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KP Chart Calculator
Your ascendant, the twelve Placidus cusps and every planet - each resolved down the sign → star → sub → sub-sub chain that KP reads a chart through. Free, no signup.
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How to read your KP chart
KP resolves every planet and every house cusp into a chain of four lords: the sign lord, the star lord - the nakshatra it falls in - the sub lord, and the sub-sub lord. The sub lord is the one that does the predictive work; in Krishnamurti's system it is the sub lord of a cusp, not the planet sitting in the house, that decides whether the matter of that house fructifies.
That is why a KP chart looks different from a standard Vedic one even for the same birth. The sign and star tell you the setting; the sub tells you the verdict.
The chart also uses Placidus house cusps rather than whole signs, so houses have real, unequal boundaries and a planet can sit near a cusp - which in KP changes which house it signifies.
A worked example
For 12 April 1990, 08:30 in Mumbai, the Moon resolves to Libra, in Vishakha pada 1 - sign lord Venus, star lord Jupiter, sub lord Jupiter, sub-sub lord Jupiter. A chain that repeats like that is unusual and worth noticing: it means the Moon sits well inside Jupiter's sub within Jupiter's star, not near any boundary.
The first cusp for the same moment falls at 33°39′ of absolute longitude - Taurus, in Krittika pada 3, with Venus as sign lord. Note the ascendant degree: on a Lahiri whole-sign chart the same birth gives a different ascendant figure, because KP uses a different ayanamsa.
That difference is the thing to understand before comparing the two charts. They are not disagreeing about the sky; they are measuring from a slightly different zero point.
How this is computed
Positions use the KP-Newcomb ayanamsa - Swiss Ephemeris `SE_SIDM_KRISHNAMURTI`, about 23°43′ in 2000 CE - not Lahiri. Houses are Placidus cusps computed for your latitude, not whole signs. Those two choices are what make it a KP chart rather than a standard Vedic one, and both are deliberate.
The four-level chain is derived by subdividing each nakshatra in the Vimshottari proportions: each of the twenty-seven nakshatras is divided into nine subs sized by their lords' dasha years, and each sub again into sub-subs by the same proportions. The sub boundaries are therefore unequal - Venus's sub is the widest and the Sun's the narrowest, in the ratio of their dasha lengths.
The implementation is anchored to the K.P. Reader series (K. S. Krishnamurti, 1971–1973) rather than to a later popularisation, and the tradition it follows is recorded on the output so it is never ambiguous which variant produced a given result.
Common mistakes
The first is comparing a KP chart against a Lahiri one and treating the difference as an error. KP uses the KP-Newcomb ayanamsa, which differs from Lahiri by a few arc-minutes. That is far too small to move a planet between signs but quite large enough to move a sub lord, which is the level KP actually reads.
The second is using whole-sign houses. KP is built on Placidus cusps, and the cusp position is not the start of the sign - it is a computed point that usually falls partway through one. A KP reading done on whole-sign houses has discarded the cusp sub lords the method depends on.
The third is stopping at the star lord. The sub lord is the operative level in KP, and the sub-sub refines it further; a reading that names only the sign and star lord has not reached the part of the method that distinguishes KP from ordinary Vedic practice.
The fourth is a loose birth time. Sub divisions are narrow enough that a few minutes of error can change a sub lord, so KP is materially less forgiving of an approximate birth time than a sign-level reading is.
What this does not tell you
A KP chart is a framework, not an answer. The significator analysis - which planets signify which houses, and in what order - is the step that turns the chain into a prediction, and it needs a question or a matter to be about.
It also will not match a Lahiri chart house for house, and it is not meant to. If you are comparing the two, compare them as two systems rather than looking for one to validate the other.
For horary work KP uses a number between 1 and 249 rather than a birth moment, which is a different calculation from this one.
Frequently asked
- What is KP astrology?
- Krishnamurti Paddhati - a sidereal system K.S. Krishnamurti set out in the K.P. Reader series in the early 1970s. It departs from mainstream Vedic practice in three ways: its own ayanamsa (KP-Newcomb), Placidus house cusps instead of whole signs, and the sub-lord, which is its own invention and the part everything else hangs on.
- What is a sub-lord?
- A sign is 30° wide and a nakshatra 13°20'. Krishnamurti divided each nakshatra further into nine parts, sized in proportion to the Vimshottari dasha years - so the nine parts are deliberately unequal. Whichever part a point falls in gives that point its sub-lord. Venus's sub runs 2°13'20" and the Sun's only 40', which is why two points less than a degree apart can have different sub-lords, and why an exact birth time matters so much here.
- Why is the cuspal sub-lord treated as the deciding factor?
- That is the central claim of the system: a house delivers according to the sub-lord of its cusp, not according to the sign lord or the star lord, which KP treats as background. So a KP reading first decides which houses a question belongs to, then looks at those cusps' sub-lords. It is a claim particular to this school - other traditions read a house quite differently.
- Why doesn't this match my chart on your other pages?
- Because the underlying settings differ, and that is expected rather than an error. KP uses the Krishnamurti ayanamsa and Placidus houses; the rest of this site uses Lahiri with whole-sign houses. The ayanamsa gap is a matter of arc-minutes, but Placidus cusps fall wherever the birth latitude and time place them rather than at 0° of a sign - so a planet can sit in a different house here, and near a boundary, in a different sign.
- Is this the same as KP horary with a number from 1 to 249?
- No. Horary answers a question from a number the querent gives, with no birth chart involved, and it is a separate technique. This page computes the natal KP chart only - your ascendant, the twelve cusps and the planets, each with its sub-lord chain.
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