Ketu, the south node of the Moon, is the descending intersection of the Moon’s orbit with the ecliptic — always exactly 180° from Rāhu and always retrograde in classical Jyotiṣa. Where Rāhu represents the direction of karmic growth and the pull toward new, unfamiliar territory, Ketu represents the accumulated karmic inheritance from past lives — skills, experiences, and attachments so thoroughly ingested that they feel instinctive, almost automatic, requiring no effort or learning. Parāśara describes Ketu as having a smoky, spotted complexion, a body composed of multiple colors (citrā — variegated), and a fiery nature akin to Mars’s, though operating through the invisible and the subtle rather than through direct, visible aggression.
The kārakatva of Ketu is more spiritually oriented than Rāhu’s worldly associations: mokṣa (liberation), spiritual knowledge and occult wisdom, psychic perception, past-life skills, enlightened teachers (particularly non-traditional gurus), solitary practices, isolation, wounds and surgery (shared with Mars), paternal grandmother, flags and emblems, and the quality of dissolution — the gradual releasing of attachment that precedes spiritual liberation. Ketu is considered the mokṣa-kāraka — the significator of liberation — and its house position in the natal chart often indicates where the native finds it easiest to release, renounce, and move toward detachment.
The paradox of Ketu in a natal chart is precisely this: the areas it governs feel deeply familiar, almost effortless — the skills carried from previous lives — yet they are also areas where the native tends toward dissatisfaction and restlessness, because the soul has already thoroughly explored these territories and is ready to move on. A strong Ketu in the second house (speech, accumulated wealth) might produce a person with natural verbal facility who nevertheless feels little satisfaction in communication or financial accumulation. A strong Ketu in the tenth house (career) can produce someone who achieves professional success without a sense of fulfillment, because the soul already knows this territory.
Ketu’s fiery, penetrating quality — often compared to Mars in its effect — gives it a particular capacity for piercing through illusion and conventional appearance to perceive underlying reality. Ketu-dominant charts or strong Ketu placements often indicate psychic perception, interest in occult knowledge and hidden matters, and a certain imperviousness to social convention that can border on otherworldliness. Classical texts note that Ketu in the 12th house (the natural mokṣa house) is one of the most powerful indicators of genuine spiritual inclination and the capacity for deep meditative practice.
The relationship between Rāhu and Ketu encodes one of the most profound insights in classical Jyotiṣa: the karmic axis represents the soul’s developmental trajectory across multiple lives. Ketu shows what has been mastered, what feels familiar, what can be offered as a gift from accumulated experience. Rāhu shows what must be developed, what calls with compulsive urgency, what represents the growing edge of the soul’s evolutionary development. The most significant karmic work of a lifetime often involves navigating this axis: releasing excessive dependence on Ketu’s familiar gifts while developing the courage to engage with Rāhu’s challenging novelty.
In Praśna Jyotiṣa, Ketu’s presence in the chart is examined for questions involving spiritual matters, surgery, hidden enemies, past-life connections, and situations where ordinary material logic seems insufficient to explain what is occurring. Ketu in the Lagna or conjunct the Moon in a Praśna chart often indicates a spiritual dimension to the question that may not be immediately apparent — the classical commentators counsel careful attention to the querent’s interior life and spiritual condition alongside the practical circumstances when Ketu is prominent. The Ketu Mahādaśā spans 7 years in the Viṃśottarī scheme and typically produces a period of intensified spiritual seeking, release of prior attachments, and sometimes sudden separations from what had previously felt most familiar and secure.