Muhurtha — Panchanga Elements, Nava Taras & Special Tithis

Fundamental Principle — Same Muhurtha Not Good for All Events

• The software does not say whether a day is good or bad. It gives the parameters; the judgment is yours.
• A day is not good or bad in itself. It depends on the purpose. A muhurtha for griha pravesha and a muhurtha for starting a sadhana need not be the same.
• Some nakshatras are good for most purposes (Anuradha), some are poor for several (Moola). The same goes for tithis — good for one purpose, bad for another. The standard lists are in Dr. Raman's book and, in summary, on one page of any Andhra panchangam. PVNR does not cover them in class.
• A perfect muhurtha — all five elements good in themselves, good in the muhurtha chart, and good for the native's own chart — is nearly impossible. Decide what matters most for this event and choose on that.
• That does not mean two elements can be wrecked. An auspicious karana, yoga, nakshatra and tithi, with their lords reasonably placed and no terrible weakness, can be found most of the time.

"It's not that a particular day is a good day and a particular day is a bad day. It depends on for what purpose."

"Even if Brihaspati comes, he can't find such a muhurtha every day."

The Five Panchanga Elements and Their Tattvas

Each of the five limbs of the panchanga is of one tattva and governs one side of the venture:

Understanding Each Tattva

Jala (Tithi): Prosperity and well-being are watery. If the karana lord is well placed but the tithi lord is badly placed, you achieve the goal but with unease and discomfort on the way — no sense of prosperity.

Agni (Vara): Fire is the life force within us, so Vara shows the life force of the activity and how long it lasts. Judge it by the Vāreśa (lord of the weekday) in the muhurtha chart.

• Example: Tuesday, Virgo lagna, Mars in Pisces. Vāreśa Mars is the 8th lord in the 7th house — short life. What is started will end soon. (Someone who wants it to end soon may choose this on purpose.)
• Vāreśa in a kendra or kona from lagna → the venture lasts.

Bhu (Karana): Earth is the solid element. Karana shows what is on the ground at the end.

• Example: Garaja karana is ruled by Jupiter and is generally a good karana. If Jupiter is in a maraka sthana in the muhurtha chart, the karana is weak although it is an auspicious one. The venture may last, but what the person set out to achieve may not get done.

Akasha (Yoga): Akasha has no form; it takes the form of whatever it fills, and it holds the other four elements together. Yoga shows what stops the venture from falling apart.

• In an organisation: whether the people holding it together work in harmony.
• In one person: the forces pulling in different directions — "renounce and go to the Himalayas", "you neglect home and family", "work harder than the others". Yoga keeps them in unison so the task goes on.

Vayu (Nakshatra): Vayu is strength. Too strong, it destroys. Nakshatra shows whether the weak gain the strength for the task, or whether the strong misuse it and lose it.

Priority Based on Purpose

Which element comes first is decided by the purpose — and sometimes you must ask the person.

Three-Layer Evaluation for Each Panchanga Element

For each element check three things. All three good is what a muhurtha should have:

1. Good by nature? — Is this tithi / vara / nakshatra / yoga / karana held auspicious in general, and for this kind of activity?
2. Good for this native? — What is the agenda of its lord in the native's own natal chart?
3. Lord well placed in the muhurtha chart? — An auspicious element with a badly placed lord is weak.

Vara (Weekday) — Important Nuance

• The thumb rule: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are good; Saturday, Tuesday and sometimes Sunday are bad — only because Sun, Mars and Saturn are malefics and Mercury, Jupiter and Venus benefics.
• PVNR gives this the least weight. Mars may be your lagna lord; for something to do with your health, Tuesday may be your best day.
• For Vara, check that the day lord is a functional benefic in the native's chart and well placed in the muhurtha chart. Honour the thumb rule if you can, but keep it at the bottom of the list.
• Saturday is held inauspicious, yet it can be good for a person whose Janma Vara (weekday of birth) it is.

