Hierarchical Chart Reading, Ashtakavarga in Kali Yuga & Fine Dasha Subdivisions

Which Chart for Which Time Scale

PVNR's own practice

• The next 2 years, the next 10 years: the natal chart with its dashas and antardashas.
• This week, the next 3 weeks, the next 2 months ("there is a layoff expected in four weeks — should I send my resume out?"; "I have been looking for three months — when will I find a job?"): not the lower subdivisions of the natal dasha. The annual Tithi Pravesha chart and its dashas. Each period is a month or two, so the precision is finer, and the chart tolerates more error in the birth time.
• What happens in a day: the daily chart.

The missing link

"When you look at a particular day, you have to look at it in the context of the surrounding month. When you look at a month, you have to look at it in the context of the surrounding year. When you look at a year, you have to look at it in the context of the whole life of the person."

• There must be methods that link the annual chart to the natal chart, the monthly chart to the annual, the daily chart to the monthly.
• PVNR has not taught any such link. His own understanding of it is incomplete. "That is a totally missing link so far."
• Read as a standalone chart, the daily chart does not give perfect results. It is experimental and does not work consistently.

How accurate must the birth time be

• If the birth time is off by 2 minutes, the Sun–Moon differential at birth is off by a fraction of a degree. The start of any later day is then off by about the same amount — 1 to 3½ minutes. Never by an hour or a day.
• So the daily chart needs the same accuracy as the natal chart, no more. The error of days belongs to the fine levels of Vimshottari (Part 11).
• For divisional charts the time should still be good to about a minute. In a given year or day a divisional lagna can sit on a border and change with 20 seconds.
• The annual chart can be used for weekly judgments with the time off by half a minute, unless something is on a border that year.

Every chart gives its own rectification window

• The moments at which a divisional lagna changes sign are different, and not aligned, for the natal chart, each annual chart and each daily chart.
• One chart may say: the time cannot be more than 1 minute earlier, or the lagna changes and the event makes no sense. An annual chart may say: not more than half a minute later. One daily chart tells nothing; another has the lagna changing within 10 seconds.
• Each known event gives a window. Take the intersection of all the windows and you can rectify with confidence.

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Ashtakavarga in Kali Yuga

A student asks about the numbers shown in the chart display. PVNR defers the subject and gives only this.

• Ashtakavarga looks at the chart not from the rising sign alone but from Moon, Mars, Mercury and every other planet as reference, and counts whether planets are favourable from each. It is a mathematical way of judging how favourable planets are.
• According to Parashara it is the one technique people of Kali Yuga will be able to use.
• In Kali Yuga there may be material success, but knowledge and wisdom are at their lowest. People think in one straight line and cannot get the full picture. They want objective rules that can be computed, with no call on discrimination.
• Ashtakavarga needs the least discrimination and wisdom. It is a very mechanical method. That is why it suits Kali Yuga.

"The words he used were: for the intellectual pygmies of Kali Yuga, this is the right technique."

"For a while, let's assume that we are better than that and try to learn other techniques. And when we fail, we will come back to this."

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Fine Subdivisions of Vimshottari Dasha

The software prints seconds; do not believe them

• PVNR's Mercury dasha runs from 1994 to 2011. Rahu antardasha within it runs from June 2004 to January 2007. For the pattern of a couple of years, an error of a few days does not matter.
• The software prints the start of his Mercury dasha as 29 December 1994, 11:43:12 PM — to the second, as if everything were accurate.

Rough formula for the error

If the birth time is off by m minutes and the first dasha of life is n years long, the dates are off by about m × n / 4 days.

• PVNR's first dasha is Jupiter, 16 years (1959–75, most of it over before birth). A 1-minute error: 1 × 16 / 4 = 4 days. "Not 4 seconds or minutes — 4 days."
• "I was born between 9 and 9:30": 15 minutes of error, so 60 days — two months.
• Unless the chart is well rectified, the dates can easily be off by days, even a couple of months.

"Some people come and tell me, my antardasha started at 5 o'clock yesterday evening. I just laugh, because you can never know for sure."

