My Next Three Years, Dasha by Dasha

Someone typed this into our chart chat in August: "give me a month wise or dasha wise breakup wiht proper dates for the next 3 years where i should go 100% in options writing and where i should go 50% and where i should go 10%"

Strip out the options writing and that is the most-asked shape in our entire chat corpus. People do not want to know whether the next three years are good. They want a list of dated rows, each with a start, an end, and an instruction about how hard to push inside it.

Three years is the right unit to ask for, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of taste. Across 23,376 charts, a 36-month window contains a median of 17 separate dated sub-periods, two changes of the year-scale period, and for about one chart in five a change of the decade-scale period as well. That is enough resolution to plan against and short enough that the dates still mean something.

This page gives you three things. The complete sky layer for 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2029, correct to the day and free for anybody to read off. The full recipe for grading a period from supportive to costly, written out so you can run it on your own chart by hand. And what that grading actually produces when it is run across 23,376 real charts, which is the part that tells you whether your own answer is ordinary or unusual.

The three questions inside the question

The request for a dated breakup with an intensity per row is three separate questions wearing one coat, and they have different answers.

Which periods am I running, and on exactly what dates do they change? This is arithmetic on one number, the sidereal longitude of your Moon at the minute you were born. It is precise, it is fixed for life, and it is the reason this question cannot be answered for a stranger.

What does each of those periods mean for me specifically? A period ruled by Saturn is a different proposition for a Taurus rising, where Saturn rules the ninth and tenth houses and is the strongest helpful planet in the chart, than for a Cancer rising, where Saturn rules the seventh and eighth and is the one the classical texts warn against strengthening. Same planet, same dates, opposite instruction.

How hard should I push inside each one? This is the part almost nobody publishes a method for, and it is the part the reader above was actually asking for. The rest of this page defines one, in full, with its cutoffs and the population it was calibrated against.

Layer one: the ladder, and where its dates come from

Vimshottari is the 120-year cycle of planetary periods that Vedic astrology times a life by, and every dated claim on this page's personal half rests on it.

It divides a life into nine major periods called mahadashas, each ruled by one planet and each of a fixed length: Ketu 7 years, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. Those nine always run in that order, and they add to 120.

Inside each mahadasha runs an antardasha, a sub-period ruled by each of the nine planets in turn, starting with the mahadasha's own lord and continuing in the same fixed order. Inside each antardasha runs a pratyantar, a sub-period one level smaller again, built the same way. Each level is proportional: an antardasha takes the same share of its mahadasha that its lord's years take of 120, so Saturn's 19 years make Saturn's antardasha 19/120ths of whatever period it sits inside.

The whole structure is anchored to your birth nakshatra, one of the twenty-seven equal segments of 13 degrees 20 minutes that the sidereal zodiac is divided into and that the Moon travels through in about a day. Your Moon's nakshatra decides which of the nine planets rules your first mahadasha, and how far the Moon had already travelled into that segment decides how much of that first period had already elapsed before you drew breath. Everything after it follows in order.

If you already know which mahadasha you are running, this table plus the fixed order tells you every mahadasha you will ever run and roughly when. What it cannot give you is the boundary dates, because those depend on the fractional position inside the nakshatra rather than on the nakshatra alone, and that fraction needs your birth time.

How long the middle level lasts

The antardasha is the level most people mean when they say "my period changed". Its length is fully determined once the mahadasha is known, so the whole grid can be printed. Read down the left for the mahadasha you are in and across for the sub-period lord.

All figures are months. The grid answers the follow-up question the table above raises, which is how much of a three-year window one sub-period can swallow. A Venus antardasha inside a Venus mahadasha runs 40 months and covers the whole window on its own. A Sun antardasha inside a Sun mahadasha runs 3.6 months and will be one row among many.

The third level is where a period lasts weeks. The shortest pratyantar that exists anywhere in the cycle is Sun inside Sun inside Sun, at 5.5 days. The longest is Venus inside Venus inside Venus, at 202.9 days. That spread is why a three-year breakup can come back with 8 rows for one person and 47 for another.

How many rows a 36-month window actually has

We cast 23,376 charts, one every two days from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2005 at eight birth times a day, for New Delhi, and read each one's full three-level ladder across 1 September 2026 to 1 September 2029.