Karana — Judge from Paka Lagna

• Thumb rule: karanas of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Moon are generally good. Saturn's karanas are not.
• As Sanjay Rath teaches it: for karana, the lagna lord matters more than the lagna, because achievement is a matter of the intelligence (paka), not the whole being. Judge the karana lord from paka lagna (the sign holding the lagna lord) — in the natal chart for layer 2, in the muhurtha chart for layer 3.

Nakshatra Lord

• The planetary lord of the nakshatra is judged, not the deity. Bharani's deity is Yama, but its lord is Venus — for a muhurtha in Bharani, see how Venus is placed.
• A bad Tara for one of the parties is softened if the nakshatra lord is strong in the muhurtha chart. Example: Anuradha (Saturn) chosen with Taurus lagna and Saturn in Libra — the yogakaraka exalted in the 6th. Some of the parties may feel weak from their own Tara, but the venture itself picks up strength.

The General Rule

• Choose a good tithi whose lord is well placed in the muhurtha chart, with a good nakshatra that is also a good Tara for the native.

Nava Taras — Nine Stars from Moon

Apart from being good or bad for everybody, each nakshatra is good or bad for you. That is the Nava Tara chakra.

The System

The 27 nakshatras fall into 9 groups of 3. Count from the Janma Nakshatra (natal Moon's nakshatra); after the ninth, the cycle starts again.

Example: PVNR's Own Chart

Data: April 4, 1970, 5:47:13 PM IST, Machilipatnam (81°E12′, 16°N15′). Moon in Purva Bhadrapada.

• Janma = Purva Bhadrapada, Sampat = Uttara Bhadrapada, Vipat = Revati, Kshema = Ashwini, Pratyak = Bharani, Sadhana = Krittika, Naidhana = Rohini, Mitra = Mrigashira, Parama Mitra = Ardra. Then Punarvasu is Janma again.
• Starting a medicine with Moon in Ashwini is good for him — Ashwini is his Kshema Tara.

How to Use

• At the muhurtha, see where Moon is and which Tara that nakshatra is from the native's natal Moon. Choose a good Tara whenever possible.
• JHora: right-click the longitudes window → "Nava Taras from Moon". The software also gives them from lagna; from Moon is the more important.
• Moon is the mind; lagna is the whole being and the intelligence. For work that is not about feeling better — writing a book — the Tara from lagna counts too, as in his book muhurtha.

The Three Stars of a Tara Share One Lord

• The three nakshatras of any one Tara are ruled by the same planet. For PVNR the Janma Taras (Punarvasu, Vishakha, Purva Bhadrapada) are Jupiter's; the Sampat Taras (Pushya, Anuradha, Uttara Bhadrapada) are Saturn's.
• This carries into Vimshottari: the dasha of the Kshema Tara's lord is in general a good period; the dasha of the Vipat Tara's lord can bring ill health; the dasha of the Pratyak Tara's lord can bring obstacles; the Naidhana lord's dasha is in general not good.
• These are general guidelines. They do not work perfectly.

Multiple People

• In a marriage the bride and groom are the ones who count — not the parents.
• If their stars are consecutive, what is Sampat for one is Vipat for the other. Some stars are good for both (Mitra, Parama Mitra), but the choice becomes very narrow, and sometimes one of them gets a bad Tara.
• If one chart shows an excellent marriage and the other shows some weakness, favour the weaker one. Boost that person so the two are level.
• Five people starting a company: a Tara good for all five is very unlikely. Fall back on the nakshatra lord's strength in the muhurtha chart.

"All this is about balance. Do the best job that you can do, do as much balancing as you can do, and then the rest is up to God."

Special Tithis — 12 Types

A tithi that is bad in general can be good for one person. JHora: longitudes window → "Special tithis".

Standard Tithi Calculation

• Moon minus Sun = how far Moon has advanced from Sun. Every 12° is one tithi; 30 tithis in a lunar month.
• Sun and Moon together = Amavasya, the end of the month. Moon catches Sun again after Sun has moved about 29°.

