Bill Gates (Seattle 1955): Alternative AL 20°20' Sag → Venus+Exalted Saturn in 11th (Better than Standard); Graha Arudha Q&A: Parashara Only Defines A1-A12 + Planet Arudhas (NOT L9/L7 Arudhas); PVNR Meta-Commentary: Arudha = Signal with Noise, Not Complete White Noise

Bill Gates — Alternative Approach (Partial Validation)

Birth data: October 28, 1955, 9:22 PM PST (8 hours west of GMT), Seattle WA (122°19'51"W, 47°36'23"N)
Lagna: Gemini 26°22'. Lagna lord Mercury at 23°21' Virgo. Moon in Pisces.

Standard AL = Virgo

• 11th = Cancer: Saturn full (10th aspect), Rahu full (9th aspect), Moon ½, Venus and Sun ¼ each → 3.
• 12th = Leo: Jupiter occupies; Rahu ¼ → 1¼.
• More gains than losses, but it does not look like the chart of a very rich man. One expects a good number of planets, and strong ones. Rahu and the Moon are not that strong here; exalted Saturn is the only strong planet aspecting.

Alternative AL

• Mercury is 3°01' short of exactly 90° from the lagna.
• From Mercury, 90° on is 23°21' Sagittarius; less 3°01' → 20°20' Sagittarius.
• The 7th house from lagna starts at 26°22' Sagittarius. 20°20' is still in the 6th. No exception.
• Alternative AL = 20°20' Sagittarius.
• Personality: a Virgo reading can be applied to him too, but people treat him as a powerful businessman more than as an intellectual. Sagittarius shows someone dharmic, fiery, charged up.

11th from the alternative AL — cusp 20°20' Libra

• Venus (about 27° Libra) and Saturn (about 28° Libra) occupy it: the lord of the house in mūlatrikoṇa and an exalted planet.
• The Sun, earlier in Libra, falls before the cusp. He is outside the 11th.
• Moon ¾ (8th-house aspect). Jupiter ¼ (3rd-house aspect). Mars does not aspect.
• Total 3.

12th from the alternative AL — cusp 20°20' Scorpio

• Rahu occupies it. Jupiter has ¾ aspect — nearly full by exact reckoning, the teacher says. Moon ½.

Verdict on the 11th

"It is not very convincing. In the case of Dhirubhai Ambani we had all the planets, basically. In this case we do not have the number."

• What it does have: Parāśara names the lord of the sign, an exalted planet, or a benefic occupying or aspecting. Here the lord of the 11th and an exalted planet both sit in it.
• With AL in Virgo, Venus has almost nothing to do with the 11th. Here he is fully involved.
• The teacher calls the 11th from this AL very powerful. The count of planets is still short.

A10 (Rājapada) — does not fit

• 10th cusp 26°22' Pisces. Its lord Jupiter is at about 4½° Leo: the exact 5th house from the cusp plus about 9°.
• From Jupiter: 4½° Sagittarius plus about 9° → about 14° Sagittarius.
• The 1st house from AL begins at 20°20' Sagittarius, so 14° Sagittarius is in the 12th from AL.

"Whatever we saw in the case of Dhirubhai Ambani's chart, you do not see the same thing here. So it does not make sense."

• His career success is a known fact. The Rājapada in the 12th from AL does not explain it.

A9 (Bhāgyapada)

• 9th cusp 26°22' Aquarius. Its lord Saturn at about 28°20' Libra is the exact 9th house from the cusp plus about 2°.
• From Saturn: 28°20' Gemini plus 2° → the very beginning of Cancer.
• That is the 7th from AL, a kendra. The Bhāgyapada is well placed.

In the daśāṁśa

• Mentioned later in the class as the kind of thing that would build confidence: placing the longitude AL in D-10 as a point puts the daśāṁśa Arudha Lagna in Gemini instead of Aries. From Gemini the 5th lord (Venus) is in the 1st and its lord (Mercury) is in the 7th — a rāja yoga between the lagna lord and 5th lord counted from Arudha Lagna.

The teacher's summary and the homework

"I have shown you one example where it makes excellent sense compared to the regular approach, and another example where it makes some sense but still there is some convincing to do."

• Take your own chart and the charts of successful or powerful people — he names Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jagadish Bose.
• Find AL, A10, A9, A5 and so on by signs and by longitudes. Note what each approach explains better.

Graha Arudha Q&A Clarifications

A planet owning two signs

• A student asked: when Mercury's Graha Arudha is taken from Gemini, is there no Arudha from Virgo at all?
• Parāśara's instruction: take the stronger of the two signs and find the Arudha from it.
• The teacher's own take, "not given by Parāśara": a second Graha Arudha from the other sign may also give tangible results of the planet, but one dominates and the other is minor. To see Mercury's tangible results, take the stronger sign.
• The student recalled an earlier remark that two Graha Arudhas can show a dual personality. The teacher: that, or simply different results.
• Caveat: Parāśara gives no rule in that section for judging the stronger sign. The rule he gives later, in another context, is being applied here. Graha Arudhas may need more fine-tuning.

