Its kinds, their interplay, and their reading in Jyotiṣa. A word that once meant the sacrifice came to mean the whole moral weather of a life; the traditions that inherited it sorted it into stores, graded it by fixity, argued over who pays it out, and built a science for reading its ripening in the sky. This essay draws the sorting, tests the logic with an instrument you can turn, and puts the horoscope where the texts put it — as a lamp, not a sentence.
Every reading I give ends up, sooner or later, at the same word. A client asks why a thing happened, or whether a thing will, and whatever I say about lords and houses and periods, the word underneath it is karma कर्म. It is the most travelled word in the Sanskrit vocabulary and one of the least examined. People use it to mean fate, or justice, or comeuppance, or a kind of cosmic bookkeeping; the tradition itself uses it to mean something more precise and more interesting than any of those, and it took the tradition about two thousand years of argument to say what. This essay is my attempt to lay that argument out in order — what karma is, how many kinds there are, how the kinds act on one another, what the physicians did with it, and what the astrologers claim to see of it — and to be candid at every step about which claims are in the texts, which follow from a model, and which are mine.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-science-of-karma-its-kinds-their-interplay-and-their-reading-in-jyotisha-card.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-science-of-karma-its-kinds-their-interplay-and-their-reading-in-jyotisha-card.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 79067 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-twenty-seven-stations-nakshatras-from-punarvasu-to-ardra.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-twenty-seven-stations-nakshatras-from-punarvasu-to-ardra.html", "title": "The Twenty-Seven Stations — The Nakṣatras and the Making of a Child, from Punarvasu to Ārdrā", "date_published": "2026-09-05T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Embryology", "Children" ], "summary": "Begin at Punarvasu, a double star in the sign of the Couple; call that night conception; walk the twenty-seven nakṣatras in their order at ten days apiece, and the last ends where a pregnancy ends. Their gods, emblems and stories beside the embryology of each ten days — Puṣya the nourisher and the trophoblast, Āśleṣā's serpent and the neural tube, Śravaṇa and the first hearing, Ārdrā and the first cry — on an interactive wheel you can set to a date.", "content_html": "Every night the Moon lodges in a different house of the sky, and there are twenty-seven of them. Begin at Punarvasu, a double star in the sign of the Couple; call that night conception; walk the houses in their order at ten days apiece, and the twenty-seventh ends where a pregnancy ends. This essay asks what the names, gods and stories of the nakṣatras say, taken in that order, about the making of a child — and hands you the wheel.
A nakṣatra नक्षत्र is, before it is anything else, a place where the Moon spends the night. The word means a star, an asterism, and the sky is cut into twenty-seven of them because the Moon takes twenty-seven days and a third to come round to the same stars again, so that each night it lies in a new one. The Purāṇas made the twenty-seven the daughters of Dakṣa and the wives of Soma, the Moon, who visits each in turn and loved one, Rohiṇī, too much. The Vedic ritualists gave each a god: Agni for the Pleiades, Prajāpati for Aldebaran, Rudra for the red star of Orion, and so down the list of the Taittirīya Saṃhitā. The muhūrta manuals gave each a shape — a horse's head, a razor, a cart, a hand, a drum — and the astrologers of every later century gave each a temperament. A nakṣatra, by the time the tradition was done with it, was a small world: a place, a god, a picture, a story, and a mood.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/twenty-seven-stations-wheel.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/twenty-seven-stations-wheel.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 110286 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-ten-descents-dasavatara-and-the-ten-months-of-the-womb.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-ten-descents-dasavatara-and-the-ten-months-of-the-womb.html", "title": "The Ten Descents — Daśāvatāra and the Ten Months of the Womb", "date_published": "2026-09-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Embryology", "Puranas", "Children" ], "summary": "Viṣṇu comes down ten times, and a child takes ten months of the moon to come down into the world. The ten avatāras beside the ten months of the womb as Caraka, Suśruta, Vāgbhaṭa, Varāhamihira and the embryology textbooks describe them — on one interactive gestation clock, with an honest reckoning of what “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” can still mean.", "content_html": "Viṣṇu comes down ten times, and a child takes ten months of the moon to come down into the world. Every schoolchild since Haeckel has heard that the embryo replays the history of life. Set the ten avatāras beside the ten months of the womb — as the vaidyas, the jyotiṣīs and the embryologists each describe them — and ask, honestly, what rhymes.
The word is the same. An avatāra अवतार is a descent — from ava-√tṝ, to cross downward, the verb the dictionaries gloss as “to descend (as a deity) in becoming incarnate.” And the chapter of every Āyurvedic classic that describes how a human being is assembled in the womb is called garbhāvakrānti गर्भावक्रान्ति, from ava-√kram, to step down into — a word Monier-Williams renders without ceremony as “descending (into a womb), conception.” The god descends; the child descends. The tradition counts ten of the first and, in its oldest layer, ten of the second: the Ṛgveda already knows the daśamāsya, the ten-month child, and prays it down alive. Caraka, Suśruta and Vāgbhaṭa describe the womb month by month; Varāhamihira assigns each of the ten months a planet; the Bhāgavata Purāṇa — the same book that catalogues the avatāras — has the sage Kapila narrate the fetus's ten months to his mother, and its child is daśa-māsya too when the birth-wind turns it head-down.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ten-descents-clock.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ten-descents-clock.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 79625 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-nine-pantries-spices-fruits-and-grains-of-the-grahas.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-nine-pantries-spices-fruits-and-grains-of-the-grahas.html", "title": "The Nine Pantries — Spices, Fruits, and Grains of the Grahas", "date_published": "2026-08-31T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Diet", "Sun", "Venus", "Saturn", "Mars", "Charaka Samhita" ], "summary": "Wheat to the Sun, rice to the Moon, sesame to Saturn — every jyotiṣī inherits a nine-shelf pantry, but who stocked it? The grains, spices, fruits, tubers, and ritual dishes of each graha, traced source by source through the jātaka texts, the śānti rites, and Āyurveda — with a grain mandala and the full referenced table.", "content_html": "Wheat to the Sun, rice to the Moon, sesame to Saturn. Every jyotiṣī inherits a pantry — nine shelves of grains, spices, and fruits, one for each graha. But who stocked it, and when, and on whose authority? This essay opens the cupboard and reads the labels: the spices, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and tubers of each planet, traced source by source.
Sooner or later the pantry question arrives in every Jyotiṣa consultation, usually in its practical costume. A client is entering a Saturn daśā and has been told — by a grandmother, a priest, a paperback, an app — to give sesame on Saturdays. Another has been handed a little cloth bag of nine grains after a navagraha-homa and wants to know why the toor dal in it belongs to Mars. A third, more suspicious, asks the question I like best: who decided this? Because it does look suspiciously tidy, this table where every planet has its grain, its taste, its colour, its proper spice — as if a committee of the heavens had once sat down and divided up the kitchen.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/life-begins-samudra-manthana-and-the-origin-of-life.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/life-begins-samudra-manthana-and-the-origin-of-life.html", "title": "Life Begins — Samudra Manthana and the Origin of Life", "date_published": "2026-08-25T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Puranas", "Moon", "Rahu", "Death", "Mahabharata", "Ketu" ], "summary": "Why are we subject to Rāhu and Ketu at all? The churning of the milk ocean read beside the modern science of life’s origin — poison before nectar, the pot and the protocell — fully illustrated, with an animated hundred-second film of the whole story.", "content_html": "Why are we humans subject to the difficult effects of Rāhu and Ketu, anyway? The tradition's answer is its oldest story: an ocean churned until deathlessness rose out of it. The newest science of life's origin tells of a churned ocean too — and the two accounts rhyme, image for image, more closely than they have any right to.
Sooner or later, everyone who sits with a Jyotiṣa chart asks me some version of the same question — often midway through a hard Rāhu daśā, or in the strange week around an eclipse: why are we humans subject to the difficult effects of Rāhu and Ketu at all? The other grahas, whatever they deliver, are at least bodies — lights you can point to. The nodes are shadows: two massless, lightless crossing-points of celestial geometry, and yet the tradition hands them some of the chart's most serious business — obsession and severance, eclipse and upheaval, the hunger no feeding fills and the cut that asks no permission. Why should such things have any claim on us? It can seem an arbitrary arrangement, even a cruel one — until you ask where the nodes came from. For the tradition does not answer this question with a rule. It answers with a story, and the story turns out to be much bigger than astrology: it is the story of how deathlessness — how life itself — entered the world. It is also, I will try to show, a story that modern science has lately taken to telling in its own vocabulary.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-six.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-six.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Part Six: The Gaṇa and the Amino Acid", "date_published": "2026-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Mantra", "gana", "codon", "amino acid", "hydropathy", "Kyte-Doolittle", "Woese polar requirement", "Sanskrit meter", "chandas" ], "summary": "Part One’s dictionary turned over: each gaṇa names a family of amino acids, and the foot’s middle syllable predicts hydropathy by 4.18 units (p = 0.00005) while its neighbours predict nothing — plus codon-for-codon matches in frame, and the Gāyatrī read as an octapeptide.", "content_html": "Part One built a dictionary and this series has been reading it in one direction ever since: codon → gaṇa, DNA turned into meter. But a dictionary has two sides, and the other side was never opened. Each gaṇa names exactly eight codons; eight codons name amino acids; so each of the eight feet of Sanskrit prosody names a family of amino acids. Turn the dictionary over and the Vedic foot stops being a rhythm imposed on DNA and becomes something stranger — a specification, a class of proteins. This essay opens that side, matches the two texts codon-for-codon in reading frame, and finds the strongest result the series has produced: the gaṇa's middle syllable — light or heavy — predicts whether its amino acids are water-fearing or water-loving, by a margin of four hydropathy units at the floor of a permutation test, while the first and third syllables say nothing whatsoever. The foot's middle syllable is its meaning-bearing one. Part Three had already shown it is the one position life refuses to vary. Those two facts turn out to be the same fact.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-coda.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-coda.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Coda: What Unites Them", "date_published": "2026-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Sanskrit and DNA", "what unites", "Purusha sukta", "chandas", "genome", "meter", "oral tradition", "error correction" ], "summary": "The series’ closing synthesis: what actually unites the human genome and the Sanskritic text — one medium, one engineering, one vehicle, and no shared author any test can see — ending with the Puruṣa hymn’s own three-thousand-year-old answer, scanned in its own meter.", "content_html": "Six essays, one dictionary, two dozen tests — and now the question a reader has every right to ask at the end, the one all the arithmetic was quietly serving: what actually unites the human genome and the Sanskritic text? Having spent the whole series watching candidate unions dissolve under permutation and correction, I can answer with unusual confidence, because what remains is only what survived. Three unions are real. One, the one everybody reaches for first, is not. And the hymn that kept walking uninvited through these essays turns out to have proposed its own answer three thousand years before the question could be asked with a p-value.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-five.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-five.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Part Five: The Four Vedas and the Whole of the Genome", "date_published": "2026-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Vedas", "Mantra", "four Vedas", "Sama Veda", "Yajur Veda", "Atharva Veda", "Gayatri", "whole genome", "Sanskrit meter", "chandas" ], "summary": "All four Vedas scanned and set against all 3.05 billion bases: the Gāyatrī expected verbatim dozens of times by pure arithmetic, no triṣṭubh anywhere, a 30-syllable containment cliff, and the pāda’s eight-beat frame that prose and introns lack.", "content_html": "Part Four scanned all four Vedas and laid the concordance on the table — every locus of held human DNA that matches a real pāda, exhibit by exhibit. This essay finishes the thought in both directions at once: all four Vedas — Ṛg, Sāma, Yajus, Atharva — and, on the other side of the table, not a gene but the whole human genome, all 3.05 billion bases of it. The whole genome cannot be fetched into a notebook, but for the questions asked here it does not need to be: occurrence and overlap at that scale are governed by arithmetic that can be written down exactly, calibrated on the sequence we do hold, and then extrapolated with stated assumptions. The results reorganize the question beautifully. At genome scale, \"does the genome contain the Veda?\" stops being mysterious and becomes a statement about length: every gāyatrī in our sample is expected to occur verbatim somewhere in your chromosomes — the Gāyatrī mantra itself dozens to hundreds of times — while not one triṣṭubh or Yajurvedic formula is. Containment is free below thirty syllables and impossible above it, and neither fact means a thing about authorship. What does mean something, as ever, is structure — and the four Vedas turn out to be a genuine metrical family, each carrying the pāda's eight-beat frame that prose and introns lack.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-four.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-four.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Part Four: The Concordance", "date_published": "2026-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Mantra", "four Vedas", "Gayatri mantra", "DNA matches", "concordance", "beta-globin", "TP53", "insulin", "Sanskrit meter" ], "summary": "All four Vedas scanned into weight-notation and matched against verified human DNA: a 928-entry concordance of actual loci — the Gāyatrī’s opening pāda eight bases into beta-globin, the Puruṣa hymn’s “all this that has been and shall be” in both insulin and p53 — tallied honestly against chance.", "content_html": "Every earlier essay in this series asked the question statistically. This one asks it the way a reader would: show me. Scan all four Vedas — Ṛg, Sāma, Yajus, Atharva — into the binary weight-notation of Part One; hold real, verified human DNA in the other hand; and then simply list every place they coincide. Not expected counts, not p-values first: actual loci, actual bases, actual pādas — a concordance between the oldest recited text on Earth and the text inside your cells, every entry checkable by anyone with the downloadable catalog. The concordance turns out to have 928 entries. Eight bases into the beta-globin gene, the genome is already reciting the opening of the Gāyatrī. The insulin gene and the tumor-suppressor p53 each carry, independently, the same twenty-one-syllable stretch of the Puruṣa hymn — the line that says the Puruṣa is all this, whatever has been and whatever shall be. And when the entries are tallied against composition, almost every count lands where chance directs — with one flagrant exception whose author turns out to be chemistry, and one champion verse whose success has a reason you can hear. This is the essay the series was always walking toward: the matches themselves, laid on the table.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-three.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-three.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Part Three: The Dialects of Life", "date_published": "2026-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Sanskrit meter", "chandas", "gana", "codon usage", "genome dialect", "GC content", "Plasmodium", "Streptomyces" ], "summary": "Eight genomes, from malaria to Streptomyces, read as metrical dialects: the tempo scale of life, the anceps third position across the whole tree, a clean test of the R·N·Y primeval-code idea, and how life fills the Virahāṅka duration envelope.", "content_html": "A dictionary was built in Part One, and in Part Two it was spent on a single gene, which declined to contain hidden poetry but agreed to reveal its tempo. This essay widens the lens as far as it will go. In 1980, Richard Grantham examined how differently organisms choose among synonymous codons and proposed what he called the genome hypothesis: that every genome has a consistent, characteristic way of speaking — his word for it was dialect. The metaphor was linguistic from the start. We are simply taking it one step further, to where it was perhaps always pointing: if each genome speaks a dialect, then under the codon→gaṇa dictionary each genome scans in one — and the dialects of life turn out to be arranged along a single metrical axis, with a malaria parasite whispering at one end and a soil bacterium tolling like a bell at the other.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-two.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-two.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Part Two: Does the Gene Scan?", "date_published": "2026-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Sanskrit meter", "chandas", "gana", "genetic code", "beta-globin", "HBB", "insulin", "GC content" ], "summary": "Real genes transcribed into gaṇas and tested with seeded permutations: no hidden ślokas, one instructive mirage, a genuine exon–intron tempo signal, and the codon’s anceps third position measured — code and data included.", "content_html": "Part One of this series ended with a dictionary and a dare. The dictionary maps every codon of the genetic code onto one of the eight gaṇas of Sanskrit prosody — exactly, as a projection, in two defensible polarities. The dare was to spend it: transcribe real genes into meter and ask, with honest statistics, whether anything in a living sequence scans. This essay does that. I will tell you the ending now, because the ending is the point: the gene hides no ślokas, one tantalizing meter turned out to be a mirage with a perfectly ordinary explanation, and the two findings that survive are the two the sober reader of Part One would have predicted — which is, in its own way, the most encouraging outcome this project could have had.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-one.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-meter-and-the-molecule-part-one.html", "title": "The Meter and the Molecule — Part One: Two Codes Written in Threes", "date_published": "2026-08-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Genetics", "Chandas", "Jupiter", "Devanagari", "Sanskrit meter", "Pingala", "gana", "genetic code", "codons", "DNA", "de Bruijn sequence" ], "summary": "Sanskrit prosody is a binary code read in triplets; so is the genetic code. Piṅgala’s binary mathematics, the de Bruijn gaṇa mnemonic, and an exact collapse of the sixty-four codons onto the eight gaṇas — with downloadable reference PDFs and data.", "content_html": "Every cell of your body is, at this moment, reciting. A ribosome settles onto a strand of messenger RNA and moves along it three letters at a time, reading each triplet as one unit of meaning, assembling a protein syllable by syllable. Twenty-three centuries ago — give or take a scholarly argument — a grammarian named Piṅgala wrote down a way of reading sequences three symbols at a time, out of an alphabet of exactly two, and worked out the complete mathematics of every pattern that reading could produce. He was describing the meters of Sanskrit poetry. The cell, it turns out, keeps its library in a strikingly similar format.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-beak-and-the-blade-the-surgical-instruments-of-sushruta.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-beak-and-the-blade-the-surgical-instruments-of-sushruta.html", "title": "The Beak and the Blade — The Surgical Instruments of Suśruta", "date_published": "2026-08-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Sushruta Samhita", "Yantra" ], "summary": "One hundred and one blunt yantras, twenty razor-edged śastras, sutures tied with ant heads — an illustrated, interactive tour of Suśruta’s surgical instruments, from heron-beak forceps to the rhinoplasty that traveled west.", "content_html": "The surgeons of ancient Kāśī worked from a kit of one hundred and twenty-one instruments — jaws copied from herons and lions, blades gauged in lentils and hairs, sutures tied with the heads of ants. A tour of Suśruta's operating table, drawn piece by piece.
Every apprenticeship begins with an inventory. Somewhere near the beginning of his training, a surgical student at Kāśī — modern Vārāṇasī, perhaps twenty-five centuries ago — would have been walked down a wall of instruments and made to learn them the way one learns a language: by families, by shapes, by verbs. One hundred and one blunt instruments, the yantras यन्त्र. Twenty sharp ones, the śastras शस्त्र. And behind them a bench of substitutes — leeches, caustics, fire, splinters of bamboo, the surgeon's own fingernails — for the day the proper tool is missing or the patient is a frightened child.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-mind-the-hand-and-the-heart-charaka-sushruta-vagbhata.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-mind-the-hand-and-the-heart-charaka-sushruta-vagbhata.html", "title": "The Mind, the Hand, and the Heart — Charaka, Suśruta, and Vāgbhaṭa", "date_published": "2026-08-07T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Sushruta Samhita", "Charaka Samhita", "Vagbhata", "Disease and diagnosis" ], "summary": "Charaka, Suśruta, and Vāgbhaṭa — the Great Trio of Āyurveda — wrote one science from three angles. An illustrated introduction: the lineages, the dates, the shape of the three books, and why their differences are the point.", "content_html": "Charaka, Suśruta, and Vāgbhaṭa — the Great Trio of Āyurveda — did not write three versions of one book. They wrote one science from three angles, and the differences between them are the point.
When someone asks me where to begin reading Āyurveda, they usually expect the name of a book. What they receive instead is the name of a relationship. Classical Indian medicine does not rest on a single scripture but on a braid of three — the Bṛhat Trayī बृहत्त्रयी, the \"Great Trio\": the Charaka Saṃhitā, the Suśruta Saṃhitā, and Vāgbhaṭa's Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya. Two millennia of physicians have read them together, taught them together, and quoted them against one another in argument, because each does something the other two do not attempt.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-sound-of-the-sri-yantra.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-sound-of-the-sri-yantra.html", "title": "The Sound of the Śrī Yantra — an interactive essay", "date_published": "2026-07-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Yantra", "Waves and sound", "Physics" ], "summary": "Chladni figures, the strict nine-triangle Śrī Yantra, and the exact recipe of drawing sacred geometry with vibration — every figure is solved live in your browser.", "content_html": "There is a story that travels wherever sound meets sacred geometry. Sing the syllable Oṁ into a tonoscope — a drum-like membrane dusted with fine powder — and the grains, the story says, arrange themselves into the Śrī Yantra: nine interlocking triangles around a central point, the great diagram of the Śrīvidyā tradition. The tale is usually traced back to the cymatics experiments of Hans Jenny in the 1960s, and you will find it repeated in books, documentaries, and a thousand yoga-studio posters.
