How the Saptāṁśa is constructed
Each sign is divided into seven parts of 4°17'8.57" each.
- Odd signs
- The seven divisions run successively from the sign itself. The saptāṁśas of Aries are Aries through Libra.
- Even signs
- The seven divisions run successively from the 7th sign from it. The saptāṁśas of Taurus begin at Scorpio.
- The seven names
- Kṣāra (salt), Kṣīra (milk), Dadhi (curd), Ghṛta (clarified butter), Ikṣu-rasa (sugarcane juice), Madhya (wine) and Śuddha-jala (pure water) — in that order for an odd sign and reversed for an even one. They run from the harshest substance to the purest, and a graha's saptāṁśa name is a real quality signal.
How to read the D-7
Read the 5th house of the D-7 and its lord first, then the D-7 Lagna, then Jupiter — the natural significator of children — wherever it falls. For a woman's chart the Moon and the 5th from the Moon carry additional weight; for a man's, the condition of the 5th lord and Jupiter together tends to be decisive.
Successive children are read from successive houses: the first from the 5th, the second from the 7th, the third from the 9th — counting two houses onward each time. The rule is old and widely used, and it is one of the reasons this chart is worth casting rather than reading the 5th house alone.
The 11th of the D-7 deserves a look as the house of fulfilment: it shows whether what is promised in the 5th actually reaches completion.
What this chart can and cannot settle
The D-7 describes the condition of progeny — the relationship, the difficulty or ease, the character of what is produced. It is genuinely useful for that.
It is much weaker at counting, and it is not a medical instrument. Questions of fertility have a physical dimension that no chart replaces, and the classical texts on this subject were written in a world without the interventions that now exist. Read the chart for the shape of the matter, and let medicine answer the medical part of it.
Read wider than biology where the chart invites it. The Saptāṁśa also carries creative issue — work that goes out into the world under your name and carries on without you. For people whose lives take that shape, it is often the more accurate reading of the chart.
The Saptāṁśa at a glance
Every figure here is specific to this division. The Vimśopaka rows give the share of the twenty-point strength score the Saptāṁśa carries in each classical scheme — a blank means the division is not counted in that scheme at all.
| D7 | |
|---|---|
| Divisions per sign | 7 |
| Arc of one division | 4°17'09" |
| Divisional Lagna changes every | about 17 minutes |
| Vimśopaka weight · Ṣaḍvarga (6) | — |
| Vimśopaka weight · Saptavarga (7) | 1 |
| Vimśopaka weight · Daśavarga (10) | 1½ |
| Vimśopaka weight · Ṣoḍaśavarga (16) | ½ |
Counted in 3 of the four schemes. The more schemes a division appears in, the more the tradition treats it as load-bearing rather than specialist.
How accurate your birth time needs to be for the Saptāṁśa
The Rāśi Lagna moves through a whole sign in roughly two hours, which is why the birth chart tolerates an approximate time. This division cuts each sign into 7, so the D7 Lagna moves to a new sign about 17 minutes — and the planets near a boundary shift with it. If your recorded time is uncertain by more than that, treat the D7 Lagna and any house-based conclusion drawn from it as provisional, and rectify the time against dated life events before relying on it. Sign placements of the slower grahas stay stable much longer than the Lagna does.
How this is computed
Positions come from an astronomical ephemeris, converted to the sidereal zodiac on the Lahiri (Citrapakṣa) ayanāṁśa and computed by our own Parāśara engine — no pre-written results, and no language model anywhere near a number. Where the classical texts disagree, this page names the convention we follow instead of quietly picking one.