The Ashtakvarga chart is of very great importance in Jyotish. And one should make full use of this tool. Checking the effects during transits and strengths of the graha in that sign is just one way of doing this. Here, I am listing out a few more ways you can use this table in making predictions. Ashtakvarga is very simple method, all you need to know is how to read the rows and the columns.

Residence in foreign lands can be easily seen using Ashtakvarga.

‘Foreign’ in astrological terms is a rather loosely defined concept. Foreign residence can mean different things to different people. A person from Chennai shifting to Sri Lanka just a few km across the sea is living in a foreign land. Someone from Maharashtra goes to live in Manipur. Or someone from India goes to USA. All these are examples of foreign residence. Foreign can mean a different town, different state or even a different nation. It basically means a place which is different from your home, in terms of distance or culture or both. The person feels it to be ‘foreign’. Several people want to translocate to foreign locations for better opportunities in life. The horoscope will support if the following houses have potential,

• 7^th house – travelling to to foreign lands
• 9^th house – long journeys
• 12^th house – journeys abroad which result in permanent residence (Rahu in the 12th house is a sure-shot prediction about having to leave the home town)

Calculate the Ashtakvarga or use the software. Then

• check the total scores of the signs placed in each of the three houses above.
• If there are any planets placed in these houses check their individual score for that specific sign and also their total score in the last column.
• All these scores will be the least possible as leaving the home and going to away from it is considered to be an inauspicious effect.

eg. Here is just the Ashtakvarga chart. (I am not giving the rest of the birth details as the person is alive and I do not like using living people as general study subjects, but I wanted to use just this chart.)

The signs in this person’s 7th, 9th and 12th houses are Aries = 22 points, Gemini = 35 points and Virgo = 23 points. Saturn is in Virgo in the 12th house, he has 1 point in Virgo. These are all very low scores so the relocation to the ‘foreign’ locations is quite evident. (Except Gemini in the 9th house has the highest score in the table = 35. The reason was because the client had a very strong past life connect with these foreign places, he was bound by the 9th house to go and complete his Dharma there.)

Confirming longevity

You can confirm the longevity and the quality of life using the Ashtakvarga scores. The following should have good scores,

• the ascendant sign’s total, this is crucial.
• the planetary lord of the ascendant sign wherever he is placed should have a good score in the sign he is placed in. The total score of this planet should be high. This too is crucial.
• any planets placed in the ascendant sign should have good scores in the sign. And the total score of that planet also should be good. This will play a supportive role.

Verify this logic with your client’s charts, it will always be correct.

• The average total for a sign is 28 points, if there are more points obviously the sign and its house is going to give good results. If there are less than 25 points, it is a cause for concern. Less than 20 and the sign is practically annihilated.
• The average for a planet in a sign is 4 points. If he gets more points, he will naturally give more auspicious results. If his points are 1 or 2 he is unable to do so.
• In our example above, the client’s Asc-Libra has 27 points, less than average but not too bad. Venus has 3 points in the sign he is placed in, its less than average. We can expect him to have a reasonably long life but there will be physical issues cropping up from time to time.

Predicting sudden rise and falls in life is easy using the Ashtakvarga charts. 

In our example, we can see that Capricorn = 32 points, Aquarius = 18 points and Pisces = 30 points. So when a planet transits from Capricorn to Aquarius whatever he signifies will go suddenly downhill, the client should be careful during this time. And when the planet again transits from Aquarius to Pisces there will be a sudden rise in that planet’s stuff. This prediction can easily be tallied using the Moon’s transits, he transits the zodiac in one month. (eg in one such transit the client managed to quarrel with his wife so seriously that it led to a temporary separation, there were other factors of course, but this Moon’s transit was the precipitating factor.) The falls especially can be dangerous and the client should be prepared and careful. This sudden rise or fall is even more dramatic if the totals are the exact 18 and 36 points, the minimum and the maximum possible scores.

If you get clients who have fallen ill suddenly or in serious accidents or sudden loss of wealth, sudden crash in relationships etc check out their Ashtakvarga table for confirmation and further predictions.

The dread of the Sadi-Sati

The transit of Saturn through the signs placed 12th, 1st and 2nd from the birth Moon sign are called the ‘Seven and Half’ years of torture, the ‘Sade-sati’. To check out how severe the Sade-sati is going to be for you, open your Ashtakvarga table and note the sign occupied by the birth Moon, the sign before and after it. (Remember the Ashtakvarga is about signs not houses, do not confuse yourself while noting down the points.) Now check out the following

• The total points of each of these three signs. If these scores are less than 25 it is bad and its even lesser you are going to have a dreadful time. But if these scores are more than 30 points, your Sade-Sati will actually give you pleasing results!
• Now see the individual score that Saturn has in these signs. if its less than 2 consider it to be a testing time, but if it is more than 6 it can give gains. The scores 3 to 5 are considered to be somewhat average.

Saturn can cause significant physical and mental stress even when he is not doing his Sade-sati. In our example above,

• Saturn (though the Yogkarak) damaged the client’s body and caused severe stress in his profession when he transited Virgo (Saturn+Virgo = 1, Virgo= 23).
• Before that when he transited Aries (Saturn+Aries = 1, Aries= 22) he caused disappointments in his education.
• Now the prediction for Saturn’s effect on the client’s life. Saturn will transit Capricorn soon from Jan 2020. (Saturn+Capricorn = 7, Capricorn= 32). The client will see a sudden rise in his profession and gains (we just saw how to predict sudden rise in life). Then next Jan 2022, Saturn will transit Aquarius (Saturn+Aquarius = 2, Aquarius= 18) this client will go through a sudden fall in luck and will have to face stress in life unless he is strongly prepared to deal with with what will come. Saturn’s next transit through Pisces will offer only generic relief because though Pisces=30 a good score, Saturn+Pisces = 1 is an abysmally low score.

So as you can see, the Ashtakvarga table is a very useful item. You can use the total values of the planets and signs and also the individual values of the planets in the different signs to gain a clear idea of what kind of results they are going to be giving in life. So whenever you predict using the birth chart, do glance over the Ashtakvarga tables, this will be an additional confirmation step which will improve the accuracy of your predictions.