This essay takes the legend seriously enough to do the physics. Not to knock it down with a shrug, but to ask the precise question hiding underneath: what would a vibration actually have to be, for sand to settle into the true, classical Śrī Yantra? The answer turns out to be exact, surprising, and — in its own way — more beautiful than the legend.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-strength-of-subtlety.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-strength-of-subtlety.html", "title": "The Strength of Subtlety — Sūkṣmatā and the Locus of Power in Āyurveda", "date_published": "2026-07-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Ojas", "Doshas", "Agni", "Disease and diagnosis", "Five elements", "Charaka Samhita" ], "summary": "In Āyurveda the finest cause governs the grossest effect. An illustrated essay on sūkṣmatā — subtlety — as the locus of power across quality, force, essence, pharmacy, and cognition.", "content_html": "A materialist intuition ties power to mass: the greater the quantity, the greater the force. Āyurveda — the classical medical tradition of India, codified in a family of Sanskrit compendia more than two thousand years ago — organizes much of its theory around the opposite premise. Its word for \"subtle\" is sūkṣma, and across register after register the subtle is presented not as the diminished or residual but as the site where causal leverage concentrates. The subtlest quality penetrates deepest; the subtlest force is crowned lord of the rest; the subtlest droplet of tissue is the seat of life; the subtlest instrument yields the truest knowledge.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/two-skies-akasha-and-dis.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/two-skies-akasha-and-dis.html", "title": "Two Skies, One Word — Ākāśa and Diś in Āyurveda", "date_published": "2026-07-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Vastu", "Waves and sound", "Five elements", "Charaka Samhita", "Neuroscience" ], "summary": "Sanskrit names two separate substances — ākāśa and diś — where English says only “space.” A visual folio in seven plates on the two “skies” that Āyurveda carefully keeps apart.", "content_html": "English hands the single word space two entirely different jobs and expects us not to notice. It means the emptiness a thing sits in — the room, the void, the field that holds a body. And it means the direction a thing lies toward — north of here, far from there, this way rather than that. Sanskrit refuses the economy. In the causal ontology that Caraka lays out in the very first chapter of the Sūtrasthāna, these are two separate substances with two separate names, two separate parentages, and two separate kinds of work in the body and the cosmos.
One is ākāśa, the fifth and subtlest of the pañca-mahābhūta, the five great elements. The other is diś — direction itself, orientation as such. Both are counted among the nine kāraṇa-dravya, the causative substances from which all reasoning about cause proceeds. And yet, as we will see, their only real kinship is that membership. In root sense, in quality, in perceptibility, and above all in the kind of cause each one is, they diverge completely. This essay draws the two apart plate by plate — and colours the argument as it goes: everything belonging to ākāśa is set in ether-blue, everything belonging to diś in antique gold, and the vermilion of the manuscript rubric is reserved for what the two hold in common.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-nine-causative-substances-charaka-sutrasthana-1-48.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-nine-causative-substances-charaka-sutrasthana-1-48.html", "title": "The Nine Causative Substances — A Visual Essay on Charaka Sūtrasthāna 1.48", "date_published": "2026-05-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Charaka Samhita", "Mind", "Five elements", "Prakriti" ], "summary": "An ancient sūtra of nine words contains, with uncanny completeness, the architecture of free will, nature, nurture, and the fabric of space-time. A visual essay on Caraka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.48 — the nine causative substances, four domains of a life, and the proper province of jyotiṣa.", "content_html": "An ancient sūtra of nine words contains, with uncanny completeness, the architecture of free will, nature, nurture, and the fabric of space-time.
Every week I share this verse with someone. I keep coming back to it because in fourteen Sanskrit words it does what whole libraries of philosophy still struggle to do: it names, completely and without redundancy, the substances out of which a life is woven. The author — the redactor we call Caraka, working roughly two thousand years ago on the older oral tradition of Agniveśa — was writing a medical compendium, not a metaphysical treatise. But the physician of that period could not separate medicine from cosmology. To treat a person, you first had to know what a person is. And what a person is, the sūtra answers, is a particular gathering of nine things, substances called dravya, which the prior sūtra explicitly defines as quality (guṇa) plus action (karma).
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/reading-the-body-a-comparative-catalogue-diagnostic-markings.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/reading-the-body-a-comparative-catalogue-diagnostic-markings.html", "title": "Reading the Body: A Comparative Catalogue of Diagnostic Markings on the Nails, Eyes, Tongue, Hands, and Feet in Ayurvedic and Western Medicine", "date_published": "2026-04-29T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Doshas", "Anatomy", "Disease and diagnosis", "body markings", "Ayurvedic diagnosis", "nail diagnosis", "tongue diagnosis" ], "summary": "Long before laboratory tests, two great clinical traditions learned to read the body’s surface as a living document of its interior. A comparative catalogue of diagnostic markings across five anatomical zones — nails, eyes, tongue, hands, and feet — pairing Ayurvedic interpretation with Western clinical signs, and noting where evidence converges.", "content_html": "Long before laboratory tests, two great clinical traditions learned to read the body's surface as a living document of its interior. Ayurveda, codified in Sanskrit medical compendia between roughly 1500 BCE and 500 CE — particularly the Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita, and the later Yogaratnakara — formalized the practice into the Ashtavidha Pariksha, or eightfold examination: pulse (nadi), urine (mutra), stool (mala), tongue (jihva), voice (shabda), touch (sparsha), eyes (drik), and general form (akriti). Western clinical medicine, inheriting from Hippocratic and Galenic foundations and refined through nineteenth and twentieth century pathology, developed an analogous tradition: the inspection of nails, conjunctiva, tongue, palms, and feet for physical signs — visible markers correlated with named diseases through clinicopathologic study.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/oj-simpson-vedic-nodal-case-study.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/oj-simpson-vedic-nodal-case-study.html", "title": "O. J. Simpson — A Vedic Nodal Case Study", "date_published": "2026-04-28T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Rahu", "Ketu", "Dasha", "Mercury", "Transits", "Venus", "OJ Simpson", "nodal astrology", "Rahu Ketu", "Vimshottari dasha" ], "summary": "A complete Jyotish analysis of O.J. Simpson's chart: natal D1/D9/D10/D11, Vimshottari dasha sequence, and five empirical theses on how the lunar nodes shaped every turning point of his life. Includes two downloadable Python scripts.", "content_html": "Birth data: 9 July 1947, 08:08 AM PST, San Francisco. Rodden rating AA. System: Sidereal (Lahiri), whole-sign houses, mean nodes, Vimshottari dasha.
Whole-sign house assignments from Leo Asc: Sun & Venus in H11 (gains, network, fame), Mercury & Saturn in H12 (confinement, hidden enemies), Mars & Rahu in H10 (career, public action), Jupiter in H3 (courage, siblings, athleticism), Moon in H8 (death, transformation, scandal), Ketu in H4 (home, mother, heart).
The full Python script that produced all of the above is oj_jyotish.py (embedded below). It is general — change the four BIRTH_* constants at the top for any other chart.
I asked Anthropic's Claude (version 4.7) for a comprehensive current audit of the state of the moment of this controversial and extremely influential paper. Its treatment of no less than 16 interlocked and manifold problems follows.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-hidden-architecture-of-the-vimshottari-dasha-years.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-hidden-architecture-of-the-vimshottari-dasha-years.html", "title": "The Hidden Architecture of the Vimshottari Dasha Years", "date_published": "2026-04-19T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Dasha", "Jupiter", "Venus", "Mars", "Saturn", "Ketu", "Vimshottari dasha", "dasha years", "numerical structure", "Kepler" ], "summary": "What a failed search for a physical formula accidentally revealed about an ancient numerical scheme — an investigation into the deliberate structure inside 6, 7, 7, 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.", "content_html": "What a failed search for a physical formula accidentally revealed about an ancient numerical scheme — and how it eventually succeeded.
The nine Vimshottari dasha years — 6, 10, 7, 18, 16, 19, 17, 7, 20 for Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus — were long assumed to be axiomatic assignments from Jyotish tradition. This analysis uncovers five layers of hidden structure that, taken together, reduce the \"free choices\" in the system from nine numbers to zero:
The net effect: all 120 years are derivable from one physical law (1/v), three structural rules (total = 120, 60-60 partition, Ketu = Mars), the Jupiter-centered palindrome, and the melakarta grounding. There is no irreducible axiomatic seed — Sun = 6 follows the structure.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/thirty-fully-fledged-astrological-research-ideas.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/thirty-fully-fledged-astrological-research-ideas.html", "title": "Thirty Fully Fledged Astrological Research Ideas", "date_published": "2026-01-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research", "Relationships", "Sun", "Sleep", "Data", "Retrogrades" ], "summary": "Do you want to do astrological research but you are not sure where to start? This article is for you!", "content_html": "Do you want to do astrological research but you are not sure where to start?
This article is for you!
Included for each is its motivation (why it is needed), what data to source, and the best mathematics to use.
Each project emphasizes falsifiability, proper control groups, and transparency about effect sizes and statistical power.
We analyzed the movements of 1,211 minor planets over 290 days, resulting in 351,190 data points, linking each minor planet's relative orbital position to major solar system features and the normalized count of articles containing its name in that day's news articles. By presenting our data with authentication from electrical engineering's signal analysis, we offer and support a simple theoretical framework of four, fundamental, astrological claims and counterclaim a fifth. We find that only astrological angles dominate orbital rhythms with peak rates of astronyms in Google News. As well, Gauquelin sectors were found in the signals.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/cs-cosmic-semiotics.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/cs-cosmic-semiotics.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 233601 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-proposed-correspondence-between-the-planets-and-the-eight-ayurvedic-diseases-of-the-mind.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-proposed-correspondence-between-the-planets-and-the-eight-ayurvedic-diseases-of-the-mind.html", "title": "A Proposed Correspondence Between the Planets and the Eight Diseases of the Mind from Ayurveda", "date_published": "2023-09-20T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Disease and diagnosis", "Ashtangahridayam", "Vagbhata" ], "summary": "Chapter 1, Verse 1 of Vagbhata's \"Ashtanga Hridayam\" is gorgeous, often being the favorite melody of my Sanskrit student...", "content_html": "Chapter 1, Verse 1 of Vagbhata's \"Ashtanga Hridayam\" is gorgeous, often being the favorite melody of my Sanskrit students.
Devanagari Script:
रागादि रोगान् सततानु सक्तान् असेष काय प्रसृतान सेशान्।
औत्सुक्य मोहारति दाञ्जघान योऽपूर्व वैद्याय नमोऽस्तु तस्मै॥
IAST Transliteration:
rāgādi rogān satatānu saktān aśeṣa kāya prasṛtāna seśān,
autsukya mohārati dāñjaghāna yo'pūrva vaidyāya namo'stu tasmai.
In 1985, a recent Bachelor of Science graduate, Shawn Carlson, published in the premier science magazine (then or now) — Nature — a study of astrology.
It \"was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government\" and was declared \"... a perfectly convincing and lasting demonstration\" by the journal's editor. [1]
To say that the paper was and is influential would be a disservice. It is the single most effective critique of astrology in recent times. [1]
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/carlson-study-is-without-key-statistical-3.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/carlson-study-is-without-key-statistical-3.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 17007 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/2022-essay-contest-winner-first-prize.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/2022-essay-contest-winner-first-prize.html", "title": "2022 Essay Contest Winner: First Prize", "date_published": "2023-01-15T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Contest", "Ritual", "Moon" ], "summary": "The sky is growing dark. The streetlight and the curve of the hill we live on allow the artificial light from our township to spill down the curvature of our…", "content_html": "The sky is growing dark. The streetlight and the curve of the hill we live on allow the artificial light from our township to spill down the curvature of our road, making the night seem less mature than it is. I look up at the sky - it’s a shade of dark blue-gray that comes before complete blackness. I won’t be awake for the north east suburban dark sky that would appear briefly in a few hours. I’m 7 years old. I have a bedtime. I’m standing outside on our front step, with my shoes on, because my mother’s anxiety would activate if I were barefoot outside. I know, even at this age, that my mother’s anxiety is its own justified reason to put my shoes on. I know, even at this age, that I’d rather be barefoot.
I’m in first grade and each evening this whole month of early spring, my homework is to pencil draw what the moon looks like, through each of her phases, putting the moon in little boxes on a worksheet my teacher gave me. After a few nights, my young eyes decide the boxes are too small to hold my moons. But I am without a solution, because my teachers won’t care if I tell them I don’t have what I need to adequately draw the moon - or at least that’s what it feels like. I wish they had asked me what I needed to draw the moon. I want to get closer to the moon. Even at this age, I can feel its pull and presence. This is my introduction to Jyotisha, witnessing Her limitlessness and being limited by Her simultaneously.
The beginning, the middle, and the end of my knowing Jyotisha exists in my lived experiences, in the recalling of such experiences, and in the intense and immense study of experience. Her characteristics of science and fact, emphasis of time and place, Her ability to be fluid, changing, and ever course creating, Her seasonality and Her patterns all create a kind of river-like flow that is ever changing, yet predictable, and yet not. All of it is alluring, inspiring, frustrating, enticing, activating, relieving, and soothing to my mind, and my heart.
I’m cold in my bones, and sort of stiff. I just slept on a Hogan floor in a sleeping bag, with multiple layers of clothing for warmth. I’m on reservation land in …
Abstract
The belief in a correspondence between the planetary positions at the time of a world event and those at a similar event at another time is ancient and still claimed today (Tarnas, 2006). Using a database of 6770 dates of world events after January 1, 1600, AD from Wolfram Research, the short descriptions that accompany each date are quantified using 1536 long embeddings from OpenAI. Embeddings, a gift from machine learning, are a precise way to measure similarities between text. They were used here to quantify similarities in short descriptions without dates of pairs in 6770 world events post-1600 AD as found in a provided database. There are 22913065 unique such possible pairs. The zodiacal placements of the charts were also calculated for either the actual date at midnight of the event or the same but
using the start date for a multi-day event. Only Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, North Lunar Node, and South Lunar Node Tropical degree placements from zero to 360 degrees were computed. Finding the mean of the Cosines of the differences between planetary placements for two events offers a neat and novel way of measuring similarities between these zodiacal placements for the two events. These metrics for textual similarities and chart similarities when plotted against each other suggest non-monotonic dependence with effect size between the chart extrema being 0.380. The upper p-value for independence between the two metrics is less than 0.0001 as computed by Hoeffding’s dependence measure. The conservative Monte Carlo approach to estimating the upper value of this p-value was necessary due to physical computation constraints. Thus, likelihood for the alternative to independence, namely dependence, between event textual similarities and event chart similarities is shown. A classifier for an event date being war-like or peace-like as decided by similarity of the embeddings for the event’s full description to the embeddings for the words “war” and “peace” respectively was successful as built on event zodiacal placements only.
…
New Horizons
When I told my mother about my Jyotish reading with Renay, and how it had given me peace, she told me she also had been questioning herself. What she could have done, or not done, to prevent my developing this disease. I hope my reading helped her, too.
I’m fine. Really, I am very healthy and feel lucky to be alive and able to actively explore the beautiful planet we live on. I had many very dark months about four years ago, when debilitating vertigo made it difficult to walk and sometimes even to sit up. Time, yoga practice, medication, and diet tweaks have kept me vertigo-free for several years now. I am permanently nearly deaf in one ear from the episodes of fluid pressure in that ear that caused the nerve damage and led to the vertigo. But as I remind myself and others, I still have one ear left. So far, anyway.
This medical condition was a contributing factor to losing out on a personal and professional dream opportunity in 2021. The loss sent me into a spiral of questions about my direction and purpose, and led me to seek out Jyotisha for insight. Why had this happened to me? What could I have done or could I do to prevent or reverse it? Although our medical establishment in the US could slap a name on what was happening and could prescribe medication to react to it, no one could tell me why it was happening to me. In some ways the inner workings of the human body remain as mysterious as other worlds. In some ways this question of “why” is something Western medicine is not equipped to address.
At first it was a shock to learn from Renay that planetary alignments from my time of birth had made this dark period in my life perfectly predictable and inevitable, results of the eddies in the fluid dynamics of cosmic energy. I was born, I lived my life, I came to this bend in the river, it crashed over me. What I heard in that message was: what else would I have been able to do? The forces of nature were greater than me.
What I did was I swim through that dark period, and now I get to explore the downstream opportunities. Reflecting on my reading, it has freed me from remaining …
We Are Made of Stars
Perhaps it started when I was 22. I had a roommate in college who studied Western Astrology and taught me all of the energies of the planets, and the signs, and those 12 houses. We would sit in front of our wood-burning fireplace, and open books and read-aloud to each other from her traditional Western Astrology texts. One of those books was about the wisdom of Jupiter, and how his placements in our chart show us where we are lucky. I was lucky, I thought. I knew enough to identify someone’s Jupiter, and then I could tell my friends about this juicy planet in the sky that brings us bounty and good fortune. That alone made me a bit of an astrologer; it gave me a kind of identity. I thought.
Perhaps it was that same year, and the night I wrote these words alone on a single page of my journal: “We are made of stars.” I was staring up at a clear night sky from the balcony of my Boulder Colorado apartment, watching the full moon very close to Jupiter, the pair like a slow dance. That vibrant light and exuberant energy could be felt. It tingled. I remember a little dance on my insides.
Perhaps, it was sitting, wrapped in a blanket, on that patio for hours just staring into that bright light face, and letting that energy wrap me tighter. I began to realize astrology was real. These planets lived above me, around me, and also inside of me.
Perhaps it started when I randomly met my Vedic Astrology teacher at a pool party, and I asked her the same question I asked everyone I met at that time, “What’s your sign?” It was like a party trick that always worked. It was Boulder. When you tell someone about herself, see someone in a way that they don’t see themselves, it’s usually a win. I was learning.
She immediately told me her ascendant, her moon and sun sign, and I knew I had a new friend. Little did I know that friendship would turn into a relationship of great importance to my spiritual development and unfolding for the rest of my life.
She was a Vedic Astrologer, and in the way I understood the “light” of Western Astrology, she understood more, something more …
We three judges had such a difficult time determining the winners of the holiday essay contest, but here they are: First prize goes to 8044918919, second prize to NewHorizons, third prize to gxx6fm7gfc. Please reach out to claim your prize by following the instruction below.
I am so pleased to share that there is a second holiday essay contest at AyurAstro.com going on now.
The deadline for submission is Dec 31 at 12 am Mountain time. You may submit your essay at https://www.dropbox.com/request/kIFmqMUw8VX1T2KcNeTt
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/holiday-essay-contest-2022-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/holiday-essay-contest-2022-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 552454 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/styles-of-healers-in-the-chart.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/styles-of-healers-in-the-chart.html", "title": "Styles of Healers in the Chart", "date_published": "2022-11-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Nakshatras" ], "summary": "Nakshatras are a beautiful part of jyotish and are believed to be the first, early, and progenitor features of understanding the sky.", "content_html": "Nakshatras are a beautiful part of jyotish and are believed to be the first, early, and progenitor features of understanding the sky. Meaning \"worshipped stars\" and other things, they are smaller slivers of the sky than the constellations and contain potent mythology that holds true even in the everyday \"real life\". Let me give you two examples.
A friend has the lord of the tenth house of career, Venus, exalted in the third house of use of hands, but that is not all. The placement is in a smaller subset of degrees, a nakshatra, associated with woodworking. Sure enough, he has the unusual contemporary profession of being an ancient-style wood worker.
