Argala · The intervention

Argala means bolt, and the technique reads a bolt thrown onto a point. It belongs to Jaimini method: planets or signs sitting in the second, fourth, and eleventh houses from a reference, a house or a planet, are held to intervene on it and shape what it gives. Where dṛṣṭi is a glance cast outward from a planet, argala works the other way, an influence arriving on a point from certain fixed places and locking on.

The primary argalas come from the second, fourth, and eleventh; the fifth is counted as a secondary, weaker bolt. The nature of the intervening planet colors the result. Classically a benefic there gives a supportive argala, a malefic an obstructive one. So a house read on its own can point one way and, once the bolts around it are counted, be read as delivering another.

A glance is what a planet sees. An argala is what leans on it.

Argala is weighed from whatever point you want to read, the lagna, the ārūḍha, a kāraka, any place whose yield is in question. It is not read alone, because each primary argala has an answer, a virodha argala from a set house that can block it. The intervention and its counter are weighed together before the point is read.