The mahadasha row is the one worth pausing on. For 77.82% of people the decade-scale period is the same on 31 August 2029 as it is today, and the entire story of their three years happens inside it. For the other 22.18% there is a single date in the window that matters more than every other date in it, because a 16, 17 or 19 year chapter closes and another opens. Two of the three worked charts further down are in that group, and in both cases the instruction before and after that one date is close to opposite.

Layer two: the sky, which is the same for everyone

The ladder is private. The sky is public, and it is the half of the answer you can have right now with no birth data at all.

Saturn and Jupiter are the two planets slow enough to define a season rather than a week, which is why every timing method in this tradition leans on them. Below is every sign change either of them makes between 1 September 2026 and 31 August 2029, with the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu for completeness. Each instant was found by walking the ephemeris day by day and then narrowing the crossing by twenty rounds of binary search, and is given in Indian Standard Time.

Both slow planets step backwards into the sign they have just left and then move forward again, which is why Saturn appears in Pisces twice and Jupiter in Leo three times. Those are not duplicate rows. A backward step is a real re-entry, it does reopen the earlier season, and each span is dated separately rather than smoothed into one long one, because choosing how wide a gap to forgive would be a guess and nothing measures it.

The single most consequential row for the longest stretch of time is 23 February 2028. Saturn enters Aries that evening and stays there for 532 days, the longest unbroken Saturn or Jupiter occupancy of one sign in the window. Rahu's 567 days in Capricorn, from 5 December 2026 to 24 June 2028, is longer still.

Now turn the sky into houses. Find your rising sign, the sign that was climbing over the eastern horizon at the minute and place you were born, in the left column and read across. Your rising sign, also called the lagna, is what fixes which house each sign occupies for you.

Saturn's house, by rising sign

Jupiter's house, by rising sign

Rahu's house, by rising sign

Ketu is always in the sign opposite Rahu, so subtract six from any Rahu row, wrapping at twelve, and you have Ketu's house.

Which rising signs get the loudest three years

Two readings jump out of the grids above and both are worth stating rather than leaving for the reader to find.

Gemini rising has Saturn sitting in the tenth house of profession from 1 September 2026 to 3 June 2027 and again from 20 October 2027 to 23 February 2028, which is 401 days of it. Saturn in the tenth reads as weight rather than lift. It looks like longer hours, restructuring, and a role that gets heavier before it gets better. For somebody already employed it argues against switching on impulse, and for somebody arriving it says the position will be one you grow into the hard way.

Cancer rising takes the same occupancy in the opposite half of the window, from 3 June to 20 October 2027 and then from 23 February 2028 to 8 August 2029, which is 671 days, the longest tenth-house Saturn stretch any rising sign gets here. Cancer also has Jupiter passing through the first, second, third and fourth houses across the window, so the personal end of the chart is busy throughout.

Pisces rising gets Saturn in the first house until 3 June 2027 and again from 20 October 2027 to 23 February 2028, which is the classical shape for a period of visible personal reconstruction, and Jupiter never leaves the fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth. Aries rising gets Saturn in the twelfth and then the first, which is the same reconstruction shifted later.

The rest of the grid is worth reading before assuming a quiet three years. Libra rising has Saturn in the seventh house of partnership for 671 days, from 3 June to 20 October 2027 and again from 23 February 2028 to 8 August 2029, and Virgo rising has it in the seventh for the 401 days on either side of those, from 1 September 2026 to 3 June 2027 and 20 October 2027 to 23 February 2028. Capricorn rising takes it into the fourth house of home and base for the same 671 days as Libra's seventh, and Sagittarius rising for the same 401 days as Virgo's. Only Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius rising get Saturn into an angle at all in this window, and for them it is the last 24 days of it, after Saturn enters Taurus on 8 August 2029. Where the slow layer is quiet, the dated answer lives almost entirely in the ladder, which is the next layer.

Sade Sati and Shani dhaiya, read from the same Saturn rows

Sade Sati is the roughly seven and a half year stretch in which Saturn passes through the sign before your Moon's sign, your Moon's own sign, and the sign after it. It is read from the Moon rather than from the rising sign, which is why it can apply to somebody whose Saturn transit table above looks quiet.

