Antara
The third-level dasha inside a bhukti.
Finer timing again — an antara is typically weeks to a few months. Used by professional consultants for pin-pointing when a promise in the chart is likely to fructify.
Glossary
Every term Lodestar uses, in plain English
Astrology has 3,000 years of vocabulary. Lodestar tries to keep the jargon out of every reading, but when a term surfaces — hover it. It’ll link back here for the long version.
Showing 25 of 25 terms
A
Ashtakoot
The eight-fold Vedic compatibility test used in synastry.
Eight koots (categories) scored out of a total of 36, each measuring a specific dimension of two-person compatibility — status, dominance, luck cycle, sexual/instinctive fit, mental fit, temperament, house-house dynamics, and genetics. A score of 18+ is considered workable; 24+ strong; 28+ exceptional.
Ayanamsa
The correction that converts a Western (tropical) chart into a Vedic (sidereal) chart.
The zodiac drifts against the fixed stars by ~50 arc-seconds per year (the precession of the equinoxes). The ayanamsa is the running total of that drift. Lodestar uses KP-Newcomb by default (calibrated against the Astro Murali reference).
RelatedKrishnamurti Paddhati (KP)
B
Bhakoot
Ashtakoot koot #7 — house-to-house dynamics (7 points).
Counts sign-count from Moon-A to Moon-B in both directions. Aligned combinations (1-1, 3-11, 4-10 …) score high; classical dosha combinations (2-12, 5-9, 6-8) score zero and are the ones traditional astrologers flag for remedial work.
RelatedAshtakoot
Bhukti
A sub-period nested inside the current mahadasha.
Also called antardasha. If you're in Jupiter mahadasha, the bhukti tells you which planet's sub-influence is active right now — this is where fine-grained timing lives. Lodestar reads five levels deep: mahadasha → bhukti → antara → sookshma → prana.
C
Chart Twin
A past reading whose deterministic rule-firing set overlaps yours.
Lodestar retrieves past readings whose rule firings overlap yours by ≥35% (Jaccard similarity) AND that carry a verified outcome. If ≥5 twins exist (k-anonymous floor), their outcome distribution becomes an empirical prior the LLM must weight.
RelatedWilson lower bound
Cusp sub-lord (CSL)
The KP verdict-maker for a house.
Each of the 12 house cusps has a sub-lord (a hyper-fine subdivision of the nakshatra it falls in). In Krishnamurti Paddhati, the cusp sub-lord IS the deciding vote: if the 10th cusp sub-lord signifies career-friendly houses (2, 6, 10, 11), a promotion is possible. If it signifies denying houses (5, 8, 12 for career), it's denied — no matter how good the rest of the chart looks.
D
Dasha
A ruling planetary period in Vedic astrology.
Each planet takes a turn 'ruling' a chunk of your life — from a few months to twenty years. Lodestar uses the Vimshottari system (120-year total cycle) which determines which planet's themes are most active for you right now.
G
Gana
Ashtakoot koot #6 — temperament class (6 points).
Each nakshatra belongs to one of three ganas — Deva (divine), Manushya (human), or Rakshasa (demonic/instinctive). Same-gana pairings are effortless; deva-manushya is workable; deva-rakshasa is the classical friction pairing that needs mutual respect.
Graha Maitri
Ashtakoot koot #5 — mental / intellectual friendship (5 points).
Compares the natural friendship of the two Moon sign lords. High scores mean easy conversations, shared frames of reference; low scores show up as constant translation between two different ways of thinking.
RelatedAshtakoot
H
House (bhava)
One of 12 life-domain slots in your chart.
The 1st house is you; 2nd is money and voice; 4th is home and mother; 7th is partnership; 10th is career and public standing; and so on. Every question maps to a set of primary and supporting houses — Lodestar reads those houses first.
RelatedCusp sub-lord (CSL)
K
Karaka
A 'significator' — a planet that stands for a life theme.
Sun is the karaka for career authority; Venus for love and money; Saturn for discipline and delays; Jupiter for wisdom and children; and so on. Lodestar reads the natural karaka's condition when you ask about that theme — a debilitated Venus is a real thing when the question is 'why do relationships keep failing?'.
