The ghatak chakra

A table of exceptions, keyed on the birth Moon sign

Where tara bala and chandra bala apply the same nine- and twelve-fold counting scheme to every birth chart alike, the ghatak chakra is not a formula in that sense — it is a lookup table. For each of the twelve possible birth Moon signs, the classical chakra names a particular tithi class, weekday, nakshatra, month, rising sign, yoga, karana and daylight quarter (prahar) that are held to be especially unfavourable for someone born under that Moon sign.

The reasoning behind any one entry is not a general rule that can be re-derived from first principles the way a tithi or a tara can — it comes from the classical chakra itself, sign by sign. That is also why coverage is uneven: a table like this can only be applied for a birth Moon sign once its row has actually been checked against a printed source, and rows that have not yet been checked are shown as unavailable rather than scored, so that an unchecked row never looks like a clean pass.

Ghatak tithi

For a given birth Moon sign, the chakra names one tithi class — drawn from the same Nanda, Bhadra, Jaya, Rikta, Purna cycle used elsewhere in the panchanga — as the one classically held to work against that birth sign. When the day's tithi falls in that class, the reading is penalized on top of, and separately from, whatever the tithi's ordinary class-based scoring already gives it.

Ghatak vara

In the same way, the chakra names one weekday per birth Moon sign as classically unfavourable for that sign specifically — distinct from the ordinary reading of a weekday's ruling graha matching or not matching the birth Moon sign's lord.

Ghatak nakshatra

The chakra also names one nakshatra per birth Moon sign as structurally difficult for that sign, and this is the entry that most visibly does not reduce to tara bala. A nakshatra can sit in a favourable tara relationship to the birth star by the nine-fold count and still be that birth sign's ghatak nakshatra, in which case both readings are shown, independently scored, side by side rather than one overriding the other.

For a Mesha Moon, the classical chakra names Magha as the ghatak nakshatra. Counted from a Bharani birth star, Magha happens to fall on Param Mitra — the most favourable tara — so a transiting Moon in Magha reads as strong on tara bala and penalized on the ghatak nakshatra check at the same time.