Moon

Candra is manaḥkāraka — the mind, meaning the receiving and responding part rather than the reasoning part, which belongs to Mercury. It signifies the mother, emotional life, and the general public.

Its benefic status is conditional on its phase: a waxing Moon is benefic and a waning one is not, which is one of the few places the system makes a graha’s nature depend on a measurement rather than a fixed table.

It moves faster than anything else in the chart, and much of Jyotiṣa is organised from it — Vimśottarī daśā begins from the Moon’s nakṣatra, and the whole Candra lagna technique reads the chart again with the Moon as the first house.