What it means
Shadbala combines six components: Sthana bala (positional strength, including dignity), Dig bala (directional, by house), Kala bala (temporal, including day and night rulership), Chesta bala (motional, peaking near retrogression), Naisargika bala (a fixed natural ranking) and Drik bala (from aspects received).
How it is read
The point of it is to stop any single factor from deciding the reading. A planet can be exalted and combust, or debilitated and in a Kendra with strong aspects - Shadbala is the classical answer to 'which of these wins', producing a comparable number for each graha.
What to watch for
The computation is intricate and implementations differ in their details, so absolute scores are not comparable across software. What is meaningful is the ranking within one chart: which planets are best supported, and which are carrying the least weight.
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