How do I know if my planets are strong?

Start with dignity: compare each planet's sidereal sign at your birth against the classical table. A planet in its exaltation sign, its moolatrikona degrees, or its own sign counts as strong; one in a friend's or neutral's sign as ordinary; one in an enemy's sign as strained; and one in its debilitation sign as weak pending its cancellation. The checker on this page runs that comparison for all nine planets from your birth details.

Which is stronger, an exalted planet or a planet in its own sign?

Exaltation ranks higher. The classical ladder runs exaltation, moolatrikona, own sign, friend's sign, neutral's sign, enemy's sign, debilitation, and the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra attaches rough measures: full results in exaltation, about three quarters in moolatrikona, about half in own sign. Own sign remains a genuinely strong placement, steady and dependable; the exaltation adds the peak intensity that own-sign comfort does without.

What does it mean if a planet is in an enemy sign?

The planet is hosted by a sign whose lord is classified as its enemy in the planetary friendship scheme, so it works under tension, constrained though never powerless. It is the second-lowest rung of the dignity ladder, above debilitation. The classical reading is reduced ease rather than damage: results come, with more friction. Support from aspects, a strong dispositor, or a kind house recovers much of the ground.

Does a weak planet mean a bad life?

No. Dignity grades one planet's ease in one placement; a life is read from the whole chart. A debilitated planet comes paired with its cancellation, neecha bhanga, which can turn the fall into a signature of rise after early struggle. Houses, aspects, and dasha periods decide most outcomes, and the classics note that an exalted planet badly placed can trouble a chart while a supported weak one blesses it.

Are My Planets Strong? Check Planetary Strength in Your Chart

Whether your planets are strong is, in Vedic astrology, first a question of dignity: the rung each planet occupies on the classical ladder that runs from exaltation at the top, through moolatrikona, own sign, friend's sign, and neutral's sign, down to enemy's sign and debilitation. The rung is fixed by the sidereal sign, and at the top and bottom the exact degree, that the planet stood in at your birth. The checker on this page takes your birth date, time, and place, computes all nine planetary positions, and grades each one, flagging exaltation peaks, debilitations, and the classical supports that cancel a fall. The article around it explains what the grades mean and what they leave out.

What the checker tells you

For each of the nine planets, the result names the sign occupied, the degree within it, and the dignity that placement carries on the seven-rung ladder. Where a planet sits near its degree of deepest exaltation or deepest fall, the result says so, since dignity sharpens toward those exact points.

Rung	Dignity	Reading
1	Exalted	Full strength; the planet's nature works at its peak
2	Moolatrikona	Settled and generous; root-trine degrees within (usually) an own sign
3	Own sign	Home ground; steady, dependable strength
4	Friend's sign	At ease; well supported by its host
5	Neutral's sign	Ordinary comfort; neither helped nor hindered
6	Enemy's sign	Tense and constrained, though never powerless
7	Debilitated	The fall; weak pending its cancellation, which the checker also looks for

One planet's grade is one fact, and the most useful results read the set together: where the chart's engines are, where its effort lives, and which placements deserve the closer reading the rest of this group provides. The system behind every rung is laid out at the exaltation and debilitation.

How the calculation works

The method is mechanical from end to end, which is why a calculator does it faithfully. The dignity tables themselves come from the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and are uniform across the tradition.

Compute each planet's position for your birth moment from an astronomical ephemeris. Steer's calculators use the Swiss Ephemeris, built on NASA JPL data.
Convert to the sidereal zodiac by subtracting the ayanamsa (the Lahiri ayanamsa, the most widely used), since Vedic signs are measured against the fixed stars.
Read each planet's sign and degree, and look both up in the dignity tables: exaltation and debilitation signs with their deep degrees, moolatrikona spans, own signs, and the classical friendship classification for the middle rungs.
For any debilitated planet, scan the chart for the cancelling conditions of neecha bhanga, starting with the state of the fall sign's lord.

Birth time matters most for the Moon, which moves about 13 degrees a day and can change sign within it; the slower planets rarely move enough in a day to change their grade. The same sidereal conversion explains why these grades can differ from a tropical Western chart's, as the sidereal versus tropical page covers.

What a strong result means

A planet on the upper rungs, exalted, in moolatrikona, or in its own sign, is an engine: its significations and the houses it rules are backed by real vigour, and its dasha periods tend to move matters with comparative ease. The specific gifts of each exalted placement are walked through on the exalted planets page.

Strength is capacity, never a guarantee of comfort. An exalted planet ruling hard houses, or standing in one, applies its full vigour to whatever it touches, which is exactly the classical caution: dignity reports raw power, and the houses, aspects, and periods around the planet decide what the power is spent on.

What a weak result means

A planet on the lower rungs works for its results: friction in an enemy's sign, real strain in debilitation. The tradition's first response to a debilitated grade is a second question, never a verdict: is the fall cancelled? The conditions of neecha bhanga lift the debility, and in strong form they mark a rise after early struggle.

Read a weak grade as the chart naming where effort lives. The debilitated planets page covers what each fall feels like and what helps it, and most charts hold their weak placements alongside strong ones; the pairing, which planet carries which, is usually the more interesting fact.

What dignity does not tell you

Dignity is the first measure of a planet, never the last. It says nothing by itself about the house the planet occupies, the houses it rules for your ascendant, the aspects reaching it, combustion, or the dasha periods that decide when any of it matters. A full reading weighs all of these, and the classics insist on the order: vigour first, then everything that directs it.

The tradition even formalises the wider weighing. The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra describes shadbala, a six-fold strength calculation in which positional strength, the dignity graded here, is the opening component, joined by directional, temporal, and other measures. A dignity check is the honest first pass of that fuller arithmetic, which is exactly how to hold its results.

So treat the checker's result as the honest opening read it is. To see the placements behind the grades, run a free birth chart, which lays out signs, degrees, houses, and the dasha timeline together; the the full guide and its detailed pages turn each grade into a reading.