A centuries-old Sanskrit text, the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, does not leave you to work out which planets get along. It names them outright, planet by planet, in four verses, then grades every pair on a five-step scale from great friend to great enemy3.50. And the grade is not a label: a planet in a friend's sign holds a quarter of its auspicious strength, while in an enemy's sign that strength is declared void3.51,3.52.
What a dignity table leaves out
If you have worked with essential dignity, you know each planet's domicile, its exaltation, and the two signs opposite those, where it is in detriment or fall. That is four signs out of twelve; for the other eight a dignity table has nothing to say.
This system fills that gap from a different direction. Instead of asking how a planet does in a sign, it asks who owns the sign and how the two planets regard each other. Every sign has a lord, so every placement becomes a relationship: your Mars is a guest in someone's house, and the question is whose, and whether they are on good terms.
The fixed list: who counts whom
Begin with the Sun, where the text begins. Mercury is neutral to the Sun, Venus and Saturn are its enemies, and the rest are friends3.44. For the Moon the verse names those that stand as related to it and leaves every other planet neutral — the Moon is given no natural enemy at all.
To Mars, Venus and Saturn are neutral, Mercury is an enemy, and the rest friends3.45. To Mercury, the Moon is an enemy, the Sun and Venus friends, the rest neutral3.45. To Jupiter, Mercury and Venus are enemies, Saturn neutral, the others friends3.46. To Venus, Mercury and Saturn are friends, Mars and Jupiter neutral, the rest enemies3.46. To Saturn, Jupiter is neutral, Mercury and Venus friends, the rest enemies3.47. The text calls this enmity, friendship and neutrality fixed3.47.
Read it twice and something a tidy table hides shows up: it does not balance. Mercury counts the Sun a friend while the Sun holds Mercury only neutral3.44,3.45. The Moon counts Mercury among those related to it, and Mercury counts the Moon an enemy3.45. Regard runs one way more often than both — which is worth sitting with, since it is also how regard works outside a chart.
The second friendship, the one only your chart has
Beside the fixed list sits a friendship made by your own birth chart. Planets standing in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th or 12th house from one another are temporary friends at that moment; from any other house they are not3.48. Two people share the whole fixed list and can still have opposite temporary ones.
Here the subject stops being a table. Saturn and the Sun are natural enemies in these verses, but if your Saturn sits in the 12th from your Sun, the two are temporary friends3.48. That is the part no printed grid can give you, and the reason a grid was never the whole method.
Putting the two lists together: five grades
The lists are then combined. A planet that is a friend both temporarily and naturally becomes a great friend, adhimitra; friendship and neutrality together make a plain friend; enmity and neutrality make a plain enemy3.49. Enmity and friendship come out neutral, and enemy in both lists makes a great enemy, adhishatru — five grades in all, which the text calls panchadha maitri3.50.
What that does is stop the fixed list being the last word. A natural enemy that is also a temporary friend is read as neutral3.50. The sky's standing arrangement gets overruled by your own particular chart.
What each grade is actually worth
The grades are priced. In exaltation a planet's auspicious strength is full; in its moolatrikona, the root stretch of its own sign, full less a quarter; in its own sign, half; in a friend's sign, only a quarter3.51. In a neutral's sign it falls to an eighth, and in debilitation, in combustion, or in an enemy's sign the text declares it void3.52. Then a clause that is easy to miss: inauspicious strength is to be stated in the reverse order3.52. Read backward, the same scale measures what a planet can cost. Which sign each planet owns in the first place is a separate list, handed out sign by sign, and it is set out in which planet rules your sign.
Notice the ranking, because it settles a common confusion. Exaltation outranks a friend's sign by four times over. A planet in a friend's sign is not thereby strong; it is holding a quarter.
Across the sixteen divisional charts the arithmetic is gentler. Counted chart by chart the full score is twenty, and a great friend's division holds at eighteen8.24; a friend's is worth fifteen, a neutral's ten, an enemy's seven, a great enemy's five8.25. An enemy's sign is void on one scale and still worth seven of twenty on another, so friendship is not a switch being thrown.
