Aspects in Vedic astrology: which planets see yours

In Vedic astrology, an aspect is a planet looking at whole houses counted from where it stands, not an angle measured in degrees. Every one of the seven planets looks at the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th houses from itself at different strengths, and Saturn, Jupiter and Mars each get their strongest look somewhere other than straight across the chart.

So a planet in your chart is never only about the house it sits in. It also reaches into other houses, and other planets reach into its house. Any one of those looks is a small part of the picture, and the planets beside it, your Moon and the stretch of years you're living through can pull it another way. The free personal reading weighs those against each other and writes a single page about you from the whole chart.

How is a Vedic aspect different from a Western one?

If you've used a Western app, you know aspects as angles: two planets 90 degrees apart make a square, 120 a trine, and an orb of a few degrees decides whether it counts. Both planets share the aspect equally.

The Vedic version starts somewhere else. The Sanskrit word for it, drishti, means sight: a planet sees. Your Saturn in one house casts its sight on certain houses counted from it, and anything in those houses is seen by Saturn. The chapter on aspects opens by announcing the aspects of each of the twelve signs, from Aries on^9.1.

Three things follow. A look doesn't have to be returned: Saturn in your 1st sees a Moon in your 3rd in full, while from the 3rd your Moon doesn't look back at Saturn at all. It lands on a house, so a planet looks at your 10th even when nothing sits there. And it comes in strengths, from a quarter to full.

Which houses does each planet look at?

Picture your Mars sitting in your 2nd house. Count that house as 1 and go forward. Mars sees the 4th and 8th from itself, which are your 5th and 9th, at full strength, and it also glances at the other houses on its list.

The planets' friendly sight on one another falls on four groups of places, counted from each planet: the 7th; the 4th and 8th; the 5th and 9th; and the 3rd and 10th^9.17. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and the rest look in four grades, a quarter, a half, three quarters and full^9.18.

Here is the whole scheme, one verse per planet:

"The others" is the chapter's own phrase. It names Saturn, Jupiter and Mars and gives one line for everyone else, which covers your Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus: they look hardest at the house straight across from them.

One detail in that table surprises people who learned the short version, where every planet sees the 7th in full. By this chapter's grading, Jupiter's look at the 7th is a half and Mars's is a quarter. Their full sight goes elsewhere.

How do you find the aspects in your own chart?

You need your Vedic chart, cast from your birth date, place and time. Then take one planet at a time.

1. Note the house it sits in and call that house 1.
2. Count forward to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th from there.
3. Match each count to the table above to see how hard it looks.
4. Write down which of your houses those are, and which planets sit in them.

Say your Saturn is in your 6th. Its 3rd is your 8th and its 10th is your 3rd, so those two get Saturn's full look. Its 7th is your 12th, at three quarters. Do this for Saturn, Jupiter and Mars first, because their full looks land on houses you might never think to check.

New to counting houses? Start with how to read a Vedic birth chart, which numbers them from your rising sign. The rest of our Vedic astrology basics build on the same counting.

Saturn, Jupiter and Mars: the three with a different full look

These three are why a Vedic reading spends so long on aspects.

Saturn sees the 3rd and 10th from itself in full^9.19. Wherever your Saturn sits, count ten houses on: that's the part of your life it looks at hardest, along with the 3rd. Our page asking whether Saturn is bad reads Saturn itself; this is where it points.

Jupiter sees the 5th and 9th in full^9.20. Those houses sit a trine away from it, so a Jupiter in your 1st looks fully at your 5th and 9th and only by half at your 7th. If you have Jupiter in your 1st house, its strongest sight falls on those two houses, not on your partner's.

Mars sees the 4th and 8th in full^9.21. Mars in your 1st looks hardest at your 4th, the house of home, and your 8th. Its look straight across is the weakest it has.

A later chapter adds weight to exactly these three looks when it scores aspects in numbers: something extra for Saturn's 3rd and 10th, Jupiter's trines, and Mars's 4th and 8th^42.6. The book comes back to them in two different methods.

Do Rahu and Ketu have aspects?

If your Rahu or Ketu sits across from a planet you care about, you'll want to know whether that counts as a look. The aspect chapter names Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, then gives one line for "the others"^9.22. It doesn't say whether the North Node (Rahu) and the South Node (Ketu) are among them.

Other chapters do have Rahu looking. In a line about the home a person lives in, counted from your soul planet's sign in the D9 chart (the navamsa, a finer chart cut from each sign), the 4th from there joined with or aspected by Saturn and Rahu gives a house made of stone^13.47. So Rahu can aspect, but the aspect chapter gives it no distances of its own.

Two rules you may meet, that the nodes cast no aspects at all or that they share Jupiter's 5th and 9th, aren't in the aspect chapter. Treat any node aspect in your chart as a question, and read the nodes themselves first: our page on whether Rahu is bad does that.

Signs that look at each other

Look at the sign your Moon is in. Some signs around your chart face it whatever planets they hold, because there is a second kind of sight, between signs rather than planets. The signs come in three kinds: movable, fixed and dual^2.5. Movable signs see fixed ones, fixed signs see movable ones, and dual signs see each other^9.2. A sign never sees the neighbour beside it; it sees the other three of the matching kind^9.3.

