शयनादि अवस्था Śayanādi Avasthā

The sayanadi avasthas catch a planet in the middle of doing something. Where the other avasthas describe a planet's age, wakefulness or mood, this set of twelve pictures it as a person engaged in an activity: lying down, sitting, watching with a hand over the eye, shining, walking, returning home, seated in an assembly, arriving, eating, longing to dance, bright with curiosity, or asleep. The image is the meaning. A planet found eating is absorbed in consuming its own significations; one seated in the assembly acts publicly and with authority; one lying down has set its work aside, while the shining planet is at its most radiant and visible. The states are not simply good or bad — a sleeping Saturn may be a mercy, a dancing Venus a delight — but each colours how the planet's promises reach you: directly or obliquely, in public or in private, with appetite or with fatigue. Because the state is computed from fine details of the birth moment, two charts that look alike can carry planets in very different postures, which is part of what makes one chart's Jupiter generous in action and another's generous only in intention. Read the sayanadi state as stage direction for the actor the rest of the chart has already cast.