how common are Raja yogas? formation frequency across 10,000 charts
The classical texts call these configurations powerful and the folklore calls them rare, but neither ever counts. This lab study counts. We sampled 10,000 birth moments on a fixed deterministic grid between 1950 and 2005, computed each chart on the Swiss Ephemeris with the same ayanamsha used everywhere on this site and tested exactly the formation conditions our own yoga pages state. Vipreet Raja yoga formed in 76.89% of charts, Neecha Bhanga Raja yoga in 42.57% and Gajakesari yoga in 33.18%. A configuration this common cannot alone explain rare outcomes, and the numbers say so more clearly than any argument.
The question the texts never quantify
Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Chapter 34 sets out the formation conditions for dozens of yogas and attaches strong readings to them: king-making, victory through enemies, sustained respect, unexpected rise. What the classical literature never supplies is a denominator. It states when a yoga forms and what it means, and stays silent on how often it forms. The silence matters because the interpretation trades on scarcity. A configuration read as a signature of exceptional lives implies, without ever stating, that most charts lack it.
The modern folklore fills the gap with adjectives. Vipreet Raja yoga is called rare and paradoxical, Neecha Bhanga a special rescue, Gajakesari auspicious and uncommon. These are testable claims. Every formation condition on our yoga pages is a deterministic function of planetary sign positions and an ascendant, and planetary positions are computable for any moment. So the honest move is to compute them: sample a large, evenly spread set of birth moments, cast each chart, apply exactly the published condition and count.
This study does that for three yogas we have documented in full: Vipreet Raja yoga, Neecha Bhanga Raja yoga and Gajakesari yoga. The point is a base rate. Whatever a yoga means, the meaning has to survive its own frequency.
Method: a deterministic grid, not a survey
The generator is a short script against the same engine that computes every chart on this site. It samples 10,000 birth moments starting 1950-01-01 00:00 UT and stepping exactly 49 hours, ending 2005-11-22. The step is chosen so the run is exactly reproducible (a fixed grid, no random draws) and so the clock time rotates: 49 mod 24 is 1, meaning consecutive samples land one hour later in the day than the last, and all 24 hours are covered uniformly across the grid. Every machine that runs the script gets the same 10,000 moments and the same counts.
For each moment the script computes sidereal positions of the nine grahas and an ascendant on the Swiss Ephemeris, using the PVRN Rao True Pushya ayanamsha from engine.ephemeris, the same conversion every published number on this site uses. Houses are whole sign. The ascendant is cast for a fixed reference location, New Delhi at 28.6139 N 77.2090 E. That choice needs stating honestly: ascendant-dependent yogas vary with birth location, so the Vipreet and Neecha Bhanga figures are estimates for one reference longitude, and a grid cast for another city would shuffle which individual charts qualify while leaving the aggregate rate in the same region, since the grid covers all hours of the day uniformly. Gajakesari depends only on the Moon and Jupiter and is location-independent at sign granularity.
Each chart is then tested against the formation condition exactly as the corresponding Tempora page states it, so page and study never contradict each other:
Vipreet Raja yoga, as published: the lords of the difficult houses (6th, 8th, 12th) sit in difficult houses themselves or exchange among themselves or aspect each other. The three branches implemented: a dusthana lord occupying the 6th, 8th or 12th house, a parivartana exchange between two dusthana lords, and one dusthana lord casting graha drishti on another (the 7th aspect for all planets, with Mars adding the 4th and 8th, Jupiter the 5th and 9th, Saturn the 3rd and 10th).
Neecha Bhanga Raja yoga, as published: a debilitated planet receives one of four classical cancellation conditions. The four implemented: the debilitation-sign lord at a kendra from the Moon or the ascendant, the exaltation-sign lord at a kendra from the Moon or the ascendant, the debilitated planet conjoining or aspecting an exalted planet at a kendra, and the debilitated planet itself at a kendra from the ascendant or the Moon. The page leaves the reference point of the third condition unstated; the study takes the kendra from the ascendant and says so here.
Gajakesari yoga, as published: Jupiter sits at a kendra (1st, 4th, 7th or 10th) counted from the natal Moon.
