The Vāstu-Puruṣa-Maṇḍala and the 16 zones
Vāstu Śāstra rests on the Vāstu-Puruṣa-Maṇḍala — the cosmic being who lies face-down across any plot, head to the north-east (water, light, openness) and feet to the south-west (earth, weight, stability), with fire in the south-east, movement in the north-west, and the void Brahmasthān at the centre. Each of the eight primary and eight intermediate directions carries an element, a presiding devatā and a ruling planet. This is the classical layer, and it is exact in the app.
Over this, Soul Yatri Jyotish adds the modern applied "Power of 16" life-area model, where each of the 16 winds acts as a switch for one area of life — the north for career and money, the north-east for clarity and spirituality, the south-east for cash flow and energy, the south-west for relationships and stability, and so on. The app is honest about provenance: the element, devatā and planet columns are classical śāstra, while the 16 life-area labels are tagged as modern applied Vāstu, so you always know which tradition a claim comes from.
- ◆North-east (Īśāna, Water) — the head of the Puruṣa: clarity, spirituality, the gravest zone to defile.
- ◆South-east (Āgneya, Fire) — the kitchen/fire zone; water here is a defect.
- ◆South-west (Nairṛtya, Earth) — the feet: heaviest, most closed; openings here destabilise the home.
- ◆North-west (Vāyavya, Air) — movement and transience: guests, storage, vehicles.
- ◆Centre (Brahmasthān, Space) — must stay open and void; any load here is a top-tier defect.
Automatic doṣa detection and the severity scale
The heart of the engine is automatic doṣa (defect) detection. You tell the app where the rooms and features of a property sit — kitchen, toilet, main entrance, staircase, master bedroom, water tank, and so on — and it checks each against a transcribed classical ruleset. When a placement is outside its ideal zone (or inside a forbidden one), it fires a doṣa, names it, explains the classical reason, and rates its severity.
Severity is graded on a five-level ordinal scale, each level carrying a numeric weight that rolls up into a whole-property score out of 100. A toilet in the sacred north-east is a Mahā-doṣa (critical); a kitchen in the wrong quarter might be a Doṣa (severe); a minor misalignment is a caution. This lets you triage: fix the criticals first, and see your score improve as you resolve them.
- ◆Critical (Mahā-doṣa) — the gravest defects, e.g. a toilet in the north-east head zone.
- ◆Severe (Doṣa) — major misplacements like fire or weight in the wrong quarter.
- ◆Moderate (minor doṣa) and Mild (caution) — smaller imbalances to address over time.
- ◆Compliant — a placement in its ideal zone earns a positive credit toward the score.
Seven property types, seven rulesets
A home and a factory are not judged by the same rules — a cash counter, a generator, a raw-material store and a child's bedroom each have their own ideal directions. The engine ships seven full rulesets and switches context cleanly between them, running the same doṣa-detection machinery against the ruleset appropriate to the building.
Pick the property type before you place rooms, and the ideal/forbidden zones, the room vocabulary and the doṣa rules all change to match. The residence ruleset is the base; the other six are transcribed from the same classical frame applied to commercial and agricultural contexts.
- ◆Home and Apartment — residential rulesets (the apartment set adapts for shared structures).
- ◆Office and Shop — owner-seat, cash-counter, storage and entrance rules for commerce.
- ◆Factory — production flow, machinery, generator and raw-material placement.
- ◆Land and Farm — plot shape, slope, water source and structure placement.
The astro-link: your chart meets your home
This is what makes the module "Astro-Vāstu" rather than plain Vāstu. The engine bridges your kuṇḍalī to the 16 zones: it scores your life areas from your chart, finds which areas are classically weak for you, and maps each one to the Vāstu zone that powers it — flagging exactly which directions of your home you should strengthen because your chart asks for support there.
So instead of a one-size-fits-all checklist, you get a personalised priority list. If your chart shows a strained career significator, the engine highlights the north (career/money) zone and its remedies. If relationships are the weak area, it points you to the south-west. The same Vāstu-Puruṣa directions get read through the unique strengths and weaknesses of your own horoscope.
Āyādi sizing, entrances, and remedies
Beyond placement, the engine handles dimension and entrance with classical precision. The Āyādi ṣaḍvarga calculator runs the six classical modular tests (Āya, Vyaya, Aṃśa, Ṛkṣa, Yoni, Vāra-Tithi) that decide whether a building's measured size is auspicious and compatible with the owner's janma-nakṣatra — useful when planning or buying. The entrance analyser projects the 45-devatā maṇḍala onto 32 perimeter padas (each 11.25°), so a main-door bearing can be scored at fine resolution as auspicious or a marma-defect.
For every doṣa it detects, the engine proposes a remedy, and it works with the 81-pada (9×9 Paramaśāyika) and 64-pada (8×8 Manduka) grids for marma-sensitive analysis. Remedies range from re-purposing a room to colour, element and symbol corrections — the practical "what to do" that turns a diagnosis into an action plan.
- ◆Āyādi ṣaḍvarga — six classical tests for an auspicious, owner-compatible building size.
- ◆32 entrance padas — score a main-door bearing at 11.25° resolution against the devatā maṇḍala.
- ◆81- and 64-pada grids — marma-aware analysis on the Paramaśāyika and Manduka maṇḍalas.
- ◆Per-doṣa remedies — room re-purposing plus colour, element and symbol corrections.
Scanning a real floor plan, offline
You do not have to place every room by hand. The floor-plan scanner lets you load an image of an actual plan, and the engine reads it on-device — there is no upload, no cloud, no privacy trade-off. The heavy computer-vision and text-recognition components (OpenCV and OCR) run as offline WebAssembly and only load when you open the floor-plan tab, so the rest of the workspace stays fast.
Once the plan is read, the engine overlays the Vāstu-Puruṣa-Maṇḍala, identifies the directional zones, detects doṣas against your chosen property ruleset, and (when a chart is open) folds in the personalised astro-link. There is also a 3D viewer and zone heatmap for visual analysis. The result is a full, professional Astro-Vāstu assessment of a genuine property, produced entirely on your own machine.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between classical Vāstu and the 16-zone life-area model?
- Classical Vāstu assigns each direction an element, a presiding deity and a ruling planet — the foundation of the Vāstu-Puruṣa-Maṇḍala. The 16 life-area labels (career, relationships, health and so on) are a modern applied layer that maps each direction to an area of life. Soul Yatri Jyotish keeps the two distinct and tags the modern layer honestly, so you always know which tradition a recommendation comes from.
- How does the engine decide a placement is a doṣa?
- Each room or feature has ideal and forbidden directions in the ruleset for your property type. When you place something outside its ideal zone, or inside a forbidden one, the engine fires a doṣa, explains the classical reason, and rates it on a five-level severity scale that rolls up into a property score out of 100 — so you can fix the most serious defects first.
- What makes this "Astro"-Vāstu rather than ordinary Vāstu?
- The astro-link. The engine reads your birth chart, finds which life areas are weak for you, and maps each to the Vāstu zone that governs it — so it tells you which directions of your home to strengthen based on your own horoscope, not a generic checklist. The same directions are interpreted through your unique chart.
- Can I analyse something other than a house?
- Yes. The engine ships seven property rulesets — home, apartment, office, shop, factory, land and farm — and switches the ideal zones, room vocabulary and doṣa rules to match. Choose the property type first and the entire analysis adapts to that context.
- Does the floor-plan scanner send my plan anywhere?
- No. The computer-vision and text-recognition run as offline WebAssembly on your own device, loaded only when you open the floor-plan tab. Your floor plan, like your birth data, never leaves your machine.
