Gochara is the Vedic transit system, and it works differently from the Western one in a way that changes every result: transits are counted from the Moon sign, not from the Lagna and not from the Sun. Each planet then has its own fixed list of houses where its transit is favourable. The lists differ from planet to planet, and they are the whole of the method.
This is what a Vedic daily reading actually is. Once you have the tables, you can produce one yourself from any ephemeris.
The tables
Count from your Janma Rashi — the sign the Moon occupied at your birth — treating it as the 1st. These are the houses in which each transiting planet is read as favourable.
| Planet | Favourable houses from the Moon |
|---|---|
| Moon | 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 |
| Sun | 3, 6, 10, 11 |
| Mars | 3, 6, 11 |
| Mercury | 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11 |
| Jupiter | 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 |
| Venus | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 |
| Saturn | 3, 6, 11 |
Three patterns are worth pulling out of that table.
The 11th appears in every single row. The house of gain is favourable for every planet without exception, which makes it the strongest transit position in the system. If you learn one line of Gochara, learn that one.
The malefics — Sun, Mars and Saturn — share a short and identical-looking list built on 3, 6 and 11. These are the upachaya houses, the houses of growth, where difficulty converts into effort rather than damage. A malefic transiting the 3rd or the 6th is not a warning.
Venus has nine favourable houses out of twelve, more than any other planet, which is consistent with its status as the greatest natural benefic. Its unfavourable positions are the 6th, 7th and 10th.
The 8th house, and why it is different
Every planet’s table treats the 8th as its worst position — with the two exceptions visible above, Mercury and Venus. The Moon in the 8th from the natal Moon has its own name, Chandrashtama, and it arrives once every 27 to 28 days for a little over two days.
What the tradition claims about Chandrashtama is narrower than it is usually reported. It does not say something bad happens. It says judgement and emotional reading are least reliable, which is a more useful and more testable claim. The corresponding advice is correspondingly narrow: postpone signing, launching, travelling and confronting. Ordinary work is unaffected.
Vedha, the obstruction rule
The tables above are the first layer. The classical system adds a second one that most simplified versions drop entirely.
Vedha means obstruction. Each favourable transit position has a paired position, and if another planet occupies that paired house at the same time, the good result is blocked. The reverse also holds: an unfavourable transit can be relieved when its vedha point is occupied.
For the Sun, the 3rd is vedhaed by the 9th, the 6th by the 12th, the 10th by the 4th and the 11th by the 5th. Each planet has its own pairing table, and the Sun and Saturn are traditionally exempt from causing vedha to each other, as are the Moon and Mercury.
The practical point is that a bare statement of the form “Jupiter is transiting your 11th, so gains are indicated” is the simplified version. Whether the position is obstructed is the next question, and it is the one that separates a mechanical reading from a careful one.
Speed, and what each planet’s transit is good for
The planets move at very different rates, so their transits answer different sizes of question.
- Moon — about two and a quarter days per sign. This is the daily layer, and it is what makes a daily reading change from day to day.
- Sun, Mercury, Venus — roughly a month per sign, though Mercury and Venus vary with retrogradation. The monthly layer.
- Mars — about six weeks per sign, longer when retrograde.
- Jupiter — about a year per sign. Jupiter is in Cancer from early June 2026 and moves to Leo in early November.
- Saturn — about two and a half years per sign. Saturn is in Pisces for the whole of 2026, retrograde from 28 July to 12 December. Saturn’s transit relative to the Moon is what produces Sade Sati.
A useful discipline is to match the layer to the question. Asking a Moon transit about a career decision is asking a two-day indicator about a five-year matter.
Why the Moon sign and not the Lagna
The classical texts are explicit that Gochara is judged from the Janma Rashi. The reasoning given is that the Moon signifies the mind, and transits describe the changing environment as it is experienced — which is a statement about the mind rather than about the body or the constitution.
Some modern practitioners read transits from the Lagna as well, or from both. That is a defensible extension, but it is an extension. If a transit reading does not tell you which reference point it used, the answer is very often the Sun sign, which no part of the classical system supports.
If you do not know your Moon sign, the Moon sign calculator gives it, along with the nakshatra.
Producing a reading yourself
- Establish your Moon sign.
- Get the current sidereal positions of the seven planets from an ephemeris or a panchang.
- For each planet, count how many houses it is from your Moon sign, inclusive and forward.
- Check that number against the planet’s row in the table above.
- Check whether the vedha point is occupied.
- Weight by speed — the slow planets describe the period, the Moon describes the day.
That is the entire method. Everything else in a transit reading is presentation.
Common questions
Is Gochara more important than the dasha?
No. The classical order is dasha first, transit second. The dasha establishes what the period can produce and the transit describes conditions within it. A favourable transit inside an unsupportive dasha is generally read as an opportunity that does not convert.
Why does my daily horoscope contradict another site?
Almost always the reference point. A reading counted from the Sun sign and one counted from the Moon sign are answering different questions, and they will agree only by coincidence. The second most common cause is a different ayanamsa moving a planet across a sign boundary.
Do the nodes have Gochara tables?
Not in the standard tables, which cover the seven visible bodies. Nodal transits are usually assessed by house significations directly rather than by a favourability list.
What about transits to natal planets rather than houses?
That is a valid technique and it is used, particularly for transiting Saturn or Jupiter crossing a natal planet. It sits alongside the house-based method rather than replacing it — house Gochara answers “what kind of period is this”, and a transit to a natal planet answers “what specifically is being touched”.
The tables given here are the classical Gochara tables and are the same ones used to compute the daily readings on this site. The meanings attached to positions are traditional readings, not predictions about events.
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