Rāśi svarūpa · the form of the signs
द्वादश राशि
The twelve rāśis — temperament, structure and the ground each graha stands on
A rāśi is not an actor. It is terrain — the conditions under which a graha has to work, and the limbs of the Kālapuruṣa laid out in order. Read the bright and dark columns as the same terrain farmed well or farmed badly. What decides which is the lord's own condition, the occupants, and whether the sign carries a kendra, a trikoṇa, or a duḥsthāna in the chart at hand.
Tattva
All
Agni
Pṛthvī
Vāyu
Jala
Svabhāva
All
Chara
Sthira
Dvisvabhāva
At a glance
The twelve, in order
Reading the degree strip. Each strip is the sign's own 30°, divided into the nakṣatras that fall in it, with pāda ticks at every 3°20′. Filled dots above the band are exaltation points; hollow dots below are debilitation points. The coloured underline is the moolatrikoṇa span of the sign's lord where one falls here. Six signs carry no dignity point at all — Mithuna, Siṃha, Dhanu, Kumbha among them — which is itself worth seeing.
On the derived attributes. Lordship, tattva, svabhāva, varṇa, liṅga, direction, rising mode, body class and Kālapuruṣa limb follow Bṛhat Parāśara Horā Śāstra ch. 4 and Phaladīpikā ch. 1. Guṇa is given by svabhāva on the standard correspondence — chara/rajas, sthira/tamas, dvisvabhāva/sattva — which is a widely used scheme rather than a Parāśarī statement. Doṣa is derived from the sign's lord, carried over from the graha volume; it is a working convention, not scripture, and Āyurvedic triplicity schemes will give you different answers.
On the psychology. Traits are interpretive renderings of classical rūpa and karakatva into modern language. Sign temperament is the weakest of the standard signals — lordship condition, bhāva and daśā all outrank it — so use these as vocabulary for describing a placement, not as a character verdict.
