What it means
The Ishta Devata is found by taking the Karakamsa - the Navamsa sign your Atmakaraka occupies - and counting to the twelfth sign from it. The planet ruling that sign, and any planet sitting in it, is then mapped to a deity. It is a Jaimini technique, set out in the Jaimini Sutras rather than in Parashara.
How it is read
The twelfth is used because in Jaimini's reading it is the house of moksha - of release and of what is left behind rather than acquired. So the question the rule answers is narrow: not which god you should worship, but which form of the divine this chart associates with liberation. The deity mappings themselves vary between commentators, and any honest calculator shows you the graha it derived before it shows you a name.
What to watch for
Two things follow, and both are worth stating plainly. The derivation depends entirely on the Atmakaraka, which depends on exact planetary degrees - so an uncertain birth time can change the answer completely. And a chart-derived deity is a tradition, not an instruction: the classical texts treat the Ishta Devata as a pointer for practice, and nothing in them says a person cannot worship as they choose.
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