Ayurveda Cases: Gemini Lagna 1965 (70% Pitta; Mars 95%+Mercury 87% on Lagna; Mind Pitta); Cancer Lagna 1953 (65% Vata; Rahu 91%+Exalted Saturn 83% on Lagna; Mind Pitta); Leo Lagna 1963 (60% Pitta+40% Vata; Rahu 100%+Saturn 92%; Saturn 6L Dasha = Gout/Arthritis); Indira Gandhi AL = Rahu 95% = World Sees Her as Manipulator

Example chart

Lagna: 3°20' Gemini, a sign of Mercury.

Body

• Jupiter is in the 1st house at 7°4' Gemini, about 3.5° from the Lagna degree. Strong Kapha influence.
• Lagna lord Mercury is in the 6th, in Scorpio, at 18°. Ketu is there at 11°. Not very close, but close enough. Mercury takes Ketu's nature: Pitta.
• Aspects on Lagna: Sun 67%, trumped by Mars 95%. Mercury 87%. Ignore the rest. Mars is Pitta and Mercury is Pitta in this chart. Two Pitta planets aspect Lagna.

Result: mainly Pitta, secondly Kapha. "Maybe 70% Pitta, or 75% Pitta and 25% Kapha" — he says it is hard to quantify. She looks very mild, but there is fire inside.

Mind

• Moon is at 26°41' Taurus, exalted. Rahu is in the sign but 15° away — too far to count. Moon is practically alone.
• Kṛṣṇa Tṛtīyā: three days after full Moon, so relatively full. A Kapha Moon.
• The Moon-sign lord Venus is a Kapha planet. He is under some Pitta influence — in a fiery sign (Sagittarius) with fiery Mars — but he is himself Kapha.
• Aspects on Moon: Mercury 93%, Sun 74%, Mars 73%. Sun and Mars are Pitta, and Mercury is Pitta in this chart.

Result: some Kapha, more Pitta. Lagna and Moon agree. "At the physical level as well as at the mental level, there is a lot of fire and also some stability."

Food for Pitta with Kapha

• Pitta people should not eat very spicy food. Kapha people need spice. The needs conflict. Pitta is the larger share here, so: mildly spiced, no hot pickles.
• Go towards the third dosha, Vata: light food, dry food. No heavy gravy or cream — bad for Kapha.
• Cilantro, coriander seed powder, cumin: drying and very cooling. They take away Pitta without raising Kapha.
• Eggplant and mango raise Pitta. Not good.
• Raisins balance Pitta and lower Kapha. Good.
• Wet dates cool Pitta but raise Kapha. Dry dates lower both and only provoke Vata. Dry dates are better.
• Banana raises both Pitta and Kapha. "Bananas are terrible fruits" for her.
• Apples lower Pitta a lot and hardly raise Kapha. Good.
• Sour fruits such as peaches and plums raise Pitta. Not in excess.
• Onion: soft-cooked onion raises Kapha a little. Raw or lightly sautéed onion lowers Pitta a lot and does not raise Kapha. It raises only Vata, which is not her problem.

Daśā

• Take most care with Pitta in the antardaśās of Mercury and Ketu. In Saturn's antardaśā Pitta gives little trouble.
• In Venus antardaśā Kapha rises in the mind and the mind may turn dull. A little more spice then, to stimulate it.

Example chart

Lagna: 20°31' Cancer.

Body

• Mars is the only planet in the 1st house, at 27° Cancer, less than 7° from the Lagna degree. Strong Pitta.
• Venus (7°48') and Ketu (9°17') are in Cancer too, but behind the Lagna degree. He places both in the 12th house.
• Lagna lord Moon: Kṛṣṇa Saptamī, so half Kapha, half Vata.
• Aspects on Lagna: Moon 46%, not much. Jupiter 70%, ignorable. Saturn 83%, Rahu 91%. Both are Vata. Above 80% is a very strong aspect, and Saturn is exalted (in Libra).
• Aspects on the Lagna lord Moon: Saturn has the highest, 70%.

