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Rashi vs Lagna: what's the difference?
In short
What is the difference between rashi and lagna?
Your rashi is the sign the Moon occupied at birth. Your lagna, or ascendant, is the sign that was rising on the eastern horizon at the exact moment and place of your birth. Rashi needs only your birth date and roughly your time; lagna changes about every two hours, so it needs an accurate birth time and place.
Three different reference points
Chandra rashi is the Moon's sign — this is what people mean by 'my rashi' and what a daily rashifal reads from. Surya rashi is the Sun's sign, which is what Western astrology calls your star sign. Lagna is the rising sign, and it is the foundation of a full birth chart.
All three are used, for different purposes. Daily and weekly predictions are read from the Moon because the Moon moves fast enough for a daily reading to mean anything. A birth chart is read from the lagna, because the houses — career, marriage, health, wealth — are counted from it.
Why lagna needs an accurate birth time
The whole zodiac rises over the horizon once every 24 hours, so a new rashi becomes the ascendant roughly every two hours. An error of an hour in a recorded birth time can therefore change the lagna, and with it every house placement in the chart.
This is why practitioners ask for a time to the minute and a birthplace, and why they are cautious about charts where the time is remembered rather than recorded. The Moon moves about 13 degrees a day, so a rashi is far more forgiving: an hour's error almost never changes it.