Papakartari and Shubhakartari Yoga, Measured

Scissors on Either Side (पाप कर्तरी योग)

Kartari is the Sanskrit for a pair of scissors, and the classical texts use the picture literally: two blades, one in the sign ahead of a point in the chart and one in the sign behind it. Fix the sign you are testing as the 1st. The blades are the 2nd sign and the 12th sign from it. When a malefic occupies the 2nd and a malefic also occupies the 12th, the configuration is papakartari (paap kartari, papa being the word for a malefic graha). When a benefic sits on each side, it is shubhakartari (shubh kartari). Astrologers who use the pair apply the same count to the lagna, to any house and to a graha’s sign; the Moon is the case this page measures.

The names carry the tradition’s own valuation, and that is as far as this page goes with it. The image belongs to the texts; nothing here reads an outcome for the house, sign or graha between the blades, in either form.

Which Grahas Count as Malefic and Which as Benefic

The site’s planet table labels the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu as malefics (the Sun as “Mild malefic”, the nodes as “Malefic (shadow)”) and Jupiter and Venus as plain “Benefic”. Mercury is the awkward one. Its entry reads “Neutral — takes on its company”, and the longer note says it takes the character of whatever it sits with. The usual Parashari practice is to count an unafflicted Mercury among the benefics, while astrologers who weigh its company first would not count it on a blade shared with a malefic. Rather than pick one, every benefic figure below is given two ways: Mercury in, and Mercury out.

How Often the Moon Sits Between the Blades

Cut at every sign change of all nine bodies in the ingress table, the Moon is in papakartari for 9.5% of the clock hours of 2026 and 10.7% of 2027. Shubhakartari, with Mercury counted as a benefic, holds for 3.6% and 5.0%. Both figures rise in 2027, and in each year the malefic form runs at more than twice the benefic one. These are shares of time in the sky, not of people or of births.

The “no benefic on either side” rows matter because a blade can be mixed. If the sign behind the Moon holds Saturn and Venus together, that side passes the malefic test and may pass the benefic one too, and some astrologers would not call that papakartari at all. Requiring the flanks to be clean roughly halves the malefic figure and cuts the benefic one much further. With Mercury out and the flanks clean, the benefic form does not occur at any moment of either year.

One fact in the table bears on the small benefic figures. Over 2026 to 2028 it never puts Mercury more than one sign from the Sun’s sign, nor Venus more than two, so the Sun, a mild malefic in the table, is never far from either of them.

Rahu and Ketu Can Supply Only One Blade

Counting Ketu’s sign from Rahu’s at every sign change between 2026 and 2028 gives the 7th house and nothing else: the nodes are always opposite. The 2nd and 12th from any sign are only two signs apart, so the two nodes can never stand on both sides of the same Moon. A node can fill one blade; the other has to come from the Sun, Mars or Saturn. Take the nodes out of the malefic list entirely and the share falls to 4.0% and 2.8%, so in both years the nodes are on one blade for more than half of all papakartari time.

Not the Same Test as Durudhara

Durudhara also asks about both sides of the Moon, but it counts any of the five taragrahas (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn) and ignores the Sun and the nodes, whatever their label. With all nine bodies in the same table it holds for 7.6% of 2026 and 9.6% of 2027. Every moment of shubhakartari is also Durudhara, because its three benefics are taragrahas. Papakartari is different: for 6.0% of 2026 and 7.1% of 2027 the Moon is in papakartari without being in Durudhara, since a blade made of the Sun or a node does not count for Durudhara. The empty-flank case, with no taragraha on either side, is Kemadruma.

Moon Signs in Each Form, November 2026 to February 2027

Each row is a stretch in which none of the eight other bodies changes sign, so the answer for a birth inside it depends only on the Moon’s sign. The two right-hand columns list the Moon signs in papakartari (any of the five malefics) and in shubhakartari (Mercury counted). Rows marked with an asterisk open or close on the Rahu-Ketu change, which uses the mean node, so that boundary is soft by about a day.

The first row is a case where both tests are met for one Moon sign. A Virgo Moon then has the Sun, Mercury and Venus in the 2nd sign and Jupiter and Ketu in the 12th: malefics and benefics on each blade together. From 5 December 2026, give or take a day, when Rahu enters Capricorn, the malefic column changes to Sagittarius and Aquarius, and an Aquarius Moon stays in papakartari in every row from then to the end of the table. A Virgo Moon is in shubhakartari in every row before 1 January 2027; from then that column empties or moves, and four of the rows have no shubhakartari Moon sign at all, against three rows with no papakartari one, the first of them from 16 November 2026. With Mercury left out, no Moon sign is in shubhakartari anywhere from 1 January 2027 to the end of the table.

Checking Your Own Lagna

The lagna version needs a birth time, so it is not computed here, but the count is quick to do by hand. Open your chart in the free kundli tool and note the lagna sign. The 2nd house is the next sign forward in the zodiac and the 12th is the sign immediately before; for a Virgo lagna those are Libra and Leo. List the grahas in each. If both lists contain one of the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu, the lagna meets the malefic test; if both contain one of Mercury, Jupiter and Venus, it meets the benefic test, and you can repeat the check without Mercury.

One difference from the Moon tables: for the lagna, the Moon itself can be a blade. The planet table gives its nature as “Benefic when waxing”, so astrologers who count it look at the phase first. The same steps work for any house: take that house’s sign as the 1st and look at its neighbours.

Where It Sits Among the Other Yogas

The Sun has its own flank yogas, counted with the taragrahas rather than with the malefic and benefic labels, on the Veshi, Vasi and Ubhayachari page. The list of kundli yogas and how common they are sets the share of each against the others. A figure near one hour in ten tells you how often the scissors appear in the sky, and nothing about any one chart. In Hindi: पाप कर्तरी और शुभ कर्तरी योग, गणना सहित.