Open the Sensitive points page of a NativeAstro report and you will see a table unlike the one above it. The planets are familiar; these rows are not: BL, HL, VGL, DHU, TRI, KD, BB — short codes and unfamiliar names, with longitudes as precise as the planets' own.
They belong to the tradition. This is the layer classical practice calls the sensitive points: places in the zodiac that are not bodies but derived positions, computed from the planets, the birth moment and the day of the week.
What a Sensitive Point Is
Every sensitive point is a rule. Some are pure arithmetic on the planets' longitudes. Others are temporal: they divide the day or night into segments and take the ascendant rising at a particular moment. Others still are lagnas: complete alternate ascendants, built by counting a fixed rate of progress from sunrise.
That last group is the one readers meet first, because a special lagna behaves like a second Ascendant: read from it instead of the rising sign and a different house becomes the first, and the reading changes with it.
Two things follow. A sensitive point is only as good as the birth time — several shift by minutes of clock. And none of them is a planet: no body, no orbit, no dignity. They are angles, and they are read as angles.
The Special Lagnas
Seven alternate ascendants are computed. Each is progressed from the Sun's longitude at sunrise at a classical rate:
| Code | Name | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| BL | Bhava Lagna | one sign per five ghatis (two hours) from sunrise |
| HL | Horā Lagna | one sign per hour from sunrise |
| GL | Ghaṭika Lagna | one sign per ghati (24 minutes) from sunrise |
| VGL | Vighati Lagna | one sign per vighati (six minutes) from sunrise |
| SL | Śrī Lagna | the Lagna progressed by one sign per the Moon's own mansion-count — the prosperity lagna |
| VL | Varnāda Lagna | the Lagna and the Horā Lagna interleaved by the odd/even count rule |
| IL | Indu Lagna | the ninth lord counted from the Lagna and from the Moon, divided by twelve, counted from the Moon — the wealth lagna |
Read the Horā Lagna for money, the Śrī Lagna for prosperity and grace, and the Indu Lagna beside the second and eleventh houses whenever wealth is the question. The Bhava, Ghaṭika and Vighati lagnas are finer timers of the same idea, and because they advance faster than the sky does they are the most clock-sensitive points in the table.
The Upagrahas
The upagrahas are "sub-planets" — shadow-points the classics use freely and modern software mostly omits. Your report computes two families.
The five Sun-derived upagrahas need only the Sun's longitude, so they survive an unknown birth time:
| Code | Name | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| DHU | Dhūma | the Sun + 133° 20' (the portion of Mars) |
| VYT | Vyatipāta | 360° − Dhūma (the portion of Rāhu) |
| PAR | Parivesha | Vyatipāta + 180° (the portion of the Moon) |
| ICH | Indra Chāpa | 360° − Parivesha (the portion of Venus) |
| UPK | Upaketu | Indra Chāpa + 16° 40' (the portion of Ketu) |
The six time-based upagrahas need a place and a clock: each is the ascendant rising at a particular slice of the day. The day (or night) is cut into eight yāmas, seven carrying a weekday lord in order; the eighth part carries no lord, and is not Saturn's — the classical descriptions are explicit that Saturn owns one of the seven lorded parts. Each point below rises inside the yāma of its own planet:
| Code | Name | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| GK | Gulika | the ascendant at the start of Saturn's yāma |
| MD | Maandi | the ascendant at the middle of Saturn's yāma (the same yāma, the other instant the schools take) |
| KL | Kāla | the ascendant at the start of the Sun's yāma |
| MR | Mrityu | the ascendant at the start of Mars's yāma |
| AP | Artha Prahara | the ascendant at the start of Mercury's yāma |
| YG | Yama Ghaṇṭaka | the ascendant at the start of Jupiter's yāma |
Gulika and Maandi are the famous pair. The classics disagree on whether they are one point or two and where inside Saturn's portion each falls; NativeAstro fixes one stated rule and prints it, and the Gulika page walks through the disagreement rather than hiding it.
Read the upagrahas narrowly. They are used for delay, chronic difficulty and isolation — never as planets, never as the headline of a life theme.
The Sphutas
The sphutas are combined points: sums of planets, the Lagna and Gulika, used for very specific questions — the body, progeny, the muhūrta of an undertaking. They need the Lagna and Gulika, so they are absent when the birth time is unknown.
| Code | Name | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| TRI | TriSphuta | Moon + Lagna + Gulika |
| PRS | Prana Sphuta | Lagna × 5 + Gulika |
| DHS | Deha Sphuta | Moon × 8 + Gulika — the body |
| MRS | Mrityu Sphuta | Gulika × 7 + the Sun |
| STS | Sookshma TriSphuta | Prana + Deha + Mrityu Sphuta |
| BS | Beeja Sphuta | Sun + Venus + Jupiter — progeny |
| KS | Kshetra Sphuta | Moon + Mars + Jupiter — the field of progeny |
| YS | Yoga Sphuta | Sun + Moon |
| TS | Tithi Sphuta | Moon − Sun |
| CS | Chatus Sphuta | Sun + Moon + Lagna + Gulika — the four-fold point |
| PS | Pancha Sphuta | Chatus Sphuta + Rāhu — the five-fold point |
Beeja and Kshetra are read together, and only when children are the subject — never as a verdict on anyone's fertility.
Kunda and Bhrigu Bindu
Two more points close the table. Kunda (KD) is the 81st harmonic of the Lagna — the Lagna multiplied by 81, modulo 360 — the fine timing point the rectification work leans on. Bhrigu Bindu (BB) is the shorter-arc midpoint between Rāhu and the Moon, a twentieth-century point now read as the most karmically active degree in a chart.
Bhrigu Bindu is worth one careful sentence in any theme the reading describes as fated. It is never a section of its own.
Reading the Table
The Sensitive points table gives six columns: the code (Body), the name, the Rāśi, the exact longitude, the Nakṣatra · Pada and the Navāṃśa sign. Read it with the same house lens as the planets: a point's house is the house whose sign it falls in. The Sensitive points plate in Other Charts draws them all in the signs they occupy, with no legend on purpose — the table is the legend.
What Is Deliberately Not Here
The table raises an obvious question: why are some classical points missing? The rule is simple — a point is computed only when its construction can be pinned to one authority. Pranapada circulates in two different forms, and the V2–V12 Varnāda series has no recoverable classical rule, so they are absent rather than invented.
How to Find This in Your Chart
- Open your birth chart and note the Ascendant's sign and degree — every time-based point below depends on it.
- In a full report, go to Calculations → Sensitive points for the complete table, and to Other Charts → Sensitive points for the plate.
- Check the longitude column first: a point within a degree of a sign boundary is the one to be careful with, because a minute of clock moves it.
- Read the special lagnas as alternate ascendants, the upagrahas narrowly, and the sphutas only against the specific question they serve.