Another example is a client who has a very strong Jupiter in Revati (a nakshatra holding meaning of shepherding and timepieces as well as other things) as indicator for work colleagues. She works with people who shepherd subatomic particles and maintain the timings for the very massive machine doing the splitting. It is so cool to see these ancient indications expressed in very modern terms.
These mythically rich lanscapes of the zodiac hold many secrets, including, I feel, information about types and styles of healers!
ASHWINI the miracle worker
KRITTIKA the brilliant, incisive cook
PUSHYA the enveloping, nutrifying, nourishing mother
ASHLESHA the shakti-filled nurse
VIRGO (all 3 nakshatras) the thoracic specialist; the Hippocrates-style hygeinic, pure-minded and earnest doctor; the bodywork specialist
ANURADHA the mathematician/number theorist/astrologer
SHATABHISHAK the brilliant herbalism or pharmaceutically informed wizard who can heal difficult, mysterious illnesses as if one were \"100 physicians\" (the translation of the name)
UTTARA BHADRAPADA the monk
REVATI the shepherd
Does your chart show signs of being one of these types of healers?
Let us know, and feel free to ask if you would like your chart looked at for this purpose!
Early narrative explaining results as of May 13, 2022 (presentation for OPA Research):
The below is automated daily data cultivation with automated daily aggregate analysis in Wolfram Mathematica:
To download or use a copy of the code immediately above, click on the three lines in the bottom left and then choose \"make your own copy\" or \"download\". There is a free time-limited version of Mathematica that you can use with the download, or making your own copy will open up an online version of the software that you can use for free.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/across-millions-of-pairs-text-similarities-in-descriptions-of-events-likely-depend-on-similarities-in-astrology-charts.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/across-millions-of-pairs-text-similarities-in-descriptions-of-events-likely-depend-on-similarities-in-astrology-charts.html", "title": "Across Millions of Pairs, Text Similarities in Descriptions of Events Likely Depend on Similarities in Astrology Charts", "date_published": "2022-03-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research", "Outer planets", "Data", "Moon", "Nodes", "Mathematics" ], "summary": "**Abstract** Embeddings, a way to measure similarities between texts, are a recent gift of machine learning. They were ...", "content_html": "
Abstract
Embeddings, a way to measure similarities between texts, are a recent gift of machine learning. They were used here to quantify similarities in very short descriptions without dates of pairs in 7153 world events post-1600 AD as found in a provided database. There are 25,579,128 unique such possible pairs. The zodiacal placements of the charts were also calculated for either the actual date at midnight of the event or the same but using the start date for a multi-day event. Only Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, North Lunar Node, and South Lunar Node Tropical degree placements from zero to 360 degrees were computed. Adding up the Cosines of the differences between planetary placements for two events offers a neat and novel way of measuring similarities between these zodiacal placements for the two events. Thus, I have metrics for textual similarities and chart similarities. The imagery of these metrics plotted against each other suggests non-monotonic dependence. This study answers a precise question: what is the p-value for independence between the two metrics? The upper p-value for independence is less than 0.01 as computed by Hoeffding’s dependence measure. The conservative Monte Carlo approach to estimating the upper value of this p-value was necessary due to physical computation constraints. Thus, likelihood for the alternative to independence, namely dependence, between event textual similarities and event chart similarities is established. A separate Hoeffding's dependence measure for each celestial feature is calculated for the special case of event distances to the word \"Battle\". A Monte Carlo simulation shows that these separate Hoeffding's D measures are mostly extremely unlikely given the distributions of celestial degrees in the data. Wolfram language code and data are included.
Introduction
World events are often used in astrology studies. Accurate place, date, and time are typically known even when they are not precise, allowing for a bridge between astrological placements and interpretation of social, cultural, and …
This paper presents a case study in Bhutonmad — the Ayurvedic framework for understanding the influence of space, time, karma, and guna on events — applied to a shooting that was perceived ahead of time.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-curious-case-of-seeing-a-shooting-before-it-happens-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-curious-case-of-seeing-a-shooting-before-it-happens-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 1964021 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/an-easy-mnemonic-for-finding-the-change-of-nakshatras.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/an-easy-mnemonic-for-finding-the-change-of-nakshatras.html", "title": "An easy mnemonic for finding the change of nakshatras", "date_published": "2021-10-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Nakshatras" ], "summary": "Perhaps you find yourself self-pressured to know the particular nakshatra of a planetary placement, given only the degre...", "content_html": "Here is an easy way to remember the changes. It all has to do with the inherent trinal nature of the four elements in the chart. Since nakshatra lords also have a trinal quality, we can borrow the structure of the elements in signs to extrapolate to nakshatras.
Fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) start off the zodiac and represent a complete set of nine nakshatras, one for each of the nine graha.
As they are the start, the degree at which the nakshatra sequence begins is zero.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/an-easy-mnemonic-for-finding-the-change-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/an-easy-mnemonic-for-finding-the-change-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 40851 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/news-aggregator-service-for-astrology-nasa-a-free-research-tool.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/news-aggregator-service-for-astrology-nasa-a-free-research-tool.html", "title": "NEWS AGGREGATOR SERVICE FOR ASTROLOGY (NASA): A FREE RESEARCH TOOL", "date_published": "2021-09-25T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research", "Machine learning", "Agni" ], "summary": "***Hello! I have been doing a lot of development of my News Aggregator Service for Astrology and want to share here an e...", "content_html": "Contemporary astrologers are challenged like never before to make their work scientific. This is especially true for astrology researchers who are stewards of the keystone for legitimacy in astrology. Fortunately, current strides in artificial intelligence allow new avenues to data cultivation for the public and private astrology researcher. The author presents her freely available solution to the challenge, using in her explanation basic, intermediate, and advanced concepts.
Astrologers the world over from all times, whether Eastern, Western, Persian, Chinese, or Tibetan, face the same challenge. Event data of time, place, and date, including that of births, are mandatory for us to do our work.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/news-aggregator-service-for-astrology-na-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/news-aggregator-service-for-astrology-na-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 32769 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/an-alternate-assignment-of-grahas-to-chakras.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/an-alternate-assignment-of-grahas-to-chakras.html", "title": "An alternate assignment of grahas to chakras", "date_published": "2021-02-24T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Yoga", "Mars", "Sun", "Jupiter", "Ketu", "Mercury", "Rahu" ], "summary": "The seven chakras have an especially important role in yoga, Ayurveda, and Jyotish. They are energy centers on which w...", "content_html": "They are energy centers on which we can depend for the integration of the physical, psychical, and astral bodies.
Here is a purported connection of the seven chakras to neve plexi There is quite a lot of other information on the chakra Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra) that I highly recommend and will save you its summary.
Interestingly, there are various assignments out there for the important association of the grahas (Sun, Moon, and planets) to the chakras. For example, David Frawley in Ayurvedic Astrology proposes the following assignments:
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/an-alternate-assignment-of-grahas-to-cha-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/an-alternate-assignment-of-grahas-to-cha-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 39615 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sign-and-symbol-vedic-numerology-and-the-zodiac-signs.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sign-and-symbol-vedic-numerology-and-the-zodiac-signs.html", "title": "Sign and Symbol: Vedic Numerology and the Zodiac Signs", "date_published": "2021-02-18T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Outer planets", "Ketu", "Rahu", "Jupiter", "Sun", "Venus" ], "summary": "In Vedic numerology what we are really talking about are the symbols of number with their equivalencies in graha, and symbols of space as segments of the zodiac. Each number read as its sign rising — now with a chart for every number, and the chart they add up to.", "content_html": "In Vedic numerology what we are really talking about are the symbols of number with their equivalencies in graha (the Sun, Moon, nodes of the Moon, and planets) and symbols of space as relevant segments of the zodiacal belt. Just as there is a language to numbers, namely mathematics, there is a corresponding language of space-time through the moving graha, namely Jyotiṣa.
The Vedic assignations of number and graha are the standard nine, the ones Harish Johari set out for Western readers in his Numerology (1990) and that every Indian numerologist uses. The signs are my own addition: the nth number takes the nth sign.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/sign-and-symbol-summary-chart.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/sign-and-symbol-summary-chart.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 74837 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/2020-holiday-essay-contest-the-grand-prize-winning-essay.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/2020-holiday-essay-contest-the-grand-prize-winning-essay.html", "title": "2020 Holiday Essay Contest: The Grand Prize Winning Essay", "date_published": "2021-01-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Contest" ], "summary": "A reading in Boulder, then five months locked down in a Rishikesh ashram, a village in the Himalayas, and a birth timed to the charts — the grand-prize essay in the 2020 holiday contest.", "content_html": "I visited Renay last fall, while my husband was away working in a refugee camp in Kenya, and we were nearing a big transition. After several years of living in Boulder – a lovely bubble – filled with adventures, graduate degrees, stability, and friends, we both felt the urge to live abroad again, to be less comfortable, to make a big ripple and avoid getting complacent. When I met Renay, we were planning to leave the US in January of 2020. The idea was to spend most of our time in India, with no distinct plans for where exactly we would be, what we were going to do, or how long we would stay away. The questions I asked Renay during my Jyotish session were related to the broad arc of this lifetime: What is my role in all this? Being highly trained in both science and yoga, what is the proper balance? How can I be most helpful to the world?
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/how-the-practice-of-jyotisha-has-influenced-my-year-2020.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/how-the-practice-of-jyotisha-has-influenced-my-year-2020.html", "title": "Essay contest winner: How the practice of jyotisha has influenced my year (2020)", "date_published": "2021-01-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Contest", "Remedies" ], "summary": "[This essay won the first place prize for our 2020 holiday essay contest (https://www.ayurastro.com/articles/2020-holida...", "content_html": "When I begin to read Light on Life by Hart de Fouw and Robert Svoboda, I felt as though I wandered into a secret world. The words I was reading felt like they were written for me. The information in the chapters made sense and suddenly I was looking at my world with a new sense of wonder. The planets became real to me. I befriended them. It felt a little crazy when I began conversing with the universe.
Maybe a bit awkward, but not uncomfortable. This reaction was similar to the experience I had when I began the study of herbalism. As I learned about new herbs, and their properties, I sought out places that they grew. It became a part of my daily routine and it continues today. Once discovered, I would sit with the plants, observe them and, yes, the conversations started. Now I had the planets to befriend as well. The pattern of my day was altered. Life became much quieter for me as I relished time spent just listening to my surroundings. The plants, and the planets, both became an important priority. Although I enjoy being social, this study of Jyotish also spoke to another side of my personality. I have always needed quiet time. I think coming from a large family, with very few boundaries, I seek solitude. It was hard to carve out time just for me. This science spoke to that need in me and I began to crave the peaceful feeling I felt while reading and absorbing new ideas.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/its-felt-like-a-life-time.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/its-felt-like-a-life-time.html", "title": "Essay contest winner: It’s Felt Like a Life Time", "date_published": "2021-01-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Contest" ], "summary": "[This essay won the first place prize for our 2020 holiday essay contest (https://www.ayurastro.com/articles/2020-holida...", "content_html": "2020 has only deepened my questions about time and how it works in and
through my life, and in this way it has deepened my relationship with Jyotisha. In a
year that both heightened the pitch of change and uncertainty in the world while
also introducing new levels of monotony to my days, I’ve leaned on the intricate
assurances of this field of knowledge. The practice of Jyotisha not only prepared me for this strange season, but it has also helped me cope and make sense of it from within.
It’s been many years since my life had any illusion of “stability.” By the time I
reached my mid twenties, I’d watched in horror as my major plans crumbled around me...several times. I looked back and realized I had seen every demise coming but had thought I could fight it. In a wicked quarter life crisis, exhausted and bereft of dreams, I wondered if I had been weak or just stupid.
I had the distinct sense that some larger force was moving me around with
all the other little pieces, and I became obsessed with trying to understand the
mechanics of fate. With no grounding or support in this endeavor, though, I felt like
someone flailing about in unknown waters.
I am breathing in and I am breathing out. As sure as the sun does rise, I am as sure that the sun sets. I am breathing out. I am breathing in. The moon also rises, and just as it does, the moon also sets. I am breathing. I am still breathing, and all the bodies that rise with life, they will all also set in their time and find death.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ocean-of-light-the-impact-of-the-practice-of-jyotisha-on-my-2020-year.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ocean-of-light-the-impact-of-the-practice-of-jyotisha-on-my-2020-year.html", "title": "Essay contest winner: Ocean of Light - The impact of the practice of Jyotisha on my 2020 year.", "date_published": "2020-12-31T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Contest", "Doshas" ], "summary": "[This essay won the second place prize for our 2020 holiday essay contest (/articles/2020-holiday-essay-contest-for-cash...", "content_html": "Over there look, so many people and they are in trouble.
Famine; Dis-ease; Standing ... Fighting ... Falling
Then I hear the echo- a ripple from a 100 years before.
How many others can now wonder how it was for the beings back then?
Ebbing and flowing in 1920, oceans of water, ocean of light.
Visions of the past bring me to the present.
Each country in its own despair.
Does anyone know what's really going on?
Alas, there is hope.
See it through different eyes.
Thank you everyone for submitting your writing! I enjoyed so much reading each and every one of the offerings! They are exquisite.
Winners, please contact me by 10 am Mountain on Dec 28, 2020 with your name, a good mailing address, and the first line of your essay.
I have learned so much from all of you, and for this holiday season, I want to learn even more.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/spaces-for-personal-and-public-planetary-yogas-in-the-zodiac.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/spaces-for-personal-and-public-planetary-yogas-in-the-zodiac.html", "title": "Spaces for Personal and Public Planetary Yogas in the Zodiac", "date_published": "2020-11-10T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "Here is just a quick series of thoughts but on something that I have not seen before. Let's look at the houses of the z...", "content_html": "Let's look at the houses of the zodiac, that fundamental distillation of space in which roam the ambassadors of time, namely the grahas (Sun, Moon, planets, and lunar nodes) Applying the signs in the standard order of Kala Purusha (https://vedictime.com/en/library/rashi), we receive the following image. What I have not seen before is the acknowledgement of the built-in increased possibility of personal yogas in the left-half of the zodiac.
Since Sun, Mercury, and Venus all travel together or nearby, within 2 signs (and the Moon is so quick moving that half the time it is with these personal planets too), they are in their own signs only in that half of the year. Thus, there is an increased propensity for parivartana and dharmakarmaadipati and other yogas, those signatures that portend great strength of indication.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/spaces-for-personal-and-public-planetary-yoga-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/spaces-for-personal-and-public-planetary-yoga-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 24567 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/lioness-rectifying-ruth-bader-ginsbergs-chart.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/lioness-rectifying-ruth-bader-ginsbergs-chart.html", "title": "Lioness: Rectifying Ruth Bader Ginsberg's Chart", "date_published": "2020-10-06T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Bhavas", "Dasha", "Mercury", "Saturn", "Career", "Nakshatras" ], "summary": "[First published on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/renay) on September 18, 2020.] In my sadness at Ruth Bader...", "content_html": "In my sadness at Ruth Bader Ginsberg's passing, I am processing my grief, in part, by rectifying her astrological chart. That is, I will attempt to find her birth time.
The \"Notorious RBG\" had a birth date (3/15/1933) and birth place (Brooklyn) that are known, but her time of birth is not known.
Here is her chart with an assumed noon birth time, just so that you can see her general placements in signs. The birth time will show the rotation of these places, i.e. their proper houses. STEP ONE: Look for a picture of her hand
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/lioness-rectifying-ruth-bader-ginsbergs-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/lioness-rectifying-ruth-bader-ginsbergs-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 71311 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/shad-ripus-and-the-digestive-organs.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/shad-ripus-and-the-digestive-organs.html", "title": "Shad Ripus and the Digestive Organs", "date_published": "2020-09-20T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Anatomy" ], "summary": "From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arishadvargas): \" In Hindu theology, **Arishadvarga** or **Shadripu**/Shad...", "content_html": "The order here is important and is typically conserved. These failures of the mind in fact can be said to define our experience in the Kali Yuga.
Ayurveda teaches that the experience of digestion of all things, including food, thoughts, and experiences, relies on the transformative power (the Agni) of our own digestive system. Understanding and stoking our digestive capacity thus leads to nothing less than true freedom, i.e. emotional freedom, from the bindings inherent in what we take in.
I propose here that the shad ripus are themselves related to each of the six Ayurvedic tastes and to each of the six digestive organs. Sub-components of this idea were presented to me in Ayurvedic school but not the whole system. Moreover, the conserved order of the shad ripus match the order at which the digestive organs assimilate food.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-simple-illustrated-guide-to-making-peanut-curry-poha.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-simple-illustrated-guide-to-making-peanut-curry-poha.html", "title": "A Simple Illustrated Guide to Making Peanut Curry Poha", "date_published": "2020-09-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes" ], "summary": "Here is an easy way to make a wonderful, nutritious, and delicious Ayurvedic meal in under 10 minutes start to finish at...", "content_html": "Here is an easy way to make a wonderful, nutritious, and delicious Ayurvedic meal in under 10 minutes start to finish at about 50 cents per serving. It can serve as a breakfast, snack, or light lunch or dinner.
Ingredients list:poha (approx. 1 cup per serving) - flattened rice, available in Indian stores or on Amazonmustard seeds (approx. 1 tsp per serving)curry leaves (approx. 2 tsp. per serving)turmeric (approx. 1 tsp. per serving)salt (approx. 1/2 tsp. per serving or to taste)chili powder (approx. 1/2 tsp. per serving) peanuts (approx. 1/4 to 1/3 cup per serving) ghee (approx. 1 tsp. to 1 tbsp. per serving)lime (1/2 per serving)pomegranate seeds (optional)
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/a-simple-illustrated-guide-to-making-pea-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/a-simple-illustrated-guide-to-making-pea-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 568337 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/arjunas-twelve-names-and-the-jyotish-chart.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/arjunas-twelve-names-and-the-jyotish-chart.html", "title": "Arjuna's Twelve Names and the Jyotish Chart", "date_published": "2020-07-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Katapayadi", "Bhagavad Gita", "Tools" ], "summary": "When I first read the Bhagavad Gita, I was charmed and intrigued by the nicknames of Arjuna, the great everyday hero of ...", "content_html": "Wikipedia summarizes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjuna) the etymology and epithets of Arjuna. A Quora post on it is here (https://www.quora.com/Mahabharata-Hindu-epic-What-are-the-10-names-of-Arjuna).
I was delighted to see these names, my friends, all in one place. This list also got me thinking. It reminded me of Katapayadi, Ka·ṭa·pa·yā·di (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katapayadi_system) is an ancient cryptographic method used to embed extra layers of meaning in texts. Here is my calculator (https://www.ayurastro.com/tool-katapayadi.html) that uses this method to decrypt Sanskrit text into Jyotishical meaning.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ayurvedic-daily-organ-activation-cycle-as-found-in-the-jyotisha-chart.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ayurvedic-daily-organ-activation-cycle-as-found-in-the-jyotisha-chart.html", "title": "Ayurvedic Daily Organ Activation Cycle as Found in the Jyotisha Chart", "date_published": "2020-06-27T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Anatomy", "Doshas", "Bhavas" ], "summary": "Below is the classical ancient empty chart of *Jyotisha*. Its diamonds and squares rightly can be said to describe all o...", "content_html": "Since there are 24 hours in the day and 12 sectors, in this schema each sector can be said to represent 2 hours.
