The Forgotten Past-Life Technique: The 9th Lord in Drekkāṇa
When astrologers today speak about past-life karma, the conversation tends to move almost automatically toward Ketu, the 5th house, the 12th house, or the Shashtiamsha, the D60.
D60 in particular has acquired an almost unquestioned reputation as the chart of previous-life karma.
But hidden inside the Drekkāṇa chapter of Secret of Vargas is a considerably more specific technique.
It does not begin with Ketu.
It does not begin with D60.
It begins with the 9th house.
And after judging the 9th house in the natal chart, it takes the natal 9th lord into the Drekkāṇa, or D3, to investigate the previous birth more closely.
That deserves attention.
Not because we should immediately declare every literal statement about previous incarnations to be empirically proven, but because this is exactly the sort of forgotten Jyotish technique that ought to be preserved, understood correctly, and tested before modern astrology casually replaces it with a much simpler slogan such as:
“D60 = past life.”
The source used for this article is Krishna Kumar's Secret of Vargas. Most importantly, the author explicitly introduces this section by saying that Sage Mantreśvara, in Phaladīpikā, revealed this method of knowing past and future birth. The uploaded text, however, does not provide the original Sanskrit verse number alongside this attribution, so I am presenting this as the technique preserved and attributed to Mantreśvara by this source, rather than claiming that I have independently established the exact textual verse in every recension of Phaladīpikā.
That distinction matters.
Because if we are going to research old techniques, we should be just as careful about our sources as we expect people to be about their charts.
The first surprise: the past birth is judged from the 9th
The method begins very plainly.
Secret of Vargas states that the previous birth is to be delineated through the 9th house, its lord, and planets occupying the 9th house. Their condition is then used to judge the general quality or status attributed to that former existence.
If these factors are benefic and well placed, the text describes the previous birth as prosperous, elevated or fortunate. If they are weak, afflicted or badly placed, it describes a poorer or more difficult previous condition.
Notice what this immediately does.
It makes D1 indispensable.
The technique does not tell us to open a divisional chart and start inventing a former biography from it.
The Rāśi chart establishes the foundation first.
You examine the natal 9th.
You examine its lord.
You examine planets occupying or influencing it.
Only after that does the technique move to Drekkāṇa.
This is consistent with the broader philosophy of Secret of Vargas. The book repeatedly treats the natal chart as the primary document and the divisional chart as a finer or “microscopic” examination of a particular factor. In its own analogy, vargas function rather like diagnostic investigations: the basic chart establishes the condition, while the relevant division allows finer analysis.
So the logic is not:
“D3 is the past-life chart.”
It is more precise:
The 9th house carries the previous-birth indication, and D3 is used to refine the natal 9th lord.
That is a very different technique.
The actual forgotten rule: take the natal 9th lord into D3
The next statement is the heart of the method.
The book says:
The position of the natal 9th lord in the D3 chart reveals the physical and psychic characteristics attributed to the previous birth, according to the decanate involved.
This is where the technique becomes far more interesting than the familiar “Ketu means past life” shorthand.
It is asking us to trace a specific significator across charts.
First identify the 9th lord in D1. Then locate that same planet in Drekkāṇa. Then judge its D3 sign and condition.
This is exactly how varga analysis becomes meaningful: the divisional chart is not read in isolation. A particular lord from the natal chart is carried into the division relevant to the question being investigated.
And Drekkāṇa itself is not being treated here merely as a “siblings chart.” That reduction is another modern habit worth questioning.
In the same D3 chapter, Secret of Vargas uses Drekkāṇa for bodily divisions, character, courage, family background, misfortune, manner of death and other specialised matters before arriving at its section titled “Decanate and Previous Birth.”
The author's treatment of the three decanates is also explicitly characterological. The first 10° division is associated with Nārada, and is described through intelligence, music, travel, nobility, versatility and mediation. The second, associated with Agastya, is characterised through strength, determination, power and overcoming opposition. The third is associated with Durvāsā, with qualities such as severity, intensity, traditionalism, anger, austerity and a strong religious inclination.
Whether every one of those descriptions should automatically be transferred literally into a previous-life narrative is another question. The past-life section itself does not spell out such a simplistic conversion.
