D2 Hora Chart: The Parashari Hora, Sign by Sign

A Divisional Chart With Only Two Signs

Of the sixteen charts in the Parashari varga set, fourteen hand out all twelve signs and the trimshamsha (D-30) hands out ten. The hora (होरा), the D-2, hands out two: Leo and Cancer. Each sign of the birth chart is cut into two halves of 15°, and each half is given to one of those two signs. Leo is ruled by the Sun and Cancer by the Moon, so the two halves are called the Sun’s hora and the Moon’s hora (सूर्य होरा and चन्द्र होरा). That is the whole vocabulary of the chart. A graha’s D-2 position is one of two signs, and so is the lagna’s.

What follows is the hora as Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives it among the sixteen vargas. Other hora schemes exist, the parivritti hora among them, and they distribute the signs differently; this page does not set out their rules and none of its tables apply to them. The word hora also names a planetary hour of the day, an unrelated division of time with its own hora calculator. The D-2 is about degrees within a sign, not hours.

Odd Signs Open With Leo, Even Signs With Cancer

The rule turns on one property of the rashi sign: odd or even. The odd signs, counted from Aries, are Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius and Aquarius; the even signs are Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn and Pisces. In an odd sign the first 15° is the Sun’s hora and the second 15° is the Moon’s. In an even sign the order reverses. Count the signs that give Leo in their first half and the answer is six, exactly the odd ones, and the other six give Cancer there.

Across the zodiac, then, each hora covers 180°: one half of every sign. Neither is larger, and no sign is all one hora.

The Hora Changes at 15°, Never at a Sign Boundary

Compare each row’s last column with the next row’s first and a pattern appears that the rule does not state outright. Because odd and even signs alternate, the second half of any sign always carries the same hora as the first half of the sign after it. The last 15° of Pisces and the first 15° of Aries are both Leo; the last 15° of Aries and the first 15° of Taurus are both Cancer; and so on round the circle. Moving forward through the zodiac, the D-2 sign stays put across the line between two rashi signs and switches only at the 15° mark in the middle of each one.

So the zodiac falls into twelve unbroken runs of 30°, alternating Leo and Cancer, each centred on a sign boundary. A graha that has just crossed from one rashi sign into the next has changed its rashi sign but not its hora sign. One that crosses 15°00′ inside a sign keeps its rashi sign and changes its hora. Anyone checking a hora by hand finds this a useful cross-check: two grahas a degree apart on either side of a sign boundary should land in the same hora.

How to Read a Graha’s D2 Sign

Two facts settle it, and both are on any birth chart that prints degrees: whether the rashi sign is odd or even, and whether the degree inside it is below or above 15°. Three cases, each run through the same rule the table uses:

• A graha at 20°00′ Taurus: Taurus is an even sign and the degree is in its 2nd half, so the D-2 sign is Leo (the Sun’s hora).
• A graha at 22°30′ Sagittarius: Sagittarius is an odd sign and the degree is in its 2nd half, so the D-2 sign is Cancer (the Moon’s hora).
• A graha at 4°00′ Capricorn: Capricorn is an even sign and the degree is in its 1st half, so the D-2 sign is Cancer (the Moon’s hora).

The lagna is read the same way from its degree. The lagna’s hora depends on the birth time far more than any graha’s does, because the rising degree moves through a 15° half much faster than any graha; a free kundli prints the lagna degree, and the page gives no time at which it crosses 15°.

What a D2 Chart Looks Like on Paper

Drawn in the usual twelve-house format, a hora chart has ten points to place, the nine grahas and the lagna, and only two signs to put them in. At least ten of the twelve houses are always empty. Which houses can be filled depends on the D-2 lagna. If the lagna falls in Leo, the other occupied sign, Cancer, is the 12th house from it; if the lagna falls in Cancer, Leo is the 2nd. A hora chart therefore uses house 1 and, at most, one other: house 12 or house 2. Nothing ever falls anywhere else.

With only two houses ever occupied, the houses-and-aspects reading a chart like the navamsa (D9) invites has almost nothing to work on here. What the hora records for each graha is a two-way answer, the Sun’s hora or the Moon’s.

One more consequence of having only two signs: the hora sign can repeat the rashi sign in just two places in the zodiac, the first half of Cancer and the first half of Leo. A graha anywhere else has a hora sign different from its rashi sign. Vargottama in the strict sense is a rashi–navamsa match, explained on the vargottama page; the hora match belongs to a different chart, covers 30° of the zodiac in all, and this page attaches no reading to it.

The D-2 in the Parashari List

In the list of sixteen vargas and the matter each one is consulted for, the Parashari text gives the hora to wealth. That is the tradition’s assignment of a topic to a chart, not a finding about anyone’s money, and the page makes no wealth reading of either hora. The rashi-chart combinations the classical texts name for wealth are a separate subject, covered on the dhan yoga page. How the D-2 sits among the other fifteen charts, and the cutting rule for each of them, is set out on the divisional charts (shodashvarga) hub. Its neighbour in the list, the D3 drekkana chart, works on a quite different principle: three parts, and all twelve signs in play.

What This Page Does Not Say

It does not say what a graha in the Sun’s hora or in the Moon’s hora brings, whether either is better, or what any hora placement means for income, savings or spending. No placement here is a reason for a financial decision. The hora also does not stand on its own in Parashari practice: a graha’s houses, lordships and dasha in the birth chart come first, and a two-sign table cannot supply them. The rules of the other hora schemes are not given. What the page does give is enough to place every graha and the lagna in its hora from the degrees on a chart. In Hindi: होरा कुंडली (D2): पाराशरी होरा, राशि-दर-राशि.