Karakamsa

kah-ra-KAHM-sha

sanskrit: कारकांश (Kārakāṁśa)

Definition

Karakamsa is the sign in the Navamsa — the ninth-harmonic divisional chart, D9 — that holds your Atmakaraka, the soul-significator. In the Jaimini-Parasari system, the Atmakaraka is the planet sitting at the highest degree within its sign, judged from the Sun through Rahu; whatever Navamsa sign that planet falls into becomes your Karakamsa. The tradition reads it as a sensitive point alongside the birth Lagna (ascendant), and the Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra gives a whole chapter — the Karakamsa-phala-adhyaya — to its effects.

In Tradition

Classical and modern Jyotish writers agree that the Karakamsa is no ordinary placement: in the Jaimini system it works as an auxiliary lagna, a second ascendant. You read its results by judging the sign itself, the planets sitting in it, and the houses or placements counted from it — not from the birth Lagna. Because the Atmakaraka stands for the soul, this Navamsa sign is leaned on especially for spiritual, karmic, and vocational indications.

In Practice

In practice the astrologer reads from the Karakamsa as a reference lagna: its sign and the planets in it speak to the soul's tendencies, and houses are counted from it rather than from the birth Lagna. Raman judges afterlife combinations from the twelfth from it, and reads malefics — the harsher planets — in the Karakamsa or that twelfth as signs of renunciation. Rath looks to the Karakamsa and its trines for skill, intelligence, and one's guiding deity, and sharply separates it from the Navamsa Lagna: malefics in trines to the Karakamsa are held to give occult knowledge, while malefics in trines to the Navamsa Lagna are read as making life miserable. Several authors treat it as a confirming check, weighed beside the birth Lagna and the Moon before predicting, and Rao marks all of Jaimini's chara karakas — his movable significators — with it for sound prediction. Cole reads the soul's desires, and the supporting forms of the divine, from it.

Historical Origin

The Karakamsa is laid out in the classical Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra, which reads the effects of the sign and of the houses counted from it (Ch.33) and gives it a whole chapter, the Karakamsa-phala-adhyaya. Modern Jyotish authors writing in English carry it forward — Rath, Rao, Raman, Larsen, Cole, and deFouw and Svoboda among them — all treating it as a key Jaimini reference point.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading