The twelfth house takes. It is the house of expense, loss, distance and dissolution, and money leaves through it in every chart, in the ordinary form of the bills and in the extraordinary forms of the hospital, the foreign and the thing that always comes up. The native who gives through it deliberately has turned the house from a leak into a door: the money leaves anyway, and it leaves to a temple, a school, a stranger or a cause rather than to nothing. The classical texts read the twelfth as the house of moksha and of daan, giving, and they read giving as the twelfth’s constructive use, the way the sixth’s constructive use is service and the eighth’s is research. This article reads charity in the chart: who gives by nature and to what, which planet’s giving each native has, whether the giving keeps the second house intact or empties it, the compulsive giver whose family pays, the daan prescribed as a remedy read as the texts wrote it, and the periods in which giving fits the money.
It belongs to the complete wealth astrology guide. The twelfth as expense and leak is read in Money Problems in the Chart and Why Can’t I Save Money?; this page is the same house read for its best use. The planet of giving is Jupiter, read for money in Jupiter and Wealth.
Conventions used. Parashari astrology, whole-sign houses, Lahiri ayanamsa, Vimshottari dasha. Giving is read as the twelfth used deliberately, with Jupiter as its natural planet and the ninth as its religious form, and the reading asks whether the giving leaves the second house intact. Where the classical remedy of daan is discussed, it is read as the texts state it and then as practice shows it, and this site’s position is that giving is worthwhile in itself and not as a transaction with a planet. Nothing on this page is financial advice.
In this article
- The twelfth: expense turned into gift
- Jupiter, the giver
- The houses of giving: twelfth, ninth, fifth and eleventh
- The nine planets’ kinds of giving
- The charts that give by nature
- Giving that keeps the second, and giving that empties it
- The giving that is said to repay
- The compulsive giver, whose family pays
- Daan as a remedy: the texts, and the honest reading
- The periods in which giving fits
- A worked chart: a fixed share for thirty years
- Frequently asked questions
The twelfth: expense turned into gift
The twelfth house governs what the native lets go of, and the classical list is long: expense, loss, sleep, the bed, the foreign, the hospital, the ashram, imprisonment, liberation and giving. The list is one thing seen from different sides, the self relaxing its hold, and money in the twelfth is money released. Released to no purpose, it is the leak; released to a purpose the native chose, it is charity, and the chart reads the difference by the twelfth lord’s condition and the planets in the twelfth. A dignified twelfth lord, in its own sign or exalted, or in the twelfth itself, gives the native whose outflow is purposeful, who spends on what is worth it and gives without being poorer for it, the Vimala formation read in the twelfth lord in the twelfth house. Benefics in the twelfth, Jupiter above all, give the giver; malefics in the twelfth give the expense that is suffered rather than chosen, and the reading of such a chart is that the giving, when the native learns it, is the way the twelfth stops taking. The house is the same for the miser and the philanthropist; the difference is whether the native or the house decides where the money goes.
Jupiter, the giver
Jupiter is the natural planet of giving, as it is of increase, because in Jupiter’s view the two are one thing: what is given is not lost but sown, and the giver is the native who believes that. A strong Jupiter gives generosity that is felt as pleasure and does not strain the second; Jupiter in the twelfth is the classical placement of the giver, read in Jupiter in the twelfth house, money spent on the temple, the teacher, the pilgrimage and the poor, and the native who is never rich and never in want. Jupiter as twelfth lord, for Aries and Capricorn, gives the native whose expense is giving by nature; Jupiter aspecting the twelfth, from the fourth, sixth or eighth, gives the giving that is protected, so that it does not become the leak. Jupiter’s giving has a shadow, the optimism that gives beyond means and the generosity that is asked for rather than planned, and a Jupiter afflicted by Rahu, the Guru Chandal combination, gives the giver who cannot refuse and the gift that goes to the wrong hands; but the shadow is the exception, and in most charts a strong Jupiter is the reason the native gives at all.
The houses of giving: twelfth, ninth, fifth and eleventh
Four houses carry giving, each of a different kind. The twelfth is giving as release, the anonymous gift, the alms, the money given to be gone. The ninth is giving as dharma, the temple, the teacher, the pilgrimage, the endowment, the gift that is also faith, and the ninth lord connected to the twelfth is the classical religious giver, read in the ninth lord in the twelfth and the twelfth lord in the ninth. The fifth is giving to the child and the cause, the school fees paid for a child not one’s own, the scholarship, the creative work supported, the giving that has a face. And the eleventh is giving as network, the philanthropy that is also standing, the donor whose name is on the building, the gift given among friends; the eleventh lord in the twelfth gives gains dispersed into giving, and the twelfth lord in the eleventh the giving that returns as network. A native’s giving is usually one of the four, and the reading names it, because the native who is told to give to a temple when their chart gives to children finds the giving joyless, and the giving that fits the chart is the one that is kept up.