An Aries Moon is in Sade Sati for all 1,096 days of this window, and a Pisces Moon for 1,072 of them. A Taurus Moon has 695 days of it and an Aquarius Moon 401. The phases run out of order for Aries and Pisces because Saturn steps backwards into Pisces in October 2027, and a phase that reopens is a real reopening rather than a labelling artefact.

The second Saturn pattern worth naming is Shani dhaiya, the two and a half year stretch when Saturn transits the fourth or the eighth sign counting from your Moon. It reads as pressure on the base of your life or on things you cannot see coming, and it lands on Moon signs that Sade Sati misses entirely.

Put the two tables together and 41.92% of the 23,376-chart sample has at least one Sade Sati day in these 36 months, 49.79% has at least one Shani dhaiya day, and 16.65% has neither. So a little over eight people in ten carry one of the two Saturn patterns somewhere in the window, which is worth knowing before anyone sells you either one as a rare misfortune.

Layer three: turning a period into an intensity

Here is the part the reader at the top was asking for, and the part almost nobody publishes. The whole recipe is below, so you can run it on your own chart with the tables on this page and nothing else.

The principle it rests on is one sentence. A period hands you the affairs of the houses its lord rules, in the condition that lord is in. Everything else is bookkeeping on that sentence.

Step one: find out what each planet rules for you

The houses a planet rules depend entirely on your rising sign, and this is where a general answer to any dasha question breaks. Read across your row.

Rahu and Ketu rule no sign at all, so they never appear in this table. What that means for their periods is dealt with two steps below, because it is the one honest weak point in the whole method and it deserves saying out loud rather than papering over.

Step two: score the period lord on three things

Functional nature. Parashari practice, the classical school this reading follows, decides whether a planet behaves well or badly for you from lordship alone. Ruling the first, fifth or ninth house makes it functionally benefic, meaning it tends to deliver what it touches. Ruling the sixth or eighth makes it functionally malefic, meaning it tends to charge for what it delivers. A planet ruling one of each is decided by the better one. A planet that rules both an angle and a trine at once is a yogakaraka, the strongest single helper a chart can carry, and there is at most one per rising sign.

Score it +2 benefic, 0 neutral, −2 malefic.

House placement. Where the planet actually sits in your chart, counted as houses from your rising sign. Score it +2 in the 1st, 5th or 9th (the trines, the houses of natural support), +1 in the 2nd, 4th, 7th, 10th or 11th, 0 in the 3rd, and −2 in the 6th, 8th or 12th (the three houses classically read as difficulty, debt and loss).

Dignity. Dignity is the standing a planet has in the sign it occupies. A planet is exalted in the one sign where it performs at its best, in its own sign when it occupies a sign it rules, and debilitated in the sign opposite its exaltation, where it performs at its worst. Score it +2 exalted, +1 own sign, 0 otherwise, −2 debilitated.

Add the three. Each planet lands between −6 and +6. Across 210,384 chart-planet pairs in our sample, that score distributes like this:

A score of +5 or +6 is genuinely rare, at 4.61% of planets. A score of −4 or worse is rarer still, at 2.76%. Most planets in most charts sit between 0 and +3, which is the arithmetic reason most periods in most lives are neither a gift nor a punishment.

What happens with Rahu and Ketu. They rule no sign, so their functional nature is neutral by construction, and this engine assigns them no exaltation or debilitation because the classical schools disagree and picking one would be asserting something we cannot support. Their score therefore comes from house placement alone and can only land at +2, +1, 0 or −2. A period ruled by either node is graded on thinner evidence than a period ruled by any other planet, and the correct response to that is to weight your own read of the house they sit in more heavily, rather than to trust the number more than it deserves.

Step three: combine the three levels

At any date you are inside three periods at once. Grade the date by weighting them 3 for the mahadasha, 2 for the antardasha, 1 for the pratyantar, and dividing by six:

grade = (3 × mahadasha lord's score + 2 × antardasha lord's score + 1 × pratyantar lord's score) ÷ 6

The weights say what the tradition already says about the three levels. The mahadasha sets the decade you are living in, the antardasha sets the year, and the pratyantar sets the weeks. A brilliant fortnight inside a punishing decade is still inside the punishing decade, and the arithmetic should say so.

