One of my favorite things to do with prasna is to find lost or hidden articles. This is something that few people ever think of going to an astrologer for, though in the old days in both India and the west, seeing an astrologer to help find something was a common thing to see an astrologer for. So here is an example:
A few days ago a good friend of ours, Carol Allen, visited. She brought gifts for everyone and my gift was a box of chocolates. We cut up some chocolates, shared them with the kids. We did this in the kitchen. I then told my youngest twin, Kirika, to go and hide the chocolates in my office somewhere so that I would not eat them the next day when she was at school, so that we we could instead share them when the kids were home.
The next day while the kids were at school, Srishti and I got a deep craving for chocolate, so we went into my office and started looking for those chocolates. The date was August 14th, 2013 at 12:25 PM Prescott, Arizona. After a few minutes of futile searching I remembered that I was an astrologer, so I cast a chart for when we started to look for the chocolates. The first thing to determine in regards to a prasna chart about a missing, lost or hidden article is whether the article will be found. After that the astrologer needs to see where the article is, but even if the article location is determined correctly, if the Prasna chart shows that the article will not be found, it will not be found.
In the Prasna for the chocolate search, the 4th lord, which rules the missing article, was Saturn and it was in the Ascendant in Scorpio with the Moon and Rahu. Not good, Saturn is in an enemy sign with an enemy Moon and with Rahu, Rahu makes thing very tricky to find, it is the great hider. The moon also has a hidden side and that side dominates when it is with Rahu. Rahu and Moon also indicate trickery. So I knew my daughter had done a tricky job of hiding the chocolates and with the placement of the 4th lord, I did not think there was going to be any chance of us finding the chocolates. Furthermore, the lagna lord Mars was debilitated in Cancer with Exalted 5th lord Jupiter, which made me think I was going to be at the mercy of my child, Jupiter, who was strong, and not be able to do anything for myself, as Mars the Lagna lord was weak. It was looking like I was going to have to eat raw for lunch again, no chocolates likely.
But still, I wanted to find those chocolates, so I tried to find the location. The 4th lord and the lagna were in a fixed sign, this means the article is where it was last it was seen – which was the kitchen. I had told her to hide in my office, but now I suspected she had hidden it in the kitchen when my back was turned – pretty sneaky of her, totally Rahu/Moon conjunction in the Lagna. The 4th lord was in a water rasi, which is north, and the ruler of the 4th lord, Mars, was also in a water rasi, so it had to be in the north. Well part of my kitchen, the pantry area, is in the dead north of the house, so figured it had to be in the pantry. So Srishti and I ran to the pantry to look for our lunch. We could not find it, so I went back to the prasna and thought, okay, the Lagna is in Vishakha and Vishakha represents cotton fields and so we had to think of the closest thing to a cotton field in our pantry and then we would find it. There is a small closet in our pantry where we keep all the spare paper towels and toilet paper rolls, certainly the most cottony things in the kitchen, so I figured it had to be there and both Srishti and I had a good look in that closet, but we did not find it. At that point I decided to follow the indication of the prasna that we would not find the chocolate and that we would just have to wait until Kirika came home from school. When she did, she went to the closet with the paper towels and toilet paper and pulled out the box of chocolates. So the chocolates were in the same room as last seen, in the north, in the closest thing we had to a cotton field in our kitchen, only she had managed to cover up the chocolates by a bunch of bags in such a way that we did not see the chocolates under the bags, so just as the prasna indicated, we did not find the chocolates.