Module 1 · The Chart's Language
Week 2 — The Frame: Signs, Lagna, Divisions, and Sight
Week 1 gave you the actors. This week gives you the stage, the seating plan, and the rule for who can see whom. Chapters 4 to 9 cover the twelve signs, how a chart is actually computed, the alternative starting points, the divisional charts, the house vocabulary you will use for the rest of your life, and both of Parashara's aspect systems.
What you should be able to do by the end
Open any chart and describe completely what is in front of you - signs, lagna, houses by classification, planetary positions, and every aspect falling on every house - without interpreting a single thing.
By the end of this week you can read a chart. Not judge it - read it. Name every element and trace every sight-line. That is a genuinely satisfying place to stand, and it is the whole of Module 1.
Six chapters sounds like a lot after last week. It is lighter than it looks. Chapter 5, on computing planetary positions by hand from an almanac, is read once for what it teaches about what a chart depends on - birth time, ayanamsha, latitude - and then handed to software, where it has belonged for a century. Nisheka Lagna, Varnada Dasha and Vimshopaka Bala are all read for orientation rather than mastery.
What you must actually own from this week is smaller and more important: the twelve signs, the house classifications from Chapter 8, both aspect systems from Chapter 9, and enough of Chapter 7 to build a Navamsha and a Dashamsha by hand at least once.