In Ayurveda, the doshas occur in the following daily time frames:vata is from 2 to 6 am and pm,pitta is from 10 to 2 am and pm, kapha is from 6 to 10 am and pm, With sunrise theoretically or poetically at 6 am, the Sun theoretically overhead at noon, sunset at 6 pm, and Sun underfoot at midnight, we can build pictorially on the empty Jyotisha chart to represent this set of distinctions. More specifically, the organs of the body follow a daily rhythm of activation as well (image below is from svasthaayurveda.com (https://svasthaayurveda.com/the-ayurvedic-body-clock-organs-and-dosha-alignment-with-time/)). Hence, they can be mapped onto this same empty chart with each juncture between houses representing an organ activation as defined classically in Ayurveda. Some really beautiful symmetries emerge. For example, lung activation is reflected about the vertical midline and the heart is reflected about the horizontal midline. Even when it seems there is a difference, e.g. between liver & gallbladder and spleen, they are really depicting the differences between the right and left parts of the actual body in that region.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/ayurvedic-daily-organ-activation-cycle-a-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/ayurvedic-daily-organ-activation-cycle-a-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 56481 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/seeing-the-qualities-of-energy-of-the-grahas-through-the-shapes-of-their-special-aspects.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/seeing-the-qualities-of-energy-of-the-grahas-through-the-shapes-of-their-special-aspects.html", "title": "Seeing the Qualities of Energy of the Grahas through the Shapes of Their Special Aspects", "date_published": "2020-04-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Saturn", "Mars", "Jupiter", "Gunas", "Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra" ], "summary": "Maṅgala looks at the fourth and the eighth, Guru at the fifth and the ninth, Śani at the third and the tenth. Draw those points on the wheel and join them and you get three triangles: one equilateral, one leaning forward, one that does not contain the centre. A 2020 notebook page, measured — with a wheel to turn.", "content_html": "Every graha looks across the chart at the house opposite it. Three of them — Maṅgala, Guru and Śani — are given a second and a third look that belongs to no one else. Put those looks on a circle and join the points, and you get three triangles. One of them is perfect. One of them leans forward. One of them does not contain the centre of the wheel at all.
In April of 2020 I drew a page in a notebook, photographed it, and put it on this site under a single sentence. The sentence said that visual examples of the special aspects, taken as the end points of triangles, pictorially show the language we use about Guru, Maṅgala and Śani, and it promised my derivation of the angle values. Then it stopped. The derivation was never written down. The page has sat here for six years with three circles on it, some numbers in ballpoint, and nothing to say why any of it mattered.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/seeing-the-qualities-special-aspects-card.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/seeing-the-qualities-special-aspects-card.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 57736 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/on-fire.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/on-fire.html", "title": "On Fire", "date_published": "2020-03-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Doshas" ], "summary": "*A very brief analysis on the theory of fire from an Ayurvedic and Jyotish perspective:* Fire element has lately been o...", "content_html": "Fire element has lately been on my mind. Mars has been strong in Scorpio, its own sign, the last couple of months, and even now, in Sagittarius, it continues to be strong.
My own inward pitta has been quite high, befitting the transits, a surge in thinking about fire has flowed forth, and my appreciation of the special place of fire has increased. I hope to show you why.
The five elements in the theory of yoga, Ayurveda, and Jyotish are space, air, fire, water, and earth. I have written before of how the knowing of them is at least equal in beauty, power, and insight as knowing the periodic table — see: The Periodic Table and the 5 Elements of Ayurveda.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/dancing-flames.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/dancing-flames.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 153388 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/how-i-correctly-picked-the-super-bowl-this-year.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/how-i-correctly-picked-the-super-bowl-this-year.html", "title": "How I correctly picked the Super Bowl this year", "date_published": "2020-02-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Jupiter", "Bhavas" ], "summary": "And the spread! Note that the technique described below was also used in this study (https://www.ayurastro.com/articles...", "content_html": "Note that the technique described below was also used in this study (https://www.ayurastro.com/articles/casual-double-blind-cross-sectional-study-of-super-bowl-retrodictions#/) of mine of a wider spectrum of Super Bowls (actually all of them until the date of that study).
At 1:26 pm today, 3 hours before kickoff, I posted a simple tweet: \"The red and white team by ten.\"
I could not remember the name of the red and white team as being the Kansas City Chiefs but figured that any reader would know who I am talking about. (I did not yet know that the SFO team would come out in red and white jerseys and gold pants. For the purposes of this analysis, it is important to know that their standard colors are red and gold with a bit of white, while the KC team's colors are considered here to be red and white with a bit of yellow. The importance of this all will become clearer below.)
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/history-repeats-itself.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/history-repeats-itself.html", "title": "History Repeats Itself", "date_published": "2020-01-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research", "Astronomy", "Data", "Sun", "Outer planets" ], "summary": "**Summary** Using natural language processing, a system of using artificial intelligence to understand text, the author...", "content_html": "Using natural language processing, a system of using artificial intelligence to understand text, the author constructs a predictor based on a simple, constrained, description of the solar system on the start dates of various world historical events (n=7819). This predictor is then statistically shown to be effective at characterizing similar events of the past. An online offering (https://www.ayurastro.com/history-predictor.html#/) of this predictor for use of characterizing the future accompanies this write-up.
Future history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_history) is a term of ripe heritage. Typically, it is used to describe works of science fiction. What if future historical events could be predicted computationally, even if hazily?
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/plants-and-planets-part-1.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/plants-and-planets-part-1.html", "title": "Plants and Planets Part 1", "date_published": "2019-10-23T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Translation", "Gunas", "Mind", "Physics", "Rigveda" ], "summary": "**I spoke with the great Sonia Masocco in January of 2017. I recommend Sonia’s herbal services (https://soniamasocco.com...", "content_html": "The audio to the interview was initially lost and then found 2.5 years later but in somewhat of a corrupted state. I am so glad to finally release the partial transcript of this interview about plants and planets. I hope you will enjoy reading the conversation as much as I had in having it!
Renay Oshop (RO): So here we are. AyurAstro is with Sonia Masocco. I thought of Sonia directly and exclusively with the theme of plants and planets. She has developed quite a wonderful teaching program and Ayurvedic phyto-products down there in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am really happy to have Sonia Masocco join me for today. Hi Sonia!
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-bit-of-an-anomaly-in-the-sidereal-charts-of-spiritual-leaders.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-bit-of-an-anomaly-in-the-sidereal-charts-of-spiritual-leaders.html", "title": "A Bit of an Anomaly in the Sidereal Charts of Spiritual Leaders", "date_published": "2019-10-05T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research", "Ayanamsha" ], "summary": "I wanted to explore the sidereal charts of spiritual leaders. I mostly wanted to explore an offhand conjecture that ther...", "content_html": "Who counts though as a spiritual leader? I decided to, without prejudice, take all entries on this Astro-databank page (https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Category:Vocation_:_Religion_:_Spiritual_Leader/_Guru) with B or higher Rodden ranking. There were 85 such entries.
Being relatively stringent with the ranking meant that Rama, Krishna, Jesus, or the Buddha could not be included. Those who were left included people as disparate as founders of religions to mere founders of spiritual magazines.
…which yielded the following for the Chi Square analysis for the AK, the only placement type that yielded significant results (Bonferroni correction included).
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/a-bit-of-an-anomaly-in-the-sidereal-char-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/a-bit-of-an-anomaly-in-the-sidereal-char-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 160671 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-enigma-of-sita.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-enigma-of-sita.html", "title": "The Enigma of Sita", "date_published": "2019-09-21T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Bhavas", "Mercury", "Saturn", "Dasha", "Mars" ], "summary": "I am a jyotishi, so when I attended an Indinanliterary festival today that is largely centered on the enigma of Sita in ...", "content_html": "There is much to process here. Indeed, I believe the whole of the multi-tome epic of the Ramayana is contained in this square, but I want to center your attention on the seventh house for Rama, locus of spouse.
The answer is that it does not, if we start and end with the idea that Sita is meek, submissive, subservient, and most critically, only some kind of victim of Dharma.
Let me take you on a bit of a journey, a short Sitayana in Jyotish, if you will.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-enigma-of-sita-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-enigma-of-sita-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 68075 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/negative-results-average-height-weight-bmi-among-male-pro-soccer-players-do-not-vary-by-sun-sign.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/negative-results-average-height-weight-bmi-among-male-pro-soccer-players-do-not-vary-by-sun-sign.html", "title": "Negative Results: Average Height, Weight, BMI among Male Pro Soccer Players Do Not Vary by Sun Sign", "date_published": "2019-02-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sun", "Bhavas" ], "summary": "[Edit: this study was subsequently repeated with NFL player data, and the same negative results held and in the same way...", "content_html": "It was a topic of conversation: does body mass index (BMI) or even height or weight vary among the sun signs?
Ayurveda would say that they may vary by Ascendant, not particularly the sun sign, but getting good data on the Ascendant is a notable difficulty, because the Ascendant depends on the birth time of day.
Getting tens of thousands of charts with that level of precision is nearly unheard of.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/negative-results-average-height-weight-bmi-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/negative-results-average-height-weight-bmi-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 25521 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-dental-pain-abatement-herbal-tea.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-dental-pain-abatement-herbal-tea.html", "title": "My Dental Pain Abatement Herbal Tea", "date_published": "2019-01-07T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Recipes" ], "summary": "I recently had some serious dental pain. It was a must lie down, tears in my eyes, think I am going to die kind of pain...", "content_html": "I recently had some serious dental pain. It was a must lie down, tears in my eyes, think I am going to die kind of pain.
The only problem was that it was the weekend, and my dentist would not be open for two more days. So, what do I do?
Inspired by some principles of Ayurveda, I made the following. It worked for me.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/some-jyotish-on-the-four-sights-of-buddhism.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/some-jyotish-on-the-four-sights-of-buddhism.html", "title": "Some Jyotish on the Four Sights of Buddhism", "date_published": "2018-10-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Bhavas", "Chart reading" ], "summary": "A student and I were discussing the charts of birth, renunciation, and enlightenment for the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama....", "content_html": "Perhaps I can just say for now that witnessing a Great One's chart is like They are right there, in front of you.
What I want to focus on here is the Jyotish of the Four Sights. I can not do the topic justice, but I would like to add a bit to the discourse.
The basic idea is that Shrii Gautama saw as a young man four sights, \"four holy messengers\", that led to his enlightenment: 1. an elderly man, 2. a sick man, 3. a dead man, and 4. a saddhu (holy man/monk), in that order.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/articles/four-sights/4-sights_orig.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/articles/four-sights/4-sights_orig.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 99314 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ridiculously-good-results-again-for-the-amazon-misspelling-rates-data-using-bigmls-deepnet.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ridiculously-good-results-again-for-the-amazon-misspelling-rates-data-using-bigmls-deepnet.html", "title": "Ridiculously Good Results Again for the Amazon Misspelling Rates Data Using BigML's DeepNet", "date_published": "2018-02-19T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Machine learning", "Mercury", "Amazon misspelling", "Mercury retrograde", "BigML", "DeepNet", "astrology research" ], "summary": "Ridiculously Good Results Again for the Amazon Misspelling Rates Data Using BigML's DeepNet 2/19/2018 12 Comments...", "content_html": "Data were obtained from Stanford’s SNAP data repository of Amazon.com reviews that gave daily misspelling rates; astronomical data were from Wolfram’s Mathematica software and its astronomy resources.
Each of the 5296 rows represents a sequential day in a 14.5-year span of Amazon review misspelling rates during Jan 1, 2000 to Jul 1, 2014.
Across the top are the labels. In each column is a simple, stable, linear function of the right ascension (i.e., the astrological Tropical degree) of the planet, moon, or star at midnight at the start of that day in London, UK. Retrogressions of the planets are also included.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/articles/bigml-deepnet/screenshot-2018-02-19-22-48-49_orig.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/articles/bigml-deepnet/screenshot-2018-02-19-22-48-49_orig.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 680299 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/even-aa-rating-charts-of-people-in-astro-databank-are-highly-likely-to-be-wrong.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/even-aa-rating-charts-of-people-in-astro-databank-are-highly-likely-to-be-wrong.html", "title": "Even AA Rating Charts in Astro-Databank of People Born After 1930 Are Highly Likely to be Wrong", "date_published": "2018-01-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research" ], "summary": "Astro-databank (https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Special:AllPages) is *the* resource for researchers in astrology. I...", "content_html": "An AA rating is \"Data as recorded by the family or state\". The expectation of many researchers is that AA data is of the highest accuracy possible and can be used freely. In the following, I show statistically that it is extremely unlikely that the AA rating charts altogether are accurate. I will be considering charts of people only and only those born at or after 1930.
The common assumption (the null hypothesis) is that AA rating charts are all of high accuracy and hence, taken altogether, exhibit behavior of high accuracy. My assertion (the alternate hypothesis) is that AA rating charts do not exhibit behavior of accurate birth data.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/even-aa-rating-charts-of-people-in-astro-databank-are-highly-likely-to-be-wrong-3.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/even-aa-rating-charts-of-people-in-astro-databank-are-highly-likely-to-be-wrong-3.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 49711 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/earthquakes-and-moon-phases-correlate.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/earthquakes-and-moon-phases-correlate.html", "title": "Earthquake Magnitudes and Moon Phases Correlate", "date_published": "2017-11-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research" ], "summary": "When it comes to modeling real-life phenomena for astrological research, earthquakes are one of the most widely studied....", "content_html": "And why not? After all, the exact time, place, and day are known as well as the strength of the effect (in magnitude).
However, a mapping of earthquake strength to solar system events has proven to be elusive, not to be dramatic, but until now.
Inspired by this Kaggle post (https://www.kaggle.com/aradzhabov/earthquakes-solar-system-objects), I decided to try my hand at this perhaps age-old problem, and I found that yes, earthquake magnitude correlates with the moon phase at the time of the event. (Moon phase has been looked at quite often but not with the model I will present today.)
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/earthquakes-and-moon-phases-correlate-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/earthquakes-and-moon-phases-correlate-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 123391 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-natural-forms-of-standing-waves.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-natural-forms-of-standing-waves.html", "title": "The Natural Forms of Simple Standing Waves", "date_published": "2017-11-06T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Yantra" ], "summary": "Shri Yantra from AstroJyoti.com By reading the book *Cymatics (https://www.dropbox.com/s/2fuavup8tct0lmc/Jenny_Hans_Cy...", "content_html": "With a few lines of code I have decided to plot the equations which go to heart of, and could be said to generate, these beautiful forms.
More motivated me than just the chance to look directly at and witness the imagery. I have seen some claims that the Shri Chakra could be seen from these \"tonoscopes\". From Pinterest Could this be real, I wondered? So, I decided to get a handle on the equations (http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/NDEigensystem.html) (hint: some partial differential equations experience will take you very far) and plot what came out. Here is a good reference (https://math.dartmouth.edu/archive/m23f09/public_html/drum.pdf) for anyone who wants to get a top-down view of the math.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-natural-forms-of-standing-waves-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-natural-forms-of-standing-waves-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 45425 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/butternut-herbed-squash-with-goat-cheese-and-dates.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/butternut-herbed-squash-with-goat-cheese-and-dates.html", "title": "Butternut Herbed Squash with Goat Cheese and Dates", "date_published": "2017-10-26T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes", "Cooking" ], "summary": "Pan with ingredients before first baking *This is really easy! The walnuts and rosemary are said to be so good for the...", "content_html": "Ingredients (all organic):*
1 medium-large butternut squash
4 - 6 oz. goat cheese
2 - 3 oz whole walnuts
1/2 - 1 oz rosemary sprigs
3 to 6 tbsp. ghee
1/2 lb. of dates
Slice off the ends of the cleaned squash. Then, slice the squash in two longways, and then for each half generated, slice in half again.
Arrange the squash pieces in a baking dish. Dollop the ghee on them. Align the rosemary sprigs on top. In the sides of the dish, add walnuts.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/butternut-squash.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/butternut-squash.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 83331 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/casual-double-blind-cross-sectional-study-of-super-bowl-retrodictions.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/casual-double-blind-cross-sectional-study-of-super-bowl-retrodictions.html", "title": "Casual, Double-Blind, Cross-Sectional Study of Super Bowl Retrodictions", "date_published": "2017-02-05T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Pop Culture" ], "summary": "I decided to test a recent theoretical development of how football game winners can be seen in the day, place, and start...", "content_html": "Accordingly, my assistant drew up a table of all Super Bowls so far and their event information.
I then drew up each chart and made a prediction. These were then checked against the real winners.
I should preface by saying that I am a football agnostic. I do not know much about football, only watching socially for a few minutes here and there and receiving the good-natured teasing of friends for knowing so little.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-astrological-research.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-astrological-research.html", "title": "About Astrological Research", "date_published": "2017-01-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research" ], "summary": "Astrological research is presently a tough row to hoe. There is no money in it, and my clients actually don’t like it. ...", "content_html": "They ask me why I do it. These are intelligent well-educated people, but they tell me they come to astrology because they are sick of science. (\"One year coffee is good for you, one year it is bad for you...\")
The work of astrological science is lonely, scary, and frustrating and really tough on me physically.
I do it instead out of love, out of passion, out of honestly wanting to know the answer.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/mercury-retrograde-amazon-review-misspellings-and-artificial-intelligence.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/mercury-retrograde-amazon-review-misspellings-and-artificial-intelligence.html", "title": "Mercury Retrograde, Amazon Review Misspellings, and Artificial Intelligence", "date_published": "2017-01-10T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Mercury", "Retrogrades", "Machine learning", "Outer planets", "Astronomy", "Mercury retrograde" ], "summary": "Mercury Retrograde, Amazon Review Misspellings, and Artificial Intelligence 1/10/2017 3 Comments...", "content_html": "Click to see presentation. Click on image to see the presentation from The Kepler Conference for Astrological Research, Jan 2017.
[Edit: a crazy further reduction in RMSE was achieved by finally using a neural net. The quick write-up of that can be seen here.
A full journal article was just approved for publication (March 2018). It will be referenced in the bibliography.]
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/mercury-retrograde-amazon-review-misspellings-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/mercury-retrograde-amazon-review-misspellings-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 118716 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/bending-spoons-redux.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/bending-spoons-redux.html", "title": "Bending Spoons Redux", "date_published": "2016-06-21T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Notes" ], "summary": "For those who might have missed it, here is a copy of my remarks at the successful bending ...", "content_html": "For those who might have missed it, here is a copy of my remarks at the successful bending spoons event today at the joint Parapsychological Association and Society for Scientific Exploration conference held here in Boulder. I twisted the fork during my demonstration.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/writings/bending-spoons-1.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/writings/bending-spoons-1.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 156276 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/astrology-the-queen-of-all-the-pseudo-sciences.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/astrology-the-queen-of-all-the-pseudo-sciences.html", "title": "Astrology, the Queen of All the Pseudo-Sciences", "date_published": "2016-06-20T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Talks and events" ], "summary": "Presented at the Society for Scientific Exploration 2016 summer conference (http://microver.se/sse-pdf/SSE-PA-2016-Progr...", "content_html": "Presented at the Society for Scientific Exploration 2016 summer conference here in Boulder, Colorado.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/question-about-illuminati-and-age-of-reason.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/question-about-illuminati-and-age-of-reason.html", "title": "Embarassing Astrology: Illuminati and the Age of Reason", "date_published": "2016-02-28T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Time cycles" ], "summary": "A few weeks ago, I did an interview with the lovely Kanyakumari Ayurveda school (http://www.kanyakumari.us/#!What-is-Jyo...", "content_html": "Funny that you mention in the interview that as a teenager, astrology seemed embarrassing. I wonder when such sentiment started building? This reminded me of my classmate's comment. He is an Ivy league graduate who's not doing very well in life. He said \"Astrology is too unscientific to me.\" My inside caption answer to that was \"That's why you missed out on 3 big startup exit opportunities.\" My personal suspicion is that 1) on the surface, industrialization called for humans who just do what they are told, so the ruling class assigned prestige on things that push people further away from success like institutionalized education 2) or, more importantly, there was a cosmic change at some point (perhaps French revolution? End of feudalism?) that somehow pushed certain souls into higher state of consciousness and certain others into \"employee\" state of mind, to make the industrialization possible to begin with. I think something like this happened again when startup bubble started (division of super smart who use every wisdom passed down to mankind and super dumb thinking institutionalized \"knowledge\" enlighten them - like myself getting an MBA for a high price). What do you think cause that embarrssement in your young self?
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/not-too-late-to-sign-up-for-sanskrit-andor-jyotish.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/not-too-late-to-sign-up-for-sanskrit-andor-jyotish.html", "title": "Not too late to sign up for Sanskrit and/or Jyotish", "date_published": "2016-02-23T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Notes" ], "summary": "Offered through Ayurved Sadhana Vidyalaya for a group that is both online and in-person. We are only a week into each. ...", "content_html": "Offered through Ayurved Sadhana Vidyalaya for a group that is both online and in-person.