Results
| Yoga | Condition tested (as stated on its page) | Formations | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vipreet Raja yoga | 6th, 8th or 12th lord in a dusthana, or parivartana between two dusthana lords, or graha drishti from one dusthana lord onto another | 7,689 / 10,000 | 76.89% |
| Neecha Bhanga Raja yoga | a debilitated planet plus at least one of the four classical cancellation conditions | 4,257 / 10,000 | 42.57% |
| Gajakesari yoga | Jupiter at a kendra (1st, 4th, 7th or 10th) from the natal Moon | 3,318 / 10,000 | 33.18% |
The branch decomposition explains where the big numbers come from:
| Branch | Charts | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Vipreet: dusthana lord occupies a dusthana house | 5,617 | 56.17% |
| Vipreet: mutual aspect between dusthana lords | 4,816 | 48.16% |
| Vipreet: parivartana exchange | 183 | 1.83% |
| Vipreet variants: Harsha (6L) 2,436 · Sarala (8L) 2,488 · Vimala (12L) 2,519 | ~25% each | |
| Neecha Bhanga: charts with any debilitated planet | 4,537 | 45.37% |
| Neecha Bhanga cancellations: c1 3,129 · c2 3,025 · c3 308 · c4 3,089 | see study JSON | |
| Vipreet and Neecha Bhanga in the same chart | 3,239 | 32.39% |
| All three yogas in the same chart | 1,138 | 11.38% |
The occupation branch alone lands near the combinatorial expectation: each dusthana lord has roughly a 3-in-12 chance of sitting in a dusthana, and with three lords the chance that at least one does is about 58%. The measured 56.17% sits next to that, which is a useful sanity check that the engine and the counting agree with basic probability. The aspect branch adds another wide net, because Mars, Jupiter and Saturn carry special aspects and frequently lord dusthanas. Only the parivartana branch behaves like the folklore says the whole yoga does: 1.83%, a genuinely uncommon configuration.
Gajakesari lands at 33.18% against a naive expectation of 33.33% (4 qualifying sign positions out of 12). Jupiter and the Moon move nearly independently across birth dates, so the sign-level condition is close to a uniform draw. Roughly one person in three carries Gajakesari by the published condition.
Neecha Bhanga tells the most instructive story. Debilitation itself is common: 45.37% of charts carry at least one debilitated planet. And cancellation is nearly automatic: 4,257 of those 4,537 charts (about 94%) receive at least one of the four cancellations, because three of the four conditions test for a kendra from the Moon or from the ascendant, and a kendra from either of two reference points covers most of the zodiac. Under the published conditions, cancellation is the default outcome of debilitation rather than a rescue.
What the numbers mean
A yoga present in a third of charts cannot alone explain rare outcomes. That sentence is the whole finding. If Gajakesari marked out distinction, a third of everyone would be distinguished. If Vipreet Raja yoga produced victory through difficulty, three quarters of everyone would rise through their enemies. The formation condition, taken at sign level, is a base rate, and the base rates measured here are far too high for presence alone to discriminate anything.
This is consistent with what the classical framework actually says when read carefully. The texts attach the strong readings to formed and supported yogas: dignity of the participating planets, absence of combustion and affliction, dasha activation, the rest of the chart. Our own yoga pages carry the same caveats. What the folklore drops is the denominator, and dropping the denominator converts a common structural pattern into an imagined rarity. The correct reading order is base rate first, filters second: start from the fact that the raw configuration is common, then ask what additional conditions have to hold before any strong claim is on the table, and how often those hold.
Base rates before readings
The reasoning discipline here is the same one documented in the reproducible astrology framework: a claim only carries information if it could have come out otherwise. A yoga that forms in 76.89% of sampled charts is close to the expected case, and its absence is the more unusual observation. Any interpretive weight has to be earned by the narrower conditions, and those narrower conditions deserve their own counted frequencies before they carry weight.
The numbers also sharpen the three pages they test. The parivartana branch of Vipreet at 1.83% is the only branch that is scarce, so a reading that leans on the exchange leans on something measurably uncommon. The near-automatic cancellation rate behind Neecha Bhanga suggests the interesting variable is how many cancellation conditions hold at once rather than whether any holds, which is exactly the strength gradation the classical texts describe. These are hypotheses the grid makes visible; testing them against outcome data is separate and harder work, and this study makes no outcome claim.
Limitations
Single reference location. The ascendant is cast for New Delhi throughout. The Vipreet and Neecha Bhanga rates are therefore estimates for one reference longitude. The grid covers all hours of the day uniformly, which is the dominant driver of ascendant variety, so the aggregate rates should transfer to other locations approximately, and we have verified nothing beyond that.
