What the 6th house shows
The sixth sign from the Lagna is the 6th house. The texts call it Ripu bhava, but in today's words it is the house of service, effort and competition. Jyotish associates it with:
- service: working for others, employment and daily duties
- routine, discipline and small habits
- debts and dealings, and the way one manages them
- competition, exams and the ability to resolve disputes
- colleagues, helpers and pets
- in tradition, the maternal uncle is also read from this house
The house is not for counting opponents; it is for understanding one's own effort and patience.
Its place in tradition: group, karaka, dig bala
The 6th belongs to three groups: apoklima (3, 6, 9, 12), upachaya (3, 6, 10, 11) and trika. Tradition calls 6, 8 and 12 the difficult houses (dusthana or trika); they also stand for learning through challenge. At the same time the 6th is an upachaya, so tradition holds that its matters improve with effort and time. Among the four aims of life it is an artha house: the work done to earn a living.
Its natural karakas are Mars and Saturn: Mars the drive to compete, Saturn service and patience. The sixth sign of the kalapurusha is Kanya, ruled by Mercury, which adds order and attention to detail. It is not a kendra, so no planet gains full dig bala here.
Whole-sign house and bhava chalit
ePandit shows the 6th house in two ways. In whole-sign houses the 6th sign counted from the Lagna is the whole 6th house. In the bhava chalit the house boundaries are set from the exact degree of the ascendant, so a planet near the edge of a sign can appear in the neighbouring house.
Suppose the Lagna is at Vrishabha 27° and Saturn at Vrishchika 2°: in whole-sign houses Saturn is in the 7th, but in the chalit it can fall within the 6th. Tradition then reads Saturn in matters of service and discipline too.
These are two views of the same sky, not a mistake. ePandit uses whole-sign houses (D1) as the base; when the two differ, tradition reads the themes of both houses together.
The 6th lord and planets here, read calmly
The ruler of the 6th is the shashthesha. Tradition holds that the house it occupies is where effort and discipline are most called for: with the 6th lord in the 10th, it is read as fields that involve meeting other people's needs.
Because this is an upachaya house, tradition is comfortable with Mars, Saturn or Rahu here, and links them with staying power in competition and getting hard tasks done. The Moon or Venus are said to bring gentleness to service. An empty 6th house is not a lack. No planet decides anything here alone; sign, aspects and dasha are read together.
The 6th house in the navamsa and other vargas
The shodashavarga scheme assigns no single varga to the 6th house, so tradition reads it mainly in the birth chart (D1) and the navamsa (D9), where the 6th lord's placement shows its depth.
The Shodashavarga chapter of BPHS links the trimshamsha (D30) with life's difficulties, so some astrologers look at it alongside the 6th. ePandit shows D30 only as a chart and draws no verdict from it.
Ashtakavarga: the numbers for this house
Ashtakavarga adds the bindu tables of seven planets into the Sarvashtakavarga (SAV); in every chart the twelve signs hold exactly 337 points, about 28 per sign on average. The 6th house's number is the SAV of the sign that falls in your 6th house; with a Meena lagna, for example, that is Simha.
ePandit shows these figures unreduced. They are a count, not a verdict, and we do not call them good or bad. You can see the number in the Ashtakavarga tab of your free kundli.