Special Tithis (Progressed at Different Speeds)

Other tithis run at 2×, 3× … 12× the speed. Dhana tithi changes every 6°, Bhratri tithi every 4°, so they run through all 30 tithis two or three times in one lunar month.

Computation: (Moon − Sun) × factor → remove multiples of 360° → divide by 12 → quotient + 1 = tithi number. A quotient of 5 gives the 6th tithi, Shashthi.

Reading Them — PVNR's Chart

• Each special tithi is the vital tithi for the matters of its house: Bhagya tithi for fortune, Karma tithi for work, Kalatra tithi for marriage. A day whose ordinary (Janma) tithi is unconvincing can still be very good for work if the Karma tithi is good.
• Karma tithi = Shukla Dwadasi. Dwadasi is usually held adverse — in Telugu a "dagdha" (burnt) tithi. But it is his karma tithi, and its lord Mercury is his 10th lord. For something he wants to achieve, Dwadasi is a very good tithi for him. (He admits he often still cannot bring himself to choose it.)
• Bhratri tithi falls in Dasami, an auspicious tithi, with 58% left — in the middle. Strong: well-being on account of brothers.
• Kalatra tithi is at a sandhi — only 2% of Dvitiya is left, Tritiya is about to start. A weakness regarding marriage, so the marriage muhurtha needs care. But Dvitiya and Tritiya are both good tithis, so a sandhi between two auspicious tithis is not that bad.

Tithi Sandhi

• A special tithi close to 0% or 100% left is at the junction of two tithis. Both ends are bad. The "% left" in JHora is how much of the tithi remains before the next begins.
• The same holds for the muhurtha itself: do not fix a muhurtha at a tithi sandhi, unless the tithis on both sides are good ones. Above all avoid the sandhi at Amavasya and Pratipat.
• Kalatra tithi in Amavasya, and at the very beginning of Amavasya: two doshas. Conclude at once that there is weakness in marriage or in relations with others.
• Remedy: on that tithi, let the person pray to the deity who shows marriage in the chart. That weakens the dosha.

Amavasya Rules

• Amavasya is inauspicious for most people and most things, though for a particular person it may be a good tithi. Conventions differ by region — some parts of India hold it good for everything, which may not be correct. (So too with a solar eclipse: the worst of times in India, yet said to be favoured elsewhere.)
• If something must be done on Amavasya, make sure Rahu — the lord of Amavasya — is well placed in the muhurtha chart. Then the dosha of the tithi subsides.
• Rahu in the 8th house: no peace; the work gives headache and frustration. Rahu in the 11th: some happiness.
• Amavasya is very auspicious for starting certain pujas — tantric pujas, Kali sadhana.

Tithi Lord Table (Memorization Aid)

Pratipat = Sun, Dvitiya = Moon, Tritiya = Mars, Chaturthi = Mercury, Panchami = Jupiter, Shashthi = Venus, Saptami = Saturn, Ashtami = Rahu. From the 9th the order repeats: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. The 15th is shared: Purnima = Saturn, Amavasya = Rahu.

Guru Purnima — How Month Names Are Assigned

A student expected Moon in Sagittarius on Guru Purnima (July 21, 2005) and found it in Capricorn.

• The month is named from where Sun is when Sun and Moon conjoin at the new moon — not re-judged at the full moon.
• The conjunction of July 6 fell in Gemini at 20°35′. With Sun in Gemini, the full Moon is normally in Sagittarius, in Purva or Uttara Ashadha → Ashadha Purnima, Guru Purnima. Sagittarius is the natural 9th, Jupiter's sign; the student's logic was sound.
• This time Sun had entered Cancer four days before the full moon, so Moon was in Capricorn.
• Should the Purnima be judged by the signs on the Purnima day itself? A valid point. There may be some corruption in the tradition. Follow it as the elders taught, and keep that in mind.