But it does show why Drekkāṇa is not being used arbitrarily.
Within this text, the decanate has enough symbolic and character-bearing detail to serve as a finer lens through which the natal 9th lord can be examined.
The relationship with the Lagna lord becomes crucial
The next stage is especially unusual.
The text compares the sign occupied by the natal 9th lord in D3 with the natal Lagna lord.
According to the rule preserved there, if the 9th lord lands in an exaltation sign, own sign, or a sign friendly to the Ascendant lord, the former incarnation is classified as human.
If it occupies a sign neutral to the Lagna lord, the text assigns a quadruped birth. If it occupies an inimical sign and is further afflicted by malefic association/aspect, or is debilitated, the text assigns the category of bird. These are among the most difficult parts of the technique for a modern reader.
They are also precisely the parts we should not quietly rewrite because they make us uncomfortable.
If we are studying a traditional technique, first record the doctrine as it is transmitted. Then investigate it.
There is no value in claiming to research an old system while deleting every statement that does not fit modern assumptions.
At the same time, there is an equally important difference between preserving a textual rule and declaring that rule experimentally established.
A statement such as “this configuration proves you were literally a bird” is obviously much harder to verify than a technique describing marriage timing, profession, childbirth or another documented event in the present incarnation.
So the responsible use of this material is not to turn it into: “Send me your birth chart and I will tell you what animal you were.” That reduces a difficult traditional doctrine into entertainment.
The much more interesting research question is whether the entire architecture: 9th house, 9th lord and the D3 placement of that lord shows meaningful continuity with verifiable past-life material in cases where such material exists independently of astrology.
That is a completely different standard of inquiry.
And then something even stranger happens: the 5th is used for the next birth
The technique does not end with previous incarnation.
Immediately afterwards, Secret of Vargas reverses the direction and assigns the 5th house, 5th lord and planets connected with them to the next birth.
It applies a parallel dignity-based scheme to the 5th lord: friendly, own or exalted relationships produce one classification; neutral relationships another; inimical or debilitated conditions another.
Whatever one thinks of the literal categories, the architecture itself is fascinating.
9th → previous birth.
Present Lagna → present embodiment.
5th → future birth.
The text is therefore not treating reincarnation as a vague cloud of “karma” surrounding the horoscope. It assigns different portions of the horoscope to different directions in the continuity of embodiment. That deserves far more research than simply throwing every reincarnation question into Ketu or D60. And the method goes further.
Trijanma Yoga: when the 5th lord meets the 9th lord
The same section introduces a striking combination.
If the 5th lord and 9th lord join, the source calls the combination Trijanma Yoga, or a “three-birth” combination. Its stated interpretation is that the person is born in the same place or family connected with the previous birth and will again be connected with that place or family in the next birth.
Again, this is a huge claim. But it is also a beautifully defined research hypothesis.
Unlike vague statements such as “you have karmic family ties,” this one gives us an exact combination:
5L + 9L. And it gives us an exact proposed result: continuity of place/family across three births.
That is researchable in principle.
If one could collect credible cases involving children who report detailed previous-life memories that have been independently investigated, Trijanma Yoga could be one of the combinations examined.
Does the conjunction occur disproportionately?
Does it involve the 2nd or 4th house more often when family/place continuity is particularly strong?
Does the D3 placement of the 9th lord add identifiable symbolism?
Does the natal 9th show strength or affliction corresponding with the reported social circumstances of the remembered life?
Those questions are not supplied by the source, they are a research extension of its rules. But that is exactly how an astrological tradition remains alive: preserve the rule first, then test rather than endlessly repeating it.
So why is everyone looking at D60?
This is where the text becomes particularly inconvenient for modern oversimplification. Because Secret of Vargas contains an entire chapter on D60. And its own explanation of D60 is not simply “this is your past-life chart.”
The book describes Shashtiamsha as the finest division used for examining the overall strength and promise of the horoscope. It says D60 is not restricted to one particular aspect of life but concerns the native's happiness and suffering in a general sense. It compares D60 to a very fine diagnostic scan and uses it to assess planetary strength and the operation of planetary periods.
