Buying an online kundli reading: seven things to check first
Most paid birth-chart readings will not tell you which ayanamsa they used, which dasha system they chose, or what they will refuse to answer. Those three questions separate a computed reading from a script.
An online kundli reading costs anywhere from a few hundred rupees to several thousand, and almost nothing on the page tells you which one you are getting. These seven questions do. They are all answerable before you pay, and a reading that dodges the first three is not computing anything.
1. Which ayanamsa did they use?
Sidereal astrology needs a constant to convert from the observed zodiac to the fixed one, and the common choices — Lahiri, Raman, Krishnamurti — differ by around a degree. That is enough to move a planet into a different nakshatra, and enough to move an ascendant into a different sign for borderline births.
You do not have to take that from us. B. V. Raman — the most influential Indian populariser of the last century, and the man whose name is on one of the competing values — wrote this in 1935:
The exact period when both the zodiacs coincided in the first point is not definitely known and accordingly the Ayanamsa — the precessional distance — varies from 19° to 23°… A number of dates is given as the year of the coincidence, viz., 361 a.d., 498 a.d., 394 a.d., 397 a.d., 559 a.d., etc.; which to accept, and which to reject, has been a matter of considerable doubt. No definite proof is available in favour of any one of the dates given above.A Manual of Hindu Astrology, §47
He then calls precession “a most vital question”, declines to discuss it as “outside our limits”, states that the constant is of “absolute necessity” — and in the next section adopts AD 397, one of the five epochs he had just said no proof favours. Four degrees is about four days of the Sun's motion. It is enough to move planets across nakshatra boundaries, which changes the dasha sequence, which changes every date you are given.
We have seen this matter concretely. Testing a set of nadi specimen charts against the Swiss Ephemeris across 182,622 days, one chart hadzero exact matches under Lahiri and three consecutive exact matches under Raman. Same chart, same ephemeris, different constant, opposite verdict. A reading that will not name its ayanamsa is hiding the setting that decides its own answer.
2. Which dasha system, and was it chosen before or after?
There are over a hundred timing systems, and a leading modern practitioner states on his own book cover that “the golden key to deciphering the correct dasa for a chart is missing.” With that many systems and no selection rule,any past event can be matched to some period retrospectively.
Ask which system will be used, and ask before they see your life story. A named system stated up front produces a prediction that can be scored. One chosen afterwards produces a story that cannot.
3. What will they refuse to answer?
A practice with no boundaries is a practice that will say anything. Ours are written down and hold in every file: no health diagnosis, no longevity or death timing, no reading of a third party who did not ask, no legal advice, and no guaranteed returns.
Death timing especially. It is technically present in the classical corpus, at length, and we retire all of it — a date attached to that produces real harm and can never be checked in a way that helps the person holding it.
4. Are the remedies things you do, or things you buy?
Of the four remedy classes in the classical texts, three ask something of you — giving, observance, attention — and one asks for money. Guess which one dominates the market. The corpus, read carefully, never instructs anyone to wear a stone; the stones appear in a list of things togive, against a passing transit rather than a natal condition.
See the full gemstone finding. If the reading ends at a shop, you have bought a catalogue.
5. Does it manufacture urgency?
“Your kundli shows an unresolved connection — contact us today.” A claim that exists to create the fear it then sells the cure for is the actual fraud in this industry, and it is easy to spot: the deadline is always immediate and always theirs. A real transit has dates, and the dates are computable by anyone.
6. Is it a session or an artefact?
A spoken consultation ends, and what you retain is a feeling and a few phrases. A written file stays: you can re-read it in a year, check what it said against what happened, and notice when it was wrong.
Being able to notice it was wrong is the feature. It is also why most of the industry prefers to sell sessions.
7. Can you question it afterwards without paying again?
The single biggest change in this market is that you already own an AI assistant that will answer follow-up questions for free — if it has the facts. Left to itself it will invent placements, which is worse than useless.
That is what our product is. Every file is a plain-text reading of one birth chart, computed from the Swiss Ephemeris, opening with instructions that tell the reading AI to answer only from the computed facts inside it and to say plainly when the file does not contain something. You paste it into any assistant and question it for as long as you own it. One payment, no subscription, no session to book, and delivery within two days.
And you can check us on our own criteria. The ayanamsa is stated in the file. The dasha system is named. The boundary list is printed. The reasoning behind every claim is public in thereference library — including the material we deleted and why.