In any chart in this convention, House positions are fixed and their numbers are indicated by Roman Numerals. First house is the birth ascendant and in anti clockwise, rest of the house follows. Decimal digits in each house indicates the number of the zodiac signs.

Aries 1 Mars (Ma)

Taurus 2 Venus (Ve)

Gemini 3 Mercury (Me)

Cancer 4 Moon (Mo)

Leo 5 Sun (Su)

Virgo 6 Mercury (Me)

Libra 7 Venus (Ve)

Scorpio 8 Mars (Ma)

Sagittarius 9 Jupiter (Ju)

Capricorn 10 Saturn (Sa)

Aquarius 11 Saturn (Sa)

Pisces 12 Jupiter (Ju)

Note: We will also use the following abbreviation for the other planets as follows: Rahu (Ra), Ketu (Ke), Uranus (Ur), Neptune (Ne) and Pluto (Pl).

In Vedic astrology, the Sun is the principal of light, life and love, or true-will and perception. It is the most important factor for determining the spiritual life and potential of an individual. In represents the soul---the causal body or reincarnating entity---whose will is behind our fate. It is also the mind or the mental principal on a lower level as reason, discernment, clarity and illumination.

A well-placed Sun gives intelligence, perception, strength of will and character. It affords endurance, stamina, vitality, positive spirit, direction, courage, conviction, confidence, leadership, independence and straightforwardness. Without it, whatever we may do or accomplish in life will not be ours and will not give us inner strength or peace. An ill placed Sun gives lack of intelligence, poor perception, weakness of will and character. It creates lack of endurance, low vitality, melancholy, fear, dependency or servitude and deviousness or dishonesty.

An overly strong but malefic Sun creates pride, arrogance, tyranny and control. It creates much of the same problems as Mars (or Saturn) when too strong. It can give a deceptive charisma and a dominating personality. When the Sun is strong, we outshine everyone else for good or bad, depending on whether its disposition is benefic or malefic, conscious or unconscious.

A weak but spiritually disposed Sun makes us receptive, wanting to do good, and self-effacing. Yet we may lack in confidence and come under the rule of other people. We will seek to sacrifice ourselves but may not know what cause to give ourselves over to.

The Moon represents our subconscious. Thus Moon can show positive resources from the past, which gives us greater consciousness in life, or it can show negative influences from the past that binds us to regressive patterns of behaviour.

The Moon is a Sattvic or spiritual planet. It gives faith, love, openness, surrender, devotion, peace and happiness. As a very sensitive and mutable planet, the Moon can be easily influenced and overcome by other planetary energies. Saturn can darken it, depress it or give it detachment. The Moon represents not only responsiveness but also inertia. Through our lunar sensitivity, we can become accustomed to a life of pain, sorrow, or ignorance, as well as to a life of joy and truth.

The Moon is our capacity to endure in any environment, which can also became a negative factor whereby we may accept subordination, subservience or degradation.

At the mundane level Moon represents mother, home or where we feel at home. It shows happiness and the state of emotions. It shows where we place our love, care, general affection and friendship in life. On the other hand, an afflicted Moon will show personality disorders, difficulties in relating to other people and emotional disturbances.

The Moon shows our capacity to receive and to be affected, but it also indicates our capacity to be hurt. It is the most easily hurt of the planets and indicates our general vulnerability. Moon reflects our dependency. Lunar people are friendly, caring, and nurturing but not always honest, consistent or clear. Lunar types may become circumscribed within a family, class, group or belief system and be unable to work with anyone outside of it.

Mars is the planet of power, strength, courage and aggression. It measures our ability to project force in life. On the positive side, a strong Mars is necessary to give us the energy, will, confidence and independence--the qualities it shares with Sun--to carry out our endeavours. Without it we have no real interests, passions and motivations, no determination, no real intensity or ability to carry out anything to the end and really accomplish it.

On the negative side, this same aggression brings about competition, argument and conflict and when unchecked by other factors, it causes domination, control, violence and injury. He is the general significator for injury, accident, conflict and marital disharmony. Mars is very selfish and does not take into account the views and needs of others. In a more positive light, these difficulties come about because Mars insists upon greater independence, differentiation and clarity of views. He makes us more certain of who we are and who our friends are. He causes discontent and seeking until we discover the real source of power within us.

Mercury is the great messenger of the Gods. He is the planet, which represents speech, communication and commerce on all levels. In his lower function he organises and articulates material resources. On a higher level he connects us with our inner capacities--the powers of the mind.

