Sign and Symbol: Vedic Numerology and the Zodiac Signs

This association is an easy at-bat. The Sun is exalted in Aries. This makes sense as the Sun is the king (among other significations, but this article will try to keep things simple), and Aries is the battlefield (same). The king’s highest moment is on the battlefield. Besides exaltation, it also makes sense to look at the lordship of the Sun. That is Leo, here in the fifth house.

For the Sun’s own sign to be in the fifth house is especially proper, as that house indicates the beating heart, the liver, and other physical indications of the Sun.

So, the nomenclature for this article is to name the exaltation house and the lordship house(s) in the following way: E1:L5. The utility of this will hopefully be clearer as time goes on, and a summation is at the end.

This is a similar situation, but for the Moon, the second regal luminary. The Moon is the queen, and Taurus is the kitchen. In this ancient form of astrology, the queen’s highest moment is in the kitchen.

Here, the lordship becomes interesting. The rulership of the Moon is the third house of Cancer. The third house typically means siblings, courage, writing. The interpretations of the Moon as left-hand path and mirror may suggest a reflection, though. This is often done in Jaimini-level Jyotiṣa, so that the third house becomes like the eleventh house — the dashed arc in the chart.

Thus, E1:L11.

As Gemini is the natural third house of the kāla puruṣa and the eighth from the eighth, perhaps this association speaks to the mystical goodness of the eighth house.

Here, Jupiter (the priest) is exalted in the second house and lords the seventh and tenth houses. The relationship between student (Mercury) and teacher (Jupiter) is tight in the dual signs in the kendras here. These mutual aspects likely are not just a nod to, but an actual depiction of, the mechanism of capillary action that is the paramparā (lineage).

Thus: E2:L7&10.

The reaching and yearning of Rāhu toward Cancerian impulses of self-contained emotional multitudes makes some sense. Here, there is exaltation in the sixth house and lordship of the eighth. Both of these are sinful pāpa spaces, perhaps speaking to the pain of Rāhu expression.

Thus, E6:L8.

Vasant Lad recently spoke of the year 2020 as summing to four, Rāhu. The collective pain of 2020 thus, he went on to say, should conclude now that we are in 2021, which sums to 5, the next number.

Here, Mercury is very friendly to the lagna lord. Moreover, Leo as the natural fifth house of the kāla puruṣa supports the indications of that house as the site of great learning from past lives, and hence preternatural knowledge that Mercury can act on. (Consider Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s fifth house, for example.)

Mercury is exalted in the second house and lords the second and the eleventh.

E2:L2&11.

One may interpret this association as speaking to the negation of Venus as leader, teacher, and guru of the rākṣasas (demons), since Venus is debilitated in Virgo.

Venus is exalted in the seventh house and lords the second and the righteous ninth.

E7:L2&9.

This association is exciting to me, as it harkens to the first line of the Atharva Veda, that magical book of incantations that forms the support for mystical Āyurveda and Jyotiṣa. The line speaks of seven, three times — triṣaptāḥ, “thrice seven” — as an encapsulation of the extensive trove of sacred secrets in the book. Seven is Ketu and three is Jupiter (see above). Thus, the incantation is evoking the highly spiritual Viṣṇu yoga of the conjunction of Jupiter and Ketu.

Moreover, seven cubed is 343, which reduces by addition to 3 + 4 + 3 = 10: that is 7 (Ketu again) plus 3 (Jupiter again), and 1 + 0 = 1 connects it to the Sun (see above) as soul. By multiplication instead, 343 becomes 3 × 4 × 3 = 36, whose two digits are the two gurus, Jupiter (3) and Venus (6); 3 + 6 = 9, and 3 × 6 = 18 reduces to 9 again — the same 9 that 1 + 0 + 8 gives for 108. Every step in this multiplicative analysis is a holy number, and the basis for 108, the ultimate holy number.

Ketu is exalted in the righteous ninth house and lords the second house. E9:L2.

This association may indicate the imposition on and suppression of Scorpionic impulses. This would be sort of like Venus and Virgo above, except instead of the sign constraining the planet, here the planet is constraining the sign. The end effect is the same: nullification. It is not lost that these cancellations align with the two most difficult pāpa houses of the sixth and the eighth in the kāla puruṣa.

Here, Saturn is exalted in the twelfth house and lords the third and the fourth. E12:L3&4.

Here, Mars is exalted in the second house and lords the fifth and twelfth houses. E2:L5&12.

Here, if Pluto is indeed the correspondence, then its own sign is the eleventh house of Scorpio. There is no classical understanding of its exaltation, so E0:L11.

Similarly, Uranus has its own sign in the first house and has no exaltation. So E0:L1.

Similarly, Neptune has its own sign in the first house of Pisces and has no exaltation. So, E0:L1.