Ayurvedic Astrology

Above is the iconic image of Jyotish, the kuNDali or astrology chart.

It’s beauty is clear and when the planets are placed on it, it is believed to contain the cosmos.

The diamond labelled 1 is what faces the Eastern horizon on the Earth’s surface at the point and time of the chart. Diamond 7 is what faces West, opposite of 1.

The diamond labelled 10 is what is overhead, 4 is what is beneath the feet.

The native and the planet earth’s center is the point in the middle.

The triangles are what are respectively in between the cornerstones 1, 4, 7, and 10. The latter are called kendras.

The first time I saw this I wanted to go home, get paper and scissors, and construct the universe.

I tried, but it isn’t possible to create a 12 sided convex polygon with 4 squares and 8 triangles. The angles and sides just do not add up. There is a platonic solid with twelve sides but it requires a pentagon face for each of the 12 sides.

What about splitting up the diamonds (squares) each into 2 triangles, thus aspiring to have a 16 sided convex regular polyhedron? Still doesn’t exist, at least not in 3-D.

How about a slight irregularity? Something called a snub tetrahedron might be the closest to what we are looking for. (Here the yellows are the kendras - 2 triangles per kendra square; while houses 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8,9, 11, 12 stay triangles.)

It’s interesting that the konas (important houses 5, and 9 besides 1) have a physical element with the snub tetrahedron: they would allow a stability of this physical model if set on the “ground” with the yellow 1 triangles pointing up, like it’s on an inner tripod.

Here’s an interesting site on the solid form. If you can get through the first paragraph, go to the animation on the bottom of the page and count to three. At that point the pink triangles show pretty well how to construct the snub.

But I don’t like the word “irregularity” when talking about the universe. Plus, “snub” is a funny word.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, it’s not clear how to take a pair of scissors and cut up the surface of the snub tetrahedron so that it would lie on a 2D surface (such as your screen or your chart) and form something like the kuNDali at the top of this post.

So I did what I could: I looked into the 4th dimension.

Consider the tetraplex which very importantly is both regular and convex in 4 dimensions, thus satisfying my desire for symmetry and allows for the convex nature of a screen for shining bodies.

Here is an orthographic projection, one of many possibilities.

The ratio of 2:1 for triangles (non-kendras) to tetrahedra (instead of squares - for the kendras) is there.

It is sometimes thought of as the 4-dimensional analog of the icosahedron. [Ed. a 12 sided Platonic solid and remember we are fundamentally looking to represent the 12 houses]

Note the role of the Golden Ratio, and the beauty of the projections. Projection, the shining of light, also seems more appropriate to form a jyotish chart, compared to cutting something up.

If you thusly capture the image to the upper right in 2 dimensions, you finally get the kuNDali.*

The beautiful complications toward the middle could account for the amshas.

Corresponding objects exist in upper dimensions.

Extra dimensions are not a problem in the Vedas - they are talked about often and at length.

Renay

* Attribution must be given to Robert Webb’s Great Stella software as the creator of this image; website: http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php.

We learned in a recent course on Ayurvedic fertility and conception that the woman’s uterus has a “flowering period” 9 days after ovulation, appropriately named pushpa (Sanskrit for flower) when conception is most likely.

I think it’s interesting and telling that, if all the village women ovulate on the same day, say on the full moon, that the pushpa period would then fall after the 8/28 section of the zodiac from the full moon, or in other words the yogi point of the chart of ovulation, calculated via the pushya nakshatra, the eighth lunar mansion, used in the definition of ayus or life.

Therefore, the village conceptions would be on the day fullest, most healthy, most fulsome astrologically.

Amazing!

More beauty from Ayurvedic Astrology.

Renay

I don’t know about you, but I got my ego kicked in the butt earlier this week. I think it has to do with Mars having entered Leo on the 21st where Saturn has been residing for awhile.

Leo is the home site for ego and feelings of prowess in any given chart. Yes, we all have Leo somewhere in our charts. It is where we are most public, most regal, and most proud, and that is where important lessons are happening right now.

