Kaalchakraकालचक्र Start your KaalchakraStart KaalchakraStart
how to read it

Every ring on the dial, named.

Kaalchakra puts six timescales on one face — the tattva turning every twelve minutes, the dashas across a century. Nothing on it is decorative. Below is the same dial seventeen times over, with one component marked on each.

Two frames run on this plate and it is worth knowing which is which. Everything from the chakra ring inward shares the clock frame — thirty degrees an hour, read against the hour hand. Everything outward is zodiacal, anchored on the signs. The mahadasha ring is the only one measured in years.

The Kaalchakra dial, with the the bezel — how this moment stands marked
01

The bezel — how this moment stands

The outermost band is not a scale. It is a single verdict on the present moment, built from the running dasha, the transits, the choghadiya and the tara bala: jade when the measures agree favourably, brass when they are mixed, red when they are testing. It is the one part of the dial you can read without knowing anything else.

r470 to r484 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the sarvashtakavarga — bindus per sign marked
02

Sarvashtakavarga — bindus per sign

Twelve small counts, one per sign, sitting just inside the bezel. Each is the total benefic bindu count that sign carries in your chart. Twenty-eight is the classical middling figure — above it a sign supports what it governs, below it the same period delivers less. The twelve always sum to 337.

r452 to r464 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the rashi ring — twelve signs marked
03

The rashi ring — twelve signs

The zodiac itself, sidereal, thirty degrees a sign. This ring never moves: it is the frame everything else is measured against. Each sector carries the sign, its Devanagari name and the Kalapurusha limb it governs — Aries the head, Pisces the feet — which is what the Swasthya panel reads a region of the body from.

r418 to r468 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the nakshatra ring — twenty-seven lunar mansions marked
04

The nakshatra ring — twenty-seven lunar mansions

Thirteen degrees twenty minutes each, tinted by their ruling graha. This is the ring the Vimshottari dasha is computed from — where your Moon falls here fixes the whole hundred-and-twenty-year sequence — and it is also the ring muhurta weighs most heavily, through the seven-fold class each nakshatra belongs to.

r372 to r416 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the bhava ring — the twelve houses marked
05

The bhava ring — the twelve houses

Your houses, anchored on the ascendant. The dial draws Sripati bhavas, so a graha can sit in one sign and fall in the neighbouring house — the split a printed sheet shows between the Lagna Kundali and the Bhav Chalit. Both are given in the Graha table.

r340 to r370 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the natal grahas — the chart you were born under marked
06

The natal grahas — the chart you were born under

Nine bodies at their sidereal longitudes at your birth minute, each with its glyph and colour. These never move. Retrograde bodies are marked vakri. Hover any one of them for its sign, nakshatra, pada, dignity and the house it falls in.

r296 to r338 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the live transits — the sky right now marked
07

The live transits — the sky right now

The same nine bodies where they actually stand this second, drawn inside your natal ring so the two can be read against each other at a glance. This is the band that moves while you watch. A short trail behind each marker shows the direction it is travelling.

r262 to r294 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the ghatana — when a matter is live marked
08

Ghatana — when a matter is live

Thin arcs marking the Vimshottari periods whose lords are connected to whichever life area you have selected. They sit on the mahadasha frame because that is the only ring here measured in years. Jade means both period lords touch the matter, which is the classical strong case.

r254 to r260 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the year ring — the twelve months ahead marked
09

The year ring — the twelve months ahead

A twelve-month band around the present, so the shape of the coming year is visible without leaving the dial.

r239 to r252 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the mahadasha ring — a hundred and twenty years marked
10

The mahadasha ring — a hundred and twenty years

The whole Vimshottari cycle laid around the circle, each graha taking the span the system gives it — Venus twenty years, the Sun six. The jade mark is your birth; the needle is where you stand in the cycle now. Click any patch to take the whole dial to that period.

r218 to r237 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the antardasha ring — inside the running period marked
11

The antardasha ring — inside the running period

The sub-periods of whichever mahadasha is running, on the same frame. Between them the two rings give the dasha to about a month; the Jeevan panel takes it down five levels to the prana.

r182 to r216 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the chakra column and its petals marked
12

The chakra column and its petals

The seven chakras with their traditional petal counts — four at the base, then six, ten, twelve, sixteen, two, and the crown. The petal letters are the fifty matrika, checksummed against the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana. The lit chakra is the one the Chakra tab reads the column from, and the same choice rotates the personalised tattva sequence.

r124 to r176 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the choghadiya and the kaala windows marked
13

Choghadiya and the kaala windows

Two bands on the clock frame. The outer carries the eight day and eight night choghadiya — Amrit, Shubh and Labh sought, Udveg, Kaal and Rog avoided. The inner marks Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika. Read these against the HOUR hand: they share its frame, thirty degrees an hour, and the minute hand has nothing to say about them.

r96 to r126 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the swara ring — which nostril, and when marked
14

The swara ring — which nostril, and when

The alternation of Ida, Pingala and Sushumna across the day, from whichever swara model you have selected. L and R mark the side. The pale ticks just beneath are where the unmodified classical schedule would hand over, so the gap between a tick and the block edge is exactly what your chart moved.

r63.5 to r72 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the tattva band — the element inside the breath marked
15

The tattva band — the element inside the breath

A thin band inside the swara ring, subdividing the running block into its five elements. Each holds a few minutes. Under the personalised tantra model the sequence opens on the element of your lit chakra and the minutes are reweighted by your chart’s own element census, so this band is yours and not everybody’s.

r58 to r62 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the kaarya — the windows for the task you chose marked
16

Kaarya — the windows for the task you chose

The innermost band. Green marks the next window that is more than merely workable for whichever task is selected, with its start and end times written in when there is room. Every window drawn is still ahead of you — as one passes, the dial moves to the next by itself.

r38 to r52 of the plate
The Kaalchakra dial, with the the hands, and the rising degree marked
17

The hands, and the rising degree

An ordinary twelve-hour clock at the centre: hour, minute and a sweeping second hand. Everything on the clock frame is read against the hour hand. Outside, a separate marker follows the degree rising over your horizon this second, which is the one quantity in a transit that depends on where you are standing.

centre to r92 of the plate

Everything on it answers to a hover.

No part of the dial is unexplained inside the app either. Hover — or tap — any arc, glyph or band and it tells you what it is, which frame it belongs to, and what the tradition reads in it. Click to pin the note; Esc clears it.

The dial in these diagrams is the app's own built-in sample chart, captured from the running instrument rather than drawn by hand — so what is labelled here is exactly what you will see.

Open your own dial