Step four: the three bands, and where the cutoffs come from

The grade runs from −6 to +6. We cut it into three bands at +2 and 0:

Those two cutoffs are not round numbers picked for tidiness. They are pinned to the measured distribution of the grade itself. Across all 446,785 ladder slices and 25,620,096 chart-days in the 23,376-chart sample, the day-weighted grade has its 20th percentile at −0.167 and its 80th percentile at +2.167, with a median of +1.00 and a mean of +0.98. Cutting at 0 and +2 therefore puts roughly the worst fifth and the best fifth of all measured chart-days into the outer bands and leaves the broad middle in the middle. The exact shares that result:

A band that fired half the time would be telling you nothing, and one that fired on 2% of days would never be actionable. A quarter, a half and a quarter is the split that makes the top band worth waiting for and the bottom band worth respecting.

What the grading actually produces, across 23,376 charts

A method is only worth having if you know how often it fires and how it is shaped when it does. Every figure below comes from the same sample, graded slice by slice across 1 September 2026 to 1 September 2029.

Read the first three rows together, because they carry the finding that matters most and it is not a comfortable one.

Four charts in ten have no full-weight window anywhere in these thirty-six months. That is 42.19% of the sample, and it is a direct consequence of weighting the mahadasha at half the grade: if the lord of your decade-scale period scores badly for your rising sign, no arrangement of the smaller periods inside it can lift a date into the top band. For those readers the honest answer to "when do I go all in" is that the next three years do not contain such a window, and the useful answer is which of their half-weight stretches is strongest, which is a different question with a real answer.

The mirror of it is that half of all charts have no light day either, so a run of three years with nothing at all to flinch from is exactly as common as a run with nothing to celebrate. Neither shape is a verdict on the life. Both are consequences of which planet happens to rule a long period.

The band-change row answers the question a planner asks next, which is how often this is worth re-checking. The median chart changes band three times in three years and stays put in between, and 18.29% never change band at all. This is not a weekly instrument and treating it as one would be reading noise.

Where the peak falls, which decides whether waiting is right

That distribution is close to even, with a tilt toward the near term. The practical consequence: for two charts in five the best stretch in the whole window is already inside the next twelve months, so a plan built on waiting for something better is spending the good part. For the other three in five it genuinely is ahead, and the value of knowing which group you are in is the difference between patience and procrastination.

The peak's width matters as much as its date. The highest-graded contiguous stretch runs a median of 71 days, with quartiles at 44 and 138 days and a 90th percentile of 172. So the typical best window in three years is about ten weeks long. Ten weeks is enough to close a deal, sit an examination, launch a thing or sign a lease. It is not enough to build the thing you plan to launch, which is what the preceding months are for.

Three charts, the same three years, three different instructions

All three below are computed from birth data by the method above, read across the same window, and shown in full rather than summarised. Every row is dated. The scores column shows the mahadasha, antardasha and pratyantar lord's scores in that order.

Chart one: 22 November 1989, 20:37, Lucknow

Gemini rising. The Moon is in Virgo in the fourth house, in the nakshatra Uttara Phalguni. Mercury rules the first and fourth houses and sits in Scorpio in the sixth, scoring 0. Jupiter rules the seventh and tenth and sits in Gemini in the first, scoring +2. Saturn rules the eighth and ninth, and because the ninth is a trine it reads as benefic here, sitting in Sagittarius in the seventh for a score of +3. Venus rules the fifth and twelfth and sits in Sagittarius in the seventh, also +3. Rahu sits in Capricorn in the eighth, scoring −2.

The sky layer for a Gemini rising is the heaviest in the whole grid. Saturn occupies the tenth house of profession from 1 September 2026 to 3 June 2027 and again from 20 October 2027 to 23 February 2028, then the eleventh until 8 August 2029 and the twelfth for the final 24 days. And because the Moon is in Virgo, Saturn is also transiting the eighth sign from the Moon from 3 June to 20 October 2027 and again from 23 February 2028 to 8 August 2029, which is Shani dhaiya for 671 days.

This chart's answer is a single date. The eighteen-year Rahu mahadasha closes on 2 October 2027 and a sixteen-year Jupiter mahadasha opens, and every one of the thirteen months before it grades light while every one of the twenty-three months after it grades half or full. Rahu here sits in the eighth house and rules nothing, so it scores −2 and drags the whole first stretch down whatever the smaller periods do; the best grade the ladder can reach before October 2027 is −0.50.