Two enemies and malefics, Mars, one’s passion and drive, is conjoined there with Saturn, Lord of hard lessons and disappointment, as a driving force meeting a limiting force. Tough combination.

I took a walk on Monday evening and all I heard from passersby were arguments. I had problems all day getting anything done. (As a Scorpio ascendent, Leo is in my tenth house.) Things just fell apart.

Indeed, everyone I’ve talked to personally had been riven by almost accidental but devastating arguments for the first few days of this transit. It seems to be better now. I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t trumpet myself just yet. The exact conjunction around 11:45am Boulder time on July 10th might be um… difficult. And Mars in its apex in the first week of August should be an overwhelming handful of passion, drive, fire.

In fact, the fiery Mars in the fire sign of Leo might be what is responsible for wildfires starting up lately, and I hope our leaders will be careful at this time.

This transit continues until Mars enters Virgo, which should be a lot better, on August 9.

Renay

I get this question pretty often.

Someone had in her partnership chart (navamsha) the symbols for a heart attack, but her partner didn’t have them in his direct rasi chart. Her partner had a heart attack when the combination in her chart was activated.

Was it her fault?

I remember when the Great Maharishi Mahesh Yogi passed on. A follower had death signifiers for her guru in her chart that were activated by dasha at that time.

Was it her fault?

I think the answers are no.

Either nothing is one’s fault or everything is one’s fault for everything is in any given person’s chart. Same thing. Pick a side, but if you’re giving a reading, I think the best approach is to say no, it’s not your fault, and it’s not, in the usual sense of the word.

Vasistha’s Yoga talks often of all events in this world being related only as when a crow alights on a tree and at that moment a coconut falls off. The “ignorant” (for lack of a better word) think there is a relationship between the two, but there is not.

The one infinite consciousness alone is thought-form or experience: there is no cause and effect relationship, these (’cause’ and ‘effect’) are only words, not facts. The infinite consciousness is forever in infinite consciousness.

This is a quote from Saraswati Herself in Vasistha’s Yoga.

(How does this jibe with “karma“? Well, as I understand it, even your past actions are just right.)

A friend asks, indeed, all that there is is the present moment, so how can there be cause and effect?

Symbols in the chart are at this level best understood as signposts. That the woman had a partner who would have a heart attack was in her chart at birth, but that was not her doing any more than her own creation itself was her doing. (Or was it?)

Make sense?

What about issues with seemingly more free will like choice of college?

I think they follow along the same lines. We can forcefully mess up our dharma by bad volitional karma or improve upon it, but our dharma is still there.

This is interesting to me, because if the planets were signposts only, why does supplication and appeasement of them by upaya work so well?

In the beautiful Colorado mountains, if we supplicate the trailhead sign it seemingly changes nothing on the trail or the mountain within it. Why do upayas (gems, mantras, yantras, etc.) work?

The grahas (planets) obviously are still very much involved, and they are inside of us (as above so below), but in terms of fault, responsibility, no, I don’t think there is personal responsibility in the personhood egosense (jIva) of things.

If the client is ready for it, and this is rare, you can present some thoughts from the Bhagavad Gita and other sacred books that there is a relationship behind all things and we are the relationship itself not individuals within.

The well known New Age phrase/bumper sticker “Life is the dance and I am the dancer.” was turned on its head to me by a speaker the other month who said, more truthfully I think, “I am the dance and life [Shiva I'd say] is the dancer.”

nimitta maatram bhava savyasaacin

Be only the instrument, O Arjuna. (Bhagavad Giitaa, 11.33)

So basically relax. No, it isn’t your fault, and yet you are the world.

sarvabhuutastham aatmaaanam sarvabhuutaani caatmaniiksate

He sees the Self in all beings, and all beings in the Self. (6.29)

It is a paradox, either very complex, or very simple.

Renay

I recently had the opportunity to do a reading for a transgendered lady. In the course of that reading I discovered something astounding, something other astrologers flat out do not believe when I tell them: the surgery of the transsexual created a new person astrologically.

The original birth chart held forth as accurate until the surgery. Then the surgery chart was the accurate one for the years thereafter.

