used for

Traditionally a Kundli is read for four things:

1. Nature. What a person is like and what comes easily or with effort.
2. Timing. Which planet is leading each period of life. This is the Dasha system.
3. Transits. Where the planets are now compared with the birth chart. This is called Gochar.
4. Matching. Comparing two charts before marriage.

What a Kundli does not do

A Kundli does not fix what will happen. It shows what is likely to come forward in each period, as the tradition understands it. These are possibilities and not certainties. Two people with the same chart will still live different lives. Use it for learning and reflection and not as a replacement for medical, legal or financial advice.

Where to start

Start with the Lagna and the Moon sign. Then look at which planets sit in which houses. After that, learn the Mahadasha you are in now. Those three steps give most people their first real picture of their chart.