Measured against the fixed stars — the way Jyotish has read the heavens for two thousand years — the zodiac sits ~24° away from the Western one. Most people’s chart shifts a full sign. Enter your birth details to see your sidereal Big Three, your Moon’s nakshatra, and the planetary period (daśā) you’re living through right now.
Computed live in your browser — Lahiri ayanāṃśa · whole-sign houses · daśā dates accurate to within days
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The same sky, measured against the stars. Your tropical positions are computed first, then converted to the sidereal zodiac by subtracting the ayanāṃśa — the accumulated drift between the two zodiacs. We use Lahiri (Chitra-pakṣa), the Indian national standard since 1956, declared on your results. — ☉ LAHIRI / CHITRA-PAKṢA AYANĀṂŚA · ≈24°13′ IN 2026
Your daśā dates are computed, not looked up. The Vimshottari sequence is derived from your Moon’s exact fraction of its nakshatra at birth, using 365.25-day years — the same convention as the standard Jyotish software your dates can be checked against. — ☽ VIMSHOTTARI ENGINE · 120-YEAR CYCLE · BALANCE FROM THE MOON
Everything runs in your browser. No birth data is sent to a server to compute your chart. Sun, Moon, and Ascendant use Jean Meeus’ algorithms (±0.02°); planets use Keplerian elements; Rahu and Ketu use the mean lunar node, as classical software does. — ♄ PRIVATE BY DESIGN · MEEUS ASTRONOMICAL ALGORITHMS
Two thousand years ago the tropical and sidereal zodiacs pointed at the same stars. Then a slow wobble in Earth’s axis — precession — began carrying the seasonal calendar away from the constellations at about one degree every 72 years. Today the two zodiacs sit roughly 24° apart. Western astrology stayed with the seasons (tropical); Jyotish, the classical astrology of India, stayed with the stars (sidereal). Same sky, two rulers laid against it — which is why your “sign” usually moves back one sign when you cross systems.
That shift is the doorway, not the destination. What Jyotish actually offers is resolution and timing: beneath the 12 signs sit the 27 nakshatras — lunar mansions of 13°20′, each with its own deity, symbol, and temperament — and from your Moon’s exact position flows the Vimshottari daśā: a dated, 120-year sequence of planetary periods that tells you not just what your chart is, but when each part of it comes due.
Your Sun, Moon, and lagna (rising sign) measured against the stars. The houses follow the oldest convention there is — whole-sign — so each sign is a house, counted from your lagna. The chart most people meet first, corrected ~24°.
The Moon’s zodiac. Each nakshatra spans 13°20′ and divides into four padas — 108 positions in all. Your Moon’s nakshatra is read as the core of the personality: more specific than a sign, older than the signs themselves.
Jyotish’s signature instrument. From your Moon’s nakshatra flows a fixed 120-year sequence of nine planetary chapters — your mahādaśās — each subdivided into antardaśās. A calendar of your life, with dates.
You’ve seen the chart. Pick the reading that matches the question you’re actually asking — who (the deep architecture of the chart itself) or when (the dated daśā forecast of your next three years).
Who you are in this system — built from your Moon’s nakshatra outward, through your lagna and all nine grahas, down to the navamśa layer beneath the chart.
Best for: “Tell me who I am in this system.”
The reading Vedic astrology is famous for: not what your chart is, but when it pays out. Your current planetary period read precisely, then a dated map of the next three years — every switch, every window, graded.
Best for: “Tell me when — with dates.”
A live Jyotish consultation of this depth runs $150–450. These stream in minutes, are written to your exact chart, and are emailed to keep. Non-fatalistic by design: every hard period gets an end date and a purpose — and we will never sell you a gemstone.
Or go wider: the full Seven-System reading places your chart inside Western astrology, Bazi, Sabian Symbols, Hermetic Alchemy, Tree of Life, and the Hermetic Virtues.
Your birth data carries over — no retyping
Standing in a daśā and facing a specific decision — a job, a relationship, a move? Paste any reading you have plus your real questions about this moment. The Oracle reads beneath the text through six esoteric traditions converging on a single direction. One consultation, $7.
Consult the Oracle →The Three Pillars
A Vedic chart is not a Western chart with different signs. It is built from three instruments that Western astrology mostly lacks — a star-anchored zodiac, a 27-mansion lunar layer beneath it, and a dated timing system flowing out of it. Each answers a different question.
Before the 12 signs existed in India, the Moon’s path was divided into 27 mansions of 13°20′ each — the nakshatras — each carrying a deity, a symbol, and a temperament. Your Moon’s nakshatra is Jyotish’s answer to “what are you actually like?”: where a sign gives you one of twelve archetypes, the nakshatra and its pada give you one of 108. It is the layer TikTok discovered in the 2020s and the layer classical India never left.
The sidereal signs and whole-sign houses, counted from your lagna. Nine grahas — the seven classical planets plus Rahu and Ketu, the Moon’s nodes — each placed in a sign and a house, each strong or strained. Specific combinations form named yogas: repeatable patterns the classical texts catalogued for two thousand years.
