See yourself through the others' eyes, with the Chara Karakas

Here’s a fun exercise I just did, and you can too - take a look at your family members’ Chara karakas - to see yourself :)

So what are these Chara karakas I speak of?

Well, just look at the degrees of the embodied planets in your chart (by embodied planets I mean Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, so we exclude the Nodes, Rahu and Ketu).

The planet with most degrees is the Atmakaraka- your Soul planet, the next one the Amatyakaraka- the minister (advisor) planet, next one Bratrikaraka, which points to siblings, next Matri and Putrakaraka, so it indicates your Mother (matri) and children (putra in Sanskrit). Isn’t it funny how Jaimini chose the same planet for these two, maybe because ultimately your mother is also your child and your child is also your mother :)
Moving on, the next temporary significator is Pitrukaraka- so it points to the father, and then Gnatikaraka distant relatives, and finally the planet with the least degrees is your Darakaraka- your spouse.

There is another case where we use 8 Chara karakas, but we shan’t talk about it now :)
 
​An example of a Chara Karaka table as seen in the Kala Astrology Software:






​So I'll tell you how I'm seen from three different charts.

My daughter’s mother-planet (MK) is Venus.
My brother’s sibling karaka (BK) is Venus.
My (ex) husband’s spouse planet (DK) is Venus.

I'll only take them into consideration because they only point to one person (my daughter has one mother, my brother has one sibling etc) while my parents had more than one child, so their child planet points to all their children.
 
So apparently, as reflected in their charts, I’m a Venusian influence. That’s funny, because my soul planet is Mercury (mind you, I do have Venus joining my Ascendant ruler in the 10th house, so a pretty visible placement).

However, I can dig up the Mercurial aspect too - in my daughter and my brother’s charts, Venus is ruled by Mercury. In my ex husband’s, Venus is ruled by Mars. And Mars is my Ascendant lord and in the ninth divisional chart, I have my soul planet Mercury with Mars.

So there you have it, that's my example, you can try it for your own chart and see how your self factors relate to your reflection in other's lives :)
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and this is how I really see myself :) - illustration by Ivan Bibilin of Russian Fairy Tale 'Fire Bird'