I can’t seem to be able to get this published in the standard journals, so I’m going to present some brief casual material here in the hopes that more trans people might get their charts done, and so that the real import of the surgery might be appreciated by all.

For those who think that Vedic Astrologers should adhere only to old Indian culture, please remember that there are numerous references in the ancient texts on transgender situations.

Here are the charts.

Our native originally had the rasi chart below.

Note the salient features:

• exalted Saturn, dig bala in the seventh and indeed he had a long lasting relationship that was mixed with a woman whom he married at the start of his Saturn dasha
• Sun and Mercury in the sixth, and he was primarily interested in helping others, often to the detriment of himself
• there is a terrible planetary war between Jupiter and Moon in the third and he had a complicated difficult relationship with most of his siblings and indeed there was a type of war between two of them and a third who had his heart (Moon)

Here is the transit chart for the time of surgery:

Note the

• release or loss of masculinity with Mars setting in the 7th
• Mars almost directly across natal Saturn (masculinity must have been very hard at the time)
• Venus (femininity) exalted conjunct swa Jupiter and Mercury, a future dharma karma adipati yog
  
• the beautiful triangle linking surgery (8th house), influence of Mother (4th house) and loss or international travel (12th house) - the surgery was in another country and was admitted to be a type of excision of the mother’s influence
• Ketu in the tenth transiting natal Rahu aspected by Mars= a pursuit of a public loss of masculine self

And with that, we get a new chart, her new birth chart, the chart of the surgery:

Her new life has articulated a number of important changes that are of this chart alone:

• working life and public opinion of her has turned challenging, reflecting debilitated Saturn in the tenth
• brilliance in advanced medical knowledge has emerged as well as passionate pursuit of academic Buddhism with a superstar Saraswati Yoga: Venus, Mercury and Jupiter in Pisces in the ninth, a better situation than Einstein had. (I predict possible medical school for her or career with medical writing when she enters Mercury dasha in 2013.) This constellation also makes a Lakshmi Yoga, one almost too good to be true. I don’t think this has been activated yet, but she’s still in Saturn period and Jupiter is awfully close to Mercury and there is a Papa kartari on both yogas. I don’t know if that would compromise it. Plus, even Bill Gates had a period when he was toiling in the garage. We shall see in Mercury period if she becomes remarkably wealthy. I wouldn’t expect it to kick in until 2017 regardless.
• she had been dating yes, a Capricorn who has Ketu in the first (a direct depiction of her new 7th house), someone who was more in touch with her masculine side but who was also more open emotionally which was not her type from before and which is also a direct reflection of her new navamsha
• she is now much better at holding on to her masculine side in arbitration in home life (Mars in Libra in the fourth)
  
• she does have the “hungry ghost” of Rahu now in the first and is constantly striving to improve her body and remake herself
• the Pushya ascendant is not lost: she is an active metaphysical healer now, in direct contrast to the more physical Aries ascendant and path she was on before surgery and she uses creativity/art in healing; see below for Moon as the ruler of the first as the explanation.
• Her heart (Moon, i.e., her emotional seat, not her physical heart ) is now very much much connected with creativity reflecting Moon in the fifth.
• Also, her relationship to domestic animals (which I have found to be represented by the fifth house, with work animals represented a la Parashara in the sixth) has greatly improved, reflecting as well her Moon now being in the fifth aspected by Jupiter. The recent difficult loss of a dog had been at a time of dasha planets activating marakas in the new D-7 (which yes, I use for pets), not in the old D-7.

That she had been in Saturn dasha while a man and has engaged in it yet again in the surgery rebirth chart suggests some fixed karma. Perhaps she is meant to experience the lessons of Saturn and here, mere surgery is not enough to block “The Greatness of Saturn” and His important lessons.

She herself says that she believes she has chosen a relatively tough series of challenges in order to learn from them and grow more complete. I see the import of the change of charts to be not so much in changing her life in the big picture of qualities of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha but in a radical trajectory change or arc of actions to get there.

