The whole chart.

Divisional charts

A divisional chart, or varga, subdivides each sign and rebuilds the chart from those subdivisions. The navamsa, or D9, splits every sign into nine parts and is the one a traditional reader consults immediately after the birth chart itself. It is conventionally read for marriage and for the deeper strength of a planet: a planet that looks strong in the birth chart but falls apart in the D9 is described as hollow.

Other divisions answer narrower questions. The D10 is read for career, the D7 for children, the D4 for property. They are not separate horoscopes. They are the same chart examined at higher magnification, and they only make sense against it.

Dasha periods

Vimshottari dasha divides a life into planetary periods running to a fixed 120 year cycle, with each planet holding a span of set length: Venus twenty years, Saturn nineteen, the Sun six. Which period you were born into is determined by the Moon’s nakshatra at birth, so it needs an accurate birth time.

Each period subdivides into sub periods, and those into sub sub periods, which is how the system gets from a twenty year span down to something with a usable resolution. This is the main tool Vedic astrology uses for timing, and it has no real equivalent in the Western tradition, where timing comes mostly from transits and progressions.

Doshas

A dosha is an affliction: a specific configuration a traditional reading checks for before it says anything else. Mangal dosha, from the placement of Mars, is the one most often raised around marriage. Kaal Sarp is named for every planet falling between Rahu and Ketu.

They matter here because they are frequently reported without context and cause a lot of unnecessary alarm. Most have standard cancellation rules that a full reading applies, and Crescent computes those cancellations rather than reporting the raw flag on its own.

Start with the basics

None of this is a starting point. If the vocabulary is unfamiliar, the core concepts page covers nakshatra, dasha, ayanamsha and navamsa in plain language first, and the planets and grahas covers Rahu and Ketu.