Malefic by nature, but the most ambiguous of the malefics: it gives loss and dissociation, and also liberation.
Reading
Ketu is the second chaya graha. Where Rahu grasps, Ketu lets go, and the tradition reads it as the graha of what has already been mastered, so that its losses are read as detachment and its detachments as freedom. It is a malefic without heat: accident, isolation, the sudden end of a thing, and the same events read as moksha.
Karaka
LiberationMokshaDetachmentPast karmaSpiritualityOccultLossSurgeryWisdomDogsFlagNorth east
Ketu is the south lunar node, the other chaya graha, and the point of what has already been finished. It gives detachment, spiritual aptitude, loss without explanation, and a peculiar blindness in the affairs of the house it occupies: the native does not see what Ketu covers, and does not much want to. Its gem is the cat's eye (lehsunia, chrysoberyl) and its metal iron.
Ketu is the descending lunar node, the tail of the asura Rahu and the second of the shadow planets of Vedic astrology. He is the moksha-karaka, the significator of liberation, detachment, spirituality and past-life karma, invoked for spiritual insight and for relief from the nodes' effects.
Modern Practice
Invoked in Jyotish for the nodal periods and for renunciation; his remedies are sesame, iron and mustard oil.