KP significators: the four levels, and Rahu and Ketu as agents

Published 9 Oct 2026

Every judgement in Krishnamurti Paddhati (KP) starts from one question: which houses does this planet signify? This article shows how to build the house-wise significator table at its four levels, how to treat Rahu and Ketu as agents, and how to turn the table into a list of houses for each planet. Two fictional charts are worked through so you can check each step against real numbers.

Terms used

• KP house. The segment from one Placidus cusp to the next, calculated with the Krishnamurti ayanamsa. A planet belongs to the house whose segment contains it.
• Occupant. A planet inside the KP house.
• House lord (owner). The lord of the sign in which the cusp falls. With unequal Placidus houses, a planet can own no cusp, one, two or more.
• Star lord. The lord of the nakshatra (13°20′) in which a planet falls. Krishnamurti taught that a planet gives the results of the houses its star lord occupies and owns.
• Sub-lord. The lord of the proportional ninth-part of the nakshatra (divided by Vimshottari years) in which a point falls. It decides whether the signified matter turns out favourably; it does not, by itself, add houses to the table.
• Agent. A node standing in for another planet. Rahu and Ketu own no signs, so in KP they take on the houses occupied and owned by the planets they represent.
• CSL. Cusp sub-lord.

The four levels

For each house, list four groups of planets.

The usual reading is that level 1 is strongest and level 4 weakest. The idea behind it is the star-lord principle: a planet acts through its star lord, so a planet in the star of an occupant is a stronger channel for the house than the occupant itself, and the same holds between levels 3 and 4.

Building the table, step by step

Step 1: Place every planet in its KP house

Work from cusp longitudes, not signs. Compare each planet with the cusps on either side. A planet before the cusp that falls in its sign belongs to the previous house.

Step 2: Note each planet's star lord

You need this for levels 1 and 3. Sub-lords and sub-sub-lords are noted too, but they are used for judgement, not for building the table.

Step 3: Note the house lord of each cusp

Take the sign lord of each cusp. With unequal Placidus houses, a sign can contain two cusps, or none.

Step 4: Decide which planets the nodes act for

For Rahu and for Ketu, list the planets it represents ("principals"). See the next section.

Step 5: Fill the four levels, house by house

For each house, start with the occupants and the lord. Add a node to the occupants if it acts for an occupant, and to the owners if it acts for the lord. Then find the planets in the star of each member: those go to level 1 (for occupants) or level 3 (for the lord).

Step 6: Invert the table

For each planet, collect every house in which it appears at any level. This list is what KP rules test against: whether the 7th CSL signifies 2, 7, 11, whether a dasha lord signifies 10 and 11, and so on.

Rahu and Ketu as agents

The nodes have no rulership, so KP teaching treats them as representatives. The commonly taught sources of a node's results are the planets conjoined with it, the planets aspecting it, the lord of the sign it occupies, and the lord of the star it occupies. A node also signifies the house it physically occupies.

Practitioners differ in which of these they use and in what order. The method used in this article's numbers, and by AstroReads, takes all four sources, in KP's order of priority:

1. Planets conjoined with the node, within 3°20′ of it (one nakshatra pada). An astrologer can widen this orb to 8° in settings.
2. Planets aspecting the node's sign, by Parashari graha drishti: every planet aspects the 7th sign from itself; Mars also the 4th and 8th, Jupiter the 5th and 9th, Saturn the 3rd and 10th.
3. The node's star lord.
4. The node's sign lord.

The nodes never act for each other, so Ketu's 7th-sign relationship with Rahu adds nothing. Then:

• Wherever one of a node's principals occupies a house (level 2) or owns it (level 4), the node is added at that level. The order above is a priority list, not a filter: every principal counts.
• The node does not follow a principal into levels 1 and 3. If the Moon signifies a house only because it sits in the star of that house's occupant or lord, a node acting for the Moon does not take that house.
• A node acting for an occupant counts as an occupant, so planets in that node's star also join level 1. A node acting for the lord counts as an owner, so planets in its star join level 3.
• The node's own occupation is counted like any other planet's, and like any planet it joins level 1 or 3 of the houses its star lord occupies or owns. When that star lord is another planet, it is also one of the node's principals, so those houses are already in its list.

