Kaal Sarp Dosh Calculator
Check whether all your planets sit between Rahu and Ketu - and which type it forms.
Check whether all your planets sit between Rahu and Ketu - and which type it forms.
Kaal Sarp Dosh forms when every planet in a chart falls on one side of the Rahu-Ketu axis. Enter your birth details above to generate your full kundali - it reports whether the yoga forms, and shows the actual planetary positions so you can see the axis for yourself rather than taking a yes or no on trust.
Rahu and Ketu are not bodies. They are the two lunar nodes, the points where the Moon's path crosses the apparent path of the Sun. Eclipses happen near them, which is why old writers gave them a shadowy character. There is nothing there to photograph. They are calculated positions, and they are marked on a chart exactly like a planet.
One property of theirs decides everything that follows. The two are always exactly opposite, one hundred and eighty degrees apart, so they always form a straight line across the chart. They normally move backward through the signs, against the direction the planets take. A straight line through a circle cuts it into two halves. Every judgment below is about which half the planets fell into at birth.
The pattern has one condition. All seven planets, meaning Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, must fall on the same side of that line, hemmed in with Rahu at one end and Ketu at the other. If all seven are inside, the form is called complete. If the crowding holds across most of the chart but one planet escapes, most sources call it partial.
How the containment is measured is itself disputed. Some astrologers work by sign, so a planet whose sign lies between the two nodal signs counts as inside. Others insist on degrees, and a planet a fraction of a degree past Rahu counts as outside. The same birth can be a complete Kaal Sarpa by one method and nothing at all by the other. Always ask which method produced your result.
The twelve named types of Kaal Sarp Dosh are counted by position, not by severity. Rahu can occupy any of the twelve houses, and Ketu is then fixed opposite it. Six lines exist: first and seventh, second and eighth, third and ninth, fourth and tenth, fifth and eleventh, sixth and twelfth. Each line can be taken in two directions, depending on which end Rahu holds. Six lines, two orientations each, twelve forms.
The names are serpent names: Anant, Kulik, Vasuki, Shankhpal, Padma, Mahapadma, Takshak, Karkotak, Shankhachur, Ghatak, Vishdhar and Sheshnag. The usual listing begins with Rahu in the first house and moves forward one house for each name. That ordering varies between sources, and so do the spellings. A name by itself tells you very little. The useful question is which two houses the line runs through.
Grouping the twelve helps more than the names do. A line through the first and seventh houses touches the self and partnership. Through the second and eighth, family money and things held jointly. Through the fourth and tenth, home and public work. Through the sixth and twelfth, illness, debt and withdrawal. These are simply the ordinary meanings of those houses. The line marks where the chart's weight is concentrated.
One planet on the free side changes the shape of the whole picture. The idea behind this arrangement is containment, everything pressed into one half. A planet outside breaks that crowding. Sources differ on what to call the result. Some drop the label entirely. Others keep it and describe the form as partial or broken. There is no agreed cut-off point between the two.
This is where an accurate birth time earns its keep. The Moon covers about half a degree in an hour, so a Moon lying near a node can be judged inside the line by one birth time and outside it by another. The house the line falls in, and therefore the name your chart is given, depends on the rising sign, which changes every two hours or so. A doubtful birth time makes the whole classification doubtful.
The honest history matters here. This condition is not found in the earliest classical texts of Indian astrology. Those foundational works discuss Rahu and Ketu at length and describe hundreds of planetary combinations, yet this particular pattern is absent from them. It appears in much later material, and it became widely known only in the last century, helped along by popular astrology writing and then by the internet.
So the argument among practitioners is not about small details. Many scholars treat Kaal Sarp Dosh as a later addition and do not use it at all. Others use it and say it describes something they see in real lives, a sense of being hemmed in, of effort meeting delay. Both groups know the same texts. The real dispute is whether a late idea can still be a true observation.
Hold the result loosely. A calculator can tell you accurately whether your planets all fall on one side of the line, because that part is arithmetic and nothing more. What such an arrangement means for a life is a much weaker claim, made by a tradition that did not always make it. Nothing about this obliges you to feel frightened, and nothing about it obliges you to fix anything.
What is Kaal Sarp Dosh?
It is the condition where all seven classical planets sit between Rahu and Ketu, leaving one half of the chart empty. The nodes are shadow points rather than physical bodies, which is why this configuration is treated as significant.
How many types are there?
Twelve, named after which house the Rahu-Ketu axis occupies. Each type is associated with a different area of life. Your chart shows the exact axis position, which is what determines the type.
Is it always bad?
No. Classical opinion is divided, and a partial formation - where one planet falls outside the axis - is treated very differently from a complete one. The chart shows you the actual placements rather than a single verdict.