Weighing: Mars is close to Lagna, but Saturn and Rahu aspect as closely. The Lagna lord adds some more Vata. Kapha from Moon is negligible.

Result: "60%, 65% Vata, and remaining Pitta." A Vata-Pitta person, not Pitta-Vata.

• The native says his Ayurvedic reading was Pitta and Vata. The teacher holds to Vata first, Pitta second: "because Mars is so close to Lagna, you can't rule out Pitta."
• A student asks about Sun. Sun is at 14° Leo, the next sign, but within 30° of the Lagna degree, so he counts as in the 1st house. He does not influence Lagna strongly. Mars does far more.

Mind

• Moon is in Taurus. The Moon-sign lord is Venus, a Kapha planet.
• Venus is in Cancer at 7°48'. Ketu is at 9°17' Cancer, within 1.5° of him. The Moon-sign lord is very closely under Ketu: fire.
• Saturn's aspect on Moon is 69% — "not even three-fourths". He sets it aside.

Result: mostly Pitta, then some Kapha. Vata hardly counts in the mind.

• Fire in the mind: short temper, or initiative, the push to do something.
• Kapha from Venus gives the mind a stable platform. "It's not like burning always."
• The anxiety and nervousness of Vata belong to the mind more than to the body. His Vata is in the body, so they may not show.

"Physically you are more Vata, mentally you are more Pitta. That is my reading."

• Which influence is up at a given time depends on the daśā — Venus, Ketu or Saturn.

Example chart

Lagna: 9°34' Leo, a fiery sign owned by Sun.

Body

• Mars is in Lagna at 15°29' Leo, 6° from the Lagna degree. Pitta.
• Leo and its lord Sun: Pitta again. A double Pitta influence.
• Lagna lord Sun is at 4°50' Gemini. Rahu is in the sign but far from him. No strong aspect falls on Sun. He is plain Pitta, unmodified.
• Aspects on Lagna: Moon 62%, Mercury 69%, Jupiter 71%. The strongest are Saturn 92% and Rahu 100%. Strong Vata.

Result: first "60%, 65% Pitta and remaining Vata". Then, looking again at how high the Saturn and Rahu aspects are: "it's even 50-50 or 60-40". More Pitta than Vata.

• Pure Pitta: a stout sportsman. Pitta with Kapha: a little fatter than that. Pure Vata: a thin, frail, yogic body. Pitta with Vata: a sportsman's body, but thin.
• In Saturn daśā or Rahu daśā the Vata share grows.

Saturn Daśā: Vata as Disease

• Saturn is the 6th lord for Leo Lagna, and Saturn daśā is running.
• "As soon as Saturn daśā started, he started having joint, gout, arthritis. Those are Vata-related problems." Saturn is the planet of dryness.
• Vata is most prominent in Saturn's own antardaśā and in Rahu's antardaśā within it.

Food for Pitta with Vata, Vata Aggravated

• Reduce Vata without raising Pitta.
• Stay away from dry foods. Eat moist, heavier foods. Creamy foods are good.
• No very heating foods. This daśā does not push Pitta, but Pitta is in the constitution and he cannot afford to raise it.
• Dairy is good: milk, yoghurt, and better still buttermilk.
• Zucchini, squash, green beans, carrots, peas — cooked, not raw.
• Salads are terrible for him. Raw, dry food raises Vata.
• Fully cooked, soft food with a lot of gravy. The liquid should be water, not oil: oil is good for Vata but raises Pitta.

Mind

• Moon is at 17° Taurus, exalted. (All three class charts have Moon in Taurus.) Kṛṣṇa Caturdaśī, almost dark: a Vata Moon.
• Mercury and Venus are in Taurus with him, a few degrees behind — the 12th from Moon by degree, but close. Venus is the closer.
• Venus is the Moon-sign lord: Kapha.
• Mercury sits with Moon (Vata) and Venus (Kapha), and Venus is nearer to him. Mercury acts as Kapha with some Vata.
• So two Kapha planets influence Moon.
• Aspects on Moon: Saturn 60%. Some Vata.

