Bhava Purusharthas (Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha Trikonas)

Definition

The bhava purusharthas sort the twelve houses into four trines (groups of three), each named for one of life's four classical aims and counted from the lagna — your rising sign. The Dharma trikona is the 1st, 5th and 9th houses (righteous purpose); the Artha trikona the 2nd, 6th and 10th (wealth and finance); the Kama trikona the 3rd, 7th and 11th (desire and enjoyment); and the Moksha trikona the 4th, 8th and 12th (liberation from birth and death). Rao says to keep these trines in mind when judging a house's spiritual significance.

In Tradition

Across the Jyotish sources surveyed here, the 1st, 5th and 9th houses are treated as a single spiritual or dharmic axis of the chart — not three unconnected houses — carrying your righteous purpose and the soul's spiritualizing impulse. This Dharma trine is read as the part of the chart most concerned with dharma, and its condition is held to bear on how fully you fulfil your life purpose.

In Practice

A jyotishi (Vedic astrologer) leans on the trines as a grouping when weighing a house. Rao counts the four purushartha trines from the lagna when judging a house's spiritual importance, and maps onto the same trines a parallel set keyed to the four ashramas, or life-stages — Brahmacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sanyas. Rath reads the Artha trikona in the Dasamsa (D-10, the tenth-harmonic divisional chart) for the course of your career, noting that any planet in the tenth can on its own form a yoga (combination) for power and career success. Behari weighs the Spiritual Triangle (1/5/9) for fulfilling the life mission and sets it against the Triangle of Maya, or Materiality (7/11/3) — the two forming a mystic hexagon. Larsen reads the dharma houses together for nature, progeny and fortune, and the Moksha houses for the means to liberation. Charak treats purushartha as the capacity for purposeful effort — as when Saturn fourth from the Moon "shows Purushartha."

Historical Origin

The four purusharthas — dharma, artha, kama and moksha — are a classical framework that Bhagat traces back to the Vedas, where the first three aims serve the attainment of moksha. Modern Jyotish authors set out the mapping of the aims onto house-trines and the related groupings: Rao in Hindu Astrology Easily, Larsen in Jyotisha Fundamentals, Behari in his Fundamentals of Vedic Astrology and Vedic Astrologer's Handbook, Rath in Crux of Vedic Astrology, and Charak in Elements of Vedic Astrology.

Further Reading

• Rao, Hindu Astrology Easily — Section Three, The Spirituality Associated with Houses
• Larsen, Jyotisha Fundamentals, Ch.8
• Larsen, Jyotisha Fundamentals, Ch.11 (Fourth, Eighth & Twelfth — The Mokṣa trikoṇa)
• Rath, Crux of Vedic Astrology, Ch.XIII §13.2.1
• Behari, Fundamentals of Vedic Astrology — Part I, Ch.1 Bhavas
• Behari, Vedic Astrologer's Handbook, Vol. II: Planets in Signs and Houses
• Charak, Elements of Vedic Astrology, Ch.XVIII
• Bhagat, Significance of Nakshatras (Stellar) in Astrology