7th lord in the 6th house: BPHS Ch. 24 Sl. 78, the partner's lord in the house of conflict

What the placement means

The 7th house lord rules the sign opposite the Ascendant. Placed in the 6th sign, it takes the 7th's matters - the spouse, partnerships, contracts - into the house the texts read for illness, opponents, debts, litigation and service.

Counted from the 7th, the 6th is the 12th house - the sign just behind the lord's own, its house of loss. Counted from the Ascendant, an angle lord has fallen into a dusthana. Both counts are unfavourable, and BPHS's verse is among the least favourable in the Yuvati series.

The two houses involved

The 7th house (Yuvati Bhava) is a kendra: marriage, partnerships and dealings with others.

The 6th house (Ari Bhava) is a dusthana and upachaya: illness, enemies, debt and service.

What BPHS says: Ch. 24 Sl. 78

Sl. 78 reads: "If Yuvati's Lord is in Ari Bhava, the native will beget a sickly wife and he will be inimical to her. He will be given to anger and will be devoid of happiness." All four clauses are adverse.

Briefly and as the text's statement: the verse attaches the 6th's two chief significations, illness and enmity, to the 7th's chief person, the spouse, and adds anger and unhappiness to the native. It is written, like the chapter, for a male native; in neutral terms it describes a partner's health and friction between partners. It is not a forecast about anyone's marriage, this app does not make one, and the health clause is a classical association, not medical advice.

The reverse is more balanced. Sl. 67, Ari's lord in Yuvati, says the native "will be deprived of happiness through wedlock" but is famous, virtuous, honourable, adventurous and wealthy. Both directions reduce marital happiness; only the reverse compensates with public goods.

When the 7th lord also owns a dusthana

Ch. 24 Sl. 145-148 combine both lordships of a two-house planet. For four Ascendants the 7th lord also rules a dusthana, and then it is a dusthana lord in a dusthana: the 12th lord for Taurus and Scorpio rising, the 8th lord for Cancer, the 6th lord itself for Leo. The Uttara Kalamrita verse quoted in the Bhrigu Sutras commentary names the 8th and 12th lords in the 6th as Vipareeta Raja Yoga conditions, and this app's engine flags those cases as Sarala Yoga (8th lord), Vimala Yoga (12th lord) or Harsha Yoga (6th lord). In those rows Sl. 78 is read beside a yoga that points the other way.

Ch. 34 Sl. 2-7 add the Kendra-lord rule (benefics owning angles lose benefic force; malefics lose malefic force). The Saravali has no verse for this placement.

The Bhrigu Sutras touch the 7th lord's condition in passing, inside the sutras for Mercury in the 7th house: if the 7th lord is strong there will be one spouse, while a 7th lord that is weak, "situated in a malefic house" or joined with malefics is read as a loss of the spouse. That is a sutra about Mercury in the 7th, not about the 7th lord in the 6th, and its harsh clause is the text's claim, not a forecast. It is mentioned because it is the only passage in the corpus outside BPHS that weighs the 7th lord's own placement in a difficult house, and because it makes the 7th lord's strength decisive in a way Sl. 78 does not. The Bhrigu Sutras' sutras for the Moon in the 7th, by contrast, say a powerful 7th lord gives two spouses, so even within that one text the 7th lord's strength is read in more than one way.

Which planet it is, Ascendant by Ascendant

From the engine's lordship table, with the engine's dignity for the planet in the 6th sign without a chart, and the planet's other house.

By sign, this placement is mostly comfortable: six rows are friendly and four neutral. Leo rising keeps Saturn, lord of the 6th and 7th, in its own sign Capricorn. Aries rising is the weak row: Venus, lord of the 2nd and 7th, is debilitated in Virgo. No row is exalted.

