Tārās and Navatāra: The Nine Stars Counted From Your Birth Star
How the nine tārās are counted from your birth star, what the classical texts actually say about them, and how the site uses them in the month verdict.
Your birth star as a starting point
The Moon's position at birth falls in one of 27 lunar mansions, the nakṣatras. That one is your birth star (janma nakṣatra). The tārā system ("tārā" simply means star) uses it as a starting point: every other star in the sky is classed by how far it is from yours. Planets — at birth or in transit — then take on the character of the star they occupy, as seen from you.
Counting the nine tārās
Count from your birth star to the star you are interested in, counting your own star as 1. If the number is above 9, subtract 9 (or 18). What is left, from 1 to 9, is the tārā. The nine come round three times across the 27 stars, which is why the system is also called navatāra, "the nine stars".
| No. | Tārā | Plain meaning on the site | How the site counts it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Janma | a day of the self — keep things steady | neutral for period lords; caution for a malefic in transit |
| 2 | Sampat | wealth and gains | supportive |
| 3 | Vipat | obstacles and setbacks | caution |
| 4 | Kṣema | well-being and safety | supportive |
| 5 | Pratyari | opposition | caution |
| 6 | Sādhana | accomplishment | supportive |
| 7 | Naidhana | the hardest tārā — avoid fresh starts | caution |
| 8 | Mitra | friendly support | supportive |
| 9 | Parama Mitra | strong support | supportive |
A quick example of the count
Say your birth star is Aśvinī, the 1st of the 27, and a planet stands in Rohiṇī, the 4th. Counting Aśvinī as 1, Rohiṇī is 4: Kṣema, a supportive tārā. Had the planet been in Hasta, the 13th star, you would subtract 9 and land on 4 again — the same tārā one round further on. Because the count always starts from your star, the same planet in the same sky can be supportive for one person and a caution for another: the tārās describe how a star sits with you, not whether it is good in itself.
What the classical texts actually say
It is worth separating what the old texts say from what later tradition built on them.
That is about all. The texts on disk do not describe reading the birth stars of your Vimśottarī period lords by tārā, a "navatāra of the month", or a majority vote of the slow planets. Those come from later tradition — on this site, the Shubham Method layer.
How the site uses tārās in the month verdict
Your monthly rating is a site heuristic: no text adds signals into one score. The classical part follows the order of BPHS 51.16 — birth promise, then daśā, then transits — with seven signals worth up to ±1 each: the main, sub and short period lords (MD, AD, PD), the period lords' own transits, Jupiter's and Saturn's transits read through aṣṭakavarga, and the monthly sign-points rule.
The tārā picture adds three smaller components, ±0.5 each:
With ±7 on the classical side and ±1.5 at most on the tārā side, the classical order still dominates. When the weights were set, the site tested them on 2,400 random chart-months: adding the tārās moved 23% of the labels by one step (say, from "Good" to "Mixed") and none by two.
A worked example
The site's sample chart (25 December 1990, 03:20, Paris) has the Moon in Uttara Bhādrapadā. Its natal planets fall in these tārās:
For October 2026 the running periods are Venus (MD), Venus (AD) and the Sun (PD). So:
The classical signals add up to +1.0, the tārās to −0.17, for a total of +0.83, which falls in the "Mixed" band. The verdict line reads: "Mixed — demanding periods, supportive transits, but Sun's tārā is Vipat (caution); the slow planets' tārās call for caution." The tārās did not decide the label here; they explain part of its tone.
In your own chart
Your monthly report names your birth star, the tārā of each period lord, the navatāra of the month and the slow-planet trend, each marked as classical text or later tradition. Get your monthly reading.