The two layers agree, which is what makes this chart legible rather than ambiguous. The light stretch coincides almost exactly with Saturn in the tenth house, and the first full-weight window opens 55 days before Jupiter arrives in Virgo, the Moon's own sign, on 26 November 2027. Jupiter returns to Virgo twice more, from 24 July to 26 December 2028 and from 29 March to 25 August 2029, and the second of the two full-weight windows sits inside the first of those returns.

What this chart should do: treat September 2026 to September 2027 as a build year and spend it on things that do not need to be judged by anybody, because the ladder is at its floor and Saturn is grinding the house of standing. The date to have everything ready for is 2 October 2027. The two stretches to spend real capital and reputation in are 2 October 2027 to 16 May 2028, which is 227 days and the longest full-weight run in the window, and 19 October 2028 to 26 February 2029, which is 130 days. The Shani dhaiya running from 23 February 2028 to 8 August 2029 does not cancel the second of those, and what it argues for is protecting the home and family base while pushing on the work.

Chart two: 25 September 1997, 05:17, Jaipur

Leo rising. The Moon is in Gemini in the eleventh house, in the nakshatra Punarvasu. The Sun rules the first house and sits in Virgo in the second, scoring +3. Mars rules the fourth and ninth, making it the yogakaraka for this rising sign, and sits in Scorpio in the fourth in its own sign, scoring +4. Mercury rules the second and eleventh and sits in Leo in the first, scoring +2. Saturn rules the sixth and seventh and sits in Pisces in the eighth, scoring −4, the worst score in this chart. Jupiter rules the fifth and eighth and is debilitated in Capricorn in the sixth, scoring −2.

The sky layer here answers a question the ladder is about to raise. Saturn transits Pisces, this chart's eighth house and the sign its own natal Saturn occupies, from 1 September 2026 to 3 June 2027 and again from 20 October 2027 to 23 February 2028. Jupiter enters Leo, the rising sign itself, on 31 October 2026 and is there again from 26 June to 26 November 2027 and from 28 February to 24 July 2028.

This is the same structure as chart one with the pivot moved to the front. A nineteen-year Saturn mahadasha closes on 29 January 2027 and a seventeen-year Mercury mahadasha opens, and the instruction reverses on that date. Saturn scores −4 here because it rules the sixth and seventh houses and sits in the eighth, and transiting Saturn is crossing its own natal sign for most of that closing stretch, so the ladder and the sky are pointing the same way for the first five months of the window.

The reason this chart's answer is opposite to chart one's is worth naming precisely rather than leaving it as a coincidence. The window opens at this chart's lowest grade, −2.33, and reaches full weight 150 days later. The whole three-year story is therefore decided in the first winter, and everything after January 2027 is a matter of choosing between good options rather than waiting for one.

What this chart should do: the five months to 29 January 2027 are for closing things down and holding position, not for opening new commitments, and it is a short enough stretch to simply wait out. From 29 January to 2 June 2027 is a 125-day full-weight window, and Jupiter is transiting the rising sign for the second half of it. The strongest single row in the window is 12 April to 3 June 2028, at +2.33, when the yogakaraka Mars runs as the smallest period, and the longest late window is 3 June to 13 October 2028, at 132 days. The stretch from 7 February to 26 June 2029 grades +1.00, its lowest reading after the pivot, because Saturn returns as the smallest period; it is a half-weight stretch rather than a bad one, and the sensible use of it is consolidation.

Chart three: 21 January 1995, 13:07, Ahmedabad

Aries rising. The Moon is in Virgo in the sixth house, in the nakshatra Uttara Phalguni. Mars rules the first and eighth houses and sits in Leo in the fifth, scoring +4. The Sun rules the fifth and sits in Capricorn in the tenth, scoring +3. Saturn rules the tenth and eleventh and sits in Aquarius in the eleventh in its own sign, scoring +2. Venus rules the second and seventh and sits in Scorpio in the eighth, scoring −2. Rahu, which runs the mahadasha for the entire window, sits in Libra in the seventh and scores +1.