For example, an interesting thing is that she would have been out of Saturn dasha at the end of 2008 but will now have to wait until 2013. Her Mercury dasha, which comes next, should be considerably better in this new incarnation however with that amazing Laksmi Yoga within a Saraswati Yoga, gifts of two female Goddess energies, by the way.

Another thing that would be easily testable is that her relationship with her siblings, difficult before because of a planetary war, and difficult now because of Saturn debilitated in the tenth in the new drekkhana, might reach a place of healing in the Mercury dasha.

The surgery seems to have allowed the setting of a new stage for her to be her highest self. I wish to thank her for her time and emotional investment in answering my questions. Best of luck to you!

Renay

This is perhaps the easiest or perhaps most obvious of the steps, and the others haven’t been too hard.

A. Ask what is interesting to them.

What are their plans? Do they have travel coming up? Plans for a child? Career concerns?

Each of these and any others have very particular and different signatures and divisionals appropriate to them.

B. Look at the appropriate divisionals and houses.

Simple enough. See if any yogas are involved. You might also want to look at rashi aspects here. And is there activation of any of these via dashas, including sub, subsub, and subsubsub?

Besides the ultra-important yogas, you may eventually want to consider omens.

Really, before the presumption inherent in C can take place, it is best to go through a thorough and disciplined study of the ancient texts.

C. Come up with a complete picture as an answer.

Imagine the total picture of what is happening, has happened, and is going to happen. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. Be neutral, calm. Then more will flow to you.

Look at involvement of other themes. For example, see if career is going to be waylaid by having a child.

This is where you get to be archaelogist and literary professor.

D. Determine how much of the answer the client is ready to hear.

OK, this one is harder. But just tell a little bit and see the reaction. Usually the person will respond immediately and then you can mutually go from the point he/she brings up. It’s usually a very fluid, dynamic process. This is the best, most efficient way to address the person’s mindset all at once, and it IS the mindset you want to address, not really the particular question.

What also is important is what not to say. There are numerous injunctions in the classic texts against saying something that is not asked for. This is very important. Beginning astrologers (including me back in the day) sometimes get so excited about seeing something so clearly that is nonetheless not what the person is ready to hear.

As well, it’s important to show some restraint even if the person wants to hear something that is not appropriate to talk about. Time of death for example is sometimes asked for. It is my opinion that this is not usually appropriate to talk about, even when seen clearly.

Remember that you are the meteorologist in the road trip of life. Ultimately, you just know probabilities.

There is still considerable free will in the Jyotish chart.

I’ve decided that doing a reading is like taking a walk together with the client, down the street of their life.

There are literally not a million, not a billion, but an infinite number of things one can see by walking down the street.

But do we really capture in our minds what we really see?

The astrologer can help the other person by pointing things out; important things, notable things, beautiful things, and/or dangerous things are the most typically of interest to both seer and seen. But really we can talk about anything.

Construct a narrative, their play of life. Think compassionately about what the other person needs to see for themselves. Use your vidya to help them, and do nothing else but that.

All you are as an astrologer is someone who helps with a little extra sight.

The astrologer’s strengths, weaknesses, predilections, etc. are hence as much a part of the reading as those of the “astrologee”. Again, you are walking down a path together.

E. When the answer to A. is met with satisfaction, stir, and repeat.

So, here is another step. It’s pretty much the last one.

Like the others, there is even more to it than meets the eye, but I think the value in listing steps like this is to realize that there is an order to things in a presentation, even if it is of a melodic, roving, mental, psychical, emotional, moral and intuitive environment.

Should the 12th be occupied by waning Moon, left eye is destroyed and, if by the Sun, it is the right eye. If, however, benefics aspect (the said 12th and the Sun/Moon), then by (suitable) efforts the eye can be repaired. (From Kalyana Varmas Saravali, p.25)

For what it is worth, I know well some one with exactly the situation of Sun in the 12th with Venus and other planets, who has a damaged right eye at birth that was then repaired.

Kalyana Varmas Saravali is another serious book on births and deaths with of course lots of amazing other stuff, e.g., unusual yogas, colors of the planets, etc. etc. in the middle.

English searchable pdf here.

A serious book, worthy of care, on answering queries partly by omens.

