What is Kaal Sarp Dosha?
Rahu and Ketu are the two lunar nodes, and they sit exactly 180° apart in every chart ever cast. That means they always cut the zodiac cleanly in half. Kaal Sarp Dosha — often called Kaal Sarp Yoga — is formed when all seven of the classical planets, from the Sun through to Saturn, fall inside one of those halves, with none on the other.
The image the name carries is of the chart swallowed along the serpent's length: Rahu the head, Ketu the tail, and a life's planets caught between them.
It is rarer than it sounds
Every chart has Rahu and Ketu opposite each other, so people often assume the dosha is everywhere. It is not. Seven planets moving at seven different speeds have to happen to be on the same side of one line, and most of the time at least one is not. If a single planet sits across the axis, the formation is broken.
That near-miss case — exactly one planet outside — is what many astrologers call partial or Anshik Kaal Sarp Dosha, and this calculator names it rather than reporting a flat no, because it is the situation people are most often told about second-hand and left unsure of.
The twelve types
The type is decided by the house Rahu occupies counted from your ascendant, and each is named for a serpent:
- 1st — Anant, 2nd — Kulik, 3rd — Vasuki, 4th — Shankhpal
- 5th — Padma, 6th — Mahapadma, 7th — Takshak, 8th — Karkotak
- 9th — Shankhnaad, 10th — Patak, 11th — Vishdhar, 12th — Sheshnag
Because the type depends on houses, and the houses depend on the ascendant, this is the part that needs an accurate birth time — the Lagna changes sign roughly every two hours. Whether the yoga exists at all depends only on planetary longitudes, which move slowly enough that the date alone usually settles it.
How seriously to take it
Kaal Sarp Dosha is one of the most commercially exploited ideas in Indian astrology, and it is worth knowing that classical Vedic texts barely mention it — its prominence is largely modern. Astrologers who use it treat it as one factor among many, weighed against the strength of the planets involved, not as a verdict on a life.
This page tells you what your chart contains. It does not sell a remedy for it.
How this calculator works
Planetary longitudes come from the Swiss Ephemeris, converted to sidereal positions with the Lahiri ayanamsha. Ketu is derived as the point exactly opposite Rahu. Each of the seven planets is then tested for which half of the Rahu–Ketu axis it falls in, and the type is named from Rahu's house relative to your ascendant.