Chandra Mahadasha: What to Expect in the Moon's 10 Years, and the Remedies

The Chandra Mahadasha (చంద్ర మహాదశ) is the ten-year period of the Moon in the Vimshottari dasha cycle. Of all nine, it is the one felt most inwardly. The Moon rules manas, the mind, and its period is remembered less for events than for the mood in which those years were lived.

The Moon also signifies the mother, the home, water, the public and the emotional body. This guide explains what its ten years are traditionally said to bring, how the sub-periods are divided, and the remedies advised when the Moon in a chart is weak, waning or afflicted.

What the Chandra Mahadasha is

In the Vimshottari dasha system, life is divided into nine planetary periods that always follow the same order and add up to 120 years. The Chandra Mahadasha lasts 10 years. Which period you are born into is decided by your janma nakshatra, the star the Moon occupied at birth, and every chart then moves through the rest in sequence. Our guide to the Vimshottari dasha explains how the cycle is set and read.

• Anyone born in Rohini, Hasta or Shravana — the three nakshatras ruled by Chandra — begins life in this dasha, with only the balance of it remaining at birth.
• Everyone else reaches it in its turn in the cycle, and a life of average length passes through five or six of the nine periods.
• A horoscope prepared at birth normally prints the dasha table, so the dates of your Chandra period are already written in it.

What Chandra brings to the front

A Mahadasha does not change who you are. It decides which part of the chart speaks loudest for those years: the houses Chandra owns and occupies, the people and work it signifies, and the lessons it carries.

• The mind and the moodEmotional life, sleep, intuition, imagination, and how steadily the mind holds through change.
• Mother and homeThe mother's health and closeness, the family house, land, vehicles and the feeling of belonging somewhere.
• Comfort and the bodyRest, food, fluids, and in the tradition the chest, the stomach and the body's water.
• The public and the manyPopularity, dealings with crowds and the public, and work that depends on being liked.

What people notice during the Chandra Mahadasha

The same period is experienced very differently by two people, because the result depends on where Chandra sits in your chart, which houses it owns and whether it is strong, weak or afflicted. The table below sets the two ends of that range side by side; most lives fall between them.

Ten years divide clearly. The opening Chandra and Kuja antardashas are usually the most personal, the long Rahu and Guru sub-periods in the middle carry the events most people remember, and the closing Ketu, Sukra and Surya years set the tone handed on to Mars's seven. A waxing Moon near full at birth is read very differently from a thin waning Moon, and this is the first thing an astrologer checks before reading the period at all.

The nine antardashas inside it

Every Mahadasha is divided into nine antardashas (sub-periods, also called bhukti), one for each graha, beginning with Chandra itself and then following the Vimshottari order. Each one lasts its own share of the 10 years — the share is the antardasha lord's own dasha length out of 120 — so the sub-periods below are exact, and they are where the real turns of a dasha are read.

The Chandra–Shani and Chandra–Rahu antardashas are the ones tradition watches, because Saturn on the Moon is the classical signature of a heavy mind (Vish yoga) and Rahu on the Moon of an unsettled one. They are also the sub-periods that most often coincide with Sade Sati, which is measured from the natal Moon and has its own guide. A Chandra Mahadasha that overlaps Sade Sati is the common reason people describe a decade as emotionally long.

Remedies during the Chandra Mahadasha

Remedies are not needed by everyone in a Chandra period. They are advised when Chandra is weak or afflicted in the chart, when it owns difficult houses, or when a hard antardasha and a hard transit fall together. What tradition prescribes is the same pattern used for any graha: mantra, giving, and shanti where the affliction is heavy.

1. 1.Have the dasha read first

   The dasha table is only half the picture; the rest is the strength of Chandra in your chart and the transits running over it. A consultation with MSAstrology reads all three before any remedy is chosen. If your chart also shows an afflicted Chandra, our guide to Chandra dosha explains the placements.

2. 2.Chandra japam

   Mantra japam for Chandra is the core remedy for its period, performed by purohits with the sankalpam in your name and gotram. On Jataka Remedies you can book 3,000 to 10,000 recitations, and the count is advised from your chart. Book Chandra japam.

3. 3.Daanam through the period

   The traditional daanam for Chandra is rice, milk, white cloth or other white items, offered on a Monday in your name if you choose it with the japam. Many families repeat a small giving on that weekday through the harder antardashas rather than once.

4. 4.Shanti when the period is heavy

   When several grahas are afflicted, or a difficult antardasha meets a difficult transit, a fuller Navagraha Shanti is advised instead of a single japam. Where the Moon is afflicted by birth-star doshas, Janana Dosha Shanti may also be advised.

दधिशङ्खतुषाराभं क्षीरोदार्णवसम्भवम् । नमामि शशिनं सोमं शम्भोर्मुकुटभूषणम् ॥

dadhi-śaṅkha-tuṣārābhaṁ kṣīrodārṇava-sambhavam namāmi śaśinaṁ somaṁ śambhor-mukuṭa-bhūṣaṇam

I bow to the Moon, Soma, white as curd, conch and snow, born from the ocean of milk, the ornament on Shiva's crown. (Navagraha Stotram)

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