D45 Akshavedamsha: the chart of character and paternal legacy

What is the D45 Akshavedamsha chart?

The D45 is one of the sixteen divisional charts Parashara describes in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, the founding treatise of Vedic astrology. Its name is a number written in words, as the old texts do, from units to tens: aksha, the sense organ, stands for five (the five senses); veda, the four Vedas, stands for four; amsha means “portion”. Akshavedamsha is “the forty-fifth portion”.

Tradition reads in it first of all character and conduct: integrity, the way you keep your commitments, the match between what you think and what you do. It also reads the paternal legacy: what your father’s line passes on to you in values, in demands and in ways of acting.

It is one of the finest charts in the system, between the D40, the chart of the maternal legacy, and the D60, the chart of the karma of past lives. It does not speak of one area of life, the way the D10 speaks of career: it colours every area, because it shows how you act.

How is the D45 chart calculated?

Each 30° sign is cut into forty-five parts of 40′, two thirds of a degree each, in the sidereal zodiac (see the ayanamsa). Where the count starts depends on the nature of the birth sign:

• Movable signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn): count from Aries.
• Fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius): count from Leo.
• Dual signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces): count from Sagittarius.
• The degree in the D45: the planet’s degree within its sign, multiplied by forty-five, minus the full rounds of 30°.

Example: at 5° of its sign, a planet is in the 8th part (from 4°40′ to 5°20′). At 5° Aries, a movable sign, it lands in Scorpio; at 5° Taurus, a fixed sign, in Pisces; at 5° Gemini, a dual sign, in Cancer, each time at 15°. The three starting points form the fire triangle, so at the same degree the three D45 signs share one element.

What to look at in a D45 chart

The D45 is read with its own houses, counted as whole signs from its Ascendant. The question you ask it: what guides your actions, and what has your father’s line passed on to you?

• The D45 Ascendant and its ruler: your underlying character, the way you conduct yourself without thinking. A ruler in an angle (houses 1, 4, 7, 10) or a trine (houses 5 and 9) gives conduct true to your principles.
• The Sun, which signifies the father, authority and honour, and the 9th house, the house of the father and of dharma (right conduct): their condition describes the paternal legacy.
• The 10th house, the house of deeds (karma in its first sense: action): how your character turns into actions.
• Jupiter, significator of wisdom: well placed, it gives a sense of what is right; weakened, it asks you to build your own bearings.
• Debilitated planets, or planets in houses 6, 8 and 12: temptations, shortcuts, the places where integrity is put to the test. They are areas for vigilance, where character is forged.

Always cross-check with the D1: a Sun strong in both the D1 and the D45 gives authority you fully own; strong in the D1 but weak in the D45, it points to a position gained that you need to live up to through consistent actions. That is the principle of crossing the charts.

D45 chart reading: an example

Take a D45 with Leo rising. The Sun, ruler of the Ascendant and significator of the father, sits in Aries, its sign of exaltation, in the 9th house: the paternal line passes on a sense of honour and of the given word, an uprightness that dares to say no, guided by principles more than by other people’s opinions.

Jupiter, for its part, is in Capricorn, its sign of debilitation, in the 6th house, the house of conflict and service. The inherited wisdom did not come ready-made: perhaps a demanding father, or rules laid down without being explained. The lever: your principles prove themselves in everyday effort, at work and in disagreements, and that is where they become your own.

Saturn in Taurus, in the 10th house, finally gives patient and reliable conduct: you go the distance. Then you cross-check: the Sun and Jupiter of the D1 show whether this uprightness is expressed openly, and the Vimshottari dashas of the Sun or Jupiter mark the years when this character is called on most.

How accurate must your birth time be for the D45?

The D45 Ascendant changes sign on average every two minutes and forty seconds, while the D1 Ascendant changes every two hours. At the latitudes of France, that ranges from just over a minute when Pisces or Aries is rising to under four minutes for Virgo or Libra. The twelve houses of the D45 follow its Ascendant.

It is one of the most demanding charts: it needs the time on your birth certificate (in France, the full copy of the birth record shows it; in the US, the long-form certificate often does). A birth recorded at “14:05” may have happened at 14:03 or 14:07: within that gap, the D45 Ascendant has time to change once or twice.

The planets hold better: the Sun stays about sixteen hours in the same part, the slow planets several days. Only the Moon changes part every 60 to 80 minutes or so. The ayanamsa matters too: a part is only 40′, and two schools one degree apart do not give the same D45; the site calculates with Lahiri.

To find out whether your D45 can be read, calculate your chart for the time on the certificate, then one minute earlier and one minute later. If the D45 Ascendant stays the same, read its houses; if it changes, rely on the signs and dignities of the planets.

How to open your D45 chart on the site

On My Birth Chart, the D45 is calculated from your birth chart, with the exact time: without a time, the Vedic option stays disabled, because the Ascendant and the houses depend on it.

1. Calculate your chart with your date, time to the minute and place of birth.
2. At the wheel, choose “Vedic (sidereal)” instead of “Tropical (Western)”: the D1 opens.
3. In the list of charts, choose the D45. The wheel, the positions (sign, degree, house) and the line that gives the meaning of the chart change; the site reminds you how precise a time it needs.
4. Go back to the D1 for the dashas, the nakshatras and the Atmakaraka, then compare.

The calculation uses the Lahiri ayanamsa, the mean nodes and Parashara’s rules. Rahu and Ketu, opposite in the sky, would fall in the same D45 sign in a raw calculation: the site keeps Ketu opposite Rahu in every chart.

D45, D10, D40: what is the difference?

The D10 shows your career; the D45, the way you conduct yourself in it. The D40 reads the maternal line, the D45 the paternal line, and the D12 the parents themselves. These fine charts are read after the D1 and the D9, never instead of them: they bring nuance to what the chart already shows. Divisional charts places each one among the twenty charts on the site.