This chart is the 42.19% case, and it is the most useful of the three to look at honestly. The grade never reaches +2 on any of the 1,096 days. Rahu runs the mahadasha throughout, scoring +1 from its seventh-house placement and nothing else, because it rules no sign and this engine assigns it no dignity. With the mahadasha's half of the weight frozen at +1, and with only Mercury at −1, Ketu at +2 and Venus at −2 arriving as antardasha lords inside the window, the highest grade reachable here is +1.83. The chart touches it for 22 days, from 25 March to 16 April 2027.

Waiting for a full-weight window here would mean waiting past August 2029 for something the ladder cannot produce. The right reading is comparative rather than absolute: the 384 days from 7 November 2026 to 26 November 2027 are this chart's best stretch, running at +0.83 to +1.83 throughout under a Ketu antardasha, and the strongest short rows inside it are 1 to 21 February 2027 and 25 March to 16 April 2027. After that the Venus antardasha opens on 26 November 2027 and runs to the end of the window, and Venus scores −2 here because it rules the second and seventh and sits in the eighth. That antardasha's own first pratyantar, from 26 November 2027 to 26 May 2028, is 183 consecutive days at −0.50 and is the weakest stretch in the three years.

The sky layer for this chart argues the same way from a different direction. Saturn enters Aries, the rising sign itself, on 3 June 2027 and sits there for most of the remaining window, crossing natal Ketu in the first house. And with the Moon in Virgo, Saturn is eighth from the Moon for 671 days, which is Shani dhaiya.

What this chart should do: move in the first fifteen months, at ordinary size rather than at conviction size, and treat 26 November 2027 as the date the risk budget comes down rather than as a date to wait for. Somebody reading only the transit tables would tell this chart to sit still until Saturn cleared, and that would waste the one genuinely good year it has.

About the options-writing part of the question

The reader at the top wanted the bands mapped to position sizes in a leveraged trade. Two different things are tangled there and separating them is the only useful answer.

The bands grade the period, which is a statement about how the chart's own machinery is disposed across a stretch of months. That is what everything above measures and it is the part this method has something to say about.

Position size is decided by what a single bad session costs you against what you can lose and still trade next week. A short options position can lose a multiple of the premium collected, and that arithmetic runs the same on a +2.33 day as on a −2.33 day, because it depends on the instrument rather than on the calendar. Sizing from a period grade means letting a monthly signal set a daily risk, and the two do not operate on the same clock.

What the grading is good for, in that context, is the slower decision that sits above the trades. Whether this is a stretch to be adding capital to a strategy or taking it out. Whether to open a new line of activity or run the existing one. Whether a drawdown in a light stretch is a reason to stop or a reason to have been smaller in the first place. Those are three-month and twelve-month decisions and they are the resolution this instrument has.

And one honest limitation that belongs here rather than buried at the bottom: the grading on this page reads the whole chart's period lords, without reference to any particular area of life. A grade of +2 says the period is broadly supportive, not that money specifically is favoured. A version aimed at money would weight the lords of the second, eleventh and fifth houses rather than treating all twelve equally, and it would give a different answer to the same reader on the same dates. Which houses to weight is a choice, and a page that hides that choice is selling you a number with a hidden argument inside it.

What a wrong birth time does to every date above

The sky tables on this page are facts about the sky. They do not care who is reading them and they are correct to the day. The ladder is different, because it counts from the Moon's exact position at birth, and the Moon moves about 13.2 degrees in a day.

The consequence is arithmetic rather than opinion. The ladder translates rigidly: change the birth time and every date in it, for the rest of your life, slides by the same amount in the same direction. Measured across 2,922 birth dates from 1990 to 2005, cast for New Delhi, with cases where the birth nakshatra itself changed excluded and counted separately:

Say plainly what that means for the promise in this page's title. A dated three-year breakup is accurate to the month only if your birth time is right to within about five minutes. At ten minutes of uncertainty the whole table slides by more than a month, so the order of your periods stays correct and their calendar dates do not. At an hour it moves most of a year, and the table is then telling you the sequence rather than the dates. Anyone quoting you a precise week off a birth time rounded to the nearest hour is quoting a precision the method does not have.

