BPHS Ch.35 Akriti Completion: 4-Sign Weapon Yogas — Yupa(1H=Personality), Sara(4H=Arrow Focus), Shakti(7H=Go-Getter People), Danda(10H=Karmayogi Persistence); 7-Sign Support — Nauka(4H Center=Clarity), Kuta(7H=People Gang), Chhatra(10H=Status Umbrella), Chapa(1H=Character Foundation); Chakra(Odd Houses=11H Culminates=Cycle of Gaining); Samudra(Even Houses=12H=Ocean Giver)

Four-Sign Weapon Yogas (Yupa, Sara, Shakti, Danda)

The class resumes at verse 13 of the chapter (Kamala and Vapi were finished last time). The verse is not clear on the recording. The words the teacher glosses: chatur-bha-stha = stationed in four signs; lagnāt = from lagna; turya = the 4th; mada = the 7th house; madhya = the middle of the sky, the 10th house.

Pattern: all seven planets inside four consecutive houses that begin at a kendra — from one quadrant to the next. Only the seven planets count, not the nodes. A house inside the span may be empty: three planets in the 1st, none in the 2nd, three in the 3rd and one in the 4th is still the yoga.

• A student asks whether these are subsets of the graha mālikā yoga. Yes — they are special cases of it.
• Parashara says nothing about what these yogas give. He meant the results to be worked out from the names, and the names are four weapons.
• Because they are weapons, in all four the person gets some important work done. Nobody picks up a weapon and hits people; the weapon shows how the work gets done.

What the four quadrants stand for

• 1st — who you are.
• 4th — peace of mind, comfort, and whether you have a direction in life.
• 7th — motivation, desire, how charged you are to do something.
• 10th — how you strive, how you get things done; karma, the work you do.

"The source of the 4 houses is the important one that decides the essential result of the yoga."

Danda and Sara compared

• Danda (stick): you need patience. You keep hitting and do not give up until the other person loses. The 10th house starts it, so the person just keeps working, working, working. "The person is patient and he just keeps executing his work. He is a Karmayogi."
• Sara (arrow): you do not keep hitting. You are at a distance, maybe unseen. You wait for the right time, take aim and release. The 4th house starts it, so the person has a good direction in life and is clear about what needs to be done.

"It's not like somebody is near you, you just panic and you keep hitting the person. You know exactly what to hit. You try to hit the bullseye with the arrow."

Yupa

The 1st house starts it. The person has certain talents and gets things done because of who he is — the very strength of the personality.

Shakti

• The 7th house starts it. It is not about knowing exactly what to do (Sara) and not about patiently working on (Danda). It is a serious intention: "I want to do it, let me do it."
• The weapon: a spear can be thrown, but it is bigger than an arrow and hard to put on a point. It can also hit a man standing next to you. It is a medium-range, versatile weapon — not long range like the arrow, not short range like the stick.
• A student adds that the 7th is also the house of interactions with people, so that is how such a person gets things done. The teacher accepts it: "Excellent."

"People with Shakti Yoga are go-getters."

Caveat: all planets between the 7th and the 10th does not by itself make a go-getter. See the lagna lord, the 3rd lord, Mars and the rest of the chart. The yoga only states the tendency.

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Seven-Sign Support Yogas (Nauka, Kuta, Chhatra, Chapa)

Verse 14. The words the teacher glosses: lagnāt saptama-ga = gone into the seven houses from lagna; naukā = ship; kūṭa = gang, group; chatra = umbrella; chāpa = arc of a circle, hence a bow.

Pattern: all seven planets inside seven consecutive houses that begin at a kendra.

• Nauka is a superset: whoever has Yupa or Sara also has Nauka. These seven-sign yogas are more generic and found in more charts; the four-sign ones are rarer.
• Chāpa in Telugu means fish. That has nothing to do with the Sanskrit word.

The common theme: support

The four names of the previous verse were all weapons, so these four must also share a theme. Parashara would not randomly mix a ship, a gang, an umbrella and a bow. The meanings have to be stretched a little until something common appears. The students get there:

• A ship protects you from sinking in water. Nauka does not mean the person owns ships.
• An umbrella gives shade from the sun — relief when you are getting burnt.
• A gang is people supporting you.
• A bow gives no obvious support, so chāpa is taken as an arch — the arc that holds up a structure.