So a node signifies the house it occupies, plus every house that one of its principals occupies or owns. The third rule matters more than it looks: a planet in the star of Rahu inherits not only Rahu's own house but every house where Rahu stands in for an occupant or an owner.

Worked example

Both charts are fictional births, used only to illustrate the method. Positions are KP positions (Krishnamurti ayanamsa, Placidus cusps). In neither chart is a planet within 3°20′ of a node, so the nodes act through aspects, star lords and sign lords.

Example A: 14 Mar 1990, 06:20 IST, Pune

The KP house differs from the sign house. Mars is at Capricorn 8°08′. The 12th cusp is at Capricorn 17°39′, so Mars sits before it and belongs to KP house 11, although in a whole-sign chart from the Aquarius lagna it is in the 12th.

The nodes' principals. Rahu is at Capricorn 21°01′, KP house 12, in the Moon's star and Saturn's sign. The nearest planet, Venus at Capricorn 14°16′, is 6°45′ away, outside the 3°20′ orb. No planet aspects Capricorn: Cancer, which would cast a 7th aspect onto it, holds only Ketu, and the special aspects of Jupiter (from Gemini) and Saturn (from Sagittarius) fall elsewhere. So Rahu acts for the Moon (star lord) and Saturn (sign lord).

Ketu is at Cancer 21°01′, KP house 6, in Mercury's star and the Moon's sign. Mars and Venus, both in Capricorn, aspect Cancer by the 7th. So Ketu acts for Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, in that order.

With the wider 8° orb, Venus would also count as conjoined with Rahu. The numbers below use the default 3°20′.

House 7. The 7th cusp is at Leo 20°50′, so the Sun is the lord. No planet occupies the 7th.

Mars and Saturn are both in the Sun's star, so they sit at level 3. Rahu acts for Saturn and Ketu for Mars, but neither node is added here: Saturn and Mars reach the 7th only through their star lord, and the nodes stand in for occupants and owners, not for planets in someone else's star.

House 11. The 11th cusp is in Sagittarius, so Jupiter is the lord.

Neither node is physically in the 11th. Rahu is listed as an occupant because Saturn is there; Ketu because Mars and Venus are. That pulls Jupiter, which is in Rahu's star, into level 1. The Moon is at level 1 because it is in the star of Mars, an occupant. Sun and Mercury are in Jupiter's star, so they sit at level 3. The nodes act for the Moon and Mercury but are not added beside them at levels 1 and 3.

Rahu's significations. Rahu signifies 1, 6, 8, 11 and 12. They come from three sources:

The Moon as a planet signifies 3, 6, 8, 10 and 11, and Saturn 1, 7, 11 and 12. Rahu does not take the Moon's 3rd and 10th or Saturn's 7th: the Moon gets those only by being in Mars's star, and Saturn by being in the Sun's.

A knock-on effect. Jupiter is in Rahu's star. Because Rahu stands in for the Moon, lord of the 6th, Rahu counts as an owner of the 6th, so Jupiter joins level 3 of house 6. Jupiter signifies 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11 and 12.

Ketu's significations. Ketu signifies 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11. It acts for four planets:

Together with Ketu's own house, the 6th, these give its nine houses. The 2nd, 7th and 12th are missing because none of the four principals occupies or owns them. As planets, Mars signifies the 7th and Mercury the 2nd, but only through their star lords (the Sun and Jupiter), and Ketu does not follow them there.

Example B: 02 Aug 1993, 21:45 IST, Lucknow

The KP house differs from the sign house. Mars is at Virgo 0°29′ and the 7th cusp is at Virgo 14°38′. Mars is in the 7th sign from the Pisces lagna but in KP house 6. Jupiter, at Virgo 16°20′, is past the cusp and occupies the 7th.

The nodes' principals. Rahu is at Scorpio 15°26′ in KP house 8, in Saturn's star and Mars's sign. Saturn, at Aquarius 4°33′, aspects Scorpio by its 10th aspect. So Rahu acts for Saturn (by aspect, and again as star lord) and for Mars (sign lord).

Ketu is at Taurus 15°26′ in KP house 2, in the Moon's star and Venus's sign. Jupiter, at Virgo 16°20′, aspects Taurus by its 9th aspect. So Ketu acts for Jupiter, the Moon and Venus.