Sign-level conditions only. The study implements the conditions exactly as the three pages state them, and the pages state them at sign level. It applies no degree orbs, no combustion checks, no dignity weighting and no varga-level checks, because the published conditions require none. A stricter operationalisation (for example requiring the dusthana lord to be free of affliction, or Jupiter to hold dignity) would produce lower numbers, and those stricter variants deserve their own explicit conditions before being counted.
A grid is not a census of births. The 10,000 moments are spread evenly across time, while real births cluster by season and by hour of day. The clustering is mild relative to the size of these rates, and a demographically weighted rerun is straightforward future work on the same tool.
Three yogas out of hundreds. The classical corpus names far more configurations than the three counted here. The tool is structured so additional conditions can be added as their pages are documented, and each added yoga gets its published condition implemented verbatim.
Formation is the only thing measured. The study counts structural presence. It says nothing about whether any yoga correlates with any life outcome, and no outcome claim should be read into a frequency table.
How to reproduce
Anyone with the Swiss Ephemeris Python bindings can rebuild the run from this page alone. The grid is fixed: 10,000 samples, start 1950-01-01 00:00 UT, step 49 hours, New Delhi at 28.6139 N 77.2090 E, whole-sign houses, PVRN Rao True Pushya ayanamsha. Test the three condition texts quoted above at sign level, count the formations and the percentages on this page fall out. Same grid in, same numbers out, on any machine.
Frequently asked questions
How common is Vipreet Raja yoga?
Common. In a deterministic grid of 10,000 birth moments between 1950 and 2005, computed with whole-sign houses for a New Delhi reference ascendant, the formation condition as published on the Tempora Vipreet Raja yoga page (a 6th, 8th or 12th lord in a dusthana house, a parivartana exchange between two dusthana lords or a graha drishti from one dusthana lord onto another) held in 7,689 charts, 76.89%. The broad aspect branch drives the number: the occupation branch alone held in 56.17% of charts and the parivartana exchange alone in 1.83%.
How common is Neecha Bhanga Raja yoga?
In the same 10,000-chart grid, 45.37% of charts carried at least one debilitated planet and 42.57% formed Neecha Bhanga Raja yoga under the four cancellation conditions published on the Tempora Neecha Bhanga page. Among charts with a debilitated planet, roughly 94% received at least one cancellation, because the kendra-from-Moon-or-ascendant tests each pass for about two thirds of placements. Cancellation is therefore close to the default outcome of debilitation rather than a rare rescue.
How common is Gajakesari yoga?
Gajakesari yoga (Jupiter at a kendra, the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th sign counted from the natal Moon) formed in 3,318 of 10,000 charts, 33.18%. This sits almost exactly at the naive expectation of 4 in 12 sign positions, 33.33%, because Jupiter and the Moon move nearly independently on birth timescales. Roughly one person in three carries the yoga by the sign-level condition.
If a yoga is present in a third of charts, does it mean anything?
Presence alone cannot explain rare outcomes. A configuration held by 33% or 77% of the population has no discriminating power on its own; any claim that the yoga produces kings, sudden wealth or exceptional rise must rest on the additional filters the classical texts also state: dignity, dasha activation, absence of affliction and the rest of the chart. Base rates come first. The study quantifies the base rate so those further filters can be discussed honestly.
How do I reproduce these numbers?
Rebuild the grid from its published parameters: 10,000 moments starting 1950-01-01 00:00 UT with a fixed 49-hour step, sidereal positions and a New Delhi ascendant on the Swiss Ephemeris with the PVRN Rao True Pushya ayanamsha, whole-sign houses and the three condition texts quoted on this page. The grid is deterministic, so the same run produces the same numbers on any machine.
Read next
This study counts structural formation frequency of three classical yoga conditions across a deterministic grid of 10,000 sampled birth moments. It measures presence, and it makes no claim about correlation between any yoga and any life outcome. The ascendant-dependent figures are computed for a single reference location (New Delhi) and are estimates, and the conditions are implemented at sign level exactly as the corresponding Tempora pages state them. All counts are reproducible from the grid parameters and condition texts stated on this page. This article does not constitute medical, financial, legal or professional advice. Study first published 14 August 2026 by Tempora Research.