Vargottama Planet and Lagna: The 12 Vargottama Degrees

Vargottama Meaning (वर्गोत्तम)

The word joins varga, a divisional chart, and uttama, highest or best. A graha is vargottama when it occupies the same sign in the birth chart (the rashi chart, D1) and in the navamsa (D9), and the lagna is vargottama on the same test. In the Parashari line of practice this agreement is read as a mark of strength: the sign the graha holds in the main chart is confirmed by the navamsa rather than contradicted by it. How the navamsa is used for marriage and for the deeper reading of a chart is covered in the navamsa (D9) chart guide. This page sets out where in the zodiac vargottama can happen at all, which turns out to be a short list.

Why Each Sign Has Exactly One

The navamsa cuts every sign into nine parts of 3°20′. The parts run through the twelve signs in one unbroken cycle from the start of Aries, so 108 navamsas cover the zodiac nine times over, and the same 108 parts are the 108 nakshatra padas. Followed sign by sign, the cycle means that a movable sign’s first navamsa is the sign itself, a fixed sign’s first navamsa is the 9th sign from it, and a dual sign’s is the 5th from it. Each sign meets its own name once in its nine parts: in the 1st navamsa of a movable sign, the 5th of a fixed sign and the 9th of a dual one. That gives one 3°20′ arc per sign, twelve in all, and a graha or lagna anywhere else in the zodiac is not vargottama.

So the four movable signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, are vargottama in their opening 3°20′; the four fixed signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, in the middle, from 13°20′ to 16°40′; and the four dual signs, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, in their last 3°20′. A planet at 2° of Cancer is vargottama and one at 2° of Leo is not.

Nine Nakshatras, Nine Different Lords

The twelve arcs fall in only nine nakshatras. Punarvasu, Chitra and Uttara Ashadha each hold two vargottama padas, side by side, because each of them straddles the join between a dual sign and the movable sign after it: the last pada in the dual sign is vargottama for that sign and the next pada, now in the movable sign, is vargottama for the new one. The other six hold one each. Read the nakshatra lords of the nine and every graha of the Vimshottari order turns up exactly once: Ashwini (Ketu), Rohini (Moon), Punarvasu (Jupiter), Purva Phalguni (Venus), Chitra (Mars), Anuradha (Saturn), Uttara Ashadha (Sun), Shatabhisha (Rahu) and Revati (Mercury).

Two of the twelve are also gandanta, the junction padas between a water sign and the fire sign that follows: Ashwini 1 and Revati 4, the two sides of the Pisces–Aries join. Both nakshatras are on the gandmool list, whose dates for the coming year are on the Gandmool nakshatra dates page. Rohini 2, Taurus’s vargottama pada, gets its own discussion on the Rohini nakshatra page.

Vargottama Does Not Change a Dignity

Because vargottama means the same sign twice, whatever a graha’s dignity is in that sign, it has the same dignity in the navamsa. Each of the seven sign lords has one sign of exaltation and one of debilitation, so each has one vargottama arc where it is exalted in both charts and one where it is debilitated in both. Saturn in the opening 3°20′ of Aries is vargottama and debilitated in the rashi and the navamsa alike; so is the Sun at the start of Libra, and Mercury in the last 3°20′ of Pisces. Reading vargottama as strength does not turn those placements into exaltation. It means the navamsa offers no second sign to weigh against the first. The last column of the table shows, sign by sign, which of the seven are exalted, in their own sign or debilitated there. No row is empty, because every sign is ruled by one of the seven.

Vargottama Lagna and Vargottama Moon

The lagna crosses all twelve signs in a day, so it passes through every vargottama arc daily, spending roughly a ninth of each sign’s rising time in it. How long a sign takes to rise depends on the place of birth, and the page gives no clock times for it; whether a lagna is vargottama is settled by its degree, which needs the birth time to the minute. The ascendant calculator gives the lagna sign, and a full chart gives its degree.

The Moon passes through the twelve arcs more often than any other graha, because it is the fastest, crossing each of them about once a month. Through 2027 its stay in a sign averages 54 hours 42 minutes in the site’s Moon ingress table, so it is inside each vargottama arc for about 6 hours on average, a little longer when it moves slowly and less when it moves fast. Those spans are the vargottama padas of the Moon’s nakshatra, so a person whose janma nakshatra pada is one of the twelve in the table has a vargottama Moon. The nakshatra finder gives the nakshatra; the pada needs the Moon’s degree.

Meetings Inside a Vargottama Arc, 2027–2028

The slow grahas sit in an arc for weeks at a time, but the site’s tables give their sign changes and nakshatra changes, not the moment they cross a pada, so the page does not list those spans. What the tables do give is the degree at which two grahas meet. At five of the meetings from now to the end of 2028, leaving out Rahu and Ketu, the meeting degree lies inside a vargottama arc, so both grahas are vargottama at that moment:

• 8 May 2027: Venus and Saturn in Pisces 27°, Revati 4; Venus exalted, Saturn in a neutral sign
• 19 October 2027: the Sun and Mercury in Libra 1°, Chitra 3; the Sun debilitated, Mercury in a friend's sign
• 29 February 2028: Venus and Saturn in Aries 0°, Ashwini 1; Venus in a neutral sign, Saturn debilitated
• 12 April 2028: the Sun and Mercury in Pisces 28°, Revati 4; the Sun in a friend's sign, Mercury debilitated
• 21 June 2028: Mercury and Mars in Taurus 15°, Rohini 2; Mercury in a friend's sign, Mars in a neutral sign

Two of those show the point of the previous section. On 8 May 2027 Venus is vargottama and exalted in Pisces; on 29 February 2028 Saturn is vargottama and debilitated in Aries. Rows within a quarter of a degree of either end of an arc are left out, because a chart cast with a different ayanamsa shifts every degree slightly; the Sun–Jupiter meeting of 31 August 2027 in Leo is one of them. The same caution applies to a birth chart: a graha a few minutes of arc inside or outside one of these arcs can change status between ayanamsas. Where two grahas meet more generally is listed on the conjunctions pages.

What This Page Does Not Do

It does not say what a vargottama graha or lagna brings. A vargottama planet is still read with the houses it rules and occupies, its aspects, the company it keeps and the dasha running, and none of that can be taken from a degree table. The page also gives no time of day at which anything becomes vargottama. Each pada named above has its own page in the nakshatra section, with the navamsa, the dignity of the nakshatra lord there and the rest of the pada’s arithmetic. To find your own vargottama grahas, a free kundli gives the degree of the lagna, and the Janam Kundli report below gives the degree of every graha; compare each degree with the arc for its sign. In Hindi: वर्गोत्तम ग्रह और लग्न: 12 वर्गोत्तम अंश.