The other measurements from the same sample say the same thing from the other side. Of same-date pairs born at 00:00 and at 23:59, 77.07% are running a different mahadasha on 1 March 2028, 87.10% a different antardasha, 87.03% a different pratyantar, and 53.59% land in a different intensity band on that date. Of same-date pairs born two hours apart, across 15,584 pairs, 92.45% have a different rising sign and 87.52% therefore have a different lagna lord, which changes what every planet rules and re-scores the entire chart.

One quiet consequence of the two-hour figure is worth stating, because it surprises people. Born at 00:00 and at 23:59 on the same date, only 2.46% have a different rising sign, because the sidereal day is about 23 hours 56 minutes and the ascendant has almost come the whole way round. Two births at opposite ends of the same day share a rising sign and run completely different ladders. The two halves of a chart do not degrade at the same rate.

The practical instruction that follows is to find the birth certificate or the hospital record rather than working from family memory. If the only figure available is "around six in the evening", read the sequence of your bands and their approximate season, and the correct next step is chart rectification, which is narrowing a birth time by testing candidate times against events you can date in your own past.

If you do not know your birth time at all

Without a birth time there is no rising sign, and without a rising sign there are no house lords, no functional natures and no house placements. Two of the three inputs to the grade disappear and the third changes meaning.

What survives is more than nothing. Your Moon's nakshatra is stable across most of a day, so the shape of your ladder is still readable even if its dates are not: which mahadasha you are in, in what order the antardashas fall inside it, and roughly when the next one arrives. The Saturn and Jupiter tables above work read against your Moon sign instead of your rising sign, and the Sade Sati and Shani dhaiya tables were built from the Moon in the first place, so they are correct as printed.

What you lose is the intensity grading, and it is worth being exact about why rather than vague. The functional nature of every planet is defined from the lagna and from nowhere else, and the house a planet occupies is counted from the lagna too. Without one, a Saturn period cannot be told apart from a Saturn period, and the difference between those two is the difference between chart two's −4 and a Taurus rising's yogakaraka.

Your own three years

Everything above is computed, and none of it is yours, because the layer that fixes the dates needs three numbers a public page does not have: your date of birth, your time of birth and your place of birth.

Signing in computes, for your chart specifically:

• Your full three-level ladder from today to August 2029, with every mahadasha, antardasha and pratyantar boundary dated to the day, laid out the way all three worked charts above are, with the median chart producing 17 rows.
• The score for each of your nine period lords, broken into its three parts, so you can see which of functional nature, house placement and dignity is doing the work in each one.
• The graded band for every row, with your strongest and weakest windows named with their start and end dates, and the length of each.
• Whether your mahadasha changes inside the window, and if it does, the exact date it turns, which for 22.18% of charts is the single most consequential date in the three years.
• The same grading recomputed against a chosen area of life rather than the whole chart, weighting the houses that carry money, work, marriage or health instead of treating all twelve equally, which is the choice this page's public grading deliberately leaves flat.
• Your Saturn and Jupiter transit layer laid over your own ladder, including the dated spans where either slow planet crosses the natal sign of a period lord you are actually running.
• Whether your Moon is in Sade Sati or Shani dhaiya, on which dates, and which phase.
• How far your birth time can be trusted, which decides whether your rows are accurate to the month or only to the season.

Related reading

• Vedic astrology insights, the hub for everything on this subject.
• What is my current mahadasha, the earlier and more general version of this page, which this one replaces.
• What is Vimshottari dasha, for the cycle's construction in more detail.
• The Sade Sati survival guide, for readers whose Moon is in Aries, Taurus, Aquarius or Pisces.
• What is Shani dhaiya, for the Virgo, Capricorn, Leo and Sagittarius Moons in the second table.
• Saturn transit in Pisces and Saturn transit in Aries, the two Saturn seasons this window is built from.
• Jupiter transit in Cancer, Jupiter transit in Leo and Jupiter transit in Virgo, the three Jupiter seasons.
• Which dasha periods bring career growth, for the same method narrowed to work.
• When will I get a job, your next 24 months month by month, for readers whose question is employment specifically.

Every date on this page was computed on 26 August 2026 from the Swiss ephemeris with the Lahiri sidereal ayanamsa and Whole-Sign houses. Transit instants were found by binary search and are given in Indian Standard Time. Period dates depend on your birth time and carry the uncertainty measured above. The population figures come from 23,376 charts cast for New Delhi, births every two days from 1990 to 2005 at eight birth times a day.