House 1 · Lagna / Tanu bhāva · Lagna / Tanu bhava
The self, the body, the beginning
Constitution, appearance, temperament, and the whole chart’s reference point.
- Angularity
- Kendra — an angle
- Classified as
- Trikoṇa — a trine, and auspicious
- Kāraka
- Sun — signifies these matters wherever it falls
The first house is not a topic like the others — it is the point everything else is measured from. The sign rising here fixes which sign each of the remaining eleven houses falls in, which is why two people born on the same day with different rising signs have almost nothing in common structurally.
What it signifies in its own right is the body and the temperament: physical constitution, general vitality, the impression a person makes before speaking, and the characteristic way they start things. Its lord is the single most important graha in the chart, because that graha carries the self into whichever house it occupies.
A graha in the first house colours the personality directly and visibly. Benefics here tend to show as ease of manner; malefics as intensity, and often as a mark on the body.
Significations
- body
- appearance
- vitality
- temperament
- early life
- how you begin things
Source: BPHS ch. 11–12