What it means
Karakamsa is the sign the Atmakaraka - the planet at the highest degree in your chart - occupies in the Navamsa, the ninth divisional chart. That sign is then treated as an ascendant in its own right, and the twelve houses are counted from it.
How it is read
The logic is Jaimini's rather than Parashara's. Where the birth lagna describes the body and the circumstances you arrive into, the Karakamsa is read as the chart of what the soul is here to work on: planets falling in it, and the houses counted from it, are taken to describe inclination rather than situation. The 5th from Karakamsa is the classical place to look for the form a person's learning or creative work takes, and the 12th from it is where Jaimini reads the Ishta Devata.
What to watch for
Two cautions, and both matter more than the technique. It depends entirely on the Atmakaraka, which depends on exact degrees - so an uncertain birth time can change which planet is the Atmakaraka and move the whole reading. And it is a second lens, not a replacement: a Karakamsa reading that contradicts the birth chart has not overruled it.
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