The nine planets’ kinds of giving
| Planet in or ruling the 12th | Gives to, and how | The giving’s shadow |
|---|---|---|
| Sun | Publicly, to institutions, with the name attached; endowments and honours | Giving for standing rather than for the gift |
| Moon | To the mother, the home, the hungry; feeding, shelter, the emotional gift | Giving that follows the mood and the crisis of the month |
| Mars | To the fight, the cause, the soldier, the land; decisive and forceful | Giving in anger or in haste, and regretting it |
| Mercury | To education, books, the young, the clever; small and often | Giving scattered into many causes, none of them followed |
| Jupiter | To the temple, the teacher, the poor, the pilgrimage; generously and gladly | Giving beyond means; the generosity that is asked for |
| Venus | To beauty, the arts, the comfort of others, the marriage of the poor | Giving for pleasure and appearance |
| Saturn | To the old, the labourer, the disabled, the institution; slowly, through service | Giving from duty without warmth, or not at all from fear |
| Rahu | To the foreign, the new cause, at scale; the sudden large gift | Giving for show, or to the arrangement that was not what it seemed |
| Ketu | Anonymously, without tracking, to the ashram and the renunciate | Giving that empties the second without noticing |
The planet that rules the twelfth for the ascendant sets the native’s default kind, and the planets in the twelfth add theirs; the placements most often behind a giver are read in Ketu in the twelfth, Saturn in the twelfth, the Moon in the twelfth and the Sun in the twelfth.
The charts that give by nature
Some charts give without being taught. The twelfth lord dignified in the twelfth, the Vimala formation, gives purposeful release. Jupiter in the twelfth, or ruling it in dignity, gives the natural giver. The ninth lord connected to the twelfth gives the religious giver, and the ninth and twelfth lords together in the ninth the temple-builder. Ketu in the twelfth gives the anonymous giver, the native who gives and does not mention it, read in the Ketu page linked above. The Moon in the twelfth gives the feeder, the native whose giving is food and shelter. And Saturn in the twelfth, dignified, gives the servant, the native whose giving is time and labour to the old and the poor, which the texts count as daan with the money. A chart with two of these gives as a matter of course and its native usually does not think of it as charity; the reading’s use for such a chart is to say which kind of giving the twelfth prefers, and to check the second house, since the natural giver is the one most likely to give past what the second can spare.
Giving that keeps the second, and giving that empties it
The test of a chart’s giving is the second house after it. Giving that keeps the second is giving from the eleventh’s surplus, the fixed share of gains, decided in advance and given in the twelfth lord’s or Jupiter’s sub-periods, with the second lord strong enough to hold what remains; the classical proportion of a tenth is the one most givers arrive at whether or not they know the texts, and the chart of the native who gives a tenth and is never short is the chart of a dignified twelfth lord and a strong second. Giving that empties the second is giving from the reserve rather than the surplus, in response to the request rather than the plan, and it is the chart of the twelfth lord on the second, the leak treated in the money-problems article, in its charitable form: the native whose generosity is the reason the family has no savings, and whose children resent the temple. The reading names which of the two a native’s giving is, and the correction for the second is not to stop giving, which the twelfth will not allow in any case, but to move the giving from the reserve to the surplus and from the request to the plan, so that the twelfth gets its share and the second keeps its own. The bindu comparison of the second against the twelfth, which says how much room a chart has to give, is in Ashtakavarga for Wealth.
The giving that is said to repay
The texts say that daan returns to the giver, in this life as fortune and in the next as merit, and the chart shows, in its own terms, something real behind the saying. The twelfth is the second house counted from the eleventh, the expense of the gains, and it is also the twelfth from the lagna, the house of release; a native who releases deliberately through the twelfth is not surprised by the twelfth, and the money that would have left through the hospital, the dispute or the thing that came up has already left, on the native’s terms, to a purpose. That is the mechanism the practitioner sees: the giver’s twelfth is spent before it can take, and the giver’s second is left alone because the twelfth is satisfied. What the chart does not show is a ledger, a return proportional to the gift, and a reading that promises one has turned giving into a purchase, which is neither what the texts mean nor what the chart shows. The honest sentence is that giving keeps the twelfth from taking, which is repayment enough, and that fortune, the ninth, arrives on its own timetable to givers and non-givers alike, on the ninth lord’s periods and not on the temple’s receipt. The larger question of grace and what the chart cannot account for is treated in the divine intervention article, and this page leaves it there.