See http://ayurvedsadhana.com/sanskrit-and-jyotish (http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/itranslator99.htm)/ for more.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/free-astrological-research-webinar-series.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/free-astrological-research-webinar-series.html", "title": "Free Astrological Research Webinar Series", "date_published": "2016-02-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Talks and events" ], "summary": "Everything you always wanted to know about Astrological (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/astrological?source=fee...", "content_html": "Featuring: Renay Oshop (https://www.facebook.com/renay.oshop), Will Morris (https://www.facebook.com/will.morris.524), Alex Trenoweth (https://www.facebook.com/alex.trenoweth), Linda Berry (https://www.facebook.com/linda.berry.581) David Cochrane (https://www.facebook.com/david.cochrane.71653)Freddy Kollerstrom (https://www.facebook.com/freddy.kollerstrom) Glenn Perry (https://www.facebook.com/glenn.perry2)
Free for Registrants of #TheKeplerConference (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/thekeplerconference?source=feed_text&story_id=1757968864433138)
1st Class Always Free for Newcomers http://tinyurl.com/zo4e9s4 (http://tinyurl.com/zo4e9s4)
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/graha-yantras-by-renay-now-available.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/graha-yantras-by-renay-now-available.html", "title": "Graha Yantras by Renay Now Available", "date_published": "2015-12-15T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Yantra" ], "summary": "1.08 by 1.08 inches square as per instructions, with baille; Sanskrit numerals form the magic square associated with...", "content_html": "Sanskrit numerals form the magic square associated with the holy planet Jupiter and the holy number three.
There are yantras for the Sun (http://shpws.me/LiNs), Moon (http://shpws.me/LiMv), and Venus (http://shpws.me/LiND) as well. All other grahas (\"planets\" in Jyotish or Vedic astrology) are also available by request (/contact.html).
These are available in many varieties of silver and gold, including very inexpensive plated versions.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/gluten-free-protein-bread.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/gluten-free-protein-bread.html", "title": "Gluten-Free Protein Bread", "date_published": "2015-12-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes", "Genetics" ], "summary": "A Let's Wing It Production. Organic Oats Organic Soy Flour Organic Coconut Flour Organic Yogurt Organic Sugar Baking Ye...", "content_html": "Organic Oats
Organic Soy Flour
Organic Coconut Flour
Organic Yogurt
Organic Sugar
Baking Yeast
Ghee or Oil
Organic Vanilla and/or Almond Extract (optional)
Organic Raisins (optional)
Organic Almond Slices (optional)
Egg (optional)
Mix about 1 cup each of the flours. Then include about 2 1/2 tbsp of yeast (if you are at altitude - less, I think, if you are not). Add about 1 cup of yogurt, 1 - 2 tbsp ghee or oil, and the 1 egg if you are doing that, along with about 1 tbsp of the extract(s). Mix in about 1/4 cup of the sugar and raisins and/or almond slices each. Knead using your favorite method, by hand or in a bread maker.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/gluten-free-protein-bread-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/gluten-free-protein-bread-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 183083 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/and-if-you-like-even-neater-and-cleaner-data.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/and-if-you-like-even-neater-and-cleaner-data.html", "title": "And if you like even neater and cleaner data...", "date_published": "2015-11-14T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research" ], "summary": "And if you like even neater and cleaner data... 11/14/2015 4 Comments...", "content_html": "In a previous post, I described how non-dictionary word use in Amazon reviews peak in a periodic way in Mercury retrograde.
I redid the analysis but also took out the common words \"dvds\", \"DVDs\", \"apps\", and \"Apps\" from consideration. (They would have been counted as misspellings before which I did not first realize.)
I also applied the mean filter to a wider time frame, so that it would be more accurate in the window of July 1, 2009 to Jul 1, 2013:
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/and-if-you-like-even-neater-and-cleaner-data-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/and-if-you-like-even-neater-and-cleaner-data-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 105733 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/full-usda-list-of-foods-in-order-of-ratio-of-protein-to-calorie-per-gram.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/full-usda-list-of-foods-in-order-of-ratio-of-protein-to-calorie-per-gram.html", "title": "Full USDA List of Foods in Order of Ratio of Protein to Calorie", "date_published": "2015-11-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes", "Genetics", "Diet", "protein per calorie", "USDA nutrient database", "protein density", "food ranking", "Ayurveda nutrition" ], "summary": "I did this quick project for a friend who wanted to know the best place to put her dollars to get the most protein. The...", "content_html": "I wrote this in November of 2015, when I had just finished pulling the whole USDA nutrient table into Mathematica and dividing one column by another. The original post was a paragraph of exclamations and a link to a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is still here — but the link had rotted, so I have rebuilt the page around the data instead of merely pointing at it. Every one of the 8,789 foods is now searchable below, and the file is downloadable in three formats.
The numbers themselves are a snapshot of the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference as it stood in late 2015. Standard Reference has since been retired; its final edition, SR Legacy, was folded into FoodData Central in 2019, which is where you should go for current figures. I have left the 2015 values untouched, because a decade-old snapshot is a perfectly good thing to be, as long as it says so out loud.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/non-dictionary-words-in-amazon-reviews-occur-more-during-mercury-retrograde.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/non-dictionary-words-in-amazon-reviews-occur-more-during-mercury-retrograde.html", "title": "Non-Dictionary Words in Amazon Reviews Occur More During Mercury Retrograde", "date_published": "2015-11-02T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Mercury", "Retrogrades", "Outer planets", "Waves and sound", "Mercury retrograde", "Fourier transform" ], "summary": "Non-Dictionary Words in Amazon Reviews Occur More During Mercury Retrograde 11/2/2015 1 Comment...", "content_html": "It is believed by many that the apparent astronomical retrogression affects human communication, travel, use of electronics, and thinking, among other broadly related things.
To test the general thesis of an effect on communications during Mercury retrograde, I looked at a randomized 5% of a collection of 69,242,585 Amazon reviews posted between Jan 1, 2009 and July 23, 2014. (Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more n.d.)
I counted the number of words per entry that are not in a computerized dictionary, while discounting digits, internet links, emoji, words with three or fewer characters. Non-English entries were also discarded.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/non-dictionary-words-in-amazon-reviews-occur-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/non-dictionary-words-in-amazon-reviews-occur-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 93583 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/across-millions-of-entries-reddit-is-more-likely-to-show-misspellings-during-mercury-retrograde-in-may-2015.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/across-millions-of-entries-reddit-is-more-likely-to-show-misspellings-during-mercury-retrograde-in-may-2015.html", "title": "Across Millions of Entries, Reddit is More Likely to Show Misspellings During Mercury Retrograde in May 2015", "date_published": "2015-10-10T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Retrogrades", "Mercury" ], "summary": "Across Millions of Entries, Reddit is More Likely to Show Misspellings During Mercury Retrograde in May 2015 10/10/2015 ...", "content_html": "In a previous post, I showed that Reddit entries were slightly, but significantly, more likely to contain spelling errors and other unusual word choices.
I had not discounted the most common slang and swear words, which one could say contain proper meaning and are not misspelled even while not in the dictionary. In this post, I will account for them.
Dropping common slang and swear words (\"ok\", \"lol\", \"bs\", \"gg\", \"awol\", \"4Chan\", \"nsfl\", \"nsfw\", \"ama\", \"s%#&t*\", \"f&%k*\", etc. and \":)\", \":(\", \";)\", \";(\", \":/\", \":\\\", etc., and their main capitalization variants) as well as links, the difference between Mercury Retrograde (MR) and Non Mercury Retrograde (NMR) in incidence of word spelling errors divided by entry word length increased to 2.14%.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/across-millions-of-entries-reddit-is-more-lik-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/across-millions-of-entries-reddit-is-more-lik-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 24261 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sva.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sva.html", "title": "The Yoga of Sva", "date_published": "2015-10-10T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "I want to talk about something for which there is unfortunately only a picture in my mind's eye. While going to sleep, ...", "content_html": "I want to talk about something for which there is unfortunately only a picture in my mind's eye.
While going to sleep, whether before or after that murky demarcation, I do not know, I saw a beautiful woman on the other side of a window, something like a friend's living room window to be exact.
The woman was smiling. I acknowledged her, and then I realized I actually loved her very much, and drew my fascination directly at/toward her.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/prima-facie-the-timing-of-mercury-retrograde-slightly-but-significantly-affected-reddit-submission-misspellings-and-other-uncommon-word-choices-in-may-2015.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/prima-facie-the-timing-of-mercury-retrograde-slightly-but-significantly-affected-reddit-submission-misspellings-and-other-uncommon-word-choices-in-may-2015.html", "title": "Prima Facie, the Timing of Mercury Retrograde Slightly but Significantly Affected Reddit Submission Misspellings and Other Unusual Word Choices in May 2015", "date_published": "2015-10-03T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Retrogrades", "Mercury" ], "summary": "Prima Facie, the Timing of Mercury Retrograde Slightly but Significantly Affected Reddit Submission Misspellings and Oth...", "content_html": "“Mercury retrograde” is, in my culture, a time of great concern.
It is believed by many that the apparent astronomical retrogression affects human communication, use of electronics, and thinking, among other things.
Before May 19, 2015, 2:46 am GMT, the people of Earth were not experiencing apparent Mercury retrograde that month, (I call this time NMR), and after that, they were (MR).
To test the general thesis of an effect on communications during Mercury retrograde, I looked at a randomized 3.13836% of the Reddit comments in May 2015, wherein 31,863,786 submissions (approx. 1.8 million per day) occurred during NMR and 22,640,624 (approx. 2.1 million per day) occurred during MR.
I used the software Mathematica to scan for spelling mistakes, finally comparing the distributions, averages, variances, and their ratios of spelling mistake rates (number of naïve word spelling mistakes in an entry divided by number of words in that entry) during NMR and MR.
I did not edit out common words that are not in the dictionary (e.g., many last names, slang, and swear words) or emojis such as :), and so they artificially increased the spelling error rate. The hope here is that this increase is minimal and approximately uniform across the millions of entries in NMR and MR, but such uniformity is, I believe, a little unlikely and not known by me, regardless. The uniformity level could be easily tested, however.
What were not included for consideration:Context mistakes (such as there/their/they’re),Digital numbers (0 through 9),Internet links,Grammar,Punctuation,Capitalization errors,Non-English entries,If the entire post was misspelled, it was disregarded to reduce absolutely nonsense entries or entries whose language is not one of the major ones that could be identified by Mathematica.
The numbers of entries thus finally considered were 951,084 during NMR and 674,001 during MR.
Note that the distributions by histogram are very similar, and the probability plot is visually close to 1:1 (yellow overlapping blue) relative to a normal distribution (the dotted line). Since the distributions are so similar, we can compare the means and variances directly.
\"If an astrologer sees something about the past, but that didn't materialize, does it give a clue about the kind of karma that the native built up? Meaning, can retrodiction [a prediction about the past] be used to live more intelligently in the future?\"
Here is my answer: If the retrodiction failed, then the astrologer failed. Sorry if that seems harsh, but that is my first answer. Building on it, that simply means that the astrologer is still learning, and very few astrologers are not still learning. What it can do is teach you something new, or at least stimulate you to learn more, some new technique, some new meaning.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/on-money.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/on-money.html", "title": "On Money, Mores, and Meaning", "date_published": "2015-09-20T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Mercury", "Saturn", "Sun" ], "summary": "Considering all of the talk about money, budgets, and taxes in this political season here in the USA, I thought that I w...", "content_html": "Let's look at the connections. Mercury rules money in the chart and business people, and indeed the fleet-footed god Mercury used to be on American dimes until fairly recently.
Why? Well, Mercury goes back and forth like money, business, and communication, but I think we can learn even more.
Why would the wings be connected to the head on the coin (versus the back, the legs, etc.)? Hint: an angel has wings connected to the mid-back. What body parts and hence what planets are thereby connected? Answer: an angel is one whose Mercury (thoughts/wings/business) and Venus (love/heart/back) are connected thusly. The USA did not want to portray itself as an angel.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ahmeds-clock.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ahmeds-clock.html", "title": "Ahmed's Clock", "date_published": "2015-09-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Bhavas", "Mars", "Nakshatras", "Mercury", "Moon", "Saturn" ], "summary": "I'm going to wrote tonight about something that I have been following all day: the story of the skinny little 14 yr old ...", "content_html": "I have found it fascinating, and I am seemingly not alone- almost a million people tweeted about it (https://twitter.com/hashtag/IStandWithAhmed?src=hash)in the last 24 hours.
By the afternoon, Obama (https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656), Zuckerberg, many astronauts, and other famous scientists extended invitations of amazing, touching, and substantial support directly to the kid.
This story fascinates me because it is something of a perfect, beautiful thing: tech and science education enthusiasts unified with anti-Patriot Act people and anti-racists, and it turns out to be a tasty recipe: they are legion (and include me).
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/ahmeds-clock-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/ahmeds-clock-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 55146 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/visual-gunas-of-the-nakshatras.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/visual-gunas-of-the-nakshatras.html", "title": "Visual Classifications of the Nakshatras", "date_published": "2015-09-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Deities", "Sun", "Moon", "Doshas", "Nakshatras", "Gunas", "gunas of the nakshatras", "tattva", "gandanta", "yoni", "gana", "nadi", "Hart de Fouw" ], "summary": "Here is something you might not have seen before in your Jyotish studies: a visual depiction of the qualities (*gunas*) ...", "content_html": "Here is something you might not have seen before in your Jyotish studies: a visual depiction of the qualities (gunas) of the nakshatras.
The material is all taken from Hart de Fouw's excellent work: Light on Life, An Introduction to the Astrology of India (particularly pages 206-214).
As one bright student told me the other day, the nakshatras are kind of like the periodic table of Jyotish. Full of story and lore, truth and the telling, myth and math, nakshatras neatly introduce us to the more Tantric webs of meaning of Nature and of the Universe.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/visual-gunas-of-the-nakshatras-wheel.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/visual-gunas-of-the-nakshatras-wheel.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 101565 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/to-not-take-things-personally.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/to-not-take-things-personally.html", "title": "To not take things personally", "date_published": "2015-08-20T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "I remember before I learned Jyotish that I was often bewildered as to why things were. I would wonder \"why is this pers...", "content_html": "I remember before I learned Jyotish that I was often bewildered as to why things were.
I would wonder \"why is this person acting that way\" and \"why was that thing that way\" and so on. And then I learned Jyotish and honestly, I never again had to leave those questions unanswered. Better yet, after a few years, I no longer had to ask them.
For example, at a meeting the other night, there was to me a rather sharp and shrill quality to the discussions, discussions that were actually coming out a generous emotional place but that ultimately detracted from the ability to relate. The relating instead demonstrated fairly universally a very strong ill-placed and displaced pitta.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/when-a-boyfriend-does-not-show-up.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/when-a-boyfriend-does-not-show-up.html", "title": "When a boyfriend does not show up", "date_published": "2015-07-27T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "I had forecast for someone the appearance of a significant boyfriend, and I even gave certain descriptors for him. Sure...", "content_html": "I had forecast for someone the appearance of a significant boyfriend, and I even gave certain descriptors for him.
Sure enough, a man with these qualities appeared in her life rather quickly, but then he broke off the relationship.
The woman wrote to me with an excellent question: \"Am I doing something wrong, am I missing the signs? I’d really like your perspective on this.\"
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/giving-a-boulder-talk.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/giving-a-boulder-talk.html", "title": "Giving a Boulder Talk Soon on the Mind", "date_published": "2015-06-24T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Notes" ], "summary": "From the great Colorado Ayurvedic Medical Association (http://www.coloradoayurveda.org) (COLORAMA): Join #R...", "content_html": "From the great Colorado Ayurvedic Medical Association (http://www.coloradoayurveda.org) (COLORAMA):
Join #Renay (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/renay?source=feed_text&story_id=10207023172278923) #Oshop (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/oshop?source=feed_text&story_id=10207023172278923), professional jyotishi of 18 years and COLORAMA Board member for a special presentation on #AYURVEDIC (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ayurvedic?source=feed_text&story_id=10207023172278923) #PSYCHOLOGY (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/psychology?source=feed_text&story_id=10207023172278923) & THE #JYOTISH (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/jyotish?source=feed_text&story_id=10207023172278923)#CHART (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/chart?source=feed_text&story_id=10207023172278923) on Friday, July 31, at 5 pm at the Lotus Room at the Solstice Center (302 Pearl St., Boulder, Colorado).
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-sacred-geometry-of-jyotish-redux.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-sacred-geometry-of-jyotish-redux.html", "title": "The Sacred Geometry of Jyotish Redux", "date_published": "2015-06-11T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Mathematics", "Chart reading", "sacred geometry", "cuboctahedron", "vector equilibrium", "Buckminster Fuller" ], "summary": "The empty Jyotish chart as an orthographic projection of Buckminster Fuller's vector equilibrium — the cuboctahedron — with an interactive 3D model you can spin and align to the kundali.", "content_html": "I wrote previously about the Jyotisha chart as a 2D shape that describes to us astrologers a 3D reality, one that may lead us to higher dimensions.
A review: the kundali image (coming from the same root as kundalini, meaning a coiled serpent) of the empty Jyotish chart
You can see here the 4 squares of the kendras and the 8 diamonds of the other houses.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-sacred-geometry-of-jyotish-redux-2.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-sacred-geometry-of-jyotish-redux-2.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 165953 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-four-types-of-conflict-in-literature-and-the-vedic-astrology-chart.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-four-types-of-conflict-in-literature-and-the-vedic-astrology-chart.html", "title": "The Four Types of Conflict in Literature and the Vedic Astrology Chart", "date_published": "2015-03-24T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Bhavas" ], "summary": "There is much of interest written of the main plot types in fiction of the West, a subject worthy of a dissertation. Be...", "content_html": "There is much of interest written of the main plot types in fiction of the West, a subject worthy of a dissertation.
Belying a divisive, atomistic, and surgical mindset towards works of art, academics tell us that four types of conflict (http://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/education/upload/background-elements-of-literature_sr.pdf) occur in fiction:
*Conflict is the essence of fiction. It creates plot. The conflicts we encounter can usually be identified as one of four kinds.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/twitter-followers-biased-to-astrological-charts-of-celebrities.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/twitter-followers-biased-to-astrological-charts-of-celebrities.html", "title": "Twitter Followers Biased to Astrological Charts of Celebrities", "date_published": "2015-03-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Pop Culture" ], "summary": "I am just an autodidact, a woman with a computer. I am excited however to publish “Twitter Followers Biased to Astrologi...", "content_html": "I am just an autodidact, a woman with a computer. I am excited however to publish “Twitter Followers Biased to Astrological Charts of Celebrities”.
In doing the work of this paper, it became absolutely obvious to me that this is really Mother Nature’s expression and paper. I am beyond grateful to touch Her hem. It is all I ever really wanted to do.
I studied math and biology and specialized in computational biology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. As an astrologer, I still feel like a computational biologist.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/more-on-jyotisha-the-eyes-of-the-vedas.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/more-on-jyotisha-the-eyes-of-the-vedas.html", "title": "More on Jyotisha, The Eyes of the Vedas", "date_published": "2015-03-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Vedas" ], "summary": "The very Vedas are alive. Manifold, breathing,and human-like, they have limbs, called vedanga, by which we may know Brahma consciousness.", "content_html": "The very Vedas are alive. Manifold, breathing,and human-like, they have limbs, called vedanga, by which we may know Brahma consciousness.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/more-on-jyotisha-the-eyes-of-the-vedas-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/more-on-jyotisha-the-eyes-of-the-vedas-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 124844 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/yet-another-reason-why-108-is-a-holy-number.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/yet-another-reason-why-108-is-a-holy-number.html", "title": "Yet another reason why 108 is a holy number", "date_published": "2015-03-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Mathematics", "Nakshatras" ], "summary": "Yet another reason why 108 is a holy number 3/9/2015 0 Comments...", "content_html": "Zero is the same as all, infinity, in a sense, since one divided by each approaches the other (assuming here that zero is being approached from the right, sinceVedic math does not tend to use negative numbers).
