The 17 free calculators every VELS seeker actually uses — what each one computes, why it matters, and how to read what it tells you. Track A helpful but not required.
Track A gave you the vocabulary — signs, houses, planets, Nakshatras, the core rules of the game. This book is where that vocabulary goes to work. Every lesson here is built around one real, free tool on the VELS platform: what it computes, the real math or classical rule behind it, and how to actually read the result it hands you.
You don't need to have finished Track A to use this book — each lesson stands on its own, with a quick reminder of any Track A idea it leans on. But if a term ever feels unfamiliar, Track A is where it was first introduced.
Every lesson also includes a real worked example with actual numbers, the same way the underlying calculator itself works — so you can follow the exact arithmetic once, and then trust the tool to do it instantly from then on.
This guide covers Lessons 1–17 — the everyday, free, no-signup tools. A second guide (VELS Astrology 301) picks up from there with the deeper Chart Analysis Dashboard sections available once you've saved a birth chart.
Almost every other tool in this book assumes this one already ran — it's the literal foundation chart.
This is Track A's "snapshot of the sky" idea, fully computed: your exact planetary sign, house, degree, and Nakshatra for all 9 planets, both Lagnas, and dignity states. Under the hood, it's a direct coordinate projection: your Ascendant's absolute ecliptic longitude is divided by 30° and rounded down to find which of the 12 signs is rising, and that sign becomes House 1 wall to wall, per the Whole Sign system from Track A.
Worked example: an Ascendant at 194°20' absolute longitude gives Sign Index = floor(194.33 ÷ 30) = 6. Counting 0-indexed from Aries, index 6 is Libra — so the entire sign of Libra, all 30 degrees of it, becomes House 1, with Scorpio automatically the whole 2nd house, Sagittarius the whole 3rd, and so on. A common mix-up: Whole Sign doesn't use your Ascendant's exact degree as a boundary the way Western systems do — a Lagna at 29° Libra still makes all of Libra the 1st house, identical in size to a Lagna at 1° Libra; only the planets' positions within that house differ, never the house's edges.
Generate your free birth chart and try switching between the South Indian and North Indian drawing styles — same data, different classical layout convention.
A focused, standalone tool for Track A's 27-lunar-mansion idea — find any planet's Nakshatra and Pada in isolation.
The math: take a planet's longitude, divide by 13°20' (13.333°), and the whole-number result is the Nakshatra index (0 = Ashwini, up through 26 = Revati). The remainder, divided again by 3°20', gives the Pada (quarter) within that Nakshatra.
Worked example: a planet at 100° absolute longitude (10° Cancer) gives Nakshatra Index = floor(100 ÷ 13.333) = 7 (0-indexed, the 8th Nakshatra) = Pushya. The remainder, 100 − (7×13.333) = 6.667°, divided by 3.333° gives Pada = floor(6.667÷3.333) = 2 (0-indexed, the 3rd quarter) = Pushya, Pada 3. A common mix-up: Nakshatra boundaries are NOT the same as sign boundaries — they're an independent 27-fold grid laid over the 12-fold sign grid, and because 9 Nakshatras fit exactly into 120° (a trine of signs), the two grids only ever re-align every 120°, at 0° Aries, 0° Leo, and 0° Sagittarius. Everywhere else, a planet can sit near the very end of one sign while still comfortably mid-Nakshatra in a mansion that straddles into the next sign.
Look up your birth Nakshatra with the free Nakshatra Calculator, then compare it to your Vimshottari Dasha's very first Mahadasha lord — they're always the same planet.
The most basic possible lookup — and a genuinely useful entry point if you've never had a real Vedic chart calculated before.
This finds your sidereal Moon sign — the closest Vedic equivalent to a Western "sun sign," but for the Moon, and on the sidereal zodiac from Track A. The math is the same sign lookup used everywhere: Moon longitude ÷ 30°, rounded down. Because the Moon moves quickly — roughly 13° per day — an accurate birth time matters to get the correct sign, especially near a sign-boundary birth.
