What a yoga in your chart means, and how many other charts have it

Being told "you have Gaj Kesari yoga" sounds like being told you have something rare. In this app it means one specific thing: a named rule about where planets stand, relative to each other, to the Moon or to the houses, matched your chart. The useful questions are which rule, what it checks, and how many other people it matches. All three have exact answers here.

To see how common each yoga is, we ran the calculator's own code over 40,000 charts, with birth moments drawn uniformly at random from 1950 to 2010 and cast for eight Indian cities. None came back empty, and that is by construction: the Sankhya family counts how many signs the seven classical planets occupy, and exactly one of its seven names always applies. The median chart returned six yogas. So "you have a yoga" is never news. Which one, and on what condition, is.

Gaj Kesari: four conditions, one chart in six

The rule as coded follows Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, Chapter 36, Slokas 3-4. Jupiter must be in the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th house counted from the ascendant or from the Moon; it must be joined with or aspected by a benefic; and it must not be debilitated, combust or in an enemy's sign. Houses here are whole signs, so the first condition is a count of signs, and Jupiter in the same sign as the Moon counts as the 1st. The reading the text attaches is splendour, wealth, intelligence and royal favour.

Two points in that column are the engine's reading rather than the text's words. BPHS elsewhere (Ch. 3) counts a waning Moon and an afflicted Mercury among the malefics; the engine treats both as benefics throughout, and the Gaj Kesari sloka names no narrower list. And "inimical sign" is read from the engine's dignity grade, which combines the natural relationship with the sign's lord and the temporary one in your chart, so Jupiter in a sign whose lord is a natural enemy can still pass if that lord stands in a friendly position from it.

A worked case: a birth on 14 August 1994 at 06:42 in Ahmedabad. The Moon is at 24.64 degrees Libra and Jupiter at 13.55 degrees Libra, both in the 3rd house: Jupiter is the 1st from the Moon, and the Moon joins it. Libra's lord Venus is Jupiter's natural enemy, but it sits in the 12th sign from Jupiter, a temporary friend, so the engine grades Jupiter Neutral, not Enemy. Jupiter is far from the Sun and not combust. All four conditions hold, so the yoga is present.

Across 40,000 charts it appeared in 17.0 percent, about one in six. Until October 2026 the engine checked only the first condition, Jupiter in a kendra from the Moon, and on that rule the same charts gave 33.2 percent, close to the one in three that four of twelve positions implies. Adding the benefic contact and the three disqualifiers removed more charts than the ascendant branch added. The Bhrigu Sutras translation in the library mentions the yoga too, in its commentary, for Jupiter seventh from the Moon and for Jupiter with the Moon.

The five Mahapurusha yogas: dignity plus an angle

These come from Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, Ch. 75, and are listed on the sources page. Five planets each have one: Mars (Ruchaka), Mercury (Bhadra), Jupiter (Hamsa), Venus (Malavya) and Saturn (Sasa). The condition has two parts. The planet is in its own sign, its moolatrikona or its exaltation sign, and it sits in the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th house from the ascendant. The Sun and Moon have no yoga in this set.

The same chapter also describes each native's face, height, palm markings, and the age and manner of death. None of that is carried over. Only a one-line temperament note is, paraphrased.

Read in the corpus, Chapter 75's own condition is "in their own, or exaltation Rasi" and "in Kendra to Lagn". The engine also accepts moolatrikona, which might look like a widening - but for these five planets every moolatrikona band lies inside one of the planet's own signs, so it admits no chart the text's wording would not. On this yoga, the engine and BPHS agree exactly. The planet pages - Mars, Jupiter, Venus and the others - list each planet's own and exaltation signs.

The 1994 chart has one. Saturn is at 16.50 degrees Aquarius, inside the 0 to 20 degree band the engine treats as Saturn's moolatrikona, and Aquarius is the 7th house from Leo rising: Sasa Yoga. That same Saturn is alone in the four angles. It does not produce Sarpa Yoga, which needs malefics in three angles, but if the Sun and Mars held two others, it would - and Sarpa's result line, unlike Sasa's, is a caution: something to balance with deliberate support, not a fixed verdict. One placement can feed two yogas pointing different ways. A yoga describes where something stands, not how things will go.

