Clock Arudam

Someone asks a question that can only be answered yes or no. Will the job come through? Will they call back? You look at the clock at that moment. The two hands give you two positions, you count from one to the other, and the number is the answer.

In Tamil this is Kadigara Arudam. Kadigaram is a clock, and arudam means the thing seated in the mind, the matter the person is really asking about. It belongs to a family of question-answering methods called prasannam, which also reads cowrie shells and betel leaves. The clock is the simplest of them, which is why it has spread.

What it will not do: it gives yes, no, or yes-with-difficulty. No dates, no amounts, no reasons. Anyone telling you the clock can do more than this has left the method behind.

The one idea you need first

A clock face has twelve divisions. The zodiac also has twelve divisions, called signs, or rasi in Tamil. This method lays one over the other. The wedge from 12 to 1 becomes the first sign, 1 to 2 the second, and so on around the dial.

That is the whole trick. You are not calculating planets. You are reading a clock as though it were a zodiac wheel. You do not need to know any astrology to begin.

Step one. Find the Udayam, from the hour

Udayam means the rising point. It stands for the person asking, and it is where your count begins. Look at the short hand, the one showing the hour. Whichever wedge it stands in is the Udayam. At twenty past five it sits between 5 and 6, so the Udayam is Kanni, sign six. On a digital display the hour figure tells you the same thing: 5:20 means you are past five and not yet six.

Step two. Find the Arudam, from the minutes

Arudam stands for the matter being asked about, and it is where your count ends. Read the long hand against the same wheel. It crosses the whole dial in an hour, so it passes through all twelve signs every hour, one sign every five minutes.

Hands get confused, hours and minutes do not. Some popular accounts state this rule with the two hands swapped. If you ever doubt it, remember it this way instead: the hour makes the Udayam, the minutes make the Arudam.

Step three. Count from Udayam to Arudam

Start at the Udayam wedge and count forward, clockwise, until you reach the Arudam wedge. Count the starting wedge as one. This inclusive counting is standard throughout Indian astrology, and it is the single place beginners slip. If the Arudam sits behind the Udayam, keep going past twelve and round again. The count is always between 1 and 12.

The shortcut: Arudam number, minus Udayam number, plus one. If that comes out zero or less, add twelve.

Udayam Mesham, Arudam Simmam. Counting inclusively gives five, not four.

Step four. Read the verdict

Held in the head: the odd counts say yes, except that seven says yes only after a struggle. The even counts say no, except that two and twelve, sitting either side of the starting point, say neither, and mean delay.

Two worked examples

Will I pass the exam? Asked at 5:04. The hour is past five, so the Udayam is Kanni, sign six. The minutes are four, inside the first block, so the Arudam is Mesham, sign one. One minus six plus one is minus four; add twelve and the count is eight. He will not pass.

Will I get the job? Asked at 9:47. The hour is past nine, so the Udayam is Magaram, sign ten. The minutes are forty-seven, in the forty-five to fifty block, so the Arudam is Magaram too. Both land in the same sign and the count is one. The job will come.

Work out your own

Take the time the question was actually asked, not the time you sat down to work it out.

Practising properly

Everything above is the complete method, and you can use it today. Learning it properly is a different thing, and it means recording readings before the outcome is known, then checking them later.

The workbook carries what this page deliberately leaves out: eight graded practice questions with worked answers, a printable practice log, a printable dial, the deeper layer that tests whether the question a person asks aloud is the question actually on their mind, four more worked examples, and where to read the classical horary texts free.

The workbook is being prepared and will appear here shortly.

Some rules of good practice

• One question, one reading. Asking again ten minutes later until a kinder answer appears empties the method of meaning.
• Reduce a 24-hour clock to twelve hours before finding the Udayam. 17:04 is 5:04.
• At exactly 5, 10, 15 minutes and so on, take the block being entered. Minute fifteen belongs to Kadagam.
• Both points must come from the same instant. Never mix an hour from one reading with minutes from another.

Where this comes from

Three sources were compared for this page. Sivadasan Ravi’s Siddhargal Aruliya Prasanna Aruda Muraigal is the fullest, and carries the dial map, the seven classical rules and the digital conversion tables. Vijay Sankar’s lesson 759 restates the same rules independently. A third, an online account from 2024, covers only the five-minute division and reverses the two hands.

The sources disagree on one point. Sivadasan Ravi treats counts of two and twelve as delay or possible failure; Vijay Sankar treats twelve as a flat no. This page follows the book, which is older and more detailed, and marks them weak rather than negative.

Clock arudam is a traditional divinatory practice, offered here as education. Nothing on this page is medical, legal or financial advice, and no reading should decide anything affecting anyone’s health or safety. The Now uses these traditions to understand the present moment, not to predict the future.