Worked example: Moon at 100° absolute sidereal longitude gives Sign Index = floor(100÷30) = 3 (0-indexed: 0=Aries, 1=Taurus, 2=Gemini, 3=Cancer) = Cancer. This is the identical operation used for every planet's sign and for the Ascendant — the Rashi Calculator is simply this one lookup, isolated as its own free tool for the Moon specifically. A common mix-up: Rashi and Nakshatra aren't two names for the same thing, even though both are often reported together as "the Moon's placement" — they're two independent grids over the same sky, and because the Moon takes about 2.25 days to cross a full Rashi but only about 1 day to cross a Nakshatra, its Nakshatra changes noticeably faster than its Rashi does.
Try the free Rashi Calculator, then compare it against your Western sun sign — expect it to usually land one sign earlier, the Ayanamsha at work (Track A).
This is the single most-used calculator on the platform — the one nearly every serious astrological question eventually routes back through.
The engine finds your Moon's exact Nakshatra, works out how far through it your Moon had already traveled at birth, and uses the remaining fraction (not the elapsed one) to compute your very first, partial Mahadasha. From there, the full 9-period, 120-year sequence unfolds in a fixed classical order at full length.
Worked example: Moon at 14°20' Libra = 194°20' absolute longitude. Swati Nakshatra spans 186°40'–200°00', ruled by Rahu. Distance already traveled = 194°20' − 186°40' = 7°40'; distance remaining = 200°00' − 194°20' = 5°40' = 5.667°. Fraction remaining = 5.667 ÷ 13.333 = 0.425. Rahu's full Mahadasha is 18 years, so birth balance = 0.425 × 18 = 7.65 years = 7 years, 7 months, 24 days of Rahu Dasha remaining at birth. A common mix-up: students often calculate the fraction already elapsed rather than remaining — but the dasha lord's period is counted as if it began when the Moon entered that Nakshatra, and you were simply born partway through it, so it's always the remaining distance to the Nakshatra's end that matters.
Open the free Dasha Calculator, enter your birth details, and find which Mahadasha — and which Antardasha within it — you're living through right now.
If the birth chart is the promise, the Navamsa is the verification — Jyotish's own built-in cross-check on marriage, dharma, and a planet's deeper strength.
The D9 divides each 30° sign into 9 slices of 3°20' each — but the starting point of the count depends on the sign's modality: for a planet in a Movable sign, the count starts from the sign itself; in a Fixed sign, from the 9th sign from it; in a Dual sign, from the 5th sign from it.
Worked example: Moon at 14°20' Libra (a Movable sign). Longitude mod 30° = 14.333°; Pada Index = floor(14.333÷3.333) = 4 (0-indexed, the 5th pada). Because Libra is Movable, counting starts from Libra itself: 5 signs forward inclusively (Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius) lands the Navamsa in Aquarius. A common mix-up: Navamsa counting does not always start from the planet's own sign — the modality-dependent starting point is exactly why two planets sitting in the identical pada-number of two different-modality signs can land in completely different Navamsa signs.
On your free birth chart, look at your D9 wheel next to your D1 — find one planet that changed sign between the two, and notice how differently it reads in each.
The classical 36-point marriage-compatibility score, computed properly — not an app-store gimmick.
Two people's natal Moon Nakshatra and Pada are compared across 8 distinct "Koots" (pillars), unequally weighted from 1 point (Varna) up to 8 points (Nadi), summing to a maximum of 36.
Nadi Koota's check is strictly binary: every Nakshatra belongs to one of three Nadi classes (Adi, Madhya, Antya); if both partners share the same class, the score is exactly 0 of 8 — otherwise the full 8 points are awarded, with no partial credit in between. A common mix-up: the 8 Koots are not weighted equally — a chart pair can score full marks on six of the eight and still post a mediocre total if the two heaviest, Nadi and Bhakoot, both fail.
Run a Kundali Matching for two people whose birth details you know, and look specifically at the Nadi and Gana Koots before looking at the total score.
Four distinct free tools answering four distinct, commonly-asked questions — deliberately not collapsed into one generic "relationship" calculator.
