Jaimini chara karakas and Chara dasha, in practice

Jaimini reads the chart by degree and by sign rather than by house lordship. Two ideas carry most of the weight: the chara karakas, and a dasha that moves through signs.

Karakas by degree

Jaimini ranks the planets by their degree within their sign, highest first, and gives each rank a role. The planet with the highest degree is the Atmakaraka, the soul's significator; the next is the Amatyakaraka (career and counsel), then Bhratrikaraka (siblings, teachers), Matrikaraka (mother), Putrakaraka (children), Gnatikaraka (rivals, illness) and Darakaraka (spouse). Bodhlok uses the seven-karaka scheme by default; the eight-karaka variant, which admits Rahu counted in reverse, is a setting.

Because the ranking is by degree, a planet at 29° of any sign is a strong candidate for Atmakaraka and one at 0°30′ is almost never. This is why Jaimini work needs the ayanamsa settled before anything else: a shift of one degree can reorder two karakas.

Reading the Atmakaraka and the Darakaraka

The Atmakaraka's sign in the navamsa is the Karakamsha, read as a lagna for the native's inner direction and, through its houses, for talents and troubles. The Darakaraka, with the 7th from the Karakamsha and the Upapada (the arudha of the 12th house), is Jaimini's primary tool for marriage: when the Darakaraka is well placed and the Upapada's second house is unafflicted, the marriage holds. The desk shows all of these on one page, with the arudha padas for every house.

Chara dasha and the co-lord rule

Chara dasha gives each sign a period whose length is the count from the sign to its lord (minus one), in a direction that depends on whether the sign is odd or even. Scorpio and Aquarius have two lords, Mars and Ketu, Saturn and Rahu. The rule Bodhlok applies, settled by the astrologers who correct its readings: the co-lords apply to Chara dasha only. For the arudha padas and the Upapada the classical single lords are used. The desk prints the sign periods and their sub-periods with dates, beside Vimshottari, so a timing can be confirmed in two systems.

Argala and rashi drishti

Jaimini's aspects are between signs, not planets: movable signs aspect the fixed signs except the adjacent one, and so on. Argala, the intervention of planets in the 2nd, 4th and 11th from a sign (and its obstruction from the 12th, 10th and 3rd), is how Jaimini judges whether a promise is supported. Both are drawn on the desk for any sign you select.