The Moon's and the Sun's yogas: who stands beside them

A family of yogas the earlier version of this page did not cover asks a simpler question: is there a planet in the sign on either side of the Moon, or of the Sun? BPHS gives both in consecutive chapters, and Saravali gives them too; the engine cites Saravali for the conditions.

• Around the Moon (BPHS Ch. 37 Sl. 7-10): a graha other than the Sun in the 2nd sign from the Moon forms Sunapha; in the 12th, Anapha; in both, Durudhura. The engine counts Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, and leaves out the Sun and the nodes.
• Around the Sun (BPHS Ch. 38 Sl. 1): a graha other than the Moon in the 2nd sign from the Sun forms Vesi; in the 12th, Vasi (BPHS spells it Vosi); in both, Ubhayachari. The engine's own notes record that it once had Vesi and Vasi the wrong way round, and that this was corrected against both texts.
• BPHS adds, for the solar yogas, that benefics causing them give the described results and malefics the contrary - a qualifier the engine does not apply.

The Sun yogas are commoner than the Moon yogas for a plain astronomical reason: Mercury and Venus never stray far from the Sun, so one of them is often in the sign next to it. That makes Ubhayachari, which BPHS describes in royal terms, the commonest of the six. Its frequency is a fact about the inner planets, not about the people who have it. The Moon yogas, by contrast, depend on where the five other planets happen to be relative to a body that circles the zodiac every month, and they come out close to what chance would suggest. In the 1990 chart, Mars in the sign behind the Moon gives Anapha, and Mercury in the sign after the Sun gives Vesi - two names for two quite ordinary facts.

Kemadruma, and two versions of the rule

Kemadruma is the reverse case: the Moon with no support. Here the two texts differ, and the difference is worth knowing. BPHS Chapter 37, Slokas 11-13, forms it when, leaving out the Sun, no graha is with the Moon, none is in the 2nd or 12th from it, and none is in a kendra from the ascendant. The engine follows Saravali's version instead: no graha in the 2nd or 12th, none in a kendra from the Moon, and no aspect on the Moon at all. Both versions are hard to satisfy, which is why the engine finds it in only 1.4 percent of charts. BPHS's reading for it is bleak; the engine's notes say it reframes that reading in the same non-fear-based tone it uses for doshas, and this page does the same. A rare configuration is not a sentence.

Three more yogas, and where the texts agree

Three other yogas the engine runs are worth setting against the corpus, because here the code and the classical texts line up more closely.

Two refinements are the engine's own and are stated in its notes. BPHS speaks of benefics occupying the 6th, 7th and 8th from the Moon; the engine grades the result by how many of the three benefics qualify rather than requiring all three, which is why it fires on one chart in six rather than rarely. And for both Adhi and Amala it adds an "unafflicted" test - no malefic in the same house or aspecting it - which the notes record was tightened after a hand-check caught a chart where Mercury shared the 10th with the Sun and Mars and was wrongly passed. That kind of correction, found by checking a real chart against the rule, is the reason every result states its condition.

Parivarthana, the sign exchange, is the last of the common ones: two planets each in the other's own sign, as the Moon and Venus are in the 1990 chart. The engine cites Kannan for it and grades it by the houses the two planets rule - an exchange between angle or trine lords reads as supportive, one involving a 6th, 8th or 12th lord as mixed. It fires on about three charts in eight. The house pages explain why the same exchange reads differently depending on which houses are being swapped.

Why there is no general Raj Yoga verdict

This app deliberately declines to issue a general Raj Yoga verdict. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives more than thirty distinct rules for it (Ch. 39), some leaning on special ascendants, the Hora and Ghatika Lagna, that this app does not compute. Early in that chapter (Sl. 3-5) it says Raj Yogas are to be known from two starting points, the natal ascendant and the Karakamsa. Picking one rule would be this product's preference presented as the text's. Saravali's Raja Yoga chapter has the same shape, more than seventy one-off arrangements, and only one rule was taken from it.

What the app runs instead are named rules that each state one checkable condition:

That last figure deserves a straight reading. The code's own notes record that its first version fired on nearly every test chart and was tightened. Even so it matches five charts in six, two in three through a shared house alone, because it tests every pairing of up to four angle lords with up to three trine lords. A label most people carry cannot tell you what is distinctive about your chart. Read it as a description of how your house lords connect, not as a mark of rank.

