Arudha Lagna

sanskrit: आरूढ लग्न (Ārūḍha Lagna)

Definition

The Arudha Lagna (AL, also A1 or Pada-Lagna) is the arudha pada — the reflected or 'mounted' image — of your lagna, the ascendant or rising sign, projected outward into the world. To find it you count the signs from the lagna to its ruling planet, the lagna lord, then count that same number again onward from the lord. Several authors read it almost as a second birth chart, distinct from the birth lagna; and when the lagna lord sits in the seventh sign from the lagna, the Arudha Lagna falls back on the lagna itself.

In Tradition

Across the modern Jyotish works surveyed here, the Arudha Lagna stands for the material or social projection of the self — the status, the reputation, the image by which the world perceives you — read as something separate from the birth lagna, which shows your true or physical self. These authors agree on that broad role even where their calculation wording and the techniques they apply to it differ.

In Practice

Astrologers read the Arudha Lagna to judge your outward status, reputation and material standing rather than your inner nature. Some weigh the strength of its lord, and the planets that join it, aspect it, or sit in kendra (an angle) to it, as signs of the fame and the activities you become known for: benefics with the AL are read as making you well regarded, malefics as colouring the reputation negatively. Several treat malefics in its third and sixth as marks of boldness or material success and benefics there as gentleness or renunciation, and read the houses counted from the AL — the eleventh and twelfth for gains and expenditure, the second as sustaining the social image — for wealth, career and recognition. In a separate Jaimini Chara-dasha (a timing system) setting it also serves as a standing reference point alongside the Karakamsha and Upapada.

Historical Origin

Every source here is a modern work that presents the technique within the Jaimini and Parashari tradition, with no verbatim classical quotation in this bundle. Treatments appear in Rath's Crux of Vedic Astrology, B. V. Raman's How to Judge a Horoscope material and Prasna Marga, Rao's Predicting through Jaimini's Chara Dasha, Larsen's Jyotisha Fundamentals, deFouw and Svoboda's Light on Life, Cole's Science of Light, and Narasimha Rao's Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading