What it is. Kaal Sarp forms when all seven classical grahas fall on one side of the Rahu–Ketu axis. The whole chart gathers into one half of the sky, with the nodes closing it off. It either forms or it does not. There are no degrees of it and no partial score.
What the tradition assigns, and here the disagreement is the answer. This formation appears in none of the foundational works. Not in Parashara, not in Jaimini. It is a recent addition, twentieth century by most accounts. A great many practising astrologers give it no weight at all. That is worth knowing before anyone quotes a price to correct it.
How common is Kaal Sarp Dosh?
It forms in 7.4% of charts. Measured over 5,000 births drawn from 1950 to 2025, 368 of them had all seven grahas gathered on one side of the nodal axis. So it is uncommon rather than rare. Out of every thousand charts, about 74 have it.
7.4%
have Kaal Sarp
368 of 5,000 charts.
25.6%
are one graha short of it
1,280 charts with exactly one graha on the far side of the axis.
33.0%
are within one graha either way
The formation, plus everyone a single placement away from it.
What the rest of the charts look like
The rule has no tolerance, so the cliff edge is the interesting part. Not who stands on top of it, but how everyone else is arranged underneath. Count the smaller side of the axis and you have the exact distance a chart sits from the formation. It can only be zero, one, two or three grahas. Four would make it the larger side.
| Grahas on the far side | Share of charts | What that is |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 7.4% | All seven gathered — Kaal Sarp |
| 1 | 25.6% | One graha short of it |
| 2 | 36.1% | Two short |
| 3 | 30.9% | A four-three split, the most even seven grahas manage |
Four buckets, and every one of the 5,000 charts is in exactly one of them.
More charts miss Kaal Sarp by a single graha than have it — 25.6% against 7.4%. A rule with no tolerance puts most of its population at the edge.
Which graha is usually the one left behind?
Of the 1,280 charts that miss by one, the lone graha is almost never Surya, Budha or Shukra. The three together account for just 4% of them. Those three travel as a clump. Mercury and Venus are inner planets, so they never stray far from the Sun. The axis cannot easily cut one of them off alone.
| Graha | Share of the one-short charts |
|---|---|
| Chandra (Moon) | 28.7% |
| Shani (Saturn) | 25.9% |
| Guru (Jupiter) | 24.5% |
| Mangal (Mars) | 16.7% |
| Shukra (Venus) | 2.3% |
| Budha (Mercury) | 0.9% |
| Surya (Sun) | 0.8% |
The four that move independently of the Sun take almost all of it. Mercury never gets more than about 28° from the Sun and Venus about 47°, which is why the bottom three rows sit where they do.
Is one of the twelve types rarer than the others?
No. The twelve named varieties are indexed by nothing except which house Rahu occupies, and Rahu is spread evenly across the twelve. Measured over the 368 charts that formed it, the shares run from 6.8% to 10.3%. Expected is 8.3% in each. That spread is noise at this sample size, not a finding.
even · 8.3%
Rahu's house in the charts that formed Kaal Sarp, houses 1 to 12: 1 8.7%, 2 9.5%, 3 7.1%, 4 7.9%, 5 9.2%, 6 7.1%, 7 6.8%, 8 9.2%, 9 7.9%, 10 10.3%, 11 9.0%, 12 7.3%.Twelve bars against the 8.3% an even spread would give. The engine's own test suite holds this distribution to a chi-square test against uniform, which is what licenses calling the spread noise rather than a finding.
Which side the grahas gathered on is as even: 50% from Rahu to Ketu and 50% the other way. Nothing in the sky prefers one semicircle. The nodes regress through the whole zodiac, so an even split is what a correct measurement should return. The Kaal Sarp page works out which side a chart falls on, and names the grahas that break the formation when any do.
Questions people ask about Kaal Sarp Dosh
What is Kaal Sarp Dosh?
It is the condition where all seven classical grahas sit on one side of the Rahu–Ketu axis. No orb and no exception: one graha on the other side and the formation is not there. It is the strictest rule this engine computes.
How common is Kaal Sarp Dosh?
Measured over 5,000 charts, 7.4% have the full formation. What the published figure misses is the shape underneath it: 25.6% miss it by a single graha, so standing one placement away is commoner than having it.
Are there really 12 types of Kaal Sarp?
The twelve names index which house Rahu occupies, and nothing more. Rahu is spread evenly across the twelve houses, so no named variety is the rare one — they each account for roughly a twelfth of the charts that have the formation.
Is Kaal Sarp Dosh in the classical texts?
Not in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and not in Jaimini. By most accounts it is twentieth century, and many practising astrologers give it no weight at all. That is worth knowing before anybody prices a remedy for it.
Does Kaal Sarp Dosh need a puja?
Nothing on this site is a reason to buy anything. This formation carries an entire remedy trade, which is the reason to publish the measurements for free rather than a reason to add a price to them.
What does my chart "missing it by one graha" mean?
That six of the seven grahas are on one side of the nodal axis and one is not, so the rule does not apply. It is a description of where a chart sits against a sharp cut-off, not a partial dosha — the condition is either met or it is not.
What this does not cover
- The formation is not classical. It is absent from Parashara, from Jaimini and from the foundational works generally, and many astrologers give it no weight. The engine computes it because people arrive asking for it, not because the tradition asks for it.
- No orb, no exception. A graha one degree past the axis breaks the formation here. Some astrologers allow a tolerance, or ignore a graha sitting on a node. This engine applies the rule strictly. The one-graha-short figure above is how much that choice decides.
- The mean node, not the true node. The true node swings around the mean by up to about 1.5°. On a rule with no tolerance, that is enough to flip a borderline chart either way. A site using the true node will disagree with this one on some charts, and both are right about their own method.
- Seven grahas only. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not part of the rule and are not counted.
- The house distribution needs a birth time, because houses do. The sample was drawn with one; a chart with no recorded time has no Rahu house to read.
- Nothing here is a reason to buy anything. This formation carries an entire remedy trade, which is exactly why the figures above are worth printing for free.