Daivajna Vallabha English searchable pdf here.

It is with a glad heart that I acknowledge that the limb fell when I went out on it to announce a flood in Boulder for yesterday.

However, with a sad heart I see that with the same chart, the people of Iowa City, IA experienced a 500 year flood. Officials said more than 400 blocks were under water, and thousands of homes were evacuated.

Could this have been what I initially saw?

I do not know, but a friend who says she is good at reflecting karma and who would have been in the middle of the Boulder flood, is convinced that she reflected the flood to her hometown in Iowa.

Astrology insight is more complicated than it might at first appear!

I have since looked at news websites etc. for the timing of when the river breached the sandbag levees on Thursday, June 12, and can only find vagueness.

I think it was around 10:20am, when the following chart was nigh.

Water signs were on the ascendant for rashi, navamsha, saptamsha, trimshamsa, and dashamsa.

This has everything to do with my earlier post of having malefics in Cancer this month in the water. Here they are in the first house with the ascendant right on them.

What also makes this timing seem appropriate are the placements of Jupiter in the divisionals.

The navamsha suggests lots of water just happened with Jupiter in Scorpio just passed overhead and a loss of character through water with Ketu in Pisces.

The D-10 with Jupiter in the tenth seems appropriate for someone (here a city) who is suddenly in the sympathy of the nation but whose image is terribly afflicted with Saturn and Mars in the first in a bad water sign and whose ego (Sun) and beauty (Venus) are lost (in the twelfth).

The strength of the city (D-27) is also severely compromised at this time but with Jupiter in upachaya Pisces in the third, I think the city will pull through:

Also, drekkana supports a weak infrastructure at the time.

Chaturtamsa suggests general unhappiness then as well.

Trimshamsa (misfortune) has debilitated Jupiter in the twelfth and all the malefics in kendras except for an exalted Mars in the third, so maybe that will be what is gained by the this misfortune, i.e., a sense of strength and courage and development of future infrastructure.

Ultimately, to see where the city is going to go, look at the D-9 again. Pisces ascendant and Jupiter trine, suggests the water, the river, will remain a defining component of the city and things will eventually be ok, but the dasha suggests not for a while. Come February a dasha change arrives to the chart, from Moon to Mars, so there may be fighting over how to rebuild the city then, maybe from a winter storm.

Something else to consider: I repeatedly asked my guides “There will be a flood in Boulder on Thursday? In Boulder?” and repeatedly got the answer “Yes.” Maybe that’s because the flood WAS in Boulder on that day, in our hearts and minds and TV sets. I’ll learn how to be more precise.

Renay

More difficult and technical, but lots of fruits. Considerate translation.

Jaimini Sutras English searchable pdf here,

A beautiful text on how to answer questions in the moment.

Prashna Tantra translated English searchable pdf here.

I’m going out on a limb on this one, but such is life.

I think and feel that the next hundred year flood for Boulder, CO, USA is going to happen on 6/12/2008 at approximately 3:36 pm or soon thereafter.

The prediction is based on kinesthetics and a look at the chart at that time.

Something rough is going to happen.

Renay

[Note:  see "I was wrong, sort of." for a follow up to this post.]

A decent complete description of some intermediate fundamentals on yogas as well as invaluable information on the timing of events.

Click here to see Muhurtha. Right-click to download.

From the last paragraph of Newton’s Principia Mathematica:

” And now we might add something concerning a certain most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which spirit the particles of bodies attract one another at near distances, and cohere, if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the neighboring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain into the muscles. But these are things that cannot be explained in few words, nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic spirit operates.”

Note the focus on sense organs and spirit a la the definition of Ayur.

Doing some research, I found that there is considerable controversy over this issue! But to me it seems to be fueled by preconceptions and emotions.

Yes, it turns out that he did study the “humours” and alchemy, what in Sanskrit is the inestimable rasa shastra.

All I am saying is that I hear the voice of a fellow Ayurvedic Astrologer in the top paragraph.

The essential first book in Vedic Astrology. Memorization would be good.

