All seven planets caught between Rahu and Ketu. It is rarer than the internet suggests, the direction changes what it means, and one planet outside the axis breaks it entirely. This checks all three.
Rahu and Ketu are not planets. They are the two points where the Moon’s path crosses the Sun’s — the places eclipses happen — and they are always exactly opposite one another. That means they draw a line across your chart and divide it into two halves.
Kaal Sarp dosha is what happens when every one of the seven classical planets falls inside one of those halves. Nothing sits on the far side to balance it. The image the tradition uses is a serpent with the whole chart in its mouth: Rahu the head, Ketu the tail.
Three things decide whether it really forms, and most calculators check only the first. All seven planets must be enclosed — one outside and it does not form, which is about a quarter of all charts. A planet sitting within a degree of either node holds the mouth open and breaks it too. And the direction matters: planets running from Ketu towards Rahu are the reverse arrangement, which many texts treat as benign and some call Kaal Amrit Yoga rather than a dosha at all.
Across four thousand computed charts, the full classical formation turned up in about three in a hundred. It is one of the few doshas that is genuinely uncommon — which is exactly why the fear around it sells so well, and why this page gives you the geometry instead of a warning.
Kaal Sarp dosha forms when all seven classical planets — Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn — fall inside the half of the zodiac between Rahu and Ketu. The two lunar nodes always sit exactly 180 degrees apart, so they cut the chart in half; when every planet is caught on one side, the chart is described as swallowed by the serpent.
Genuinely uncommon, which is unusual among the doshas people worry about. Measured across four thousand computed charts, the full classical formation appears in about three in a hundred, and the reverse arrangement in about four more. Roughly two thirds of charts have planets on both sides of the axis and no formation at all.
No. The rule requires all seven, so a single planet outside breaks the enclosure — and that is a common chart, about a quarter of all of them. The tradition treats what remains as a partial influence over the areas that one planet governs, not as the dosha. Calculators that round this up to a full dosha are overcounting by a wide margin.
The named forms — Anant, Kulik, Vasuki, Shankhpal, Padma, Mahapadma, Takshak, Karkotak, Shankhachud, Ghatak, Vishdhar and Sheshnag — are decided by which house Rahu occupies counted from your rising sign. Each is associated with a different area of life: Takshak with marriage, Ghatak with career, Padma with children and learning. Naming the form needs a birth time, because the rising sign changes every couple of hours.
No, and this is the distinction most online calculators miss entirely. If the planets run from Ketu round to Rahu rather than from Rahu to Ketu, that is the reverse arrangement — many texts treat it as the benign form and some call it Kaal Amrit Yoga. Reporting it as the full dosha is simply an error, and it is the commonest one on this subject.
That is your decision and your tradition’s, not a calculator’s. What we will not do is tell you your life is cursed until you book a specific ritual at a specific temple — that framing sells pujas, and it is not what the classical texts say. Kaal Sarp is one feature of a chart that has many, and its weight depends on where the nodes sit, what aspects them and which dasha you are running.