Gochar phal, the result of a transit, is read from your Moon sign. Each graha gives good results only in certain houses counted from the Moon: Saturn, Mars, Rahu and Ketu in the 3rd, 6th and 11th; Jupiter in the 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th; the Sun in the 3rd, 6th, 10th and 11th. A second rule, vedha, lets another graha block a good or a bad transit. Here is the full table and a worked example.
The idea in plain words
The Moon is the mind, so a transit is felt through the mind first. Count from your Moon sign, your Chandra rashi, as house one. If Saturn sits in the sign 11 places on, it is in your 11th from the Moon, one of its good houses, and its transit brings gains. If it sits in the 8th, the same Saturn brings delays. This is why two people can feel the same transit in opposite ways.
The rules here are the ones Phaladeepika gives in its chapter on gochara, and they are the rules the transit pages on this site use.
Step 1: find your Moon sign
Your Moon sign is the sign the Moon occupied at your birth. It is shown in the free kundali as the Chandra rashi. It is not your Sun sign, and it is often not your lagna.
Step 2: count the house of the transiting graha
Count from your Moon sign to the sign the graha is in now, with your Moon sign as one. Take an example: a person with the Moon in Mithun, and Saturn entering Mesh on 3 June 2027. Counting Mithun as one, Mesh is the 11th sign. So Saturn transits this person's 11th house from the Moon.
Step 3: check the good houses
| Graha | Good houses from the Moon | Matching vedha houses |
|---|---|---|
| Sun (Surya) | 3, 6, 10, 11 | 9, 12, 4, 5 |
| Moon (Chandra) | 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 | 5, 9, 12, 2, 4, 8 |
| Mars (Mangal) | 3, 6, 11 | 12, 9, 5 |
| Mercury (Budh) | 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11 | 5, 3, 9, 1, 8, 12 |
| Jupiter (Guru) | 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 | 12, 4, 3, 10, 8 |
| Venus (Shukra) | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 | 8, 7, 1, 10, 9, 5, 11, 6, 3 |
| Saturn (Shani) | 3, 6, 11 | 12, 9, 5 |
| Rahu and Ketu | 3, 6, 11 | 12, 9, 5 |
Saturn is good in the 3rd, 6th and 11th, so the Mithun person's Saturn transit is favourable. Anywhere else, the transit is counted as testing.
Step 4: check vedha
Vedha means obstruction. Each good house has a partner house, shown in the third column. If another graha, apart from the exceptions below, transits that partner house at the same time, it blocks the good result. For Saturn's 11th the vedha house is the 5th. For our Mithun person the 5th from the Moon is Tula. If, say, Mars were in Tula while Saturn was in Mesh, Saturn's good 11th house result would be held back.
There are two exceptions. The Sun and Saturn do not block each other, and the Moon and Mercury do not block each other, since in the old texts they are father and son.
A worked example with vedha from 2027
Take a person with the Moon in Vrishchik. Saturn enters Mesh on 3 June 2027, the 6th sign from Vrishchik, which is one of Saturn's good houses. The vedha house for Saturn's 6th is the 9th from the Moon, which for Vrishchik is Karkat. Jupiter is in Karkat until 26 June 2027, so for those three weeks it blocks Saturn's good result. Once Jupiter moves into Simha on 26 June, the block lifts and the transit gives its full benefit: rivals give way, debts clear and work pays.
The same method works for any graha and any Moon sign. Find the transit house, check whether it is good, then look at the partner house for another graha.
Step 5: weigh the transit against your chart
Gochar is the outer layer of a reading. A good transit delivers more when the same graha is strong in your birth chart and when its dasha or antardasha is running. A hard transit is lighter when Jupiter aspects the house it crosses. Many astrologers add Ashtakavarga, a point system that scores each sign for each graha, as a finer check on the same idea.
A quick answer for the 4th house
People often ask what Mercury, the Sun or Jupiter does in the 4th from the Moon. By the table, Mercury in the 4th is good: home matters, vehicles and study move well. The Sun in the 4th is not one of its good houses, so home life can feel strained and pride clashes with family. Jupiter in the 4th is not one of its good houses either, so it gives a quieter spell, with home and property plans moving slowly.
Where people go wrong
The most common mistake is counting from the Sun sign, which most Western horoscopes use. Another is counting from the lagna for a gochar reading. The lagna matters for natal houses, but the classical gochara rules count from the Moon. A third is ignoring Saturn's and Jupiter's long stays, which matter far more than a fast graha's week in a sign.
Check your own
Find your Moon sign, then look at where the slow grahas are now in Grah Gochar 2027. Saturn and Jupiter set the tone of a year, Rahu and Ketu of eighteen months, and Mars, the Sun, Mercury and Venus of a few weeks. The Shani Gochar 2027 and Guru Gochar 2027 articles apply this table to every Moon sign.