Functional Benefic and Malefic Planets for Each Lagna

Functional Malefic Meaning: Two Ways to Call a Graha Good or Bad

Jyotish labels the grahas twice. The first label is fixed: Jupiter and Venus are natural benefics, Saturn and Mars natural malefics, whatever the chart. The second label depends on the lagna. Each graha is lord of one or two houses counted from the ascendant, and the Parashari tradition grades a graha for that lagna by which houses those are. A graha graded favourable this way is called a functional benefic; one graded unfavourable is a functional malefic. So the phrase “functional malefic” describes a lordship, not a temperament, and the same graha can carry opposite functional labels for two different lagnas.

Below, one fixed set of rules is applied to all twelve lagnas and the result is printed in full, with the houses behind every entry, so you can check each cell by hand. The page grades lordships only. It does not look at where a graha sits in your chart, it does not read your chart at all, and it gives no outcome or timing for any graha.

The Lordship Rules This Page Applies

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra sets out these rules in its chapter on yogakarakas, and the Parashari scheme as commonly taught follows them. The site’s house table supplies the two groups the rules turn on: the kendras are the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th, the trikonas the 1st, 5th and 9th.

1. Trikona lords are functional benefics. Lordship of the 5th or the 9th counts in a graha’s favour. The lagna lord is favourable whatever its other house, since the 1st is a kendra and a trikona together.
2. Lords of the 3rd, 6th and 11th are functional malefics.
3. Kendra lordship on its own is neutral. A natural benefic that lords the 4th, 7th or 10th is read as giving up its beneficence (kendradhipati dosha), and a natural malefic that lords one is read as giving up its malefic quality. Both halves end in the same place: an angle by itself makes a graha neither.
4. Lords of the 2nd and 12th are neutral. They take their colour from the graha’s other lordship, or, where there is none, from association in the chart.
5. The 8th lord is unfavourable unless it also lords the lagna. The Sun and the Moon are held exempt from the blemish of 8th lordship.
6. A lord of a kendra and a trikona is the yogakaraka. As on the site’s other lordship pages, the 1st is set aside for this test, so the graha needs an angle other than the 1st and a trine other than the 1st.

One further step is this page’s own bookkeeping, not a rule from the text. When a graha’s two houses pull in opposite directions, a trikona on one side and the 3rd, 6th, 11th or 8th on the other, it is marked mixed. Practitioners weigh such a graha differently, and the page does not choose between them.

Lagna ke Anusar Shubh Ashubh Grah (लग्न अनुसार शुभ अशुभ ग्रह)

Each entry gives the graha and the houses it lords for that lagna, which is the whole of the reason for its column. Each lagna name links to its own page, and all twelve are gathered on the ascendant hub.

Across the twelve rows there are 84 entries, seven grahas per lagna: 24 functional benefics, 28 functional malefics, 20 neutral, 6 mixed and 6 yogakarakas. Every lagna has at least two functional malefics under these rules.

Reading the Table: Where the Rules Bite

The yogakarakas. Six lagnas have one: Saturn for Taurus (9th and 10th), Mars for Cancer (5th and 10th), Mars for Leo (4th and 9th), Saturn for Libra (4th and 5th), Venus for Capricorn (5th and 10th) and Venus for Aquarius (4th and 9th). These are the same six that the kendra-trikona and yogakaraka page derives, by the same test; the reason only those three grahas can qualify is worked out there.

Angles land in the neutral column. Fourteen entries hold an angle and nothing that pulls either way, and all of them are neutral here. That includes the four cases where Jupiter or Mercury holds two angles: Jupiter for Gemini and Virgo, Mercury for Sagittarius and Pisces. Some authors go further and treat a benefic with two angles as unfavourable; this table applies the rule as stated and stops at neutral. The kendradhipati dosha page sets out those cells and the narrower and wider versions of the dosha.

A lagna lord with a hard second house. For Aries (Mars, 1st and 8th), Taurus (Venus, 1st and 6th), Libra (Venus, 1st and 8th) and Scorpio (Mars, 1st and 6th), the lagna lord also holds the 6th or the 8th. Rule 1 keeps all four in the benefic column, and rule 5 says the same of the two 8th-lord cases, which is why they are tagged “lagna lord” rather than mixed.

The luminaries and the 8th. Only two entries test the exemption: the Moon as 8th lord for Sagittarius and the Sun as 8th lord for Capricorn. Each lords that one house only, so the exemption leaves both neutral.