Marriage Prediction, Love Marriage Prediction, Marriage Timing Prediction, and Married Life Prediction each apply a focused subset of classical house and planet analysis — primarily the 7th house, its lord, and Venus and Jupiter as natural relationship significators. Timing specifically layers in Dasha and Gochara (transit) methodology on top.
Worked example: a native has a Libra 7th house ruled by Venus. Three classical layers point the same direction at once: (1) the current Mahadasha is Venus's own period — the 7th lord's dasha is active; (2) transiting Jupiter is currently aspecting natal Venus; (3) the chart carries no unresolved Manglik Dosha. Classical timing methodology treats this as a three-layer confirmation — the 7th house/lord's condition, the active Dasha, and the current Jupiter/Saturn transit all agreeing — not any one factor in isolation being decisive. A common mix-up: a single strong indicator (a "good" Venus dasha, say) isn't sufficient on its own to call a marriage window — all three layers need to agree before it's read as genuinely strong.
If you're curious about more than one of these questions, try two of the four tools side by side and compare which house/planet signals each one leans on.
Possibly the single most well-known "dosha" in popular Vedic astrology — and VELS deliberately checks it two different ways, not just one.
Manglik Dosha is flagged when Mars occupies one of houses 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, or 12 — checked from both your Ascendant and your Moon sign independently, with a match on either one enough to register the Dosha (an "OR," not an "AND").
Worked example: for an Aries Ascendant, Mars in Cancer is the 4th house from Aries — a triggering house from the Lagna. If that native's Moon is in Libra, Cancer is the 10th house from Libra — not a triggering house from the Moon. The rule is has_dosha = from_lagna OR from_chandra, so this chart is flagged Manglik on the strength of the Ascendant placement alone, even though the Moon-based check came back clear. A common mix-up: a genuine Manglik flag doesn't require the affliction to show up from every reference point at once (some regional traditions also check Venus and the Sun) — VELS checks only the two classically core points, Lagna and Moon, flagging the dosha if Mars triggers from either one.
Run the free Manglik Dosha Calculator and see whether the match comes from your Ascendant, your Moon, or both.
Saturn's slowest, heaviest transit — one specific 7.5-year window per lifetime, and the single most-asked-about topic in practical Jyotish.
Sade Sati is active whenever transiting Saturn occupies the sign before, the sign of, or the sign after your natal Moon — three specific signs out of twelve, checked purely by comparing Saturn's current sign against your fixed natal Moon sign.
A common mix-up: Sade Sati is not a fixed 7.5-calendar-year block counted from one known start date, the way a lease term would be. Because Saturn's real transit speed isn't perfectly uniform, and it can retrograde back across a boundary it only just crossed, the true entry and exit dates shift from chart to chart and can include a brief re-entry — the precision Sade Sati Timeline in the 301 guide exists specifically to track those exact crossings rather than relying on an averaged 2.5-years-per-sign estimate.
Check the free Sade Sati Calculator to see whether you're currently in a phase, and if so, which one.
A whole-chart pattern, not a single-planet affliction — every classical planet trapped on one side of the Rahu-Ketu axis.
The engine measures each of the 7 classical planets' angular distance forward from Rahu; landing between 0°–180° past Rahu counts to one "side," 180°–360° counts to the other. If all 7 land on the same side, Kaal Sarpa is active — a strictly binary check, not a matter of degree.
Worked example: Rahu at 100° (Ketu automatically at 280°, exactly opposite). Suppose Jupiter sits at 90° — its distance forward from Rahu is (90−100) mod 360 = 350°, landing on the far side, not the near one. With six planets on one side and Jupiter alone on the other, the enclosure is broken and Kaal Sarpa is flagged inactive, even though six of the seven were enclosed. A common mix-up: there's no such thing as a "partial" or "mostly enclosed" Kaal Sarpa — the check is either all seven on one side, or it isn't active at all, with no partial-enclosure score being averaged.
Run the free Kaal Sarpa Dosha Calculator — if it's present, notice which single house Rahu occupies, since that's what the named sub-variants hinge on.
Turns Track A's transit theory into a live, dated readout — what each planet transiting each house from your Moon actually tends to mean.