Mercury governs writing, education, calculation and thought. Mercury is the fastest moving of the planets and so is indicative of quick comprehension, facility, ease and plasticity in expression. Mercury provides for the quick correlation of ideas, the fast interchange of information or of things of value. He is mental and nervous energy in its articulate activity. He shows our intellectual powers and the degree of mental development in life.

As a planet of commerce, Mercury represents trade, or articles of trade, including money. Though not in himself a planet of wealth, he is helpful in both acquiring it and keeping it, as he helps us organise it. He is necessary whenever there is to be an exchange of ideas or commodities. He sees the value of open markets and free communication and is not restricted by boundaries of race, nation, caste or belief, but he can be attached to his own opinion, his calculations, and his own gains and losses.

Mercury is an important factor in determining our Vocation, for that is what we do in life to communicate with others - our interchange with society. Mercury shows how we appear and how we function in the network of transactions that makes up the world of things and ideas. In this regard, his representation of our education or training in life comes into play. He is the child that is the father of the man.

A weak Mercury makes us rationalise things to suit our purpose. It creates immaturity, naiveté and folly. It can create dishonesty and a lack of properly defined boundaries. This may make a person a thief - not because he is cruel, but because he does not respect anything as belonging to another. Such people take what they need according to a childish view of life that the world should provide for them. They have no objective perception and are caught in childish fantasies and may even believe that what they have taken was really given to them or merited by them.

In the higher sense Jupiter is the divine grace, which can fulfil all of our needs without our seeking. He gives religious merit and spiritual beneficence. When Jupiter is with us, all life, the entire universe is with us, for he is that cosmic and Divine beneficence. On a physical level, he is the planet of health, the planet of wealth. He makes us active in a healthy way and attunes us with the joy of nature. He gives vigour, vitality and a strong immune system. The other most important aspect of Jupiter is that he gives us true knowledge and wisdom as opposed to information based intelligence, which is the function of Mercury. When Jupiter becomes functionally malefic and afflicted, it closes our door to true wisdom. It will make us too materialistic, too enamoured of wealth. It will make us proud, give us too much ego and make us a showman, and self indulgent. He will make our inner immune system ineffective. His true creative power will get ineffective in trivial enjoyments. His great benevolence in sharing will transform into a mindless orgy of pleasure.

Venus represents the feminine sprit, she is well known as the Goddess of Love and Beauty. Our Venus shows our affection and sense of harmony in life. On the lower and outward level Venus shows our seeking for pleasure, comfort and luxury. She represents the pleasure of the senses and the comforts of the body. She is sexuality and sexual attraction and serves to make the person attractive to the opposite sex. She brings wealth as an adornment. She is beauty, style and elegance-the refinement of wealth and not just crude accumulation. Her concern is not just with quantity, but with quality and good taste.

But Venus must do all these to reach out to others. Venus wants the world must admire her. She demands that we please her and that we be pleasing to her.

Hence when Venus gets afflicted, she can become the pleasure that dissipates, exhausts and debilitates, the self-indulgence that can destroy us. She will make us vain, superficial and affected - mere show.

Saturn is the most mysterious of all planets. On one hand while it represents all that is evil, base and cruel, on the other it is also a great benefic. At the mundane level it is total 'Tamasik' (Base and Gross), and at the higher level it is the greatest 'Satwik' (Pure and highest Soul). Saturn is the divine magistrate and the great preserver of law and order, who will punish us the moment we deviate from our ordained life script. And how cruel can be the punishment! Saturn can represent death and the destroyer of all the things that we hold dear to us. Saturn will take away the dearest one from our life without notice, can turn the king into a pauper within a moment. Saturn wants us to understand that all these material trappings of earthly power are meaningless, the only true thing in life is to be free and liberated from all desires and become a true Yogi.

Saturn can be a very cruel teacher. It will give us all the trappings just to test us and then snatch it away within a moment, in case we deviate from the path of liberation, and have got trapped in all our material success.

As such, they have the power to overcome the Sun and Moon, and in the sense they can be stronger than any of the planets. The subtle relationship between the Sun, the Moon and the Earth plays a large part in the unfolding of each individual's consciousness. The conjunction of any planet with either of the lunar nodes is regarded as the kind of eclipse of that planet wherein its energy is in some way obstructed, negated or liberated. Thus Vedic Astrology regards these two nodes as among the most important factors in chart interpretation. They possess the power not only to negate planetary influences, but because eclipses are points of energy transformation, they have additional special properties to transfer or to augment planetary influences for good or bad. It was necessary to introduce the concept of Rahu and Ketu in detail, as they are usually alien to a western person.