House 7. The 7th cusp is in Virgo, so Mercury is the lord.

Mercury is in Jupiter's star, so it is at level 1 as well as level 4. Ketu, which sits in the 2nd, joins level 2 of the 7th as Jupiter's agent, through Jupiter's 9th aspect on Taurus.

House 6. The 6th cusp is in Leo, so the Sun is the lord.

Mars occupies the 6th, so Rahu, its agent, is counted as an occupant too. Saturn is at level 1 because it is in Mars's star; Venus is at level 1 because it is in Rahu's star. Rahu acts for Saturn and Ketu for Venus, but neither node is added at level 1 beside them. Mars also appears at level 3 because it is in the Sun's star; Rahu, its agent, does not follow it there.

Planet significations. The inverted table gives:

Rahu is its own occupation (8), plus the houses Mars occupies and owns (6; 2, 9) and the houses Saturn occupies and owns (11; 11, 12). It does not take Mars's 5th, which Mars gets only by being in the Sun's star. Ketu is its own house (2), plus Jupiter's (occupies 7; owns 1, 10), the Moon's (occupies 11; owns 5) and Venus's (occupies 3; owns 3, 8). Venus, in Rahu's star, also signifies 6, 9, 11 and 12 through Rahu (the 11th and 12th because Rahu stands in for Saturn, which occupies the 11th and owns the 11th and 12th cusps), but Ketu does not follow Venus into Rahu's star. Nodes tend to collect long lists, which is one reason some practitioners weight levels rather than count every link equally.

Where traditions differ

• Order of strength. The level 1 to level 4 order is standard KP teaching, but practitioners differ on how to use it. Some count only the strongest available level for a house; some treat all four as valid links; some give occupants more weight than the order suggests when no planet is in their star. KP itself ranks the levels, with planets in the star of the occupants strongest. The numbers here treat all four levels equally, as links, and leave weighting to the astrologer.
• Aspects and conjunctions. Some add a further level for planets conjoined with or aspecting a significator. That is not done here; aspects and conjunctions are used only to find a node's principals.
• Node principals. KP texts and later teachers list conjoined planets, aspecting planets, star lord and sign lord, but differ on which to count and in what order. Some take only the most prominent agent; some put the sign lord ahead of the star lord; some use only sign lord and star lord. Some teachers also chain further, letting a node carry every house its principals signify, including what a principal gets through its own star lord; that can give a node almost every house. Here a node takes only the houses its principals occupy and own. The orb for "conjoined" is also a convention: 3°20′ (one pada) and 8° are both taught. The method here counts every agent, in the order conjunction, aspect, star lord, sign lord.
• Chained readings. Later KP practitioners developed step-by-step methods that read a planet, its star lord, its sub-lord and the sub-lord's star lord in sequence, rather than a single four-level table.
• House placement near a cusp. Some astrologers move a planet that sits just before a cusp into the following house. The strict cusp-segment rule is used here.
• Parashari comparison. Parashari astrology judges a planet by the houses it rules and occupies, its aspects and its dignity, usually with whole-sign houses. It does not use the four-level table, though nakshatra lords are used in dasha interpretation.

AstroReads uses Placidus cusps, the Krishnamurti ayanamsa, all four levels weighted equally, and nodes acting for all their agents in the order above, with a 3°20′ conjunction orb by default and 8° as an option in settings. Other choices are legitimate.

Common mistakes

• Placing planets by sign instead of cusp. Mars in both examples shows how this changes the house.
• Forgetting that unequal houses change ownership. A sign without a cusp gives its lord no house through that sign.
• Treating the sub-lord as a significator. The table is built from occupation, ownership and star lords. The sub-lord judges the result.
• Dropping the nodes' agency. In Example A, Rahu signifies the 1st and 11th only as Saturn's agent. Leaving that out changes every rule that tests Rahu or a planet in Rahu's star.
• Counting a node link and then counting its principal again as independent evidence. Rahu and Saturn in Example A are, in large part, one source.

Sources

• K.S. Krishnamurti, KP Readers I–VI, especially Reader II (Fundamental Principles of Astrology) and Reader VI (Horary Astrology).
• Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, for the Parashari treatment of house lordship and the nodes.