One chart, every yoga it returns

The clearest way to see what a yoga list means is to take one and explain every line. Here is the birth on 15 August 1990 at 10:30 IST in New Delhi, used throughout these essays: Virgo rising, the Moon in Taurus in the 9th, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus and Ketu together in Cancer in the 11th, Mercury in Leo in the 12th, Mars in Aries in the 8th, Saturn in Sagittarius in the 4th, Rahu in Capricorn in the 5th. The engine returns seven yogas. The birth chart calculator shows the same placements.

Read as a list of names, this chart looks crowded with Raj Yogas. Read line by line, it is a description of a handful of facts: Mars and Mercury flank the luminaries; the planets are spread over five signs; the trine and 8th-house placements give Argala and Sarala; Jupiter and Venus share a sign; and the Moon and Venus have swapped signs. Several of those facts produce more than one name. The Jupiter-Venus conjunction is the Kendra-Kona line. Saturn alone in the 4th, which an earlier version of the engine counted as Sarpa Yoga, now produces nothing. The pages on Saturn in the 4th house, Mars in the 8th house and Jupiter in the 11th house describe what the classical texts read from those placements directly, which is often more informative than the yoga names they generate.

Sarpa and Maala: three angles, as BPHS asks

Sarpa and Maala are the two "Dala" yogas. BPHS Chapter 35, Sloka 8, gives Maala when three kendras are occupied by benefics, and Sarpa when malefics are so placed; Saravali asks for all four angles. The engine follows BPHS for Sarpa: malefics in at least three angles and no benefic in any. Of the seven grahas only the Sun, Mars and Saturn are malefics, so all three must stand in different angles, and Sarpa now fires on about one chart in 850 (47 of 40,000). Until October 2026 it fired whenever every occupied angle held only malefics, even one Saturn in one angle - about 13 percent of charts, the 1990 chart among them. Maala now follows the same sloka the same way: benefics in at least three angles and no malefic in any. It fires on about one chart in 157 (254 of 40,000); the earlier rule, any occupied angles all benefic, gave it to almost one chart in four (9,416), a single Venus in the 1st being enough. When Sarpa does form, the result's own line frames it as something to balance rather than a verdict.

The trika-lord yogas - Harsha, Sarala and Vimala, for the lords of the 6th, 8th and 12th placed in one of those same houses - do not appear by name in the BPHS translation at all. The engine's notes cite their use in Advanced Predictive Astrology's case studies and call the formation rule widely attested, which is an honest description of a rule taken from practice rather than from a sloka. Each fires on about a quarter of charts. The 8th house and 6th house pages give the classical background for the houses involved.

The Nabhasa yogas: all 32, and the one every chart has

BPHS Chapter 35 lists 32 Nabhasa yogas in four groups: 3 Asraya (all grahas in movable, fixed or dual signs), 2 Dala (Maala and Sarpa), 20 Akriti (shapes the planets make across the chart) and 7 Sankhya (how many signs the planets occupy, from one sign for Gola to seven for Vallaki). The engine implements all four groups. Every chart here gets exactly one Sankhya yoga: the seven grahas have to occupy some number of signs between one and seven. In the 8,000-chart run, five signs (Pasa) was the commonest at 44.5 percent, then four (Kedara) and six (Damini); one or two signs (Gola, Yuga) almost never happen. The twenty Akriti yogas are the opposite: in a separate draw of 40,000 charts only 734, 1.8 percent, formed one, most often Vajra, Yava or four houses in a row. BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 16-17 says a Sankhya yoga does not operate when another Nabhasa yoga is present; the app lists both and leaves that choice to you.

Names you will not find here

Budha-Aditya does not appear in this app's results for anyone: it is not one of the rules implemented, so the calculator neither confirms nor denies it. Nor do twenty of Saravali's thirty-two Nabhasa yogas, left out because the source's wording could not be resolved to one certain rule. A missing yoga is a statement about this code, not about your chart.

Two samples, the same answers

The percentages in this article come from two independent runs of the same code: the original 40,000 charts and a fresh 8,000 drawn for this revision, both from birth moments spread uniformly over 1950 to 2010 at eight Indian cities. Where both measured the same yoga they agree closely - Kendra-Kona 84.0 and 83.9, Argala Raj Yoga 38.9 and 39.2, Raja Yoga 11.9 and 11.5, Dharma-Karmadhipati 12.0 and 11.3, and the five Mahapurusha yogas within a few tenths of a point each. Gaj Kesari and Sarpa were re-measured after their rules changed, on two further draws of 40,000 and 8,000: Gaj Kesari 17.0 and 17.3 percent, Sarpa 0.12 and 0.06. That agreement is what makes the figures usable: they are properties of the rules, not of a lucky draw.

