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Livelihood indicators

Which planets decide the kind of work a chart points to — a classical reading, computed deterministically, with the geometry behind every answer exposed.

This is a different question from Career affinity. That endpoint scores 436 occupations for fit. This one asks the older question: not which job, but what colour of activity a chart describes, and which planets decide it.

Measured: this does not separate occupations

Calibrated against 15,921 births whose times come from civil registers, each labelled with the person's real profession. Ten predictions were registered before the run — Mercury for writers, Venus for performers, Sun and Mars for politics, and so on. None survives a permutation test that holds the birth era constant: family-wise p = 0.42.

One caution learned the hard way in that run: an unstratified shuffle made "Mars for sports champions" look real at p < 0.003, and it vanished once the labels were permuted only within five-year birth bins. The corpus is stratified by era to an extreme degree, so any test on it that does not hold the era constant will find effects that are not there.

Serve this as a traditional reading with its reasoning shown. Do not present it as advice, a prediction, or a hiring signal.

The method

Saturn is the significator of livelihood and karma — he shows what sort of activity a person engages in. The planets casting argala on Saturn are the decisive influences on its nature.

Argala

A planet in the 2nd, 4th or 11th house from a point casts primary argala on it; the 5th casts a weaker, secondary one. Each argala house carries its own meaning:

House Role What it decides
2nd sustenance the basic ingredient that sustains the matter
4th driver the basic factor driving its mood, state and progress
11th catalyst what can turn it into gains
5th contributor an additional contributing factor

Obstruction

Planets in the 12th, 10th, 3rd and 9th obstruct the argala coming from the 2nd, 4th, 11th and 5th respectively — each obstructing house is the mirror of the one it blocks about the 1st/7th axis, which is why the pairs sum to fourteen.

Obstruction is reported, not applied. The response lists the blockers on each influence and leaves the judgement to you. The reason is that the sources are not consistent: the rule is stated plainly, and then readings are published that draw conclusions from influences the same rule would block. Rather than pick a side silently, the endpoint gives you both and the dominant field considers only unobstructed influences.

The reversed count

When Ketu occupies the same sign as Saturn, the counting runs backwards through the zodiac. Ketu moves against the signs, and argala on a sign it holds is counted the same way. The reversed_count flag says when this applied — it does for about 7.6% of charts, and missing it puts every influence in the wrong house.

Which influence leads

Dignity first — a planet in its own sign or exalted outranks the rest — then primacy, then advancement: how far the planet has travelled through its sign. The nodes are measured from the end of their sign, because they move backwards: a node at 5°54' is 24°06' advanced, not 5°54'.

Fetch — GET /v1/vedic/charts/{chart_id}/livelihood

Required scope: charts:read

Response

{
  "chart_id": "019fedac-c1ae-7750-9d19-58d80ce892fe",
  "method_version": "livelihood-argala-v1",
  "karaka": "saturn",
  "karaka_sign": "scorpio",
  "karaka_element": "water",
  "reversed_count": true,
  "influences": [
    {
      "planet": "venus",
      "house": 11,
      "role": "catalyst",
      "primary": true,
      "advancement_degrees": 20.72,
      "dignified": false,
      "obstructed_by": []
    }
  ],
  "dominant": "venus"
}
Field Type Notes
karaka string The significator the reading is taken from. Always saturn in this version.
karaka_sign string The sign it occupies.
karaka_element enum fire, earth, air, water — the quality the work takes on. A watery karaka reads as something flexible and fluid.
reversed_count bool Ketu shares the karaka's sign, so the houses were counted backwards.
influences[].house int One of 2, 4, 5, 11 — counted from the karaka.
influences[].role enum sustenance, driver, catalyst, contributor.
influences[].primary bool false only for the weaker intervention from the 5th.
influences[].advancement_degrees float [0, 30] Travel through the sign; nodes measured from the end.
influences[].dignified bool In its own sign or exalted.
influences[].obstructed_by string[] Blockers. Empty when the influence reaches intact.
dominant string or null The unobstructed influence with the first claim; null when every influence is blocked or there are none.

An empty influences list is a valid reading — about 6% of charts have no planet in any argala house from Saturn — and is not an error.

Reading the result

  • The number of influences is itself information. One planet alone speaks unambiguously; six pull in six directions. Roughly 15% of charts have exactly one, 6% have none.
  • The role matters as much as the planet. The same planet in the 4th and in the 11th says different things: the first drives the work, the second is what makes it pay.
  • Show obstructed_by. An influence with blockers is a claim under dispute, and hiding that turns a qualified reading into a flat assertion.

Errors

Situation Response
Unknown chart_id 404
Chart has no Saturn 400 — the reading is taken from Saturn
Chart is not Vedic 400