Jupiter transiting the 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th, or 11th houses from your natal Moon is classically considered supportive; Saturn transiting the 3rd, 6th, or 11th houses from Moon is Saturn's own set of favorable Gochara positions — a completely separate claim from Sade Sati's 12th/1st/2nd trigger.
Worked example: natal Moon in Taurus. Transiting Jupiter enters Virgo, the 5th house from Taurus — one of Jupiter's five supportive houses {2,5,7,9,11}, so this transit reads as auspicious. If transiting Saturn separately sits in Pisces (the 11th from Taurus), that's one of Saturn's own three favorable houses {3,6,11} — a favorable Saturn period in its own right. A common mix-up: Saturn's favorable houses (3rd/6th/11th from Moon) are not "a milder Sade Sati" — they're an unrelated calculation entirely; a chart can be in a strong Saturn transit while nowhere near Sade Sati, or vice versa, depending purely on where natal Moon and transiting Saturn actually sit.
Open the Gochara Phal Calculator or the Transit Hub to see today's live transit effects mapped against your own Moon.
A fast, day-to-day compatibility check between "today's Moon" and "your Moon" — one of the oldest practical timing tools in the tradition.
The distance (in Nakshatra count) from your birth Nakshatra to a target Nakshatra, reduced modulo 9, gives one of 9 named Tara categories. Because a modulo-9 result can come out to exactly zero, that specific case is remapped to 9 rather than 0 — meaning your own birth Nakshatra's transit day, and every ninth Nakshatra after it, lands on Tara 9 (Adhi-Mitra, "great friendship"), not Tara 1.
Worked example: birth Nakshatra Ashwini (index 0). Today's Moon transits Hasta (index 12). Distance = (12−0) mod 9 = 3 — Tara 3, Vipat ("losses"), a challenging day. Tomorrow the Moon moves into Chitra (index 13): distance = (13−0) mod 9 = 4, Tara 4, Kshema ("protection") — a supportive day, purely because the target shifted by one Nakshatra. A common mix-up: favorability doesn't rise and fall smoothly as the Moon moves further away — because the scale wraps every 9 Nakshatras and each remainder has its own fixed, non-sequential quality (2 and 6 strongly supportive; 3, 5, and 7 challenging), favorability jumps discontinuously day to day rather than trending gradually.
Check the free Tara Bala Calculator for today's date against your own Nakshatra.
The daily-driver version of Track A's five-limbs lesson — a live lookup for right now, wherever you are.
Tithi = the Sun-Moon angular separation ÷ 12°. Vara = the weekday. Nakshatra = specifically the Moon's Nakshatra (not the Sun's), since the Moon's fast daily motion is what makes it useful as a day-to-day marker. Yoga = (Sun longitude + Moon longitude) ÷ 13°20'. Karana = half a Tithi.
Worked example: Sun at 100°, Moon at 250°. Tithi Index = floor((250−100)÷12) = 12 (0-indexed, the 13th Tithi) — since the separation is under 180°, the Moon is waxing, three days short of full. Yoga Index = floor((100+250)÷13.333) = 26 (0-indexed, the 27th and final Yoga of the cycle). A common mix-up: Panchang's "Nakshatra" always means the Moon's, never the Sun's or "whichever planet feels active" — the Sun's Nakshatra only changes about once a month, which is why it's the Moon's fast-moving one that's useful day to day.
Check today's Panchang for your own city, then check it again for a city on the other side of the world — notice what does and doesn't change.
A specialized classical technique asking one specific question: what does a planet's transit into a new sign say about its symbolic material "makeup"?
Each of the 9 planets has its own independent classical lookup table (from the Phaladeepika) mapping its house-position-from-the-natal-Moon into one of four material tiers: Gold, Silver, Copper, or Iron — evaluated at the exact moment a transiting planet enters a new sign.