Jyotish’s sharpest edge. From the Moon’s exact position flows a fixed 120-year sequence of planetary chapters: Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. Each mahādaśā subdivides into antardaśās. The result is what Western astrology rarely gives you: a life with dates on it.
Earth’s axis traces a slow circle, one full turn every ~25,800 years. The equinox point — the tropical zodiac’s anchor — therefore slides backward through the constellations at about 50.3″ per year. Around 285 AD the two zodiacs agreed; today they differ by roughly 24°13′. That offset is the ayanāṃśa. Subtract it from any tropical position and you have the sidereal one. This calculator uses the Lahiri (Chitra-pakṣa) ayanāṃśa — adopted as the Indian national standard by the Calendar Reform Committee in 1956, anchored so the star Spica sits at exactly 0° sidereal Libra.
The Sun spends a month in each sign — a twelfth of everyone born that month shares it. The Moon changes signs every two and a half days and nakshatras every day, and in Jyotish it represents the mind: the instrument through which everything else in the chart is experienced. This is why a Vedic astrologer asking “your sign” means your Moon sign, and why the daśā clock starts from the Moon, not the Sun.
At birth, your Moon sits some fraction of the way through one nakshatra. That nakshatra’s lord rules your first mahādaśā — and the fraction already traveled is subtracted from it. Born with the Moon 60% through a Jupiter-ruled mansion? You enter life with 40% of a 16-year Jupiter period remaining, and the fixed sequence unrolls from there for 120 years. Every date on this page is computed from that single anchor — which is why an accurate birth time sharpens everything.
Start with the shift — your tropical Big Three beside your sidereal Big Three. Then meet your Moon nakshatra: its deity, symbol, and temperament are the most personal sentence on the page. Scan the nine grahas through the whole-sign houses for where the chart concentrates. Then read the daśā timeline: which mahādaśā you’re in, what year of it, and when it hands over. The paid readings take it from there — the architecture in full, or the next three years with dates.
Every number on this page is computed live in your browser from your birth data — no server round-trip, no third-party astrology API. The conventions below are the ones working Jyotishis use; the formulas come from primary sources or peer-reviewed astronomical references, and the stack is declared so you can cross-check any output.
Tropical longitudes are converted to sidereal by subtracting the Lahiri (Chitra-pakṣa) ayanāṃśa — the Indian national standard, defined so the star Spica (Chitrā) sits at 0° sidereal Libra. We anchor at 23°51′11″ for J2000 and accumulate precession at 50.29″/year (≈24°13′ in 2026). Accuracy is within an arcminute across 20th- and 21st-century births — and any placement within 0.1° of a nakshatra or sign boundary is flagged.
Solar and lunar longitudes use Jean Meeus’ Astronomical Algorithms — Chapter 25 for the Sun and Chapter 47 for the Moon (the full 60-term periodic series). Typical accuracy is within ±0.02°. The lagna (ascendant) derives from Meeus Chapter 12’s GMST with the obliquity of date, verified to ±1–2 arcminutes against professional software.
The five visible planets use Keplerian orbital elements (Paul Schlyter, 1979) with Jupiter–Saturn perturbation corrections — accuracy ≤0.5° for 1900–2100, sufficient for sign, house, and nakshatra placement everywhere except within a degree of a cusp, which we flag.
The lunar nodes use the mean node polynomial (Meeus Ch. 47), the convention of classical Indian software and the published Lahiri ephemeris. Ketu sits exactly opposite Rahu. The mean–true node difference can reach 1.7°, so the convention is declared here rather than left ambiguous.
Your Moon’s sidereal longitude fixes its nakshatra and the fraction already traversed. The balance of the first mahādaśā is that remaining fraction times the lord’s full period; the fixed 120-year sequence unrolls from there, with antardaśās proportioned as MD × AD ÷ 120. We use 365.25-day years — the convention of the standard references — so mahādaśā dates should match them within a day or two.
Houses follow the classical Jyotish convention: the sign holding your lagna is the first house, and each sign thereafter is one house. The navamśa (D9) sign of each graha is derived from its position within its sign — each 3°20′ pada maps to one navamśa sign in the standard movable/fixed/dual progression.
Transiting Saturn’s sidereal sign is compared with your natal Moon sign; Sade Sati spans Saturn’s passage through the 12th, 1st, and 2nd signs from the Moon (~7.5 years). Entry and exit moments are found by bisection root-finding on Saturn’s longitude, refined to within a day — computed from actual motion, never assumed.
Your birth location is geocoded against a database of 200+ cities or via the OpenStreetMap Nominatim API. The IANA timezone database (via the browser’s Intl API) handles historical DST for 20th- and 21st-century births. Half-hour and quarter-hour zones (India +5:30, Iran +3:30, Nepal +5:45) are supported.
Calculations are deterministic and reproducible; readings are interpretive guidance, not medical, legal, or financial advice. The paid readings apply these sources to your specific chart. For deeper background, see the Western time-lord calculator, the Bazi Four Pillars calculator, and the full site methodology.