CrescentWhich planets are looking at your houses?
Vedic aspects are counted in whole signs, not degrees, and three grahas see further than the rest.
If you learned aspects the Western way, Vedic drishti will look wrong at first. Nothing is measured in orbs, the angles are not symmetrical, and a planet can affect a house it is nowhere near.
How is a Vedic aspect counted?
By whole signs, from the graha outward. A planet in the first house aspects the seventh because the seventh is seven signs along, and it does so whether the planet sits at one degree or at twenty nine.
Western aspects work by angular distance with an orb of a few degrees, so two planets either are or are not in aspect by arithmetic. Vedic drishti asks a coarser question and answers it more decisively.
Which houses does each graha see?
Every graha aspects the seventh from itself. Three of them have additional aspects that the others do not.
- Mars also aspects the 4th and the 8th from itself.
- Jupiter also aspects the 5th and the 9th.
- Saturn also aspects the 3rd and the 10th.
- The Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus aspect the 7th only.
Why is Jupiter's aspect treated as helpful?
Because the 5th and the 9th are the trinal houses, read as the supportive part of the chart, so Jupiter reaches them from wherever it sits. Saturn reaching the 3rd and the 10th lands on effort and work instead, and Mars reaching the 4th and the 8th lands on home and on rupture.
The reputations follow from which houses each one can reach, not from the planets having personalities assigned in advance.
Is a Vedic aspect mutual?
Usually not, and this surprises people. If Saturn is in your first house it aspects the third, but a planet in the third does not aspect back, because the third from there is somewhere else entirely. Only the seventh house aspect is reciprocal, since seven signs on from seven signs on brings you home.
See the aspects on your own chart
Crescent draws both the Western aspect grid and the Vedic drishti from the same positions, so you can see what each system thinks is under pressure.
Cast your free birth chartWhich system should you read?
They are not competing measurements of one thing. Western aspects describe relationships between planets, and drishti describes which houses a graha exerts influence over. Reading both tells you more than choosing, and it costs nothing to look at the two side by side.