The compulsive giver, whose family pays
Some charts give past the point of virtue, and the reading owes the family the sentence. Jupiter with Rahu in or ruling the twelfth gives the giver who cannot refuse and gives to whoever asks last; the twelfth lord on the second with Jupiter’s aspect gives the generosity that is the household’s leak; the Moon in the twelfth afflicted gives the giving that follows the crisis, the relative rescued every year; Ketu on the second with Jupiter in the twelfth gives the native who does not notice that the reserve is gone. The family of such a native experiences the giving as a kind of theft, and the reading has to hold both truths: the twelfth is doing what it does, and the second and the fourth, the savings and the home, have their own claim, which the twelfth is not entitled to override. The correction is the plan and the proportion, the share of the surplus fixed in advance and given in the periods that fit, with the reserve held by a planet other than the giver, in practice by a family member or an arrangement the giver cannot reach in the moment. A native who gives compulsively and is told so, with the numbers, usually agrees, because the twelfth’s release is not the same as the desire to leave one’s children nothing, and most givers, shown the difference, choose the plan.
Daan as a remedy: the texts, and the honest reading
The classical remedial literature prescribes daan for each planet, the gift of a substance and a colour associated with it to a person the planet signifies, on the planet’s day: grain and cloth for Saturn to the labourer, gold and yellow for Jupiter to the teacher, rice and white for the Moon to the mother or the widow, and so on through the nine. The prescriptions are real and old, and this site’s position on them is the same as its position on every remedy: they support the native’s effort and never replace it, and a reading that prescribes a gift as a transaction with a planet, a sum paid for a period to improve, has misread both the texts and the planet. What the practitioner sees is more modest and more interesting. The daan for a planet is a gift of that planet’s kind to that planet’s people, and a native who gives Saturn’s gift to Saturn’s people has spent time with the old and the poor, which is the disposition an afflicted Saturn most needs; the remedy works, when it works, by changing the giver, not the planet. The full discussion of why remedies do and do not work, with the site’s reasoning, is in why remedies did not work; here it is enough to say that the giving prescribed for a planet is good giving, that its benefit is the giving itself, and that a native who gives only to be rid of a dasha has given the twelfth a purpose anyway, which is more than the leak had.
The periods in which giving fits
Giving fits the money in the twelfth lord’s sub-periods, when the outflow is running in any case and can be directed; in Jupiter’s, when generosity is natural; in Ketu’s, when release is the period’s whole business and the native who gives in Ketu’s sub-period loses less to Ketu’s write-offs; and in the ninth lord’s, when the religious form fits. Jupiter’s transit over the twelfth, the year of enlarged expense, is the year in which the enlargement can be chosen, and Jupiter over the ninth is the pilgrimage year. Giving fits least in the second lord’s sub-periods, which are for accumulation, and in Saturn’s transit over the second, when the squeeze needs the reserve; a giver who gives from the reserve in those seasons has given the twelfth what the second needed. The reading of a giver’s periods is therefore the same calendar as the saving reading turned round: the seasons in which the twelfth is running are the ones in which to give on purpose, and the seasons in which the second is running are the ones in which to let the twelfth wait. The general period reading for money is in Which Mahadasha Brings Money?.
A worked chart: a fixed share for thirty years
A Sagittarius lagna chart, particulars altered. Mars, lord of the fifth and twelfth, sits in Scorpio, its own sign, in the twelfth: the Vimala formation, the twelfth lord dignified in its own house, and the fifth lordship attached, giving to the child and the cause. Jupiter, the lagna lord, sits in Pisces, its own sign, in the fourth, aspecting the eighth, tenth and twelfth from there: the giver’s planet in dignity, protecting the twelfth. The Sun, lord of the ninth, sits in Leo, its own sign, in the ninth, with Mercury, lord of the seventh and tenth: dharma at home in its own house. Saturn, lord of the second and third, sits in Capricorn, its own sign, in the second: the reserve held by the slow accumulator, who does not spend what has not been earned twice. Venus, lord of the sixth and eleventh, is debilitated in Virgo in the tenth. The Moon, lord of the eighth, is in Taurus in the sixth. Rahu is in Gemini in the seventh, Ketu in Sagittarius in the lagna.
Read the giving. The twelfth lord in its own house with the fifth’s lordship: purposeful release, to children and causes, Mars’s kind, decisive and to the fight. Jupiter’s aspect on the twelfth from its own sign: the giving protected, not the leak. The ninth lord own in the ninth: the religious form available. Saturn own in the second: the reserve kept whatever the twelfth does, the second house that the giving cannot empty. Ketu in the lagna: the native who does not mention what he gives. The bindus, from his chart: second thirty-two, eleventh thirty, twelfth twenty-seven, so that the twelfth has room and the second has more.