So, 108 represents all between Sun and Saturn, which is to say our whole solar system, unifying the domain and range of astrology with one’s body, one’s lineage, the Ganga, and divine geometry.
In 1849 Arthur Cayley wrote to George Salmon about a curiosity. Take a cubic surface — the smooth, rippling sheet you get when a third-degree polynomial is set equal to zero — and ask how many perfectly straight lines lie flat inside all that curvature. Cayley proved the number has to be finite. Salmon pinned it down: exactly twenty-seven. Not roughly twenty-seven, not twenty-seven on average. Twenty-seven, on every smooth cubic surface there is.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/life-lessons-learned-through-knitting.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/life-lessons-learned-through-knitting.html", "title": "Life Lessons Learned Through Knitting", "date_published": "2014-04-02T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Notes" ], "summary": "If you think you can’t do something, maybe it’s because you never tried it.Whatever is the warp eventually becomes the w...", "content_html": "If you think you can’t do something, maybe it’s because you never tried it.Whatever is the warp eventually becomes the woof, sometimes sooner than you might expect.All you are in charge of is one little piece of the puzzle. Do that well and repeatedly, and then all that is left is to trust in a higher power of the pieces coming together and the grand design that results.Different people manage tension in different ways. You may even change your way within a single hour or a single stitch, but whichever way you do it, this is an essential skill you have to learn in order to last for the long run. More tension is harder. Loosen up.Little mistakes are best taken care of right away. They may not be apparent immediately, but when you are done, everyone will focus on them, and you will wish you had done whatever it took to fix them when they happened.Doing something backwards is not necessarily wrong.Feel free to mix colors.Math is your friend. So is music in ways that are not unrelated.It is important to know what you want to do.Some tools are more stable than others. Each has its pros and cons. Find these qualities about yours, for you will be depending on them every step of the way.It’s ok to take breaks in in the middle but not when when casting on or off.Tedium and good company cannot coexist.Don’t forget to look at your accomplishment along the way. It is necessary to feeling good about the work.People don’t care that you knit. It is still worth doing, for:Life is a net (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net), and a net is knit.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/what-makes-your-moon-full.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/what-makes-your-moon-full.html", "title": "What Makes Your Moon Full?", "date_published": "2014-02-19T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Moon", "Ayanamsha" ], "summary": "The Moon is our gorgeous diva up in the sky. Ever changing, first new and then full and then back, She has 28 recognize...", "content_html": "Ever changing, first new and then full and then back, She has 28 recognized stages through which she expresses deep stages of our truths for us.
A spandana, a pulse, is created when she pushes and then pulls at our jala tattva, our water element – enough to actually make the Earth’s tides rise and fall and our own private ones as well.
Much is understood about Her personality in Vedic Astrology, but perhaps here I can make one more very small observation.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/nakshatras-and-the-recent-human-stages-of-history.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/nakshatras-and-the-recent-human-stages-of-history.html", "title": "Nakshatras and the Recent Human Stages of History", "date_published": "2013-01-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Nakshatras", "Deities", "Time cycles" ], "summary": "It is well known in astrological circles: the ideas of Christ and Krishna ushering in the Piscean Age and of our next gr...", "content_html": "It is well known in astrological circles: the ideas of Christ and Krishna ushering in the Piscean Age and of our next grand Age being “The Age of Aquarius.”
Times of great wars preceded the Christ Age, of course, and the Mahabharata preceded the Age of Krishna. These phenomena could reasonably be interpreted to be of the Arian (Aryan?) Age, the Age of Aries.
And so it goes, human development progressing by going backwards through the Zodiac. Why backwards? The sun travels in the galaxy in a direction that is much slower and opposite in direction from the circular motion of the planets in our solar system.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/considering-hamlet-baby-steps-to-the-start-of-a-reading.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/considering-hamlet-baby-steps-to-the-start-of-a-reading.html", "title": "Considering Hamlet, Baby Steps to the Start of a Reading", "date_published": "2012-12-18T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Mercury", "Bhavas", "Venus", "Dasha", "Rashis" ], "summary": "Considering Hamlet, Baby Steps to the Start of a Reading 12/18/2012 0 Comments...", "content_html": "Our lives are like a play, we are told. The word in Sanskrit for our play is leela, and indeed, I do read a person's life like a play, a grand better-than-Shakespeare type of dramatic narrative.
To understand, I often want my beginning students to make 3 overlapping dials made out of cardboard, with the outermost dial representing the houses (bhavas), the middle one representing the constellations (rashis), and the innermost one representing the \"planets\" (grahas).
These dials can independently rotate, but become fixed in relationship to each other at the time of a person's birth, altogether forming the kaleidoscope that I have referred to in years past. Put a pointer through the middle of these overlapping dials and point it to what graha is active by dasha. That graha has the mic and is directing traffic up on stage in the play of the person's life.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/articles/hamlet/4258024_orig.png", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/articles/hamlet/4258024_orig.png", "mime_type": "image/png", "size_in_bytes": 573779 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-four-houses-of-hogswarts-and-the-chart.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-four-houses-of-hogswarts-and-the-chart.html", "title": "The Four Houses of Hogswart’s and the Chart", "date_published": "2012-12-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture", "Doshas", "Mars", "Sun", "Relationships" ], "summary": "The Four Houses of Hogswart’s and the Chart 12/8/2012 0 Comments...", "content_html": "I heard recently of a young man’s pulses being read as Kapha. He asked his friend for a description and upon hearing it exclaimed “Oh no, does that mean I am a Hufflepuff? I want to be a Gryffindor!”
How does the momentous imagination of JK Rowling align with the classifications of one’s Nature in Ayurveda? Ayurvedic Astrology leads the way.
I propose that yes, perhaps Kapha does line up smudgily with the Hufflepuffs, and Vaata lines up roughly and airily with the Ravenclaws. JK Rowling does saythat the Hufflepuffs represent the Earth element and Ravenclaws the Air element.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-pricing-philosophy.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-pricing-philosophy.html", "title": "My Pricing Philosophy", "date_published": "2012-10-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Pricing and practice" ], "summary": "I have a very clear philosophy on why, when and how I price my astrology readings as I do. My philosophy is simple. Ast...", "content_html": "I have a very clear philosophy on why, when and how I price my astrology readings as I do.
My philosophy is simple. Astrology is priceless when it is accurate and expensive beyond count when it is not.
When the discernment is spot on, no amount of money is enough, not enough or even appropriate to talk about. The exchange is a gift from God to both of us, nothing less.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/electromagnetic-human.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/electromagnetic-human.html", "title": "Electromagnetic Human", "date_published": "2012-05-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Meditation" ], "summary": "Meditation is a wonderful thing. I’ve lately begun to feel the connection of the sushumna naadi to my crown chakra above and my root chakra below.", "content_html": "Meditation is a wonderful thing. I’ve lately begun to feel the connection of the sushumna naadi to my crown chakra above and my root chakra below.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-four-aims-of-life-and-the-noble-eightfold-path-unifying-ayurveda-and-buddhism.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-four-aims-of-life-and-the-noble-eightfold-path-unifying-ayurveda-and-buddhism.html", "title": "The Four Aims of Life and The Noble Eightfold Path: Unifying Ayurveda and Buddhism", "date_published": "2012-05-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Bhavas", "Career", "Charaka Samhita" ], "summary": "*dharmaartha kaama mokSaaNaam aarogyam mulam uttamam*, Charaka Translation: Health is the utmost root for the four aims...", "content_html": "Translation: Health is the utmost root for the four aims of human life: dharma, artha, kaama, and mokSa.
dharma, which is purpose, duty, why we are here,artha, which interestingly translates to both means and meaning, the meaning and gains of human life,kaama, which is desire,and mokSa, which is liberation.
These four aims of life are expressed three times each in the chart as beginning, middle and advanced stages.
first house = beginning dharma = outer personality, physique, health/well-being, ...
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/super-moon-2012.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/super-moon-2012.html", "title": "Super Moon 2012", "date_published": "2012-05-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "Here is a view of the May 2012 Super Moon phenomenon – the full moon happens to occur at the same time as it is at its c...", "content_html": "Astrologically, I think it will be a beautiful Moon, but due to its conjunction geocentrically with Saturn, it may not be a joy bringer.
Now, next month will bring us a solar eclipse and the full moon will be with Rahu, the head of the dragon. Both will be debilitated and rising in the US.
Sorry to be a downer. Go ahead and enjoy the Moon with its conjunction with Saturn this weekend. Contemplate the vastness of Shiva, the depth of ancient lessons, the truth of eternity.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-first-big-city-talk-on-astrology.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-first-big-city-talk-on-astrology.html", "title": "My First Big City Talk on Astrology", "date_published": "2012-04-02T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Notes" ], "summary": "*Hear ye, hear ye. Come one, come all.* I will be at PYAMandala Center (http://www.pyamandala.com/)on April 13, 2012 ...", "content_html": "I will be at PYAMandala Center (http://www.pyamandala.com/)on April 13, 2012 at 6.30 pm in north central Denver, CO to give a talk on
This two and a half hour talk will help you realize in fullness the presence of the Great Beings in your own mind, body, and life. It is meant especially for novices of astrology.
Here are what some people are saying who were there this past weekend for a practice preview.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/bhutas.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/bhutas.html", "title": "Bhutas", "date_published": "2012-02-24T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Five elements" ], "summary": "Since I started my work with astal forces in astrology (http://www.ayurastro.com/astrology), I have experienced many won...", "content_html": "Since I started my work with astal forces in astrology (http://www.ayurastro.com/astrology), I have experienced many wonderful things. It would make sense that I also have encountered negative components of the astral world, namely bhutas or ghosts that are afflicting people.
I would like to share here briefly the stages of bhuta possession as seen in some clients’ lives:
The bhuta wants to get your attention, typically by moving objects outside of you or thoughts within you. Both are easy to do because of the manomayokosha and pranamayakosha being placed squarely in the astral world or loka.The bhuta wants your acknowledgement of its presence from the above event(s).The bhuta wants you to give a name to it.The bhhuta wants to teach you to regularly move your body in reaction to one of their thought influences or movements of objects.The bhuta wants to use the connection you learned in moving your body by your then regular engagement in experiences that satisfy one of their cravings from worldly life, such as smoking, drinking, or sex.At this stage, the bhuta has possessed you.
It really is a terrible thing to witness, and the stages are very consistent from possession to possession.
For the chart of Christ, I used April 17, -6 AD approximately 4 in the morning in Bethlehem for his birth time.
For more on the source of this estimation, see here (http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2011/12/16).
the beautiful morning star of Venus is exalted in Pisces and rising on the East horizonif this isn’t what the magi were there to witness, it would still be a fantastic show, for after the rising of a perfect Venus, next came in quick succession Saturn, then a beautiful waning Moon, then Jupiter, then an exalted Sun, followed by Mars and Mercurythe birth happened on Saturday before dawn; i.e., on Vedic Friday, ruled by Venus, on Shabbathon the previous Monday, the Sun was fully eclipsed: is this when the king gave his decree to kill male newborns??Uranus of Revolution (not shown) was ahead of that amazing Venus rising in the EastThe nakshatra of Ascendant and Venus rising is Revati, a deep star associated with the final stage of spiritual evolutionyogi planet is Jupiter ruling the first and tenth, depicting someone whose presence was beautiful and peaceful and strong and of a leader in those qualitiesyogi planet is in Hamsa yoga ruling Ascendant rashi with exalted Sun in the second supports an amazing speaker, a King of Kings and a King of Peace at thatthat strong Venus enlivens the eighth with its themes of scandal and death, especially one by a hidden political ruler because of Pluto at 0 degrees in Libra (not shown)Ketu, signifying spiritual liberation, in the eighth house of death in the fixed star placement of Vishaka, a nakshatra associated with symbology of a crossa breath-taking ashtakavarga of 42 in the twelfth house – signifying great acheivement in spiritual liberation to say the leastthere is a LOT more here, of his being an amazing healer for example, or about his relationship to religion, but I just wanted to put this out there sooner versus laterplease keep in mind that this is meant to be a brief description of the astrology of the man of Jesus, of his corporeal human existence, not of the avatar, of the saint, or of his transcendence – that’s a whole other topic.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/dhatu-nutrition-may-revisit-the-formation-of-the-solar-system.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/dhatu-nutrition-may-revisit-the-formation-of-the-solar-system.html", "title": "Dhātu Nutrition May Revisit the Formation of the Solar System", "date_published": "2011-11-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Dhatus", "Sun", "Mars", "Venus", "Jupiter", "Moon" ], "summary": "Dhātus are the Āyurvedic tissues — rasa, rakta, māṃsa, meda, asthi, majjā, śukra — and their nutrition flows in that order, each with its graha. Does that order replay the birth of the solar system? A 2011 hunch, re-scored in 2026.", "content_html": "Dhātus are the Āyurvedic tissue types: rasa (plasma), rakta (red blood), māṃsa (muscle), meda (fat), asthi (bone), majjā (marrow and nerve), śukra (reproductive tissue). Their nutrition flows in that order: the refined product of each becomes the food of the next. Vāgbhaṭa lists them in exactly this sequence in the opening chapter of the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayam (Sūtrasthāna 1.13), and Caraka states the chain outright:
रसाद्रक्तं ततो मांसं मांसान्मेदस्ततोऽस्थि च।
अस्थ्नो मज्जा ततः शुक्रं शुक्राद्गर्भः प्रसादजः॥
rasād raktaṃ tato māṃsaṃ māṃsān medas tato ’sthi ca |
asthno majjā tataḥ śukraṃ śukrād garbhaḥ prasādajaḥ ||
The ill-starred death of very talented musicians at the age of 27 has yesterday sadly captured another: Amy Winehouse.
In this short essay I present the natal astrology charts of her, as well as Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin, and the transit overlay of the planets at the approximate time of the artists’ deaths.
All have the following astrological influences.
At death, SA by transit in 12th house to natal SA, RA/KE by transit opposite natal RA/KE, ascendant at time of death is likely to be in the natal 7th or 8th house, KE with MA at time of death, JU aspect or conjunct transiting MO at death. Let’s take these one by one.
What I have found in my experience teaching at and attending Ayurvedic schools is that there is a fairly simple but robust formula for who does best in which school. I get asked pretty often by students which school to go to. This post is for you.
Each school has an overall characteristic that can tell you what its working rising sign is. For example, a certain school has a very academic approach, very technical. It functionally has a Gemini ascendent. Sure enough, almost all of the students have a Scorpio rising sign. How does this make sense? Well, Ayurveda is represented by the eighth house. Scorpios have Gemini in their eighth house and so tend to learn Ayurvedic mystery-school type stuff, represented by the eighth house, in a Gemini way.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/how-astrology-exists.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/how-astrology-exists.html", "title": "How Astrology Exists", "date_published": "2011-04-21T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Physics", "Diet" ], "summary": "How Astrology Exists 4/21/2011 0 Comments...", "content_html": "How Astrology Exists 4/21/2011 0 Comments...
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-philosophers-stone-an-ayurvedic-bhasma.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-philosophers-stone-an-ayurvedic-bhasma.html", "title": "The Philosopher’s Stone, an Ayurvedic Bhasma?", "date_published": "2011-04-21T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Recipes" ], "summary": "The concept of a *Philosopher’s Stone* has become famous from the Harry Potter books of J. K. Rowling. To many’s surpri...", "content_html": "Recently, in the past month, a treatise has been released that describes in detail how to make the stone (see recipe book link), and on multiple readings it seems to “hold water”, uniting selections from the Bible, ancient Taoist texts, and medieval manuscripts.
The similarity to Ayurvedic 1000 times washed ghee is undeniable in its making process and its purported effects.
I would like to embark on the 1.5-3 year process of making the powdery stone from vegetable and plant juices.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-koan-for-the-upcoming-eclipse.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-koan-for-the-upcoming-eclipse.html", "title": "A Koan for the Upcoming Eclipse", "date_published": "2010-12-14T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Yoga", "Eclipses" ], "summary": "Two ways to drop sand: Grasp tightly or Let fall the hand. Only one way to hold sand. This beautiful poem/koan, writ...", "content_html": "This beautiful poem/koan, written by my friend Eliot in 1982, may be worthy of remembering next week , on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at approximately 7:43 am MST (+/- 1.5 hours).
An eclipse will be occurring then right on the Eastern horizon, at a point that aligns with the galactic center. A retrograde Mercury and a strong Mars will be there too, all in a nakshatra lorded by Ketu which is in the most stormy part of the zodiac and occluding our sense of perception, the Moon.
Meanwhile, the benefics, Jupiter and Venus, will be well-situated in the 4th and 11th houses.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ayurvedic-herb-database.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ayurvedic-herb-database.html", "title": "Ayurvedic Herb Database", "date_published": "2010-12-05T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Data", "Herbs" ], "summary": "A rotational relational database (http://webbrain.com/u/11iO) on herbs and techniques of Ayurveda , the traditional anci...", "content_html": "A rotational relational database (http://webbrain.com/u/11iO) on herbs and techniques of Ayurveda , the traditional ancient Indian form of medicine.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/tarpana-an-effective-and-beautiful-sanskrit-offering-to-our-ancestors.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/tarpana-an-effective-and-beautiful-sanskrit-offering-to-our-ancestors.html", "title": "Tarpana – An Effective and Beautiful Sanskrit Offering to Our Ancestors", "date_published": "2010-11-28T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit", "Ancestors" ], "summary": "## From the cosmically esteemed, holy Shree Maa (http://shreemaa.org). (/uploads/1/1/0/9/11099376/tarpana.pdf) tarpa...", "content_html": "## From the cosmically esteemed, holy Shree Maa (http://shreemaa.org). (/uploads/1/1/0/9/11099376/tarpana.pdf) tarpa...
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-lighting-of-the-lamps.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-lighting-of-the-lamps.html", "title": "The Lighting of the Lamps", "date_published": "2010-11-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Notes" ], "summary": "Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about yo...", "content_html": "Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
It has been a cold turn to things as the Sun is debilitated and the Moon is just appearing, also debilitated. Combine that with a weak Jupiter by sandhi, and retrograding that weakness to us.
Thank God for the lighting of the lamps. Today’s Dhanvantari puja made me feel extraordinarily better. Thank you Dr. Vaidya.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/remains-of-the-day.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/remains-of-the-day.html", "title": "Remains of the Day", "date_published": "2010-10-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Festivals", "Sun", "Transits" ], "summary": "**Departing Words** by Dao Hanh Autumn does not proclaim: The swallows return! It smiles, indifferent, at those who w...", "content_html": "If the year were in a day, now would be the somewhat poignant time of the Sun setting in the West. In January rather, the Sun knows what to do: its dharma, to snap open, born again.
Now, late October, is when the Sun astrologically enters Libra, its debilitation sign. To preserve the flickering light, India has Diwali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali), the festival of candles. It is also time to celebrate re-invigorating the soil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayadashami), as every gardener knows.
Every year I am surprised by Fall. Each season’s uniqueness takes time to win me over, and when I have finally embraced it, it is gone, and none as much as Summer’s fall.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-our-wildfire.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-our-wildfire.html", "title": "About Our Wildfire", "date_published": "2010-09-11T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Mars", "Ketu", "Bhavas", "Meditation", "Saturn", "Sun" ], "summary": "As Boulder’s wildfire wraps to a close, consider the following Robert Penn Warren (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P...", "content_html": "As Boulder’s wildfire wraps to a close, consider the following Robert Penn Warren (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren) poem.
The sun now angles downward, and southward.
The summer, that is, approaches its final fulfillment.
The forest is silent, no wind-stir, bird-note, or word.
It is time to meditate on what the season has meant.
But what is the meaningful language for such meditation?
What is a word but wind through the tube of the throat?
Who defines the relation between the word sun and the sun?
