The nine planets of Jyotish, and what each one governs

Jyotish works with nine planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, plus Rahu and Ketu, the two points where the Moon’s path crosses the Sun’s. Each planet governs particular subjects in a life, from career and money to partnership and health, and each one rules its own season of years.

Why are the Sun and the Moon counted as planets?

In Jyotish the word planet covers every moving point that shapes a chart, as seen from Earth. The Sun and the Moon are the two lights, the five visible planets follow, and Rahu and Ketu complete the nine.

The planets discovered by telescope, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, are not part of the system. Jyotish has always worked with nine, and the Systems’ Approach keeps to the same nine.

What does each planet govern?

Each planet carries a fixed set of significations, the subjects it speaks for wherever it sits in your chart. Each also rules a season of life, a period of years in which its subjects move to the foreground.

• Sun: authority, social status, your father, government, leadership, vitality and recognition in your career. Its season lasts 6 years.
• Moon: the mind and emotions, your mother, home, the public, nourishment and travel. Its season lasts 10 years.
• Mars: energy, courage, decisive action, brothers, property, engineering and physical discipline. Its season lasts 7 years.
• Mercury: intelligence, analysis, business, finance, communication, writing and technology. Its season lasts 17 years.
• Jupiter: wisdom, law, education, children, philosophy and the expansion of wealth. Its season lasts 16 years.
• Venus: love, marriage and partnership, the arts, beauty, design, vehicles and comfort. Its season lasts 20 years.
• Saturn: discipline, sustained effort, delay, longevity, labor, land and service to the many. Its season lasts 19 years.
• Rahu: the unconventional, the foreign, obsession, amplification and sudden disruption. Its season lasts 18 years.
• Ketu: detachment, spirituality, separation and losses that lead toward freedom. Its season lasts 7 years.

Added together, the nine seasons span 120 years, the full cycle of planetary seasons. The seasons of a life explains how that cycle is calculated from the Moon at your birth.

What are Rahu and Ketu?

Rahu and Ketu are not physical bodies. They are the two points where the Moon’s orbit crosses the apparent path of the Sun, and they always sit exactly opposite each other. Eclipses happen when the Sun and the Moon line up close to one of them.

They move backward through the zodiac, spending roughly eighteen months in each sign. Rahu moved from Pisces into Aquarius on May 29, 2025, and it moves on into Capricorn on November 25, 2026, when Ketu moves into Cancer. Rahu and Ketu change signs on November 25 maps that shift.

In the Systems’ Approach, Rahu and Ketu ask more of every chart, whatever the rising sign. Rahu intensifies whatever it touches, and Ketu loosens attachment, sometimes through loss.

Are some planets good and others bad?

The tradition divides the planets by general nature. Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and the Moon tend toward growth and ease, while Saturn, Mars, the Sun, Rahu and Ketu tend toward friction and pressure. Neither group is good or bad on its own, because both describe necessary terrain.

The Systems’ Approach adds a more precise layer. Each planet’s role in your chart depends on your rising sign, so Saturn can carry one person and press on another. That principle has its own entry: why some planets carry you and others ask more of you.

What makes a planet strong or weak?

Every planet has one sign where it is strongest and one where it is weakest. A planet in its strongest sign delivers its subjects with full clarity. In its weakest, it operates with difficulty, and the Systems’ Approach does not let other factors cancel that weakness.

• Sun: strongest in Aries, weakest in Libra.
• Moon: strongest in Taurus, weakest in Scorpio.
• Mars: strongest in Capricorn, weakest in Cancer.
• Mercury: strongest in Virgo, weakest in Pisces.
• Jupiter: strongest in Cancer, weakest in Capricorn.
• Venus: strongest in Pisces, weakest in Virgo.
• Saturn: strongest in Libra, weakest in Aries.

Sign is one factor among several. A planet also weakens when it travels too close to the Sun and is outshone, and when it sits in the first or last five degrees of a sign. The journal has followed both extremes: Jupiter’s months in Cancer, its strongest sign, and Venus’s return to Virgo, its weakest.

Why this matters for your own chart

Knowing the nine planets is the beginning of reading a chart, not the end. What matters is where each one sat at your birth, how strong it was, and which areas of your life it governs from your rising sign.

Practitioner note

Exaltation degrees: Sun 10 Aries, Moon 3 Taurus, Mars 28 Capricorn, Mercury 15 Virgo, Jupiter 5 Cancer, Venus 27 Pisces, Saturn 20 Libra. Debilitation is the opposite sign at the same degree. No neechabhanga is applied in the Systems’ Approach. Combustion orbs from the Sun: Moon 12, Mars 17, Mercury 14, Jupiter 11, Venus 10, Saturn 15 degrees.

Infancy and old age cover the first and last 5 degrees of any sign. Vimshottari years: Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. Rahu and Ketu are functional malefics for every lagna.

The Life Chart shows where each of the nine stood at your birth, how strong it is, and whether it carries you or asks more of you.