Reading the Chart

Your birth chart, also called the Rasi chart is the D1 chart in this system. It is the foundation of everything!

Sidereal astrology. It is a snapshot of the sky at the exact moment you were born, and it serves as the blueprint of your entire life. To generate it you need three things: your date of birth, your exact time of birth, and your place of birth.

The time matters more than most people expect, because even a difference of a few minutes can shift your Rising sign, which changes the structure of the entire chart.

If you have only ever seen a Western astrology chart, the Sidereal chart is going to look very different to you. Instead of a wheel divided into pie-shaped sections, the North Indian Sidereal chart uses a square with a diamond shape inside it, creating twelve distinct sections arranged in a fixed geometric pattern. Each section represents one of the twelve houses of your chart. Within those sections you will see letters and numbers. The letters are abbreviations for the zodiac signs, and the numbers represent the planets placed in each house.

Once you know how to orient yourself within this format, the chart becomes surprisingly readable. Your Rising sign, known as the Lagna, is always found in the top center diamond of the chart, and everything else is built from there.

To go deeper into what each placement means for your specific life, that is exactly what my book, my services and the tutorials here on the site are designed to walk you through.