Result: mostly Kapha, secondly some Vata. Not much fire in the mind.

• Kapha in the mind: calm and stable in good times, lazy and sluggish in bad times. Two sides of one coin.
• From his body one would expect a restless Pitta-Vata man. That is only the body. The mind is relatively calm — "more stable than your mind", he tells another student.
• Vata in the mind is air: the mind goes here and there. Some anxiety and nervousness are possible now, because Saturn daśā is running.

Indira Gandhi — Body, Mind, and Persona from Arudha Lagna

Taken up "just as an exercise".

Body

• Lagna is at 26° Cancer. Saturn is at 21° Cancer — behind the Lagna degree, so not in the 1st house, but close to Lagna. Vata influence.
• Lagna lord Moon is a Śukla Ṣaṣṭhī Moon (the recording garbles the tithi name): half Kapha, half Vata.
• Aspects on Lagna: Moon has a high aspect. Venus 70%, Rahu 60%. He takes Moon and Venus. Venus is Kapha.

Result: Kapha and Vata, the two extremes — one fat, one thin. A medium build, but not the sportsman's build of Pitta. Both doshas are cool, so a cool body. Spicy food suits such a person. To look at, she is neither too thin nor too fat.

Mind

• Moon is half Kapha, half Vata. His dispositor counts for more: Saturn, a Vata planet.
• Jupiter aspects Moon (Kapha). Saturn has some aspect too.

Result: Kapha and Vata. Stable and confident on one side, anxious and nervous on the other.

"But She Appears Very Aggressive"

A student objects. The teacher gives two answers.

• This is the prakṛti. At a given time a daśā may have changed it.
• How a person appears is different from what the person is. "If you look at me, the way I talk, the way I write, you may think I am a very restless person, but I may not be."
• Only those close to a public figure know the mind. "She may be a nervous wreck before elections. You never know."
• For the image the world sees, look at Arudha Lagna.

Persona: Arudha Lagna

• He uses the Arudha computed from longitudes — the method he had shared in a recent article — not the sign-based Arudha. It falls at 14°52' Gemini.
• Ketu is in Gemini, close to it but not in the 1st house from it. He sets Ketu aside, noting some influence. (The recording gives Ketu's degree as "20"; the chart has him near 10° Gemini.)
• The lord of the Arudha Lagna is Mercury. He is in Scorpio, a sign of Mars, alone with Sun. He behaves like his company: Pitta.
• Aspects on the Arudha Lagna: Sun 66%, Mercury 73%, Venus 79%, Rahu 95%.
• All three doshas are there: Vata from Rahu, Kapha from Venus, Pitta from Mercury and Sun. The lord himself aspects at nearly three-fourths, and that makes his influence very strong.

Result: mostly Pitta, secondly Vata.

• She comes across as fiery, determined, focused, a fighter, a warrior.
• Rahu adds an anxious, nervous note.
• Rahu is also the manipulator, the deceiver, the cheat.

"Such a strong, powerful aspect will give an image of somebody who is manipulating. In reality, she may not even be thinking in terms of manipulating. She may be thinking this is the right thing to do, let me do this. You never know. But as far as the image is concerned, she creates an image of somebody who manipulates, because Rahu has the highest aspect on Arudha Lagna."

"If you want to see how the world sees somebody, look at Arudha Lagna. If you want to see how the mind actually is, look at Moon. And if you want to see how the body is, look at Lagna."

What Each Reading Is Worth

• The body can be guessed on sight: thin means Vata, muscular and short of hair means Pitta, fat with a lot of hair means Kapha.
• The mind cannot. "The thing on Moon, that is priceless, because you can't really know how the person's mind is unless you actually look at the chart."

Use in Rectification

• For someone born within a window of an hour: the body is visible. Change the Lagna longitude and watch which planets aspect it. Fix it where the aspects agree with the body — for a clear Pitta body, where many Pitta planets aspect Lagna.
• "You can't say it just based on that, but that is one of the factors."

Homework: apply this to a few people you know. If something does not add up, bring the chart to the next class.