What the grades do in a life
The five grades appear a second time, told as results. The text lists nine states a planet can be in26.6, then keys them to dignity: exalted, a planet is dipta, radiant; in its own sign, svastha, comfortable; in a great friend's sign, mudita, delighted; in a friend's sign, shanta, peaceful; in a neutral's sign, dina, wretched26.7. In an enemy's sign it is atidukhita, deeply pained26.8. The results arrive while that planet's years run, so this reads alongside the dasha years.
A radiant planet reads as lordship over land, valor, wealth and vehicles, and esteem from a king26.9; a comfortable one as bodily ease, wealth and happiness from a king, learning and fame26.10. In a great friend's sign: clothes and perfume, pilgrimage and fortitude, conveyances and ornaments26.11. In a plain friend's: happiness and merit, land, a wife, the enjoyment of learning, esteem from the lord of the land26.12. Where the verses say king, read whoever can hand you a post or a title.
Now the hard half, which belongs here as much as the rest. For a planet in a neutral's sign, during its own years, the text reads displacement from one's place, conflict with kin, living by a base and lowly occupation, being forsaken by people, and being afflicted with disease26.13. For a planet in an enemy's sign it reads manifold and constant sorrow, going abroad, being deprived of kinsfolk, and living in fear of thieves, fire and the king26.14. Going abroad and being without one's people sit in the same line, as one movement.
Both describe one condition — a particular planet, in a particular sign, during its own years — and both are readings, not predictions. Both stay conditional in the book's own terms: a temporary friendship lifts a natural enemy to neutral before any of this is read3.50, and exaltation or own sign outranks friendship on the strength scale3.51. The illness named in the first is a matter for a doctor, not a chart.
Three ways this text reads enmity
A sign is only the first way. Another set of six states26.24 includes kshudhita, hungry, which the text applies to a planet in an enemy's sign, joined with an enemy, aspected by an enemy, or joined with Saturn26.27. So a planet in a neutral sign can still be read as hungry, if an enemy sits beside it or looks at it. Of such a planet the text reads grief, delusion and distress, anguish through the suffering of one's dependents, thinness from fear, quarrel and loss of money through enemies, a complete check on one's strength, and judgment impaired by despair26.41. Those are the verse's words for a condition, not a forecast; money named in old verses is not financial advice, and a worry about your mind or your household belongs with people who can help.
It runs in your favor as well. Friendly aspect between planets is placed at the 3rd and 10th, the 5th and 9th, the 4th and 8th, and the 7th9.17. And a friend's sign can do more than hold a quarter: planets in their own sign, in exaltation, or in a friend's sign, standing in a kendra — the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th — are read as mutual karakas, causes of each other's results, especially in the 10th12.22. One such planet, in a kendra with another, is itself a karaka12.24. Two planets in merely friendly signs, placed in those corners, make each other work.
What these verses do not cover
Two gaps worth naming. The fixed-friendship verses name the seven — Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn — and give no friendship list for the lunar nodes, which you may know as the North and South Nodes3.44,3.47. Tables that assign them friends get that elsewhere.
And this may not be the subject you came for. "Which planet rules friendship" and "which planet represents enemies" are questions about areas of life, read from houses and their lords. These verses are about how planets regard each other — a different thing wearing the same word.
So a single bad grade settles nothing. Saturn in an enemy's sign is a long way from the whole of what the text reads into Saturn's years — see is Saturn always bad? — and the same holds for the North Node and for a planet retrograde at birth. How the engine weighs them together is in how AstroEngine reads the BPHS; the rest sit in the library.
Questions to sit with about your own grades
- Whose house is each of your planets standing in? That question, not the sign's name, is where this method starts.
- The regard in the fixed list often runs one way. Where in your life does that sound familiar?
- A natural enemy can be a temporary friend in your chart. What does a relationship that works in spite of the type look like to you?
- A planet in a friend's sign holds a quarter of its strength. Where are you settling for comfortable company over strong ground?
Planet friendships: quick answers
Which planets are enemies?
Are the lists mutual?
What does a friend's sign do for a planet?
The grade of every planet in your chart
Your reading grades every planet in your own chart on this scale, from a great friend's sign to an enemy's. It names the natural grade and the temporary one, combines them as these verses do, and prints the verse behind every line.