Libra (Tula) sign in Vedic astrology: traits and lord

The profile table lists Libra's classifications in two columns: the label on the left, Libra's value on the right. Each row is one traditional way of sorting the twelve signs (rashis), so the same labels reappear on every sign page.

Movable (chara) means a sign whose nature is 'to move and to be dynamic', in P.V.R. Narasimha Rao's (PVR) gloss. Fixed signs are stable and constant, and dual signs alternate between the two.

Libra is also an air sign, and PVR describes air as having 'a varying state'. Fire transforms, earth stays solid, and water stays flexible.

Guna means a quality of nature. Libra's guna is rajas, which PVR glosses as energy and passion.

Libra is a day sign, so it is traditionally strong in the daytime. PVR notes that of the two signs a planet owns, one is a day sign and one is a night sign; Venus's other sign, Taurus, is the night one.

Two rows in the table, direction (west) and the Kalapurusha row, are explained further down the page. Libra also comes over the horizon head first (seershodaya), and it is an odd (male) sign, one of six in the zodiac.

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS, R. Santhanam's translation), chapter 4, describes Tula as: coming over the horizon head first (a Seershodaya sign); strong in the daytime; black in complexion; mostly rajas; the western direction; resorting to land; of medium build; two-footed; and ruled by Venus. BPHS closes by saying the twelve signs are described this way 'to evaluate gross and specific effects'.

Light on Life (Hart de Fouw and Robert Svoboda) gives the symbol: 'Libra's symbol, the scales (a shopkeeper's weighing scales, not the scales of justice)'.

PVR lists traditional associations for Libra: places and things such as businessmen, markets, trade centers, banks, hotels, amusement parks, entertainment and cosmetics, and qualities such as balanced, wise and a good talker. PVR explains that signs stand for situations and influences in life, while planets stand for people.

B.V. Raman cautions that such descriptions 'are only general in nature and should not be applied hastily'.

A sign's lord is the planet that owns it, and in any chart the lord of the sign in a house becomes that house's lord. Libra's lord is Venus, which also owns Taurus.

The dignity table shows where planets are strong or weak in Libra. 'Own sign' means the sign a planet rules: Venus here.

'Exalted' means the sign where a planet is traditionally at its strongest: Saturn, deepest at 20 degrees of Libra. 'Debilitated' means the opposite, the sign where a planet is traditionally weakest: the Sun, deepest at 10 degrees.

'Moolatrikona' is the third kind of sign where PVR reads a planet as strong, after its own and exaltation signs. Venus's moolatrikona is Libra from 0 to 15 degrees, so only the first half of Libra counts as Venus's moolatrikona.

One pattern ties the table together: each planet is debilitated in the seventh sign from its exaltation sign. The Sun is exalted in Aries, and Libra is seven signs away.

Kalapurusha means time personified. BPHS chapter 4 and PVR assign each sign a limb of this cosmic body, PVR saying it is Lord Vishnu's body, and give Libra as the space below the navel.

This is sky-lore, a way of remembering the signs as one living whole. It carries no reading of anyone's body or health.

Other texts differ. B.V. Raman's Hindu Predictive Astrology (chapter 23) places Libra at the abdomen and navel of Kalapurusha instead.

Both views are traditional; the pages here follow BPHS and PVR.

The Sun's dates follow Skybond's conventions: the sidereal zodiac with the True Chitra Paksha ayanamsa (the offset between the tropical and sidereal zodiacs). Each year the Sun enters Libra on 17 or 18 October and leaves on 16 or 17 November, in Indian Standard Time.

In Skybond's computation for every year from 2000 to 2050, entry falls between 17 and 18 October. Western (tropical) sun-sign dates differ because of the ayanamsa, so the Vedic sun sign is often one sign earlier.

The three cards show the three places Libra can hold in a chart: as your lagna, the sign rising on the eastern horizon at birth, which becomes your 1st house; as your moon sign, meaning the Moon sat in Libra at birth; or as your sun sign, from about 17 October to 16 November each year.

Time to rise differs too. B.V. Raman lists Libra among the signs of long ascension for places north of the equator (he notes the order reverses south of it), so as an ascendant it takes longer than average to rise.