Doshas are a separate list

The same engine also reports doshas - conditions read as cautions rather than as yogas - in a separate list, with the same rule of stating the condition. Two of them have essays of their own: Mangal Dosha, where the engine counts six houses and BPHS four, and Kaal Sarp Dosha, which no text in this library names at all. The Mangal Dosha calculator and Kaal Sarp calculator run them on their own.

When a yoga is said to act

A yoga describes a birth chart, and a birth chart does not change. The classical texts tie the results to time through the dasha. BPHS's chapter on wealth says of the planets forming its wealth combinations that "there is no doubt, that these Grahas will give wealth during their Dasha periods", and the same idea runs through the yoga chapters: a combination is expected to show itself most in the periods of the planets that form it. This app does not time yogas. It reports which rules your chart satisfies; the Mahadasha and Antardasha essays explain the clock the texts would read them against, and the Vimshottari Dasha calculator gives your dates. Putting the two together is a reading step the app leaves to you.

How to read a yoga list

• Read the condition, not the name. Every result states the placements that triggered it. The condition is a fact you can check; the name is a label someone gave to that fact.
• Check the frequency. A yoga that fires on a third of charts, or on five in six, cannot be what makes your chart distinctive. The tables on this page give the share for each one the engine runs.
• Group the results by the placement behind them. One conjunction or one exchange often produces two or three names. Count facts, not names.
• Notice where the engine's rule and the text's differ - Kemadruma and the Sun yogas on this page - and read those results as what the engine checks.
• Treat bleak classical readings as the engine does: as historical text, reframed. No yoga in this app carries a probability or forecasts an event.

Running it on your own chart

The calculator runs only on a chart with an ascendant. Most of the rules above are counted in houses, and houses need an ascendant, which needs a birth time and a resolved birth place as well as a date. Without both, the calculator returns no yogas rather than estimated ones, and says which input is missing - what an unknown birth time costs explains why. With them, the yoga calculator states the condition behind each result, usually naming the planets and houses involved, so you can check any line against the rule it came from.

Is Gaj Kesari rare?

Not very: about one chart in six. The app applies BPHS Ch. 36's full rule - Jupiter in a kendra from the ascendant or the Moon, with a benefic joining or aspecting it, and not debilitated, combust or in an enemy sign. Checked on the kendra-from-the-Moon condition alone, as it once was, it matched one chart in three.

I have several Raj Yogas. Does that mean high status?

It means several named rules about your house lords matched. The Kendra-Kona rule alone matches about five charts in six. Read each result's condition; this app makes no prediction of rank from them.

Another app showed me Sarpa Yoga with one planet in the angles. Why not this one?

Because this engine follows BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 8, which asks for malefics in three angles, and forms it only when the Sun, Mars and Saturn hold three different angles with no benefic in any. A single malefic in one angle does not qualify. Until October 2026 this app also formed it from one planet; that looser reading was corrected.

Why is a yoga another app shows missing here?

Either the rule is not implemented - Budha-Aditya, and most of the named yogas of BPHS Ch. 36, for example - or the two apps use different conditions for the same name. A missing yoga is a statement about the code.

Do I need a birth time for the yoga calculator?

Yes, and a resolved birth place. Most of the rules count houses from the ascendant, so without one the calculator returns no yogas and names the missing input, rather than guessing.

Why does every chart get a Sankhya yoga?

Because the seven classical planets must occupy some number of signs between one and seven, and BPHS Ch. 35 names one yoga for each count. Five signs (Pasa) is the commonest, at about 44 percent of charts.

Are the result lines the texts' own words?

They are paraphrased. Where a source's reading was bleak - Kemadruma, Gola, Sarpa among them - the engine reframes it in a non-fear-based tone and says so in its notes. The conditions, unlike the readings, are stated exactly.

Can a yoga be cancelled?

The texts give many qualifications - Saravali, for instance, says royal yogas fail when a vargottama ascendant has no aspect on it - but this app does not apply cancellation rules. It reports the conditions met, and nothing more.