Worked example: Mars entering the 2nd house from natal Moon reads, on Mars's own row, as Swarna (Gold) — full strength. The Sun entering that exact same 2nd-house position reads instead as Rajat (Silver) on the Sun's own row — a weaker tier, for the identical house, purely because each planet's table is independent. A common mix-up: this is easy to confuse with the simpler, uniform transit rules elsewhere in this book (like Jupiter's or Saturn's Gochara houses) — but Moorti Nirnay has no shared "1st/6th/11th = Gold" rule for every planet; it's a full per-planet lookup with no shortcut, and there's no substitute for checking each planet's own row.
Try the free Moorti Nirnay Calculator with your own birth details as a quick, curiosity-driven extra data point.
The classical remedial cousin to Track A's exaltation lesson — turning "this planet is weak" into a specific, traditionally-prescribed stone, but only after checking whether strengthening it is actually a good idea.
House lordship gates the recommendation before weakness is even considered: a weak planet ruling a good house (like a trine) gets recommended a strengthening stone; the identical weakness in a planet ruling a difficult house (the 6th, 8th, or 12th) does not, since amplifying a dusthana lord's influence is classically inadvisable regardless of how weak it natally is.
Worked example: for a Leo Ascendant, Jupiter rules the 5th house (Sagittarius) — an auspicious trine. If this Jupiter is weak, the calculator recommends Yellow Sapphire, since Jupiter here is a natural benefic ruling a supportive house that simply needs help expressing itself. Contrast a Cancer Ascendant, where Jupiter instead rules the 6th house (also Sagittarius, but the 6th from Cancer) — a difficult dusthana house. Even if equally weak, the same logic withholds the recommendation here. A common mix-up: gemstone recommendation isn't purely about strengthening whichever planet tests weakest — house lordship gates the recommendation first; the goal is supporting planets that help you, not amplifying whichever planet happens to score lowest.
Run the free Gemstone Calculator on your own chart and see which planet it flags — then check which house that planet rules in your chart.
Not Vedic astrology at all, technically — but ancient, cross-culturally attested, and a genuinely popular complementary lens VELS offers alongside the Jyotish core.
This computes your Life Path and Destiny numbers from your birth date and name using the Chaldean system — the older of the two major numerology systems, where letters map to numbers 1 through 8 only. The number 9 is considered too sacred to attach to any individual letter, and only ever appears as a result of digit reduction, never as a starting letter value.
Worked example: the name "VEDA" under the Chaldean grid: V=6, E=5, D=4, A=1, summing to 16. Because 16 is one of the four recognized Karmic Debt numbers (13, 14, 16, 19), the engine flags it before continuing the reduction: 1+6 = 7, reported as "Expression Number 7, reduced through Karmic Debt 16." A common mix-up: Chaldean numerology does not assign letters 1 through 9, the range familiar from the more common Pythagorean system — it only ever goes up to 8.
Try the free Numerology Calculator with your own name and birth date to find your Life Path Number and its archetype.
The one "horoscope" feature on the platform that isn't computed live per visitor — and there's a good reason why.
Unlike every other tool in this book, this runs on a fixed schedule (daily at midnight IST, weekly on Mondays, monthly on the 1st): one engine call fetches the current sidereal transit degrees, and a single AI call generates copy covering all 12 signs at once — not 12 separate calls. Each seeker's own house-relative placement (e.g., "Jupiter is transiting your 5th house") is then derived afterward with plain modular arithmetic from that one shared snapshot.
The whole batch is written to a static JSON file that every seeker's page simply fetches — no live engine call and no live AI call happens between one scheduled run and the next, no matter how many people view the page in between. A common mix-up: opening the horoscope page does not trigger a fresh, personalized calculation for that specific visit — the content is only as fresh as the last scheduled batch run, which is precisely the trade-off that keeps page loads instant.
Check your Daily, Weekly, or Monthly Horoscope page — then check back after the next scheduled run to see it update.
New terms from this book, alphabetized. Track A's own glossary covers the foundational vocabulary these build on.
You now know what every free calculator on VELS actually computes, the real math or classical rule behind it, and how much to trust what it tells you.
VELS Astrology 301 continues from here — the deeper Chart Analysis Dashboard sections available once you've saved a birth chart, and the full Cosmic Blueprint report itself.