Yogas — planetary combinations

A yoga is a named combination of planetary positions held to produce a particular result. The word means union or yoking.

The classical corpus defines several hundred. Some texts run to over a thousand. Before learning any of them, understand the consequence of that number: almost every chart contains some yogas said to be excellent and some said to be terrible. A reading that lists only the flattering ones is not analysis; it is selection.

Raja yogas

The central family. A raja yoga forms when a kendra lord (1, 4, 7, 10) and a trikona lord (1, 5, 9) are connected — by conjunction, mutual aspect, or exchange of signs.

The reasoning is structural rather than arbitrary. Kendras are houses of action and visibility; trikonas are houses of merit and fortune. A link between them is capacity meeting opportunity.

Because the 1st house is both a kendra and a trikona, the lagna lord participates in raja yogas readily, which is one more reason it dominates a reading.

Dhana yogas

Wealth combinations, formed by connections between the lords of the 2nd (accumulated wealth), 5th and 9th (fortune) and 11th (income). The same logic: link the houses that signify money and the money-signification strengthens.

Pancha Mahapurusha yogas

Five "great person" yogas, each formed when a specific graha is in its own sign or exaltation and in a kendra from the lagna:

Note the Sun and Moon are absent — there are five, not seven. Both conditions must hold together; a graha exalted in the 6th does not qualify, nor does one in a kendra but in a neutral sign.

Others commonly cited

• Gaja Kesari — Jupiter in a kendra from the Moon. Note it is counted from the Moon, not the lagna. Common, and correspondingly weak as a distinguishing marker.
• Budhaditya — Sun with Mercury (Lesson 16). Very common.
• Neecha Bhanga Raja Yoga — cancelled debilitation (Lesson 13). Heavily over-claimed.
• Viparita Raja Yoga — the lords of 6, 8 and 12 placed in each other's houses. Read as gain arising through difficulty, on the reasoning that a difficult house harming another difficult house produces a net benefit.

How to actually use yogas

Four disciplines separate useful yoga reading from fortune-telling:

1. Check the conditions exactly. Most claimed yogas fail on inspection. Gaja Kesari requires a kendra from the Moon; Pancha Mahapurusha requires both dignity and kendra. 2. Check the strength of the participants. A raja yoga formed by two weak, combust or badly placed grahas is technically present and practically inert. 3. Check whether the dasha ever runs. A yoga delivers largely during the periods of the grahas that form it. A magnificent yoga whose grahas never get a mahadasha in a normal lifespan will not do much. 4. Count the unflattering ones too. If you only look for what you hope to find, you will find it in any chart.

That fourth point is the whole lesson. The existence of hundreds of yogas makes the tradition rich and makes cherry-picking effortless. Both things are true at once.