Astrology: a worldwide phenomenon

Almost all ancient civilizations practices astrology. Great efforts were put to understand and document the movement of all celestial bodies evolving in advanced astronomy. These calculations show one of the great skills of the human mind in noticing connections between events and cycles of life (e.g. seasonans, year etc.). As the human mind cleverly understand the correlations between the movements of the celestial bodies, it obviously also connect them to events that are happening in earth. And here astrology is being born.

Vedic Astrology or Jyotish

Vedic Astrology is also called Jyotish which means light in the Sanskrit language.The first time I heard of it was when a brahmachari (Indian monk) explained the effects of Pujas and astrology to me. He said “we are all walking in the dark, not knowing where we are going, and Jyotish astrology is just like someone is giving you a torch with which you can see your path clearly”.

In Vedic Astrology, both the planets and the shadow sides of the Moon are called “Grahas”. One meaning of this word is to grahana, eclipse the mind, the sul and the body grap. Desire eclipses mind, this causes bias. Desire is seen in 7th house. Eclipse of mind happens in 7th house from Moon.  Soul eclipses by karma. Body eclipsed causes hunger or thirst. How do we get out of this?^[1]see this YouTube from a class from Pandit Sanjay Rath

This means that the energy of the planets is holding a grip on us and energetically procasting certain tendencies on us. Each Graha is able to bestows us with positive and negative tendencies. And it is up to us to execute the positive ones well and transcend the negative ones. In an astrology reading one can learn about the possible negative tendencies to be transcended or the positive ones to be executed in dharmic way.

What can be seen from a horoscope?

Well, that depends where one looks at. In Vedic Astrology there are many subcharts for each major realm of life. In a sense an astrologer can learn about every field of life and therefore also guide in these areas.

Sub Charts in Vedic Astrology

The birth chart (D1) is mainly showing the external tendencies of one’s life. The navamsha (D9) is showing more of the more inner quality and character of the native. The Shastiamsa (D60) gives a view on the overall karma that someone is carrying with him. These three charts are most important for a general view.

Then the D30 says more about alle challenges that will arise and the D27 can give insight in ways to transcend these challenges. Others, give a more close up insight in one area of life, like the Dasamsa (D10) gives a close-up look in career matters.

In this way Vedic Astrology can tune into any subject of life. For an astrologer this also means that Vedic Astrology is a life long study and only very few are able to become excellent in every part of this field.

Is this needed?

No, Astrology is the science of maya, or illusion. It can help us to understand this divine play, but we do not need to know everything. For myself I have acquainted myself well with a few subjects that I give readings in, while I have learned the basics about many other subjects. And this will evolve, as I learn more.

Positive effects happen when the grahas are positioned in signs ruled by grahas that are in harmony with it’s nature and is not negatively affected by other grahas or signs. Negative tendencies become more strong when grahas are in signs that are not friendly and/or when it is aspected negatively by it.