What word has glittered on whitecap? Or lured blossom out?
Around the earth, Jupiter, Saturn and Sun rendezvoused in a precarious triangle over the daytime sky.
Both supporting and opposing this balance were the very sites of human psychological imbalance, Rahu and Ketu, unincarnated points of eclipse.
This year’s version of the Sun’s usual quaternary summer sojourn has seen movement of the soular from the Ketu eclipse point in Gemini by June 15, 2010 to Saturn’s realm in Virgo around October 1st.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/our-times-a-poem.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/our-times-a-poem.html", "title": "Our times, a poem", "date_published": "2010-08-11T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ketu" ], "summary": "As a particularly strained summer solstice season comes to a close, I wish to share with you the inspiring thoughts and ...", "content_html": "As a particularly strained summer solstice season comes to a close, I wish to share with you the inspiring thoughts and feelings of this excerpt of a poem by Jame Agee, whose reading seems particularly appropriate since:
wandering far alone is Saturn personified pulled by the south star shadow Ketu in Ardra, the nakshatra for weeping, aspected directly by the planet for enlightened wonder and surety, Jupiter, as is happening in the sky right nowJupiter is the symbolizer of kindness, this year watching for us from Pisces, the 4th house ground, of the United Statesstar-made shadows seem like the shadow nodes, Rahu and Ketu, which are no longer at high 90 degree tension to said Jupiter and Saturn; i.e. the star-made shadows are so slowly from here on becoming more roundthis late year, the lunar chart of 12/31/2010, in the early morning, is a beautiful one for feelings of love and mediation whose graces and fortune are that of helping others in health; all is healed?the chart of the very last minute of the year has Ketu lying down in the northnow we are indeed in high summerthe new moon has just passed, in Cancer, and as the Moon grows from this placement, it is a time, of hearts made whole
Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
I updated the template for this site without backing up, and some recent important posts were lost.
One for the summer eclipse season of 2010 and one about Tiger Woods are some examples. I will try to find archived versions and repost.
The essence of the Tiger Woods one was that he wouldn’t win again, that his divorce would be delayed to later this year, and that he would come through in ~4 years time as a golf TV commentator and family man.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/vegetarian-new-years.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/vegetarian-new-years.html", "title": "Vegetarian New Years’", "date_published": "2010-01-08T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes", "Cooking", "Festivals" ], "summary": "Here is a super popular, quick and easy, New Year’s Day/Dal meal. It actually has been voted in as a weekly Saturday win...", "content_html": "Here is a super popular, quick and easy, New Year’s Day/Dal meal. It actually has been voted in as a weekly Saturday winter dinner at my place, because it is so good. It takes 20 minutes from top to bottom, and costs perhaps $5 for 4-6 servings.
Basically we’re matching up haluska, an Eastern European staple, especially on New Years’, with a side of spiced black eyed peas, popular in the American South on that same day.
8 oz. wide or curly egg noodles, dried
one medium head of greenish-white cabbage
one medium organic yellow onion
4 tbsps of ghee or oil of choice (I think Sunflower works well here) – I know that sounds like a lot, but you’ll appreciate it later
Bring 2 quarts of salted water to rapid boil. Add only the noodles. Boil for 5 minutes uncovered. Strain. Set aside.
I will only buy the following items, ideally unprocessed, organic and very local when available:
flour
water
nuts
legumes
beans
vegetables
fruits
milk
butter
yogurt
eggs
spices
honey
sugar
oils
rice
A local seller on Craigslist is allowing me to get a $20 breadmaker in very good condition. That will allow me to take care of breakfast, with good chai on the side. Toasted homemade bread with local butter and farmer’s market peach jam doesn’t sound like scrimping to me.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/may-31st-2009.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/may-31st-2009.html", "title": "Nutmeg", "date_published": "2009-05-31T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Herbs" ], "summary": "**sanskrit** jaTI phala, mada zauNDa **latin ***Myristica fragrans* **rasa **pungent, bitter, astringent **vIrya **he...", "content_html": "karmas astringent, nervine, sedative, psychotropic, carminative, aphrodisiac, stimulant, expectorant
Botanical Description Nutmeg is the seed (about 1 x 3/4 inch) of the tree which is an angiosperm or evergreen.
Habitat and Varieties Indigenous to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, it is also grown in Malaysia, the Caribbean, and the Kerala state of India. M. malabarica is an adulterant sometimes used in India, and is called Jaiphal as well.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/turnip-onion-milk-asparagus-spring-soup.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/turnip-onion-milk-asparagus-spring-soup.html", "title": "Turnip Onion Milk Asparagus Spring Soup", "date_published": "2009-05-31T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes", "Cooking" ], "summary": "all ingredients are organic, most are from the Farmer’s Market; serves 8 perfect for the late spring (Hemant) melting p...", "content_html": "Slice onions thinly and caramelize in the ghee, salt, and pepper for 5 minutes. Then reduce heat.
Slice turnips into thin rectangular cubes. Add to caramelized mixture. Stir 3 minutes. Add all of milk. Stir while saying mantra. Turn heat to medium.
After breaking the ends off, chop asperagus into 1 inch long sections. Add to pot.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/64-bit-computing-and-the-golden-age.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/64-bit-computing-and-the-golden-age.html", "title": "64 Bit Computing and the Golden Age", "date_published": "2009-02-20T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit", "Saturn" ], "summary": "We are about to enter the Golden Age, many spiritual teachers agree. I think 64 bit computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/...", "content_html": "I think 64 bit computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit) is going to facilitate this transition.
the 64 complete codons in DNAthe 64 complete steps in computer science (and hence neuronal communication, etc.)the base 64 of the orbitals of the elements in the Periodic Table (http://ayurastro.com/ayurveda/?p=38)the 64 complete steps of the I Chingthe 64 cards of the Tarotthe 64 padas of the Manduka Mandala in Vaastu Shastra (http://vastuved.com/vastu-whatisatemple.html)the 8 possible vikruti types of the mother times the 8 possible vikruti types of the father when a baby is formed.
Am I missing anything?
A British study found that London traders with relatively long ring fingers earn eleven times as much money as men with short ring fingers... (Harper’s Weekly, Mar 09, p.84)
Ah, palmistry. True Vedic palmistry tells us as much about the person as the chart. What is in the hand is in the chart, what is in the chart is in the hand.
When the person is not sure of their birth time, palmistry is often THE way to go straight to what is really happening in the person’s life, and the above quote only supports this ancient knowledge.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-periodic-table-and-the-5-elements-of-ayurveda.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-periodic-table-and-the-5-elements-of-ayurveda.html", "title": "The Periodic Table and The 5 Elements of Ayurveda", "date_published": "2009-02-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit", "Five elements" ], "summary": "Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of South Asia, has a philosophy of matter (Sankhya) that is based on the five elements of space, air, fire, water, and…", "content_html": "Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of South Asia, has a philosophy of matter (Sankhya) that is based on the five elements of space, air, fire, water, and…
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/aham-brahmasmi-i-am-brahma.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/aham-brahmasmi-i-am-brahma.html", "title": "aham brahmAsmi: I am brahma", "date_published": "2008-11-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit", "Deities" ], "summary": "brahma is the sanskrit word for all that is. Not all that exists, but all that is. I am that I am – Yahweh For exampl...", "content_html": "For example, let’s say the words “purple zebra”. A purple zebra doesn’t exist, as far as we know, but it IS, because it is in your head right now.
Sort of like a black swan. A “black swan” was a word/concept used in medieval Europe to describe something that didn’t exist. Then, when the Europeans went to Australia, lo and behold, there were actual black swans.
You can deify brahma if you want, and give it a Personage, so that you would call it Brahma with a capital B, but you don’t have to. Here, it is “simply” the word for all that is.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/an-ode-to-dharana.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/an-ode-to-dharana.html", "title": "An Ode To DhAraNA", "date_published": "2008-11-05T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit", "Asana", "Meditation", "Pranayama" ], "summary": "“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,” says the Book of James Yama, niyama, Asana, prANAyAma, pratyAhAra, d...", "content_html": "Yama, niyama, Asana, prANAyAma, pratyAhAra, dhAraNA, dhyAna, and samAdhi are the eight limbs [of yoga]. Yoga Sutras, II.29
I’ve recently been in something like love with the concept of dhAraNA, “focusings”, that leads to an incredibly important quality, steadiness.
Steadiness sounds rather dry, doesn’t it? It’s yet another concept that I didn’t process very deeply at first in the Sutras. I think it gave it short shrift: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I need steadiness.”
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/copper-vessels.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/copper-vessels.html", "title": "Copper Vessels", "date_published": "2008-11-01T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda" ], "summary": "In Ayurveda, copper drinking vessels are suggested for the *dinacharya* (daily rituals) of the yogi, as well as the mate...", "content_html": "In Ayurveda, copper drinking vessels are suggested for the dinacharya (daily rituals) of the yogi, as well as the material of choice for items of complex rituals and pancha karma.
This study (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1081359/Copper-door-handles-taps-kill-95-superbugs-hospitals.html) may indicate why:
A study found that copper fittings rapidly killed bugs on hospital wards, succeeding where other infection control measures failed.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/peoplenomics.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/peoplenomics.html", "title": "Peoplenomics", "date_published": "2008-10-29T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "The recent stock market downturn was not so difficult for me. For one thing, I am not in the market. For another, I wa...", "content_html": "For one thing, I am not in the market. For another, I was able to tell my friends who were to get out about two weeks ahead of time. I think I saved them around ten million dollars all told. Not bad.
Well, there was one exception, a good friend who didn’t believe me, and he lost about 70% of his portfolio this month.
I would like to say that my prescience was all because of astrology (http://ayurastro.com/astrology).
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ethics-in-astrology-part-one.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ethics-in-astrology-part-one.html", "title": "Ethics in Astrology: Part One", "date_published": "2008-10-26T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ethics" ], "summary": "This is a HUGE topic, but perhaps I can start off, as I typically do, with an analogy. Astrology is like cat sitting. ...", "content_html": "This is a HUGE topic, but perhaps I can start off, as I typically do, with an analogy.
Someone is giving the keys to their house to you whenever they give you their birth information. Everything that is important to them is going to be accessible by another human being.
I don’t blame politicians for being wiley with their birth info. No electioneering compares with the power of the astrologer. Reagan knew it.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/actioninaction.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/actioninaction.html", "title": "Action/Inaction", "date_published": "2008-10-22T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "The pursuit of book‐learning brings about daily increase. The practice of Tao brings about daily loss. Repeat this...", "content_html": "The pursuit of book‐learning brings about daily increase.
The practice of Tao brings about daily loss. Repeat this loss
again and again, and you arrive at inaction. Practice inaction,
and there is nothing which cannot be done.
‐ Lao Tzu
After the herb dust settled on last month’s JAMA article (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/300/8/915?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Ayurvedic&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resource), I decided to write about this challenge to the business of Ayurvedic herbs, where lead, mercury, and arsenic levels have been detected.
The first thing to remember is that, alas, there is lead even in India’s spinach (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2891587.stm). I don’t think this is really about Ayurveda.
As our friend, a prominent practitioner, has elegantly summarized,
“As long as our entire food chain is polluted by human activity it will be impossible to remove every detectable trace of heavy metals, yet the levels are too low to be of harm.”
In the Western model, it is by definition the apex of what we currently know and less than what we will know in the future. Yet, it is accepted as the “final truth” in the moment.
It may be helpful as confirmation, but never as final confirmation. More and more it just seems a way to reference a complete system from the past.
In this article (http://www.livescience.com/health/080926-roses-arthritis.html), it is reported that:
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-pancreas-where-does-the-fifth-house-end-and-the-sixth-house-begin.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-pancreas-where-does-the-fifth-house-end-and-the-sixth-house-begin.html", "title": "The Pancreas: Where Does The Fifth House End And The Sixth House Begin?", "date_published": "2008-09-04T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Ayurveda", "Anatomy" ], "summary": "In most books (http://www.vedicbooks.net/product_info.php?ref=154&products_id=686&affiliate_banner_id=1) we learn that t...", "content_html": "In most books (http://www.vedicbooks.net/product_info.php?ref=154&products_id=686&affiliate_banner_id=1) we learn that the fifth house is from the navel to the lungs, namely the stomach and heart. The sixth house, we are told, is from the navel to just above the reproductive organs. That is to say, it consists of the organs required for all important digestion.
However, in my recent papers (http://ayurastro.com/astrology/?page_id=7) on the astrology of Diabetes and Cystic Fibrosis, where the pancreas (http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/pancreas-picture.htm) is involved in both, I use different houses to describe the pancreas.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-speed-of-light-is-in-the-rk-veda.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/the-speed-of-light-is-in-the-rk-veda.html", "title": "The Speed of Light is in the Rk Veda!", "date_published": "2008-09-03T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "This has been said before (actually many times before) but it bears repeating here. The speed of light is in the Rk Veda, and not hidden in metaphors either.", "content_html": "This has been said before (actually many times before) but it bears repeating here. The speed of light is in the Rk Veda, and not hidden in metaphors either.
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-speed-of-light-is-in-the-rk-veda-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/the-speed-of-light-is-in-the-rk-veda-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 113960 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/what-we-can-learn-from-epidemiological-birth-data-of-type-one-diabetes.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/what-we-can-learn-from-epidemiological-birth-data-of-type-one-diabetes.html", "title": "What We Can Learn From Epidemiological Birth Data of Type One Diabetes", "date_published": "2008-09-02T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Jupiter", "Saturn", "Ketu", "Rahu", "Anatomy", "Children" ], "summary": "In the course of doing astrological research (http://ayurastro.com/astrology/?page_id=7) on Type One Diabetes, I came ac...", "content_html": "This is exactly what research astrologers need: an independent account of the patterning of birth dates on illness outcome.
Caption from the paper: The annual incidence for each 100 000 children < 16 years of age in the seven paediatric departments during the study period. The highest peaks occurred in 1983 and 1993.
Caption from the paper: Seasonal variation in month of birth in the total cohort. The zero line indicates expected patients and the bars indicate observed patients. For example, in July there were 13 patients more than expected, whereas there were 33 less than expected in October. SBR, standardised birth ratio; *p < 0.01;p < 0.02.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/dandelion.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/dandelion.html", "title": "Dandelion", "date_published": "2008-08-13T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Anatomy", "Herbs" ], "summary": "From Louise: Taraxacum officinale. Proposed Sanskrit: tooth of the lion, simhasyadADAkaH bitter,sweet/cooling/pungent...", "content_html": "On an herb trip one of the instructors had a printed T-shirt that said ” If you can’t beat em eat em”. This is referring to the plant with the yellow flowers that appear in the spring time. Flowers that open with the morning sun and close in the evening and in gray weather.
Our Dandelion, considered an obnoxious, annoying weed that won’t go away despite our efforts to eradicate it.
It is hardy, abundant, and ever there. It is thought that Dandelion was introduced to America by the pioneers from Europe and Asia. Why? Because since ancient times it was widely and successfully used as a food, a medicine, and a dye.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/turmeric-seems-to-succeed-against-cystic-fibrosis.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/turmeric-seems-to-succeed-against-cystic-fibrosis.html", "title": "Turmeric Seems to Succeed Against Cystic Fibrosis", "date_published": "2008-08-11T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Ayurveda", "Herbs" ], "summary": "Holy Moley. Here is a study in the New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4912) that is just about ...", "content_html": "Here is a study in the New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4912) that is just about as positive as can be.
“It can almost completely correct the measurable defects of the disease,” says Michael Caplan at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, US, part of the research team.
Caplan cautions that this does not necessarily mean that curcumin will work in humans. He notes that Asian people do have a much lower incidence of the disease, but says this may have more to do with population genetics than with more turmeric in their diet.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/walking-slowly-through-the-yoga-sutras.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/walking-slowly-through-the-yoga-sutras.html", "title": "Walking Slowly Through the Yoga Sutras", "date_published": "2008-08-10T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit", "Yoga Sutras", "Neuroscience" ], "summary": "I had an interesting experience the other day: I was within the field of consciousness if only for a minute. I had my f...", "content_html": "I had an interesting experience the other day: I was within the field of consciousness if only for a minute.
I had my feet up as it happened. I looked at my feet and said, “What nice feet.” I wasn’t actually just complimenting my feet. I was the self as it is upon waking and before cognition. I was the me that is still me in my few visits to past lives. I was the me that is still me in my one surprising preview of a future life. I was my eternal self, the “seer in my own nature” (I.3)
It may sound funny, me just looking at my feet, but I swear to you: it had the effect of a thousand storms.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ideal-my-quest-for-the-kundali-solid.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ideal-my-quest-for-the-kundali-solid.html", "title": "Ideal: My Quest For The KuNDali Solid", "date_published": "2008-08-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Chart reading", "sacred geometry", "kundali", "cuboctahedron", "snub tetrahedron", "dodecaplex" ], "summary": "Can the twelve-house kuNDali fold into a solid? From the cuboctahedron and the snub tetrahedron into the fourth dimension and the dodecaplex — the original 2008 images restored.", "content_html": "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 triangles are what are respectively in between the cornerstones 1, 4, 7, and 10. The latter are called kendras.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/amazing-wam-western-allopathic-medicine-support-for-eastern-pulse-analysis.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/amazing-wam-western-allopathic-medicine-support-for-eastern-pulse-analysis.html", "title": "Amazing WAM (Western Allopathic Medicine) Support for Eastern Pulse Analysis", "date_published": "2008-08-05T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Ayurveda", "Pulse diagnosis" ], "summary": "In this video (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/578081?src=mp&spon=17&uac=96118PN), two doctors on Medscape describe ...", "content_html": "In this video (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/578081?src=mp&spon=17&uac=96118PN), two doctors on Medscape describe highly technical, mechanical and avant garde attempts to simulate valuable ancient analysis of complex pulsatile blood pressure.
When they speak of the benefits of accessing the wave interactions of blood flow and flowback from the entire arterial tree, I am reminded of Dr. Lad (http://www.ayurveda.com/) speaking of pulse analysis as really an effort to describe a tree using only words.
For a nice article on Ayurvedic pulse reading from a student at the California College of Ayurveda, click here (http://www.ayurvedacollege.com/AyurvedicPulseDiagnosis_000.htm).
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/pushpa-pushya.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/pushpa-pushya.html", "title": "Pushpa = Pushya!", "date_published": "2008-08-02T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "We learned in a recent course on Ayurvedic fertility and conception that the woman’s uterus has a “flowering period” 9 d...", "content_html": "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.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/mothers-nutrition-affects-gender-of-future-child.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/mothers-nutrition-affects-gender-of-future-child.html", "title": "Mother’s Nutrition Affects Gender of Future Child", "date_published": "2008-07-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Ayurveda", "Diet", "Children" ], "summary": "Here is an article in the New York Times (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/boy-or-girl-the-answer-may-depend-on-...", "content_html": "Here is an article in the New York Times (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/boy-or-girl-the-answer-may-depend-on-moms-eating-habits/?scp=1&sq=nutrition%20gender%20baby&st=cse) where WAM (Western Allopathic Medicine) shows some preliminary evidence that the mother’s diet affects the gender of upcoming children.
the consistency of the trend offers an explanation for the small but consistent decline in the proportion of boys born in industrialized countries over the last 40 years, where even though women in general appear to be consuming more, eating habits have changed
I am touched by the reader’s comments that basically say “No WAY is that possible.”
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/brain-washing.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/brain-washing.html", "title": "Brain-washing", "date_published": "2008-07-12T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Neuroscience", "Meditation" ], "summary": "I remember growing up in the 70’s. I would watch “60 Minutes” Sunday nights with my dear grandparents and have some qual...", "content_html": "I remember growing up in the 70’s. I would watch “60 Minutes” Sunday nights with my dear grandparents and have some quality time with them.
A younger Dan Rather somberly intoned not once but a few times on the emergent cultural manifestations of “cults” taking over the young people.
