Corrected planet nature (Mercury / Moon)¶

The static benefic/malefic list (Sun + Mars + Saturn + Rahu + Ketu = malefic; Jupiter + Venus + Moon + Mercury = benefic) is only the starting point. Vedic tradition applies two corrections that change how Mercury and Moon should be read in any given chart.

Two corrections¶

1. Mercury contamination¶

Mercury is intrinsically neutral. It picks up the nature of any planet sitting in the same sign:

Saturn / Mars / Rahu / Ketu in Mercury's sign → Mercury becomes krura (malefic).
Jupiter / Venus in Mercury's sign → Mercury stays saumya (benefic).
Both camps present → Mercury reads as mixed.
Moon in Mercury's sign → contributes saumya if the moon is bright, krura if dark (see below).

2. Moon phase¶

The Moon is benefic only when bright. Brightness is the classical 8-tithi rule: Sun-Moon arc between 96° and 264° (counted forward from the Sun). Outside that arc the Moon reads as malefic.

The endpoint also exposes the raw sun_moon_angle and an illumination_percent proxy so downstream callers can build a richer "dark-of-the-month" check.

`GET /v1/vedic/charts/{id}/corrected-nature`¶

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://api.astrolinkers.com/v1/vedic/charts/$CHART/corrected-nature"

{
  "chart_id": "01HKD…",
  "mercury_nature": "malefic",
  "mercury_explanation": "Mercury turns krura via conjunction with saturn",
  "moon_nature": "benefic",
  "moon_explanation": "Bright moon (Sun-Moon arc 150.5 deg)",
  "moon_phase": {
    "sun_moon_angle": 150.5,
    "is_waxing": true,
    "is_bright": true,
    "illumination_percent": 93.5
  }
}

How this feeds downstream¶

The corrected natures feed into:

Composite strength — the dignity-score input for shadbala uses the corrected nature so a contaminated Mercury scores like a natural malefic.
Theo system — sign influence aggregation respects the moon-phase correction.
Predictive engine — base potential for thematic areas uses the corrected camp.