The second-lordship verses for a lord in Ari colour each row. As 2nd lord (Aries, Libra), Sl. 18: gain through enemies with a benefic, loss through them with a malefic. As 4th lord (Virgo, Pisces), Sl. 42: lacking maternal happiness, angry, independent in action. As 10th lord (Gemini, Sagittarius), Sl. 114: little paternal bliss and wealth, troubled by enemies. As 12th lord (Taurus, Scorpio), Sl. 138: enmity with one's own people. As 8th lord (Cancer), Sl. 90: victory over enemies, with illness. As 6th lord (Leo), Sl. 66: enmity with kin, friendship with others. Sl. 145-148 combine each with Sl. 78.

Strength changes the reading

• Dignity: the engine's dignity label. Read literally, a stronger lord gives more of Sl. 78.
• Nature: under Ch. 34, owning the 7th weakens a benefic's benefic force and softens a malefic's malefic force.
• Association: the 6th is aspected from the 12th, and specially by Mars (3rd, 11th), Jupiter (2nd, 10th) and Saturn (4th, 9th) - see drishti. The Vipareeta rows ask that the dusthana lords be free of relation with other planets.

BPHS also reads the spouse from the Navamsa (Ch. 7), so a verse about the spouse is usually checked against the planet's Navamsa sign in the Navamsa calculator. Planet-level pages such as Sun in the 6th describe the planet in the house without lordship.

Worked example: Aquarius rising, the Sun in Cancer

The engine's deterministic search produced this chart; it can be re-entered in the birth chart calculator: 7 August 1985, 20:48 IST, New Delhi. The Ascendant is Aquarius 26.1.

• With Aquarius rising, the 7th house is Leo, ruled by the Sun alone. The 6th is Cancer.
• The Sun is in Cancer at 21.4 degrees, Ashlesha pada 2, in the 6th. The engine marks it Friendly sign.
• Mars (Cancer 15.04, Debilitated and combust; ruler of the 3rd and 10th) and Mercury (Cancer 27.16, combust and retrograde; ruler of the 5th and 8th) share the 6th.
• Jupiter in the 12th and Saturn in the 9th aspect the 6th. The 6th lord, the Moon, is in Aries, Mars's sign, so the Moon and Mars have exchanged signs.

The Sun carries Sl. 78 alone, at friendly strength. Ch. 34 Sl. 41-42 list the Sun among the "killers" for Kumbh Lagn, the maraka classification that fits a 7th lord. The company changes the house more than the Sun does: Mercury, as 8th lord in the 6th, forms Sarala Yoga in the engine, and the Moon-Mars exchange appears as Parivarthana Yoga. The engine also reports a Kendra-Kona Raj Yoga that includes the Sun. None of those flags concerns Sl. 78 directly; they sit beside it.

Neighbouring placements

The reverse, the 6th lord in the 7th (Sl. 67), is summarised above; together they form an exchange (parivartana). One house back, the 7th lord in the 5th (Sl. 77) is one of the brightest Yuvati verses; one house on, the 7th lord in its own 7th (Sl. 79) brings happiness through the spouse. The other dusthana placements are the 8th and the 12th.

1. 1.Find your Ascendant with the Lagna calculator.
2. 2.Check the birth chart for the 7th lord in the 6th sign, with its dignity.
3. 3.If it also rules the 6th, 8th or 12th, see whether the yoga calculator lists Harsha, Sarala or Vimala Yoga for it.

Questions about the 7th lord in the 6th

What does BPHS say about the 7th lord in the 6th house?

Ch. 24 Sl. 78: a sickly spouse, friction with the spouse, anger and unhappiness. It is the text's statement about a combination, scaled by strength; this app does not predict marriages or health.

Can it form a Vipareeta yoga?

Only through the planet's other lordship: when the 7th lord also rules the 12th (Taurus, Scorpio), the 8th (Cancer) or the 6th (Leo), the engine flags Vimala, Sarala or Harsha Yoga.

Does a weak 7th lord in the 6th soften the verse?

By BPHS Sl. 145-148, a weak lord gives a smaller share of its verse. The text does not say weakness reverses it.

Which Ascendant makes the 7th lord also the 6th lord?

Leo: Saturn rules Capricorn (6th) and Aquarius (7th), so here it is in its own sign, and the engine flags Harsha Yoga.

How common is it?

251 of 3,000 sampled birth moments 1985-2060, 8.4%.