What dasha period are you in?

Vedic astrology splits a life into nine planetary periods, and Dasha Journey draws all nine as one road with you standing on today.

The nine periods, and how long each one runs

The Vimshottari cycle gives each planet a fixed span: Sun 6 years, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17, Ketu 7 and Venus 20. That's 120 years in all, more than a lifetime, so nobody walks the whole road. Where you join it is set by the nakshatra your Moon was in when you were born: that planet's period is your first, already part spent, and the rest follow in the same fixed order.

Periods inside periods

A main period, the mahadasha, is split into nine sub-periods in the same order, each ruled by a planet in turn, and every sub-period splits again. So a nineteen-year Saturn stretch has a Mercury year inside it and a Venus month inside that. This is why two years in the same mahadasha can feel nothing alike, and it's the level that answers why now rather than why ever.

Questions people ask

What is a mahadasha?

The main period: one planet running your days for its full span, from six years for the Sun to twenty for Venus. Most people live through three or four of them. The sub-period inside it, the antardasha, is what shifts the feel of a particular year.

How is my dasha worked out?

From the Moon's position at your birth. The nakshatra it sat in names the planet whose period you start in, and how far the Moon had travelled through that nakshatra says how much of the period was already gone when you were born. The order and the lengths after that are fixed for everyone.

Which periods are good and which are hard?

No period is only one or the other. Each has things it's good for and things to go easy on, and a stretch that's hard on one part of life often builds another. Dasha Journey names both for the one you're in.

Do I need my birth time?

For exact dates, yes: the Moon moves far enough in a day to shift a period's start by months. Without a time the road still shows the right worlds in the right order, and the reading offers to sharpen the dates once you add it.