"L9", "L7" are not Parāśara's terms

"L9, L1, L2, L3 is not Parāśara's terminology. It was our terminology."

• Parāśara defines two things only: the Arudhas of houses (AL, A2 … A12) and the Arudhas of planets (of the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and so on). He does not speak of the Arudha of the 12th lord or the 7th lord.
• To see how the 7th lord manifests, take him as a planet. If he is Mercury, take Mercury's Arudha, even if it is reckoned from Mercury's other sign.
• A student's case: judging the father in D-12 from the 9th house. Take the 9th house, A9, the 9th lord, and the 9th lord's Graha Arudha. With Capricorn lagna the 9th is Virgo and its lord is Mercury; Mercury's Graha Arudha may be found from Gemini. That is still how the 9th lord manifests in that chart.

"It is not L9. It is A-Mercury — the Arudha of Mercury."

Graha Arudhas from both signs — people of each lagna

• The software's Graha Arudha view lists two for each two-sign planet — for Jupiter, one from Sagittarius and one from Pisces. It was programmed after a method in one of Sanjay Rath's books (the teacher thinks the Narayana Dasa book).
• The method: to see the influence on you of a person of a given lagna, take the Arudha of that sign's lord reckoned from that sign. For a Sagittarius-lagna person, Jupiter's Arudha from Sagittarius. Where it falls from your lagna shows whether such people bring losses, tension or fortune.
• The book gives a couple of examples, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru.
• "This is not granted by Parāśara." It may come from tradition; it may or may not be perfected knowledge.

PVNR's Meta-Commentary on Arudha Research

Nobody predicts from Arudhas

"I have not seen anybody actually using Arudhas to predict results confidently. We conveniently use Arudhas. When we have already made up our mind based on other factors, then we say, oh, this planet is in A10, or this planet is having argala on A10, so he gives success in career."

• "This is the Arudha, so this is the result" — he has not seen anyone do it with sign-based Arudhas, and cannot do it himself.
• "We are still in a tube light, whereas we need to reach the light of the Sun."

Signal with noise

A student objected: this undoes what was learnt so far, and confidence in the new method is low.

"It is basically signal corrupted with a lot of white noise. It is not complete white noise; there is some signal behind it."

• What students already do is not useless. The lagna, the Sun and the Moon are where they are, perhaps a house more or less. That is why the old method works in some cases and fails in others, including cases where one concluded confidently and it did not come true.
• For readings: use the principles you have confidence in. Test the new approach on a hundred charts; switch when it has earned your confidence, however long that takes.
• Have humility even with good knowledge.
• The teacher lived with this question for almost ten years. When the teaching first went public one position was taken, and he could not tell whether it was taken because it was known to be right or because one has to start with something. Over time he met explanations that did not hold together and stopped relying on them. The class should not need years; he expects to reach a conclusion on this in about a month.

Keep it simple, stay with Parāśara

• The aim from the start was a renaissance in astrology — a better understanding of what the rishis taught.
• BPHS may have some corruptions, but it is mostly authentic.
• Sublime knowledge is simple. Complicating it creates a niche for someone who is selling; for someone trying to understand, it makes the knowledge worthless.
• His conclusion after twelve years: stick to Parāśara, keep it simple, think logically, and something useful comes out — daśās, Aṣṭakavarga, Sudarśana Chakra, whatever the topic.

How old is Parāśara?

• He rejects the view that BPHS was written in the last 1,000–2,000 years, or that Parāśari astrology came from Greece. That chronology was put together by Indologists who wanted everything to fit a biblical time frame and assumed Indian civilisation came from the West; they do not change it even when shown evidence.
• Metre: Vyāsa, Vālmīki and Parāśara use anuṣṭubh almost throughout. Kālidāsa, Varāhamihira, Kalyāṇavarman and Mantreśvara do not; they use lyrical, complex metres. As Kali advances people complicate things. "You are not writing poetry, you are teaching astrology."
• Style: those later authors resemble one another. Parāśara is of a different type.
• It works:

"Whenever I am confident that I have understood Parāśara, I see that it works consistently, whereas I cannot say the same with other things that I have learnt from various other sources, including various classics."

• A rishi with perfect control of the mind can will that his text be understood again at a certain time. The teacher's belief: in the next 100 years or so people will understand BPHS a little better than in the last 2,000.

Do not look down on lesser knowledge

• The parrot astrologer — a parrot pulls out a sheet and the prediction is read from it — is not useless. If you are destined to help someone, you will help them.

"Don't look down upon people who have lesser knowledge than you, because what you are proud of may still be not that superior to somebody who is doing the parrot kind of astrology."

• On the fear of misguiding: suppose the Iṣṭa Devatā read from the 12th from ātmakāraka in navāṁśa is not the right one. Prayer to any deity is not wasted; no effort is wasted. Give the best guidance your knowledge allows. Whether it turns out good guidance or misguidance is not in our hands.