The book is as charming as Moonlight for the study of Astrology. It is undoubtedly one of the best, briefest and lucid book on the subject of Astrology and there is no book which can rival this primer.

Bhrigu Sutras English searchable pdf available here.

Brihaspati.net originally put up translations of all the major Vedic Astrology shastras.

They didn’t put any limitation on their use, and I see that the site is now down. So I’m going to upload them one by one for the common good.

Our first is the paramount Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra.

It deserves a lot of attention, a lot of memorization, and the study of Sanskrit.
For now, do the best you can and enjoy the English searchable pdf version.

I had a great time at the International Astrology Conference in Denver today. Hundreds of people were there. It was about twice as big as last year’s Ayurveda Conference (but who is counting.)

It is the first conference I’ve ever been to that had room on the name tag for Ascendant, Moon, and Sun signs.

It’s going on through Wednesday for those of you in the area. I heartily recommend jumpling on the bus and checking it out.

I met THE Edith Hamilton, who agreed with me on the 2008 Presidential Election, by the way, and lots of other famous-y people, and I think (I hope) I made some salient points at their wonderful presentations.

Dr. Frawley gave a very strong lecture on nakshatras.

If you are interested in Vedic Astrology, get the track 8 Vedic Astrology track recordings here. They show the best of what is happening now, what is publicly accesible knowledge on amazing topics, in real time.

I also totally dug some of the jewelry. If I had the $500 some of the peices cost I would totally Madame Trelawney myself up.

Really, energy and creativity were very high at this year’s conference. I had a great time.

There was even a fun article from the Associated press on the conference.

They somehow didn’t interview me about my prediction of Al Gore for Vice President.

Renay

I was once told by Hart that there is no publicly known reasoning behind the order of the planets in the widely used and accurate Vimshottari dasha system.

That order is

Sun/Moon/Mars/Rahu/Jupiter/Saturn/Mercury/Ketu/Venus.

But why?

Well, I foolhardily have attempted to figure it out.

Here it is. Even if it isn’t true, it’s a good mnemonic.

1. Sun and Moon the original eternal pair of Agni and Soma are naturally arranged together. So we have:

Sun/Moon

2. The outer planet on the other side of the solar system is Saturn, the eternal overseer, so we have:

Sun/Moon

Saturn

3. The benefics, the good in life, Jupiter and Venus reasonably come next, and are placed before the stern rulers Sun and Saturn.

Jupiter is placed before Saturn, as in the solar system, leaving Venus to be placed before Sun.

Venus/Sun/Moon

Jupiter/Saturn

4. The fruits of the benefics are to be realized in this Yuga only after the dizzying seizures of Rahu and Ketu.

So place Rahu, the point of striving, reasonably before the kind generosity of Jupiter. Correspondingly, Ketu, the point of loss goes before the laid back Venus.

Ketu/Venus/Sun/Moon

Rahu/Jupiter/ Saturn

5. What is left is Mercury which is in the solar system before Venus, and hence before the important shadowy relationship of Ketu and Venus. Mars in the solar system goes before Jupiter and correspondingly, before Rahu and Jupiter.

Mercury/Ketu/Venus/Sun/Moon

Mars/Rahu/Jupiter/Saturn

This step is also important because it is the division between the inner and outer parts of the solar system, as seen from the Earth.

Rahu might also be in the outside part because in this Yuga we try to go outside of ourselves.

6. To complete the two halves and form a complete list, place the inner list before the outer list, and you get

Mercury/Ketu/Venus/Sun/Moon/Mars/Rahu/Jupiter/Saturn

This is a reasoning, but not the rhyme.

The music is there, in the chart.

As to why the number of years are there for each dasha, maybe that’s a future post.

Renay

When I first entered Ayurvedic school, I was so careful with my body, with my diet, with my (physical) yoga.

I was hypersensitive to everything and didn’t really know what was happening to me when I felt this or that. Yet I knew the basic niyamas of the Yoga Sutras, I knew that I was doing good things with my body and deep self. I knew I was getting closer though still at a distance to some notion of perfect.

Then I walked into an astrology classroom and saw an advanced student of Hart’s whom I greatly admired drinking a Coca-Cola.

