Navamsha
- Type
- Concepts
- Section
- The natal chart
- Counting rule
- the sign is divided into nine parts, each spanning three degrees and twenty minutes
- Reference points
- in a movable sign the count starts from itself, in a fixed sign from the ninth, in a dual sign from the fifth
Navamsha is the ninth divisional chart; the classics assign the theme of the spouse to it.
Navamsha is the ninth divisional chart, the one the classics turn to more often than any other varga. Its construction is straightforward: the sign is divided into nine parts, each spanning three degrees and twenty minutes. The rule of counting depends on the nature of the sign: in a movable sign the count starts from itself, in a fixed sign from the ninth, in a dual sign from the fifth. The classics assign the theme of the spouse to the navamsha, and in a marriage reading it comes directly after the birth chart.
Place in the system
A divisional chart is another scale of reading one and the same longitude. Each rashi is cut into equal shares, the shares are laid out around the circle of signs, and a planet takes a new position within the ninth part of a sign.
Each nakshatra consists of exactly four navamshas, and the navamsha boundaries coincide with the pada boundaries. Hence a practical consequence: navamsha and pada are two names for one division taken from different sides.
The Phaladeepika reports the opinion that the effect of the navamsha equals the effect of the rashi and the bhava. It is not a "refining" chart and not a checking one — it is a second layer of reading.
Practical meaning
Of the twelve vargas it is the navamsha that is assigned to the theme of the spouse, and so in a marriage reading it comes straight after the birth chart. One looks at the position of Venus in it, at the lord of the seventh house, at the general condition of the signs.
The navamsha has a distinct role in the Jaimini branch: the sign in which the Atmakaraka stands is called karakamsha — "the share of the karaka" — and from it one reads a person's task and how it is lived out.
The navamsha does not "confirm" or "refute" the birth chart: there is no such rule in the classics. It describes the same material at another scale, and the conclusions of the two layers add to one another rather than replacing one another.
In daily practice
The navamsha is especially sensitive to the birth time: the navamsha by Lagna changes roughly every thirteen minutes, and an error of even a quarter of an hour carries one into the neighbouring navamsha.
For a compatibility reckoning by Ashta Kuta the navamsha is not needed at all: the thirty-six gunas are counted from the Moon in the birth chart. These are different instruments working at different depths: Ashta Kuta is a quick filter, the navamsha a full reading that requires an exact hour of birth.