House groups
Kendra, trikona, dusthana: house groups
Kendra, trikona, dusthana and upachaya are four overlapping lists of houses. See which houses each holds, and why one house can be in two groups.
01 · Four lists over twelve houses
The groups overlap, so one house can belong to two of them.
Traditional rules name houses by group rather than one by one. The four common groups are not a partition of the twelve: the first house is in two, and so are the sixth and tenth, while the second is in none.
Groups by position
The twelve houses are counted from the rising sign, and traditional rules often refer to them in groups rather than one at a time. The four most used, as the site’s houses guide lists them:
| Group | Houses | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Kendra, the angles | 1, 4, 7, 10 | the rising sign and every third sign after it |
| Trikona, the trines | 1, 5, 9 | the rising sign and the signs 120° either side of it |
| Dusthana | 6, 8, 12 | a traditional grouping of difficult houses |
| Upachaya | 3, 6, 10, 11 | houses associated with increase or development |
The first two are geometric. The kendras are four houses a quarter of the circle apart, starting from the rising sign; the trikonas are three houses a third of the circle apart, at the corners of a triangle. The other two are traditional groupings with no single geometric shape.
Overlaps
The lists are not a sorting of the twelve houses into four boxes:
- House 1 is both a kendra and a trikona.
- House 6 is both dusthana and upachaya; house 10 both kendra and upachaya.
- House 2 is in none of the four.
That is why rules state which group they mean. A planet in the tenth house is, for one rule, in an angle and, for another, in a house of increase, and both statements are true of the same placement. A group label describes the house’s position; it does not on its own rate the whole chart or the life it describes.
Where the groups appear
Many traditional yoga definitions are written in these terms, for example a benefic in a kendra, or the rulers of a kendra and a trikona together. The twelve houses explainer gives each house’s traditional topics.
Calculate a chart and read its houses on the Kundli page, or explore another topic in Learn.