Houses, with the signs set aside
The planets are placed in houses counted from the ascendant, exactly as in a conventional chart. What Lal Kitab changes is how the houses are read: the first house is always treated as Aries, the second as Taurus, and so on round the wheel, whatever sign is actually rising. The sign a planet is really in is set aside, and its house does all the work.
Because every house is counted from the ascendant, the birth time matters here as much as in any other chart: a different rising sign moves every planet to a different house, and with it the whole reading.
Benefic or malefic, asleep or awake
Each planet has its own adverse houses and is counted benefic in the rest: the Sun is malefic in the 6th, 7th and 10th, Mars in the 4th and 8th, Saturn in the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th, and so on. The verdict follows the house alone.
A planet is asleep (soya) when no planet stands in the seventh house from it, and awake when one does. A sleeping planet is held to give little of its result until something wakes it. Both are shown for every planet above.
The nine ancestral debts
Lal Kitab names nine debts (rin), one for each planet: to the forefathers, the self, the mother, a woman of the family, relatives, a sister or daughter, those wronged, the unborn and nature. A debt is formed when a planet's enemies sit in that planet's own house while the planet itself is away; a planet in its own house holds the debt off. Most charts carry one or two of the nine, and each has a remedy the whole family does together in a single day.
Aspects work differently
Classical Jyotish gives each planet its own set of special aspects — Mars to the 4th and 8th, Jupiter to the 5th and 9th, Saturn to the 3rd and 10th. Lal Kitab simplifies this considerably, working mainly with the opposite house, which is one reason its readings can diverge sharply from a Parashari one on the same birth data.
Totka — the practical remedies
The remedies are the reason most people know the tradition. They are deliberately inexpensive and physical: feeding chapatis to dogs or cows, floating coal or coins in flowing water, burying something, giving away a specific item, keeping a vessel of water by the bed. No mantra initiation or ritual specialist is required.
How the remedies are meant to be used
Lal Kitab is prescriptive about method. A remedy is generally performed for a stated duration, often 43 days, and the texts caution against performing several at once, against doing them for someone else without their knowledge, and against continuing after the stated period.
Where it sits alongside classical Jyotish
Lal Kitab is not a replacement for a Parashari reading and does not claim to be. Practitioners commonly read a conventional chart for structure and timing, and turn to Lal Kitab for its remedial suggestions. Where the two disagree on a prediction, that reflects genuinely different methods rather than an error in either.