A 2nd or 12th with nothing else. Four entries lord only the 2nd or the 12th: the Moon for Gemini, the Sun for Cancer, the Moon for Leo and the Sun for Virgo. Rule 4 gives them no direction of their own, so they sit in the neutral column, and the tradition reads them by the grahas they are joined with in a given chart, which a lagna table cannot know. Where a 2nd or 12th comes with a second house, that house decides: Mercury for Libra (9th and 12th) is a benefic, and Jupiter for Capricorn (3rd and 12th) a malefic.

The Six Mixed Cases

These are the entries the rule set cannot settle by itself:

• Gemini: Saturn, lord of the 8th and the 9th; the 9th is a trikona, the 8th comes under rule 5.
• Cancer: Jupiter, lord of the 6th and the 9th; the 9th is a trikona, the 6th is on the malefic list of rule 2.
• Leo: Jupiter, lord of the 5th and the 8th; the 5th is a trikona, the 8th comes under rule 5.
• Virgo: Saturn, lord of the 5th and the 6th; the 5th is a trikona, the 6th is on the malefic list of rule 2.
• Capricorn: Mercury, lord of the 6th and the 9th; the 9th is a trikona, the 6th is on the malefic list of rule 2.
• Aquarius: Mercury, lord of the 5th and the 8th; the 5th is a trikona, the 8th comes under rule 5.

Astrologers who work in this scheme do not all weigh such a pair the same way, and many bring in factors outside lordship before calling it. That is a judgement made on a whole chart, so the page leaves the label as it is.

Worked Example: Benefic and Malefic Planets for Leo Ascendant

Take a Leo lagna and walk each graha through the rules in order.

• The Sun lords the 1st only. As lagna lord it is a functional benefic by rule 1.
• Mars lords the 4th, a kendra, and the 9th, a trikona. Rule 6 makes it the yogakaraka for Leo.
• Jupiter lords the 5th, a trikona, and the 8th. It is not the lagna lord and not a luminary, so rule 5 applies in full and the entry is mixed.
• Mercury lords the 2nd and the 11th. The 2nd has no direction of its own, the 11th is on the malefic list, so the result is a functional malefic.
• Venus lords the 3rd and the 10th. The 10th is an angle, where a natural benefic is read as setting its beneficence aside; the 3rd then decides, and Venus is a functional malefic for this lagna.
• Saturn lords the 6th and the 7th. The 7th, an angle, takes away its malefic quality as a natural malefic, which leaves the 6th and a functional malefic.
• The Moon lords the 12th only. By rule 4 it is neutral, to be read by association.

For Leo, then: the Sun as functional benefic, Mars as yogakaraka, Jupiter mixed, Mercury, Venus and Saturn functional malefics, the Moon neutral. These are labels for a lagna, the same for every Leo chart; the Leo ascendant page lists what each of those houses covers. Who the lords of the 2nd and 7th are is a separate lookup on the maraka lords page, and the lord of the badhaka house is on the badhakesh page. Neither is folded into this table.

Why Natural and Functional Labels Differ

The natural label comes from the site’s planet table, which gives a short nature for each graha: the Sun (mild malefic), the Moon (benefic when waxing), Mars (malefic), Mercury (neutral — takes on its company), Jupiter (benefic), Venus (benefic) and Saturn (malefic). The shubh and paap grah page covers that natural scheme on its own terms. The functional label is a separate question, asked once per lagna, and the two disagree often. Jupiter and Venus, the two the table calls benefic outright, come out as functional malefics in eight of their 24 entries. The Sun, Mars and Saturn come out as functional benefics or yogakarakas in thirteen of their 36, and in eight of those without being the lagna lord.

Neither label cancels the other in the tradition. A Venus that is a functional malefic for Sagittarius, as lord of the 6th and the 11th, keeps every karaka the planet table lists for it; what changes is how its lordships are graded for that lagna.

A note on the Moon and Mercury. The table calls the Moon benefic only when waxing and Mercury neutral, taking on its company, so neither has a fixed natural label. In the rules above, natural nature matters only in the kendra rule, and there both halves end at neutral. The page therefore classifies the Moon and Mercury, like the others, by lordship alone; a waxing or waning Moon changes no cell.

Rahu and Ketu. In the site’s lord table neither node lords a house for any lagna, so the lordship rules have nothing to grade. Practitioners read the nodes by the sign they occupy and the grahas they are associated with, and they are left out of the table rather than forced into a column. The house-lord names page quotes the site’s entries for them.

What This Page Does Not Do

It grades lordships for a lagna and stops. It does not say what a functional benefic or malefic will bring anyone, it does not weigh dignity, placement, aspect or dasha, and it does not settle the mixed cases. It makes no gemstone or remedy suggestion from any column. If you do not know your lagna, the ascendant calculator works it out from birth date, time and place; then find your row above. In Hindi: लग्न अनुसार शुभ अशुभ ग्रह: हर लग्न के कार्यात्मक ग्रह.