Here is every sign, as the chapter spells it out:

Virgo shares its verse with Gemini, Libra with Cancer, Capricorn with Leo, Aquarius with Scorpio and Pisces with Sagittarius.

Planets ride along with their signs. Any planet sees the planets in the three signs its own sign sees^9.10, so a planet in a movable sign sees whatever stands in the fixed signs it faces^9.11, and one in a dual sign sees the planets in the other dual signs, skipping the one next door^9.12. This sight runs both ways: if Aries sees Leo, Leo sees Aries.

For most readers this is the second layer. Learn the planet looks first, and come back to sign aspects when a reading mentions them.

What does a planet's look do to a house?

This is where aspects stop being geometry. Think of a house as a room in your life, and the looks it gets as the people who keep checking in on it.

A house flourishes when three things line up: kind planets look at it, the planet that rules it is sitting there as a kind planet, and that planet is youthful, awake and princely, the verse's words for a planet in good condition^17.15. The ruler's look matters on its own too: when a house's ruler looks at it, that house's happiness is declared to grow, a rule given for every house alike^17.16.

Which planets count as kind depends partly on your rising sign. For an Aries rising sign, for instance, the verse lists Jupiter and the Sun as kind and Saturn, Mercury and Venus as hard^16.13. Our page on your Vedic rising sign gives the list for all twelve.

Your rising sign gets special treatment. Your 1st house holds you yourself: your body and how it's built, what you know, your strength, and what you're like^17.1. Any planet looking at it counts as a giver of good, and there's more: a planet in its weakest sign that looks at the 1st is still said to make someone a king^22.26. Today a line like that reads as standing: being seen, and being backed.

One pairing of rulers gets a verse of its own. The ruler of your 9th is called the king and the ruler of your 5th the minister, and when the two look at each other, it reads a person who comes to hold a kingdom^21.2. Today that might be a field, a team or a project that's yours to run.

When an aspect reads hard

Some looks work against a planet, and the verses name them without softening.

A planet sitting in an enemy's sign, with an enemy, or under an enemy's look, or sharing a house with Saturn, is called hungry^26.27. A planet sitting with the Sun, seen only by hard planets and looked at by an enemy is called agitated^26.30. Who counts as whose enemy is its own list; see which planets are friends and enemies.

A missing look counts too. A house's ruler can fail it in several ways: burned up close to the Sun, or sitting with a planet that rules the 6th, 8th or 12th^17.13, or not looking properly at its own house, or in a dead, old, asleep or afflicted state. When any of those is true of a house's ruler, the verse calls that house's happiness destroyed and what it bears doubtful^17.14. The wording is blunt, and any one of those conditions is enough.

What it asks of you is to find that house's ruler, see what's looking at it, and only then decide how much a single line about the house tells you.

The same weighing runs through a planet's years. In the years of a weak Sun, kind planets looking at the Sun bring some happiness midway, and a hard planet's look leaves only the hard results^36.11.

Mars in its weakest sign, in a difficult house (the 6th, 8th or 12th), without kind strength, joined with and looked at by hard planets, gives years called a giver of misfortune^36.28. Today that reads as a stretch where things go wrong more often than they should, and it asks for patience with yourself while it runs.

Lines like these describe how a planet gets weighed, and they're for your own reflection. They don't forecast anything and they aren't advice, and a choice about your money, your health or your family belongs to you, worked out with the people it touches.

How strong is an aspect? The degree count

Here the Vedic and Western versions meet. A later chapter measures a look in degrees. You take the distance from the planet doing the looking to the one being looked at, fold it back if it's more than half the circle, and turn that into a strength score^42.3. Different distances get different formulas^42.4, and Saturn's, Jupiter's and Mars's special looks get their extra on top^42.6.

So the house scheme tells you which houses a planet looks at, and the degree count gives each look a number. That number works much like a Western orb, and it means two charts with the same house aspect can still differ in how strongly it's felt.

Which aspects in your chart matter most?

You can make these checks on your own chart in a few minutes:

1. Find Saturn's 3rd and 10th, Jupiter's 5th and 9th, and Mars's 4th and 8th. Those are their full looks, and the degree chapter adds extra strength to exactly these^42.6. Note which of your houses they land on.
2. Check who looks at your rising sign. Any planet looking at your 1st is read as giving good, even one in its weakest sign^22.26.
3. Check whether each house you care about is seen by its own ruler. A ruler looking at its own house makes that house's happiness grow^17.16.
4. Look for an enemy's look on a planet. That alone can make it hungry in the text's terms^26.27.

Each check gives you one thread. A real chart pulls on all of them at the same time, and on your Moon and the planet whose years have begun for you as well. The free personal reading works from that whole picture and gives you a page about you, which is an easier start than adding up looks by hand.

Curious how the verse behind each line gets checked? How AstroEngine reads the text shows the process.

Questions to sit with

• Which house does your Saturn look at fully, and does that area of your life feel watched or tested?
• Is there a house in your chart that no planet looks at? What do you notice about that part of your life?
• Which planets look at your rising sign, and do you feel backed by them?
• If two of your rulers look at each other, how do those two parts of your life talk to each other?

Aspects in Vedic astrology: quick answers