Horoscope or a natal chart is the picture of the sky at the time of the birth of a child. At that exact moment, the position of the planets in the sky, as seen from the birthplace is mapped to the horoscope. Horoscope today is a very powerful tool, which contains all the information of current and past lives of the native, which can be decoded using various concepts and tools of Vedic Astrology. It can be used to predict timing of the event in current life, viz, marriage/relationships, childbirth, education, job/business, illness, travel, overseas settlement, court cases, etc or any event for that matter.

Houses and Zodiac in horoscope:

Houses – There are 12 houses in a horoscope. These houses are fixed. 1st house called Ascendant is the top-middle diamond shaped block. Rest of the houses are counted anti-clockwise. The number in the houses are not house number, but it is the number of the Zodiac occupying that house, so don’t get confused with it. See attached picture.

Zodiac - There are 12 Zodiac. Each Zodiac occupies one house. We can think of Zodiac as a circular belt around the Earth, its start point of 0 degree of Aries is considered as the imaginary northern point where equator of the Earth crosses the ecliptic of the Earth around the Sun. Each of these Zodiacs are 30 degrees, thus 12 Zodiac constitute 360 degrees. The sequence is 1. Aries (Mesh), 2. Taurus (Vrshabh), 3. Gemini (Mithun), 4. Cancer(Kark), 5. Leo (Singh), 6. Virgo (Kanya), 7. Libra (Tula), 8. Scorpio (Vrishik), 9. Sagittarius (Dhanu), 10. Capricorn (Makar) , 11. Aquarius (Kumbh) and 12. Pisces (Meen).

Planets - In Vedic Astrology, there are total of 9 planets. The Sun and the Moon are also called Planets, along with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. Rahu and Ketu are imaginary points in the space where the solar path (Path of the Sun’s appeared motion) and Lunar Path (Orbit of the Moon around the Earth) intersects. The northern imaginary point of intersection (North Node) is called Rahu, and the southern imaginary point of intersection (South node) is called Ketu. These two points have so much of energy that they impact life of the objects on the Earth.