The author records different opinions surrounding D60. Some use it to study difficult results. Others use it to confirm planetary auspiciousness. Still others, the text says, examine upāsanā, japa and religious rites and their impact through D60.
This does not make D60 unimportant. Quite the opposite.
It means we should stop forcing every varga into a one-line social-media definition.
D60 can be profoundly important without needing to monopolise the subject of past birth. And within this particular source, when the author wants to give a defined technique specifically titled “Decanate and Previous Birth,” he places it in the D3 chapter and directs us to the 9th house and 9th lord.
That fact alone is enough to justify reopening the subject.
D3 is not replacing D60
This distinction is important.
The argument here is not: “Forget D60. D3 is the real past-life chart.”
That would simply replace one reduction with another.
The source itself does not tell us to read the whole D3 indiscriminately as the previous incarnation. It tells us to take a specific natal significator: the 9th lord and study its position in D3.
That is subtler.
The correct question is therefore not: D3 or D60, which one wins?
It is: What question is each technique actually answering?
The D60 chapter of this source concerns extremely fine planetary strength, the overall promise of the nativity and, according to some traditions quoted there, religious practice.
The previous-birth technique under discussion asks: What does the natal 9th house indicate about the former birth, and what further physical or psychic information is revealed when its lord is examined in Drekkāṇa?
Those are not necessarily competing questions. They may belong to different layers of the same Jyotish architecture.
How I would actually research this technique
If we want to test it seriously rather than merely repeat it, I would use one fixed protocol across every chart:
Establish the birth time first. Do not use loosely timed charts, because the house lord itself can change with Lagna, and divisional-chart placements demand reliable planetary degrees.
Judge the natal 9th house before opening D3. Record its sign, lord, occupants, associations, aspects, dignity and obvious strength or affliction.
Identify the natal 9th lord and locate that exact planet in D3. Do not substitute the D3 9th lord for the natal 9th lord; that is not the rule preserved in the text.
Record the D3 sign occupied by the natal 9th lord. Compare that sign with the natal Lagna lord according to the friendship/dignity scheme stated in the source.
Record affliction or support to the 9th lord in D3. Do not judge dignity alone if the planet is heavily associated or aspected.
Keep the literal reincarnation category separate from the descriptive data. First record what the technique predicts; only afterwards compare with whatever independently documented past-life material exists.
Study the 5th lord separately for the future-birth side and note any 5L–9L conjunction indicating Trijanma Yoga. Do not merge the past and future rules simply because both deal with rebirth.
That is the only list I would want beside me when testing charts. Everything else should emerge from the data.
The biggest research problem: how do you verify a past life?
This is where astrology has to become more disciplined.
A technique predicting a marriage can be tested against a marriage date. A technique predicting profession can be checked against profession. A technique predicting previous incarnation is different because the event lies outside the normal biographical record of the present person.
Therefore, testing the method on random charts and saying: “This feels right.” proves almost nothing.
The best dataset would consist of cases where detailed previous-life statements were recorded independently preferably before the previous identity was identified and subsequently matched with historical information.
The astrologer should ideally receive only the birth chart, not the remembered-life story. Predictions should be written before comparison. Otherwise confirmation bias becomes almost unavoidable.
For example, if a chart belongs to someone claiming memories of being a musician, it is extremely easy to look at a flexible symbolic system afterward and find “music.” That is not research.
But if the astrologer receives twenty blinded charts and the 9th-house/D3 procedure consistently distinguishes social status, temperament, geography, bodily traits or other independently recorded details better than chance, then something genuinely interesting has happened.
Even failure would be valuable. A rule worth preserving should also be worth testing.
What should “physical and psychic characteristics” mean?
This phrase from the source deserves more attention than it usually receives. The book does not say that the D3 position of the 9th lord simply produces another judgment of good karma versus bad karma.
It says it reveals physical and psychic characteristics connected with the former birth. That opens a far more interesting field of investigation.
Drekkāṇa has strong bodily symbolism elsewhere in the same chapter. The source maps decanates onto bodily regions and gives extensive descriptive material for individual decanates.