He runs a trading firm and has given a fixed share of its profits since his twenty-seventh year, to a school for the children of the men who load his lorries, which is the fifth lord’s twelfth, children and the fight, exactly. The share was set in Mars’s major period, the twelfth lord’s, when the outflow was running in any case and the reading he was given at twenty-six said to direct it: a tenth, decided in advance, from the surplus and never from the reserve, given in the twelfth lord’s own years. Rahu’s period, from his thirty-fourth, was the firm’s scale and the giving’s, Rahu-Jupiter the year the school got its building, the lagna lord’s protected giving at Rahu’s scale, and Rahu-Saturn the year the reserve was tested by a bad season and held, Saturn in its own house in the second doing what it does. Jupiter’s period, from his fifty-second, is running now, the giver’s own, and the giving has become the family’s habit rather than his, the children giving from their own second houses. He has never been the wealthiest man in his trade. He has never been short, his second house has never been touched by the twelfth, and the school has been there for thirty years; and the reading of his chart at twenty-six had said all three things, because the twelfth lord was in its own house, the second was Saturn’s, and the giving, once it was planned, was the twelfth done well.
Frequently asked questions
Which house is for charity in astrology?
The twelfth, the house of release and daan, read as expense turned into gift when the native gives through it deliberately; the ninth adds giving as dharma, the temple, the teacher and the pilgrimage, the fifth giving to children and causes, and the eleventh giving as network and standing. A native’s giving is usually one of the four kinds, and the giving that fits the chart is the one that is kept up.
Which planet is for charity?
Jupiter, the natural planet of giving and of increase, which in Jupiter’s view are one thing; a strong Jupiter gives generosity felt as pleasure, and Jupiter in the twelfth is the classical placement of the giver. Each planet ruling or occupying the twelfth gives its own kind: the Sun publicly, the Moon as food and shelter, Saturn through service to the old and the poor, Venus to beauty and the arts, Mercury to education, Ketu anonymously, Rahu at scale to the new cause.
Does giving to charity bring good luck?
The chart shows a real mechanism and not a ledger. The twelfth is the expense of the gains and the house of release, and the native who releases deliberately through it is not surprised by it: the money that would have left through the hospital or the dispute has already left, on the native’s terms, to a purpose, and the second house is left alone. That is the repayment. Fortune, the ninth, arrives on the ninth lord’s periods to givers and non-givers alike, and a reading that promises a return proportional to a gift has turned giving into a purchase.
What does the 12th lord in the 12th house mean for giving?
It is the Vimala formation, the twelfth lord dignified in its own house, and it gives purposeful release: the native who spends on what is worth it, gives without being poorer for it, and whose outflow is chosen rather than suffered. With a strong second lord it is the chart of the giver who is never short, and the planet that rules the twelfth for the ascendant says what kind of giving comes naturally, Mars’s to the cause and the fight, Jupiter’s to the temple and the poor.
Can charity be a remedy for a bad dasha?
The classical texts prescribe daan for each planet, a gift of its substance and colour to its people on its day, and the prescriptions are real. Their benefit is the giving itself and the change in the giver, since Saturn’s gift to Saturn’s people is time spent with the old and the poor, which is the disposition an afflicted Saturn needs; they support the native’s effort and do not replace it, and a reading that sells a gift as a transaction with a planet has misread both. A native who gives only to be rid of a dasha has still given the twelfth a purpose.
How much should I give according to the chart?
From the surplus and never from the reserve: the fixed share of gains decided in advance, given in the twelfth lord’s or Jupiter’s sub-periods, with the second lord strong enough to hold what remains. The classical proportion of a tenth is the one most givers arrive at, and the bindu comparison of the second against the twelfth says how much room a chart has. The chart does not name a figure; it names which of the two kinds of giving, the kind that keeps the second and the kind that empties it, a native’s giving is.
What does it mean if someone gives too much?
Jupiter with Rahu in or ruling the twelfth gives the giver who cannot refuse; the twelfth lord on the second with Jupiter’s aspect gives generosity that is the household’s leak; an afflicted Moon in the twelfth gives the giving that follows the crisis; Ketu on the second with Jupiter in the twelfth gives the native who does not notice the reserve is gone. The family experiences it as theft, and the reading holds both truths: the twelfth is doing its work, and the savings and the home have a claim it is not entitled to override. The correction is the plan and the proportion.
Is your giving the twelfth done well, or the twelfth emptying the second?
A one-to-one consultation reads your twelfth lord and the planets in the twelfth for the kind of giving your chart prefers, tests your second house for what it can spare, and marks the sub-periods in which giving fits the money and the ones in which the reserve comes first.