A Coca-Cola!

I hadn’t even seen one in months. The thought of it, of drinking it myself, was akin to swallowing poison.

How could this be? I seriously was stunned and in a slight haze of confusion for the next six months or so over that one act of witnessing.

Eventually I could not only relate but understand.

(gItA, 3 - 6):

karmendriyANi samyamya ya Aste manasA smaran /
indriyArthAn vimUDhAtmA mithyAcAras-sa ucyate //
The one of deluded understanding
who, restraining the organs of action,
sits thinking in his mind of the sense objects,
is called a hypocrite.

After studying astrology more in depth and doing hundreds of charts, I too started to relax my superficial codes of conduct but not my love of yoga. If anything, my understanding of yoga grew correspondingly to an order of magnitude beyond anything I knew when I was acting the part but was mentally far away.

Now, I even have a name for this phenomenon. I call it:

the paradox of partial omniscience.

Astrology allowed for me a route to the truth that was faster, more zippy than any other pursuit. Within months I too could start to predict things that actually would happen or had happened and equally important, I knew when many things would not happen for myself and for others.

I saw myself pretty stark and bare.

This honesty can be dizzying if it happens too fast.

Such knowledge is a taste of omniscience, a little homeopathic dose of infinity.

Now, I learned in college that say, 1/8th of infinity is still infinity. That is what this feeling is like. It’s still infinity.

If you are closely guarding your every move and believing in how good you are because you mostly follow the rules, your mind instead gets blown, your head cracked open to the stars.

You realize a Coca-Cola is not the biggest thing in the world.

And you do still more charts. The knowledge gets overwhelming, the truth adds up. Infinity, homeopathic or not, surrounds infinity.

If you are not living expansively disciplined, say by living with a yoga master, your saadhana, once based entirely on ego, can unfortunately weaken without that daily physical discipline, so easy to do when it was superficial.

It’s like signing up for a nourishing delivery of milk and instead getting major feasts of chocolate out of the air. The attention to the milk delivery may dissipate, although it is still essential, and more important than the dessert.

I am a little bit flailing here in trying to describe what a little taste of infinity is like. I guess my point is, to a small mind, a small infinity is equal to an infinite infinity. Partial omniscience is as wide and scary and huge and important as omniscience itself.

I wonder if this is why astrologers don’t eat as well, or take as much control of their bodies, or are as personally disciplined as other people in the Vedic world.

We study, we work, we practice, we see things, but without lots of attention, we may get imbalanced. It’s so easy to do.

Infinity all at once is a hard gift to accept.

I know that I ask your forebearance, your understanding, and ultimately your forgiveness for not being perfect. I know well enough the importance of what I know, but the vessel is still fragile, basically insufficient for its content.

I’m catching up to myself and am doing the best I can. Thanks.

Renay

Now we need to do an allover scan for the next level of information on the native.

I recommend at this point that you:

A. Make a printout.

This should have all the primary details like dashas and divisionals and ashtakavarga at the least.

Once again, Jagannatha Hora shines at this point. I like their printouts and go to them first because the layout is clean and well-designed.

Actually, at this stage I get a printout for myself and another set for my client, so that I may annotate my set at will while keeping the latter clean, since I am a visual person.

B. Note the dasha that the person is in.

At least the first level. Get a feel for when the major mahadashas will and have occurred. Circle on the sheet ones that catch your attention, such as soon to be upcoming ones.

C. Look for planetary dominance in the rasi and divisionals.

This is when you can refer to exaltation, swa, planetary wars, and dig bala.

If you are a visual person, circle, square, and otherwise annotate them as such in your printouts.

D. Look for yogas in the rasis and divionsals..

These planetary alliances are very important. Perhaps the best list that is most accessible is the chapter ten on them in Light on Life.

I also do a visual deconstruction of these with symbols on the printout, perhaps using arrows or so on.

There’s actually quite a lot of Jyotish in this step, but it won’t be passed over. Eventually I hope to address each subsection on it’s own.

Ok, it may be time to start interacting with the client. That will be the focus of the next step.

Renay