Yogas
Kemadruma
keh-mah-DROO-mah
Chandra Yogas
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Origin 500 to 800 CE
Kemadruma yoga is an inauspicious lunar combination formed when no planets (other than the Sun, and excluding the nodes Rahu and Ketu) occupy the 2nd or 12th houses from Chandra (the Moon), and often when no planets sit with or aspect the Moon, leaving it isolated and unsupported. It is associated with hardship, poverty, loneliness, instability, and struggle, as though the mind lacks the support of its neighbors. Classical texts, however, list many cancellations (Kemadruma bhanga): the yoga is nullified if a planet occupies a kendra from the Moon or the Lagna, if the Moon is aspected by or conjunct a benefic, or if the Moon is otherwise strong, so it should never be judged in isolation.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period500 to 800 CE 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Origin PeriodThis planetary yoga belongs to the classical catalogue the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra sets out; Pingree's survey of jyotihsastra literature situates the text within the sixth to eighth century CE stratum of classical Sanskrit horoscopy. 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Structure
Formation ConditionNo planets in the 2nd or 12th from the Moon, and the Moon unsupported 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 1 Attributions
EffectsHardship, poverty, loneliness and instability unless cancelled 1 Learn More
Kemadruma Yoga
Kemadruma Yoga is an inauspicious combination and the negative counterpart of the sunapha, anapha and durudhara group: it is formed when there is no planet in either the twelfth or the second place from the Moon, the Sun and the shadow planets being excluded from the count. The Moon in Jyotisha signifies the mind and the immediate support of the life, and a Moon with no planets flanking it is read as unsupported, so the combination is given for isolation, instability of mind and material difficulty.
The classical texts also give a substantial list of cancellations: a planet in an angle from the Ascendant or from the Moon, the Moon itself in an angle from the Ascendant, a strong aspect to the Moon, and other conditions are each held to annul the yoga. Those cancellations are as much a part of the doctrine as the yoga itself and are routinely omitted in popular presentations.
The Combination Defined by an Absence
Kemadruma is unusual in being defined by what is not there. The Moon is unattended: no planet other than the Sun in the sign before it, none in the sign after, and in the stricter versions none with it. Where Sunapha, Anapha and Durudhara describe the Moon accompanied on one side, the other, or both, Kemadruma is the fourth case, the Moon alone.
That completeness is a clue to how these four were constructed. They are not four separate observations. They are an exhaustive partition of one variable, and every chart necessarily falls into exactly one of them. A scheme that carves the space up that way is a classification rather than a discovery, and its members inherit their meanings from the scheme's own logic: three kinds of support and one of isolation.
The tradition takes Kemadruma seriously and reads it as difficulty, isolation and want. It also supplies an unusually long list of cancellations, bhanga: a planet in an angle from the ascendant, a strong aspect to the Moon, the Moon in an angle, a well placed dispositor. The list is long enough that careful practitioners note the combination is far more often cancelled than allowed to stand.
The atlas records both the reading and the cancellations. Nothing here is a prediction and nothing here concerns any individual.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Originates in Language
The term is Sanskrit, and the technical vocabulary of the Panchanga and of jyotisha more widely is Sanskrit throughout, whatever the vernacular in which a given almanac is printed. The name is a Sanskrit term. Regional almanacs render it in the local script and pronunciation, so a reader will meet the same term in several transliterations without any difference of reference.
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