Module 5 · Lesson 5-1 · 14 min
Module 4 handed you a finished verdict sheet. For any lagna you can now say whose side every planet is on — yogakaraka, functional malefic, maraka, the whole roster. But try predicting with it and a hole opens at once: the sheet records allegiance, and allegiance without muscle predicts nothing.
Picture the case lesson 31 flagged — a yogakaraka sunk in its fall. Still the MVP; module 4 was emphatic about that. But will its promised raja yoga ever arrive? Whose-side cannot answer. You need the second question — how strong? — and Parashara built an entire instrument to ask it.
The instrument is shadbala — shad, six; bala, strength — a six-fold audit that scores each classical planet's power to deliver its agenda, in numbers you can rank. This lesson gives you the frame: the six strengths, the units they are counted in, and the bar every planet must clear.
By the end: Name all six balas with what each measures, convert virupas to rupas, check any planet's grand total against its classical minimum, and re-rank a module-4 verdict by whether the planet can actually deliver.
Shadbala measures how much power a planet has to push its agenda. It answers how strong — never whose side. That is the exact split lesson 31 flagged: a debilitated yogakaraka is a weak MVP, still an MVP. Allegiance comes from lordship; strength is a separate column, and prediction needs both.
Two Capricorn-lagna charts, two Venus yogakarakas: one mighty, one feeble. Same allegiance, opposite delivery.
Sthana bala, positional strength: dignity and the divisions a planet occupies — the standing earned from where it sits. Dig bala, directional strength: each planet owns one direction of the chart, one angle where it is most potent. Kala bala, temporal strength: day against night, the seasons, the hora — power drawn from when the birth falls.
A planet exalted by sign can still face the wrong direction — the columns vote separately.
Cheshta bala, motional strength: speed and retrogression — slow and retrograde planets burn bright here. Naisargika bala, natural strength: a fixed brightness ranking, identical in every chart ever cast. Drik bala, aspectual strength: the net of aspects a planet receives — benefic gazes add, malefic gazes subtract.
Naisargika is the only column with no news in it: the same ranking, birth after birth.
The six scores are counted in virupas; sixty virupas make one rupa. Sum a planet's six columns and test the grand total against its classical minimum — the bar it must clear to deliver: Sun 6.5, Moon 6.0, Mars 5.0, Mercury 7.0, Jupiter 6.5, Venus 5.5, Saturn 5.0 rupas.
Mercury at 6.8 rupas has failed its bar; Saturn at 5.1 has cleared its own. The bar moves with the planet.
Read the table again: the gentle planets need more strength than the harsh ones. Mercury must reach 7.0; Mars and Saturn clear at 5.0. The logic is beautiful — a benefic delivers only when strong, because softness must be loud to be heard; harshness lands its blow even when quiet.
A whisper of Saturn is still Saturn. A whisper of Mercury is nothing at all.
Shadbala is computed for the seven classical planets only. Rahu and Ketu take no rupa totals — you judge the nodes through their dispositors, as lesson 26 taught. And nobody hand-computes the rest anymore: software outputs every total. The skill that remains — the whole skill — is reading the numbers.
AskVeda's engine will hand you the table later in this module; your job is the ranking, not the arithmetic.
The one idea to keep
A strong functional malefic is trouble that arrives; a weak functional benefic is a promise that stalls. The strength column re-ranks every module-4 verdict before prediction. After every verdict, ask the second question: can this planet actually deliver?
A Libra-lagna chart holds Saturn as yogakaraka — lord of the 4th and 5th — but Saturn sits debilitated in Aries with a low shadbala total. What does the strength finding change?
Two separate columns: whose side, and how strong. Which one does shadbala write in?
Mars is retrograde in the chart on your screen. Which of the six strengths registers that fact — and what does retrogression do there?
Sort the six by what each one watches: position, direction, time, motion, nature, aspect.
The software prints two grand totals: Mercury 6.4 rupas, Saturn 5.2 rupas. Who clears the classical minimum?
The bar is per-planet. Recite the table before you compare anything.
A client asks for Rahu's shadbala score. What is the correct answer?
How did lesson 26 teach you to judge a node's condition?
6 cards added to your recall deck. First review: tomorrow.
Five questions on the six strengths — sort the columns, run the minimums, and keep allegiance separate from muscle.
5 minutes · 5 questions · pass at 4/5.