RelatedSignificator
Krishnamurti Paddhati (KP)
A precision Vedic astrology framework.
Developed in 20th-century Tamil Nadu by K. S. Krishnamurti. Reduces every prediction to a testable yes/no via cusp sub-lords and significators. Lodestar's deterministic engine is KP-first, sidereal, with Placidus-house-based cusps.
M
N
Nadi
Ashtakoot koot #8 — genetic / physiological fit (8 points).
Highest-weighted koot. Divides all 27 nakshatras into three nadis (Adi, Madhya, Antya). Same-nadi is the classical Nadi Dosha — considered a strong caution in traditional matchmaking; different nadis score the full 8/8.
Nakshatra
One of 27 lunar mansions the sky is divided into.
Vedic astrology divides the 360° zodiac into 27 nakshatras of 13°20′ each — you can think of them as star-based houses of the Moon. Every nakshatra has a ruling planet, and the nakshatra where your Moon sits at birth kicks off your Vimshottari dasha sequence.
R
Ruling Planets (RP)
The most 'live' planets at the moment a question is asked.
The classical KP set: the sign-lord, star-lord, and sub-lord of the ascendant AT THE QUESTION MOMENT, plus the sign-lord, star-lord, and sub-lord of the Moon, plus the day-lord. When these overlap the significators of the intent, the promise is 'active'.
S
Significator
In KP, a planet that promises a specific house's outcome.
KP builds a hierarchy: A significators (occupants of the nakshatra whose lord occupies the house), B (occupants of the house), C (lords of nakshatras whose sub-lord signifies the house), D (house lord itself). When a planet appears in multiple layers, its 'signal' compounds — that's what Lodestar's cascade engine scores.
Star-lord (nakshatra lord)
The planet that owns the nakshatra a planet or cusp sits in.
In KP, the star-lord is often a stronger indicator of what a planet actually delivers than the sign lord. If Saturn sits in Pushya nakshatra, its star-lord is Saturn itself — read Saturn's promise. If it sits in Ashlesha, the star-lord is Mercury — read Mercury's promise instead.
T
Tara
Ashtakoot koot #3 — luck-cycle alignment (3 points).
Counts nakshatras between the two Moons and grades the result 1–9 by classical tara-chakra. Aligned taras mean the pair's luck rhythms rise and fall together; misaligned ones mean when one flourishes the other treads water.
V
Varna
Ashtakoot koot #1 — spiritual / status fit (1 point).
Ranks the pair on the classical Brahmin → Kshatriya → Vaishya → Shudra hierarchy of the Moon's sign. Matches when the woman's varna is equal to or lower than the man's; low weight (1/36) — treated as a minor factor, not a verdict.
RelatedAshtakoot
Vashya
Ashtakoot koot #2 — dominance / influence (2 points).
Who yields to whom, based on the animal / element class of each Moon sign. High score means natural mutual influence; low means one partner tends to overpower the other unless conscious effort is applied.
RelatedAshtakoot
Vimshottari Dasha
The 120-year Vedic planetary-period system.
The most-used dasha system in Vedic astrology. Each of the 9 planetary lords (7 classical + Rahu + Ketu) rules for a fixed number of years, cycling through everyone's life in a sequence determined by the Moon's nakshatra at birth.
W
Wilson lower bound
A statistical confidence floor used to rank calibrated rules.
Same technique Reddit uses to rank comments. Instead of saying '80% success rate' from just 5 samples (misleading), Lodestar computes the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval — so a rule with 8/10 successes is trusted more than 80/100 only if the sample size supports it.
Y
Yoni
Ashtakoot koot #4 — instinctive/sexual fit (4 points).
Each nakshatra is assigned an animal (cat, deer, tiger, cow, snake, dog, etc). Yonis are matched or opposed in the classical tables. The most heavily-weighted koot for physical chemistry and animal-level compatibility.
Curious how these terms combine into a reading?
Our methodology page walks through the pipeline — Swiss Ephemeris astronomy, KP significators, outcome calibration, LLM-on-a-leash.