Kool-Aid people, EST, the Hare Krishnas, Osho followers, and Transcendental Meditation were all grouped together. I remember specifically the “proof” that these were scary terrible sects. Something about not being able to go to the bathroom.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/word-of-the-day-veda.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/word-of-the-day-veda.html", "title": "Word of the day: veda", "date_published": "2008-07-02T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Sanskrit", "Mantra", "Vedas", "Etymology" ], "summary": "from the dictionary (http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/): 2 veda 1 m. (fr. 1. %{vid} q.v.) knowledge , true or sacred k...", "content_html": "2 veda 1 m. (fr. 1. %{vid} q.v.) knowledge , true or sacred knowledge or lore , knowledge of ritual RV. AitBr. ; N. of certain celebrated works which constitute the basis of the first period of the Hindu1 religion (these works were primarily three , viz. 1. the R2ig-veda , 2. the Yajur-veda [of which there are , however , two divisions see %{taittirIya-saMhitA} , %{vAjasaneyi-saMhitA}] , 3. the Sa1ma-veda [1015,2] ; these three works are sometimes called collectively %{trayI} , `” the triple Vidya1 “‘ or `” threefold knowledge “‘ , but the R2ig-veda is really the only original work of the three , and much the most ancient [the oldest of its hymns being assigned by some who rely on certain astronomical calculations to a period between 4000 and 2500 B.C. , before the settlement of the A1ryans in India ; and by others who adopt a different reckoning to a period between 1400 and 1000 B.C. , when the A1ryans had settled down in the Panja1b] ; subsequently a fourth Veda was added , called the Atharva-veda , which was probably not completely accepted till after Manu , as his law-book often speaks of the three Vedas-calling them %{trayam@brahma@sanAtanam} , `” the triple eternal Veda “‘ , but only once [xi , 33] mentions the revelation made to Atharvan and An3giras , without , however , calling it by the later name of Atharva-veda ; each of the four Vedas has two distinct parts , viz. 1. Mantra , i.e. words of prayer and adoration often addressed either to fire or to some form of the sun or to some form of the air , sky , wind &c. , and praying for health , wealth , long life , cattle , offspring , victory , and even forgiveness of sins , and 2. Bra1hman2a , consisting of Vidhi and Artha-va1da , i. e. directions for the detail of the ceremonies at which the Mantras were to be used and explanations of the legends &c. connected with the Mantras [see %{brAhmaNa} , %{vidhi}] , both these portions being termed %{zruti} , revelation orally communicated by the Deity , and heard but not composed or written down by men [cf. I. W. 24 &c.] , although it is certain that both Mantras and Bra1hman2as were compositions spread over a considerable period , much of the …
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/is-it-my-fault.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/is-it-my-fault.html", "title": "“Is It My Fault?”", "date_published": "2008-06-27T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Relationships", "Vargas" ], "summary": "I get this question pretty often. Someone had in her partnership chart (*navamsha) *the symbols for a heart attack, but...", "content_html": "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.
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.
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.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/mars-joins-saturn-in-leo.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/mars-joins-saturn-in-leo.html", "title": "Mars Joins Saturn in Leo", "date_published": "2008-06-27T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Mars", "Saturn" ], "summary": "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 ent...", "content_html": "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.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-spicy-meal-before-bed-can-impair-sleep.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-spicy-meal-before-bed-can-impair-sleep.html", "title": "A Spicy Meal Before Bed Can Impair Sleep.", "date_published": "2008-06-17T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Research", "Ayurveda", "Sleep", "Doshas" ], "summary": "Um, yeah. We know this as *pitta*. A study (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/health/17real.html?em&ex=1213848000&en=3...", "content_html": "A study (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/health/17real.html?em&ex=1213848000&en=3692d4bf55d77c55&ei=5087%0A) in The New York Times also says that spicier night time meals lead to higher body temperatures as well. WAM (Western Allopathic Medicine) doesn’t know why, but it’s basic to Ayurveda. Such usefulness is Ayurveda!
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/primordial-sounds-are-greatest-medicine.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/primordial-sounds-are-greatest-medicine.html", "title": "Primordial Sounds Are ‘Greatest Medicine’", "date_published": "2008-06-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "In this excerpt, (http://indiapost.com/article/philosophy/3026/) Deepak Chopra talks about being given primordial sounds...", "content_html": "In this excerpt, (http://indiapost.com/article/philosophy/3026/) Deepak Chopra talks about being given primordial sounds by the Great Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
I think it makes all the sense in the world, using sound to cure (http://www.soundhealingcenter.com/WSHC/intention.html).
We are vibrations, even physicists agree. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory)
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/rebirth-a-transgendering-surgery-creates-a-new-life.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/rebirth-a-transgendering-surgery-creates-a-new-life.html", "title": "Rebirth: A Transgendering Surgery Creates a New Life", "date_published": "2008-06-16T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Research", "Saturn", "Mercury", "Dasha", "Bhavas", "Jupiter", "Chart reading" ], "summary": "I recently had the opportunity to do a reading for a transgendered lady. In the course of that reading I discovered some...", "content_html": "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 get this published in the standard journals, so I am going to present some brief, casual material here — in the hope that more trans people might have their charts done, and 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 to transgender situations. (See, for example, “Life on the Fringes,” Express India.)
", "image": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/rebirth-a-transgendering-surgery-creates-2.jpg", "attachments": [ { "url": "https://ayurastro.com/assets/images/rebirth-a-transgendering-surgery-creates-2.jpg", "mime_type": "image/jpeg", "size_in_bytes": 117110 } ] }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/proper-chai-tea.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/proper-chai-tea.html", "title": "Proper Chai Tea", "date_published": "2008-05-28T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes" ], "summary": "The old fashioned Indian way: Get Red Label Tea (available from Indian shops incredibly cheap) or any other black tea t...", "content_html": "Get Red Label Tea (available from Indian shops incredibly cheap) or any other black tea to your liking. There is one brand in a yellow and green bag that begins with a D that is the cheapest of all, and my favorite by taste. (Really, old India.) Also, I understand that Rooibos (a healthier red noncaffeinated) tea is good.
Mix Homemade Chai Masala. This can include:
Ground Cardamom Seeds
Green Cardamom Pods
Nutmeg
Cloves
Black Pepper
Ginger, fresh if possible
Cinnamon
Anise
Fennel
Red Pepper
Lemon Grass
Be creative here. The right balance depends on your dosha, the season, your vikruti, many other things, so just try a balance. You can always adjust it later. Fresher spices are better. You don’t need much.
Does the Spirit even speak through the very construction of vegetables and fruits?
A sliced carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye...and yes science now shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes. A tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.”
Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food. A walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over three dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.”
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/surprisingly-good-mung-bean-pudding.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/surprisingly-good-mung-bean-pudding.html", "title": "Surprisingly Good Mung Bean Pudding", "date_published": "2008-05-27T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes" ], "summary": "This recipe is as simple to make as it is satisfying. It is a big hit and something of a conversation-starter! Take: 5...", "content_html": "Take:
5 parts of coconut milk (not coconut water)
Heat on a stove at medium low until it starts bubbling a bit.
Mix with:
1 part sugar, preferably sucanat
Stir until it has dissolved. Take off the stove.
You’ll need to stir slowly and completely to get the fine flour to mix in.
Add a good deal of ground cardamom, but not too much. (For 1 liter of coconut milk to start with, I add 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom.) Same thing goes with some high quality vanilla.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are like a hyperdimensional door with many locks. Each suutra seems to be the key.
The grammar of this sutra is straightforward unlike that of many. The vocabulary is crystal-clear.
There are very good words to choose to repeat, a whole science called mantra to it.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-breathtaking-record-of-achievement-and-understanding-indeed.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-breathtaking-record-of-achievement-and-understanding-indeed.html", "title": "A “breathtaking record of achievement and understanding” indeed.", "date_published": "2008-05-26T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda" ], "summary": "*\"On one side is scientific inquiry, with its breathtaking record of achievement and understanding. On the other side is...", "content_html": "\"On one side is scientific inquiry, with its breathtaking record of achievement and understanding. On the other side is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term for remedies that are based on tradition and spiritualism, which receives heartfelt anecdotal support but little else to vouch for its efficacy. (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/565472_2)\"
I am still amazed at this debate. On one hand we have a tradition that a short 150 years ago had their surgeons sharpening their knives on the bottoms of their boots (Western medicine) and on the other (CAM) there are treatises 3000 years old that describe the microscopic structures of virii and bacteria.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ancient-organics-ghee.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ancient-organics-ghee.html", "title": "Ancient Organics Ghee", "date_published": "2008-05-26T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Recipes" ], "summary": "*Like an individual wave rising from the ocean, it is not separate from the ocean. Just so, anything truly organic is an...", "content_html": "Like an individual wave rising from the ocean, it is not separate from the ocean. Just so, anything truly organic is ancient and anything ancient is organic.
My first review will be on Ancient Organics brand ghee (http://www.ancientorganics.com/articles.htm).
Ghee is an essential to Ayurvedic cooking. It is a rasayana (medium), it is a food (http://www.realbollywood.com/news/2008/05/dharmendra-success-mantra.html), it is a nectar. Well, just read the article linked to above.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/did-the-father-of-calculus-and-the-discovery-of-gravity-do-astrology-and-ayurveda.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/did-the-father-of-calculus-and-the-discovery-of-gravity-do-astrology-and-ayurveda.html", "title": "Did the father of calculus and the discovery of gravity do astrology (and Ayurveda)?", "date_published": "2008-05-24T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Pop Culture" ], "summary": "From the last paragraph of Newton’s Principia Mathematica: *” And now we might add something concerning a certain most ...", "content_html": "” 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.”
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ayurvedic-healing-cuisine-by-harish-johari.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/ayurvedic-healing-cuisine-by-harish-johari.html", "title": "Ayurvedic Healing Cuisine by Harish Johari", "date_published": "2008-05-23T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda", "Recipes" ], "summary": "Ayurvedic Healing Cuisine by Harish Johari is my favorite go-to book for Ayurvedically innovative recipes that reach to ...", "content_html": "Ayurvedic Healing Cuisine by Harish Johari is my favorite go-to book for Ayurvedically innovative recipes that reach to the heart of old India.
It has a decent introduction to Ayurveda for those just starting out, yet can also finally answer those more esoteric questions of how to for example, properly use cumin seeds or bitter gourd.
It is a complete recipe book too in the sense that everything from chutneys to chai is covered.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sutra-of-the-day-by-sanyama-perfect-regulation-of-thoughts-on-the-sun-knowledge-of-the-worlds.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sutra-of-the-day-by-sanyama-perfect-regulation-of-thoughts-on-the-sun-knowledge-of-the-worlds.html", "title": "Sutra of the day: by saṁyama [perfect regulation of thoughts] on the Sun, knowledge of the worlds", "date_published": "2008-05-18T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit", "Sun", "Yoga Sūtras", "Patañjali", "saṁyama", "bhuvana", "lokas", "Sūrya Siddhānta", "gāyatrī" ], "summary": "Yoga Sūtras III.26 — from saṁyama on the Sun, knowledge of the worlds: the gāyatrī's three bhuvanas, Vyāsa's seven lokas, and how sunlight really did reveal other worlds.", "content_html": "By saṁyama — the perfect regulation of thought through dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi — on the Sun: knowledge of the worlds.
Word by word it is almost nothing. Bhuvana, world; jñānam, knowledge; sūrye, on the Sun; saṁyamāt, from saṁyama. Four words, one of the shortest sutras in the vibhūti-pāda — and it opens onto the largest possible view.
Ammachi, Karunamayi, even the Hymn to the Gaṅgā refer to the three worlds. The gāyatrī opens with them — bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ, earth, mid-air, heaven — before turning, fittingly, to the light of the Sun.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sutra-of-the-day-how-to-have-invisibility.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sutra-of-the-day-how-to-have-invisibility.html", "title": "Sutra of the day: [how to have]… invisibility", "date_published": "2008-05-18T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit", "Yoga Sutras", "Meditation", "Patañjali", "saṁyama", "siddhi", "invisibility", "antardhāna", "metamaterial cloaking" ], "summary": "Yoga Sūtras III.21 — by saṁyama on the form of the body, the eye's light no longer meeting it: invisibility. The sutra's precise optics, from Vyāsa's siddhis to metamaterial cloaks.", "content_html": "kāya-rūpa-saṁyamāt tad-grāhya-śakti-stambhe cakṣuḥ-prakāśāsaṁprayoge ’ntardhānam
By saṁyama on the form of the body — its power to be grasped suspended, the light of the eye no longer meeting it — invisibility.
Word by word: kāya, the body; rūpa, its form, the visible shape of it; saṁyamāt, from saṁyama; tad-grāhya-śakti-stambhe, upon the arresting (stambha) of its power (śakti) to be grasped (grāhya); cakṣuḥ-prakāśa-asaṁprayoge, upon the non-meeting of eye and light; antardhānam, disappearance — literally a “placing within.”
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/word-of-the-day-guna.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/word-of-the-day-guna.html", "title": "Word of the Day: Guṇa", "date_published": "2008-05-09T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Sanskrit", "Gunas", "guna", "sattva", "rajas", "tamas", "Bhagavad Gita", "Sankhya" ], "summary": "A Sanskrit word-of-the-day entry for guṇa — its Vedic definition, its role in Sāṁkhya philosophy as sattva, rajas, and tamas, and the Bhagavad Gītā’s injunction to go beyond all three.", "content_html": "guṇa m. — a single thread or strand of a cord or twine; string or thread, rope; a garland; a bow-string; the string of a musical instrument, chord; (in geometry) a sinew; ifc. with numerals “fold, times” (as in tri-guṇa, threefold); a multiplier, coefficient (in algebra); subdivision, species, kind; the six subdivisions of action for a king in foreign politics (peace, war, march, halt, stratagem, and recourse to the protection of a mightier king); a secondary element, subordinate or unessential part of any action; a secondary dish (opposed to anna, rice or the chief dish), side-dish; (in grammar) the secondary or less immediate object of an action; a quality, peculiarity, attribute, or property.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-kitchen-in-every-pot.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/a-kitchen-in-every-pot.html", "title": "A Kitchen In Every Pot", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Recipes" ], "summary": "A good pot is a beautiful thing. It is sturdy, reliable, trustworthy, able to withstand abuse and yet supports the creat...", "content_html": "A good pot is a beautiful thing. It is sturdy, reliable, trustworthy, able to withstand abuse and yet supports the creation of amazing things other than itself.
It is the symbol for Aquarius ruled by a lord Shani, Saturn, who represents responsibility, duty, hard work, and perseverence.
What cook doesn’t know the rewarding gleam of a pan after the cleansing ritual of washing dishes?
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-ayurveda.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-ayurveda.html", "title": "About Ayurveda", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Ayurveda" ], "summary": "definition of Ayurveda: hitaahitam sukham duhkham aayus tasya hitahitam, maanam ca tac ca yatrokam aayurveda sa ucyate ...", "content_html": "hitaahitam sukham duhkham aayus tasya hitahitam, maanam ca tac ca yatrokam aayurveda sa ucyate (Charaka, 1)
Ayurveda is said to be that science where what is useful and detrimental (to health/life); the unhappy and happy (state of) life; what is good and bad for life, it’s measurement (span/length); and life itself are described. (translation, Dr. Lad.)
Welcome to the section about Ayurveda, which in Sanskrit means the study/knowledge/lore/broomset of life in all ways, shapes, and forms.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-cooking.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-cooking.html", "title": "About Cooking", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Recipes", "Cooking" ], "summary": "Cooking is the first line of Ayurveda. Many of us know that the smallest thing ingested can cause pain or incredible de...", "content_html": "Many of us know that the smallest thing ingested can cause pain or incredible delight.
The Indian cook, and every Indian grandmother, knows about the 6 tastes and the 3 doshas of Ayurveda.
These principal themes of Ayurveda are essential to yummy food, good health, and happiness.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-sanskrit.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-sanskrit.html", "title": "About Sanskrit", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "To study Indian Astrology a good grasp of Sanskrit is a must. -the great C. S. Patel in CVA Journal, II, 1, page 4. Wh...", "content_html": "With it being a limb of the Vedas, actually many limbs, with the language structure being not just the FORM but the CONTENT of the Vedas themselves?
Be sure that I do not know much, but that I will present here translations such as I can make of them.
Actually, it’s important to know that translations are hyperdimensional like and of the universe itself.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-yoga.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/about-yoga.html", "title": "About Yoga", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga" ], "summary": "The Real Definition of Yoga Someone once said to me that yoga is the art of flexibility and so on. In the ancient texts...", "content_html": "Someone once said to me that yoga is the art of flexibility and so on. In the ancient texts, it actually is a very real science.
This is the real meaning of yoga and the goal of all the postures, Asana, breathing techniques (praanayaama), and meditation.
Typically, quite a lot of effort goes into that act of cessation, that ending of effort, until all is one, one, One.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/jyotish-meaning-vedic-astrology-and-more.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/jyotish-meaning-vedic-astrology-and-more.html", "title": "‘Jyotish’, Meaning Vedic Astrology and More", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "Jyotish comes from two Sanskrit words, *jyoti*, meaning light, and *ishta*, meaning a Divinity. One may take one’s *ish...", "content_html": "Jyotish comes from two Sanskrit words, jyoti, meaning light, and ishta, meaning a Divinity.
One may take one’s ishta devata or personage of Divinity to in fact be the Jyotir Vidya or knowledge of light itself.
Astrologers were society’s astronomers once, and with a tweak of the lens of discrimination/definition, can still be considered so
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-visual-take-on-how-to-teach-jyotish.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/my-visual-take-on-how-to-teach-jyotish.html", "title": "My Visual Take on How To Teach Jyotish", "date_published": "2008-04-30T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha" ], "summary": "**Welcome to my first post, dedicated to the proposed ****RMIYA** (http://www.rmiya.org/)** course, Ayurvedic Astrology ...", "content_html": "Seer, seen, and the act of seeing, signpost, signer, and signification become one in the act of Vedic Astrology. Indeed, it is truly so in all things, but the phenomenon is so apparent, so pure in the act of doing a reading....
This realization is one of the first of many advanced teachings in the material.
Also, I was challenged from a distance by a teacher to create a**** mind map** (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Mapping)** of the contents of the proposed course. A mind map is a visual map of the whole, inspired by the TM (http://www.tm.org/) philosophy of seeing everything at once, and then learning the details.
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sutra-of-the-day-to-see-is-to-forget-the-name-of-what-one-sees.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/sutra-of-the-day-to-see-is-to-forget-the-name-of-what-one-sees.html", "title": "Sutra of the day: To see is to forget the name of what one sees.", "date_published": "2008-04-10T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Yoga", "Sanskrit" ], "summary": "That actually is not the sutra, but it’s a fair translation, and it comes from Paul Valery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...", "content_html": "That actually is not the sutra, but it’s a fair translation, and it comes from Paul Valery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Val%C3%A9ry) (1871-1945).
It was my favorite quote in my 20′s. Figures I could find it in the Yoga Sutras.
Conceptualization [one of the unhelpful definitions/limitations on the field of consciousness] is when you don’t have an actual object but rely upon concept in language. (I.9)
" }, { "id": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/on-the-jyotishical-arrangement-of-hypercubes.html", "url": "https://ayurastro.com/writings/on-the-jyotishical-arrangement-of-hypercubes.html", "title": "On the Jyotishical Arrangement of Hypercubes", "date_published": "2002-06-29T12:00:00-06:00", "authors": [ { "name": "Renay Oshop" } ], "tags": [ "Jyotisha", "Sanskrit", "Bhavas" ], "summary": "Following just the introductory teachings, there was but one thing that didn’t immediately rest with me structurally: th...", "content_html": "Following just the introductory teachings, there was but one thing that didn’t immediately rest with me structurally: the notion of changing by moment the lagna (ascendent), to adjust for various omens, so that for example, if the native is touching his feet, we would use Pisces as the new lagna.
Intuitively this feels absolutely fine and certainly has amazing results, but I just wondered, in the gola and ganita (structure of the universe) view of things, how did it all fit in?
Do any of you know the “My mother told me...” fortune-telling paper game played by girls in elementary school?
" } ] }