Why the middle house

Students first try to tie each yoga to its starting house. The teacher proposes the middle one: if all planets lie between the 1st and the 7th, they sit on either side of the 4th, and the 4th becomes the focal point.

• Kuta — 7th. The 7th is your interactions and public relations. Support from a gang fits.
• Chhatra — 10th. An umbrella is also a sign of position. The labourer carrying loads sweats in the sun; the man supervising him does nothing and has an umbrella over his head. Kings have the chhatra — Chhatrapati. The 10th is the work you do in society and your status in it.
• Nauka — 4th. The 4th is your vision, clarity, direction, and mental peace. "You don't basically sink in the trouble, you keep afloat like a ship keeps people afloat" — because you know where you are going and feel in charge.
• Chapa — 1st. Lagna is the talent of the person and the stability of the personality. That is the arch holding everything up.

A student asks why Parashara gave them in the "other" order. He did not. He only said "seven houses from lagna", "seven houses from the 4th", and so on; he never said which house matters. Taking the middle house is the teacher's own reading:

"I am basically speculating based on the meanings so that there is a consistent meaning and consistent philosophy behind the names. Because the only clue he has is name and the grouping."

"In the previous case where you have a yoga based on 4 signs, the starting house seems to be important, whereas in this set of combinations where there are 7 signs involved, the middle house seems to be important."

Kalasarpa Yoga is a different thing

• A chart with Kalasarpa Yoga may also have one of these four, but neither is a sub-case of the other.
• In Kalasarpa the seven houses need not start at a kendra — they may run from the 2nd to the 8th, or the 3rd to the 9th. Then none of these yogas forms.
• These yogas are for the seven planets only and do not involve Rahu and Ketu.

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Alternating-Sign Yogas (Chakra, Samudra)

Verse 15. The words the teacher glosses: from lagna, in signs one apart (alternating signs); ṣaḍ-bha-ga = gone into six signs.

Chakra Yoga

• All planets only in the odd houses: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.
• Chakra = wheel.
• An odd-looking combination but by probability not so rare. The teacher has no example at hand.

Samudra Yoga

• All planets only in the even houses: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12.
• Samudra = ocean.

What they mean

The class tries several ideas: gain against travel; a wheel as repetition, what comes goes; the ocean as depth and calm (the teacher: go and look at the waves — a tsunami kills tens of thousands, so the ocean is not calm); the wheel as travel inside one's own land and the ocean as crossing continents; the wheel as the cycle of birth and death ending in the house of gains, the ocean as knowledge ending in the 12th.

On the travel reading the teacher says it is tenable, but doubts that something so fundamental is about something so specific. And:

"The bottom line is I also don't know the perfect answer. We are speculating here."

His own proposal:

• With six houses there is no middle house. The key is either the first or the last of the pattern: the 1st or 11th for Chakra, the 2nd or 12th for Samudra.
• One group went by the starting house, the next by the middle house, so here the last house may decide: the 11th and the 12th.
• Chakra — 11th, gains. The focus of life is making gains, and gains are never enough. Once you gain, you invest and gain more. "It is basically a cycle of wanting more and getting more."
• Samudra — 12th, giving. The ocean stands for vastness and completeness, and it is a great giver — it holds wealth of every kind. The focus is magnanimity. The yoga culminates in the 12th, the house of giving. Much money may come, but the person spends it, gives to others and helps others.

A student asks whether the giver is then the spiritual one and the other the materialist.

"Spiritual or not, let's not go there. Again, we are being too specific."

Keep it to this: one keeps running after more and more; the other is a magnanimous giver.

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How These Readings Were Reached

• Parashara gives only the name of each yoga and the group it belongs to. He organised the yogas in groups of two, three, four and seven and did not mix them at random. The name and the grouping are the only clues.
• The readings in Parts 1–3 are the teacher's reasoning from those clues, done in class with the students. He says so each time.
• The key house, group by group:
  • four-sign weapon yogas — the starting house;
  • seven-sign support yogas — the middle house;
  • Chakra and Samudra — the last house.
• For Chakra and Samudra in particular: "Unless we have some real case studies, we cannot really say anything confidently."
• The class stops at verse 15. The next class starts from verse 16.

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