Rāja Yoga · kendra and trikoṇa lords joined

A kendra is an angular house, the first, fourth, seventh, or tenth, and the tradition reads the kendras as the visible structures of a life. A trikoṇa is a trine, the first, fifth, or ninth, read as its fortune and merit. When the lord of a kendra joins the lord of a trikoṇa, by conjunction, by mutual aspect, or by exchange of signs, jyotiṣa marks a Rāja yoga, a combination classically held to raise a person in station.

It is a potential, not a promise. The combination is read to deliver only when both lords are themselves strong, unafflicted, and set off by a daśā that gives them their season. A Rāja yoga formed by two weak or damaged planets is treated as a door that stays shut. The cleaner the link between the lords and the better their placement, the more the tradition allows the potential to show.

A Rāja yoga names a potential for rise, not a throne already granted.

This is the foundational royal combination, and many of the named yogas are special cases of it. Dharma-Karmādhipati, the ninth and tenth lords joined, is one such case, since the ninth is a trine and the tenth an angle. So the reader is looking less at the label than at whether the two lords are in a condition to deliver.