KP Drishti — Aspects on the Cusps

The idea

KP reads houses from Placidus cusps, not whole signs. That one choice makes a question askable that Vedic technique cannot phrase: how close is Saturn to the 7th cusp?

Not “is Saturn in a sign that aspects the 7th” — a yes or no. How close, in degrees, to the degree the 7th house actually begins at. KP software prints that table beside the chart, and this is it.

The ten angles

Each aspect carries its own orb — how far from exact it may sit and still count — and its own weight, which is how the table is ordered.

Three tiers, and the tiering is the substance:

• Conjunction and opposition are the axis. They get a wide 15° orb because they stay meaningful when loose, and weight 10 because they dominate anything else in the same cell.
• Trine, square and sextile are the classical majors — 6°, weight 3.
• The five harmonics are admitted, but only when nearly exact: 1° of orb, weight 1. A novile 40.5° apart is not a novile.

Because weight leads and orb breaks ties, a tight aspect of a heavier kind outranks a wide minor one — which is the order an astrologer actually reads them in.

Two tables, and only one has a Vedic cousin

Graha to graha is familiar territory: the planets aspecting each other, now with orbs attached.

Graha to cusp is the one worth the trip. Nine grahas against twelve cusps is a matrix of 108 cells, and most of them are empty — which is the correct shape for the information. A cusp with three planets on it and a cusp with none are genuinely different situations, and the matrix shows that at a glance in a way a list of hits does not.

Each occupied cell is openable, because the cell has to carry more than a symbol: which aspect, at what orb, applying or separating.

Applying and separating

An aspect that is still tightening is read differently from one that has already peaked and is falling apart. The first is a matter coming to a head; the second is a matter that has passed.

Determining which is harder than it sounds. A retrograde planet closes an aspect by moving backwards, and a fast planet can pass a slow one so that a separating aspect becomes an applying one to the next angle. Rules written in terms of “the faster planet moves toward” acquire a special case for every one of these.

So the app does not use a rule. It steps both bodies forward a moment and asks whether the orb got smaller. Retrogrades, overtaking and the nodes’ permanent backwards motion all fall out correctly with no special handling, because none of them are exceptions to “did the gap close”.

A hit whose direction genuinely cannot be determined is kept and marked unknown, never dropped as separating. Filtering something out is a claim, and we do not make it on a guess.

The applying filter is applied in the app rather than by refetching, so the toggle is instant.

On the orb column

Our orb is the plain angular residual — the number of degrees the separation sits from exactness. A conjunction 2.4° from exact has an orb of 2.4°.

We flag this because at least one widely used KP program prints something else in that column: on our reference chart a Sun conjunction that separates by 2.4° is labelled 8.32. We have not worked out what that figure is, and we have not imitated it. When we compared the sets, ours contained all 33 of their rows with the identical aspect type in every one, plus 45 more that their applying-only filter removes.

So: same aspects, different number in one column, and we would rather say so than quietly match a figure we cannot derive.

Three aspect systems, on purpose

AstroShruti computes aspects three different ways, and they are not interchangeable:

• Vedic graha drishti — whole-sign, no orbs, used by Gochar and the natal chart.
• KP drishti — this page. Ten angles, orbs, weights, and cusps as targets.
• Tajika aspects — sign-distance based with per-planet deeptamsha orbs, used only in the annual chart.

Each belongs to a tradition that reads it a particular way. Merging them into one “aspects” table would produce something no school uses.

The settings that are not yours

The KP pages force the KP ayanamsha and Placidus houses whatever Advanced Settings says. Here the reason is unusually direct: the cusp longitudes are the targets. Aspecting a Lahiri cusp and calling the result KP would be measuring to the wrong degree.

Where to go next

• Bhava Cusps — where the twelve target degrees come from.
• The KP System — the frame this table is measured in.
• Cuspal Interlinks — the other thing you read off a cusp, and the more decisive one.
• Gochar — the Vedic drishti this is deliberately not.