Kārakāṁśa: Your Soul Planet's Navāṁśa
The kārakāṁśa is the navāṁśa sign of your soul planet. Jaimini reads vocation, learning and devotion from it. Here is how.
Where the soul planet really lives
In Jaimini astrology your ātmakāraka, the soul planet, is the planet furthest advanced in its sign (see the article on chara kārakas). Knowing which planet it is tells you a lot. Knowing where it stands in the navāṁśa tells you more.
The navāṁśa (D9) divides each sign into nine slices of 3°20′, and each slice is assigned a sign of its own. It is the most used of the divisional charts: BPHS reads the spouse and the inner strength of planets from it. The navāṁśa sign of your soul planet is called the kārakāṁśa (BPHS 34.1; JS 1.2.1). The Jaimini commentary also calls it svāṁśa, "one's own portion". The whole of BPHS chapter 34, nearly a hundred verses, is devoted to what it shows.
What the kārakāṁśa answers
Think of it as the chart of the soul's leanings. The texts read from it:
Some of the sign readings are oddly specific: the texts link a kārakāṁśa in Aries with nuisances from small animals, and one in Gemini with skin complaints. Read them as the old authors' shorthand for a temperament, not as literal forecasts. Others are plain and useful: Libra, for instance, points to trade and commerce (BPHS 34.5).
A broad rule sums up the whole chapter: if only benefics occupy the kendras and trines from the kārakāṁśa, the native is prosperous and learned; benefics and malefics mixed give mixed results (BPHS 34.10–11).
Two views: navāṁśa and birth chart
Here the site has to make a choice the texts leave partly open. Do you count houses from the kārakāṁśa in the navāṁśa (using the planets' navāṁśa positions), or in the birth chart (taking the same sign and looking at the planets' ordinary positions)?
BPHS mostly reads the kārakāṁśa in the navāṁśa, but in places it clearly applies the same counts in the birth chart (BPHS 30.28, 34.9), and later commentators use both. The site therefore computes both views and labels each reading with the view it comes from. When the two agree, the theme is stronger; when they disagree, each is reported separately rather than averaged away.
A worked example
In the site's sample chart (25 December 1990, 03:20, Paris), the soul planet is Venus, at 22°20′ Sagittarius. That degree falls in the seventh ninth of Sagittarius, whose navāṁśa sign is Libra. So the kārakāṁśa is Libra. Venus rules Libra, so the soul planet stands in its own sign in the navāṁśa, a dignified start.
In this chart Libra happens to be the rising sign too, so the kārakāṁśa falls in the 1st house of the birth chart. In the navāṁśa, where the rising sign is Scorpio, it falls in the 12th.
The sign itself. Libra as kārakāṁśa points to trade and commerce (BPHS 34.5, also JS 1.2.8).
The navāṁśa view.
The birth-chart view. Count from Libra in the ordinary chart and the 10th is Cancer again, but here it holds Jupiter: benefics on the 10th from the kārakāṁśa give steady wealth and a serious character (BPHS 34.57).
The two views disagree about the 10th. That is not a contradiction to hide: the navāṁśa speaks of the inner pull, the birth chart of what the world sees. Here the second is kinder than the first, and the report shows both.
Reading it without the jargon
If the vocabulary feels heavy, reduce it to three questions. What sign is the soul planet's navāṁśa, and what kind of activity does the text attach to it? What occupies or influences the 10th from it, which the texts treat as work and standing? And what sits in the 5th, the field of study and skill? Answer those three and you have the core of what this technique offers. The rest of chapter 34 adds detail, but rarely changes the direction.
How sensitive is it?
The kārakāṁśa depends on the soul planet's degree, which is stable against small birth-time errors (except when the Moon is the soul planet). But the navāṁśa slices are only 3°20′ wide, so a soul planet near the edge of a slice deserves a second look. Venus at 22°20′ sits 2°20′ inside its slice (20°00′ to 23°20′), which is comfortably safe.
In your own chart
Your report names your soul planet, its navāṁśa sign, the house it falls in from both your rising sign and your navāṁśa rising sign, and lists each kārakāṁśa reading with the view it comes from and its verse. Start with the sign and the 10th: they are the closest the texts come to describing a calling. Calculate your chart to find your kārakāṁśa.