Therefore, a serious researcher could record possible correlations involving appearance, bodily injuries, distinctive physical marks, behavioural disposition, occupations suggested by decanate imagery, or characteristic modes of action.
But again, prediction must precede comparison. Otherwise the symbolism becomes infinitely stretchable.
The 9th house here is not merely “luck”
Modern shorthand has done something similar to the 9th house that it has done to the vargas. The 9th becomes: luck, father, religion, long-distance travel. All of those may be valid significations. But classical techniques often reveal much larger structures behind houses.
Here, the 9th is being used as a gateway to what precedes the current incarnation. And that may help explain why dharma and bhāgya are so deeply connected with it.
Bhāgya is not merely “getting lucky.” Within a karmic worldview, the fortune one encounters now is inseparable from causes that precede the visible present.
This last sentence is an interpretive philosophical reading rather than a rule explicitly explained by Secret of Vargas. The source gives us the technique; it does not provide a long metaphysical argument for why the 9th specifically carries previous-birth information.
That gap should remain visible. We should not manufacture a śāstric explanation simply because we want one.
A subtle point: this method judges condition before identity
This may be the most important thing to preserve. The first rule does not begin by telling you whether you were a king, monk, soldier, healer, woman, man, animal or anything else.
It first evaluates the condition of the previous birth through the natal 9th.
Was the 9th strong?
Was its lord well placed?
Was the house occupied by supportive planets?
Was it damaged?
Only after establishing that background does the technique move into D3. That sequencing is astrologically elegant. It forces the reader to build a judgment in layers rather than taking one exotic placement and constructing an entire story around it. That is exactly how we should approach past-life astrology if we use it at all.
Not: “Ketu in Scorpio, you were a witch.”
But: house → lord → condition → divisional refinement → repeated testimony.
Jyotish deserves better than spiritual fan fiction.
What about Ketu?
Nothing in this technique makes Ketu irrelevant. But Ketu is not the starting point of the rule. That matters.
If Ketu influences the natal 9th lord, occupies the 9th, joins the 9th lord in D3, or otherwise becomes part of the testimony, then it can be interpreted according to the system being used.
But inserting Ketu automatically because “Ketu means past lives” would change the technique.
The method preserved here is remarkably specific:
Previous birth → 9H + 9L + planets in/influencing 9H.
Further characteristics → natal 9L in D3.
That should first be tested exactly as transmitted. Only afterward should additional factors be introduced. Otherwise we will never know which technique actually worked.
The real lesson is methodological
The most valuable thing about this forgotten rule may not be whether it eventually proves every literal reincarnation category exactly as written. It is what it teaches us about how Jyotish techniques were constructed.
A bhāva carries the subject. Its lord carries that subject elsewhere. A varga magnifies a particular dimension. The relevant natal lord is followed into that varga. Strength, dignity, association and aspect modify the result. And multiple testimonies are combined before judgment.
This is fundamentally different from the modern habit of assigning a single keyword to a single chart.
Ketu = past life.
D9 = marriage.
D10 = career.
D60 = karma.
Those statements may help a beginner remember broad associations, but they are not the full predictive architecture of Jyotish.
Secret of Vargas itself explicitly says that divisional charts are finer analyses of the natal horoscope rather than substitutes for it. The D3 previous-birth method demonstrates exactly what that means in practice.
Final thought
Perhaps the most interesting question is no longer: “What was I in my past life?” That question is irresistible, but it often turns Jyotish into storytelling.
A better question is: “Did traditional astrologers preserve a reproducible method for tracing continuity from one embodiment into another and can we test that method without changing it first?”
According to the technique preserved in Secret of Vargas, the investigation begins with the 9th house, follows its lord into Drekkāṇa, and uses the 5th house to look in the opposite direction toward what follows.
The same work even preserves a special 5L–9L combination, Trijanma Yoga, tying previous, present and future birth into one astrological structure. That is considerably richer than saying: “Look at your D60.”
And perhaps that is exactly why old texts are still worth reading carefully.
Sometimes the technique everyone is searching for in the most complicated chart is sitting quietly in a chapter they were taught was only about siblings.
The past-life investigation, at least in this method, begins not with an exotic varga but with the 9th lord, and where that lord goes in Drekkāṇa.
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