Six levels

• Vimshottari can be subdivided again and again. Maharshis and elders have taught only up to six levels.
• At the sixth level a period lasts a few hours. On the morning of the class PVNR's sixth-level (deha) dasha of Mars ran from 9:50:58 AM to 1:52 PM.
• At this level it is "totally useless unless everything is totally accurate": the birth time to a fraction of a second, and the ayanamsa too, because a small error there shifts Moon's longitude.

How PVNR rectified his own

• Sanjay Rath told him to rectify the dasha dates accurately first; then he would teach more principles for judging the fine periods.
• PVNR took 20 events of his life — not big events like the year of marriage, but fine ones: the hour of the wedding, the meal two hours later, going home, sleeping, an hour spent driving.
• He moved the dates this way and that until all of them made sense. It took one whole day of trial and error. "You cannot press a magic button."
• The same could be done by changing the birth time by a fraction of a second, but the precision of his longitude calculation did not allow that. He shifts the dates instead: he subtracts 1 day, 4 hours and 17 minutes from every Vimshottari date. With that he can explain events to the hour.
• That correction is for his chart only. He advises students to wait a year or so, until the basics are firm, before attempting this.

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What Is the Moment of Birth?

A student was present when his son was delivered by surgery and noted 1:15 PM. Which instant counts?

PVNR has no conclusive answer. Elders give four definitions, and one view assigns one to each yuga:

1. Shiro-darshana — the head is first seen. Krita Yuga.
2. Bhu-patana — the baby "falls on the ground", fully out of the mother's body. Treta Yuga.
3. Cutting of the umbilical cord — the baby is an independent being. Dwapara Yuga.
4. First breath — the baby breathes on its own, usually when it cries. Kali Yuga, according to some scholars.

• PVNR uses the first breath. Even with a caesarean, the second at which the baby breathes by itself is not in anyone's control.
• But the definition may not be the correct one. Whoever noted the time may not have followed it. And breath cannot be measured exactly; the cry only indicates it.
• So even with a clock good to nanoseconds you cannot be sure.

"People always tell me I was born at 9:30, 9:15, 9:45. It's always a 15-minute multiple, but they swear it's accurate."

In 99% of charts he has to rectify, if all the past events are to be explained honestly.

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Many Techniques, and Prasna

Daily chart or Prasna — which is more prominent?

Neither. There are a hundred ways to look at the same thing.

• A throat infection: the allopathic doctor finds the virus. The Ayurvedic doctor finds accumulated toxins and heat that made the body a breeding ground. Both are right.
• Ten blind men and an elephant: one holds the tail, one the tusk. None knows it is an elephant.
• Each technique shows the picture from one angle — Prasna, the daily Tithi Pravesha chart, transits in Rasi and Navamsa, Ashtakavarga. The daily chart is itself transits frozen at one moment.
• Nothing works perfectly. One technique may succeed 80% of the time, another 60%, another 70%. Combine them and the probability moves closer to 1.
• Do not ask which is more correct. Experiment, and use what suits the way your own mind thinks.

Prasna and natal astrology

• Natal horoscopy is "almost a science": replicable. Apply the principles of annual chart and dasha and in perhaps 70% of cases you get a good sense of what is going on.
• Prasna is more intuitive. In experienced hands it is accurate; in inexperienced hands it is guessing. It is like communicating with the God within. Rules alone do not give the answer — the astrologer has to be a good and intellectually honest person.
• A good astrologer should learn both. PVNR is more comfortable with natal work. Sanjay Rath casts both for every client and correlates them.

How Prasna and the natal chart are used together (gist)

1. In the Prasna chart look at the influences on lagna: who is in it, who aspects it, who is with its lord. Jupiter must influence lagna. Without Jupiter the gods are not willing to answer now. Do not proceed.
2. Then the Prasna Navamsa. Its lagna must link strongly to the querent's natal chart — for a Virgo-lagna native, Virgo rising or Mercury in lagna. If not, again no answer.
3. Then find in the Prasna chart which planet afflicts the matter asked about — for marriage, the houses of marriage. Go back to the natal chart and see what that planet does there.

The natal chart holds many influences. The Prasna chart shows which one is causing the trouble now. Sanjay Rath uses it to pick the planets for remedies. An example is promised for a later class.

Which moment is the Prasna cast for

• Most astrologers, PVNR and his father among them, cast it for the moment the question is asked.
• Sanjay Rath and his gurus cast it for the moment the astrologer takes up the question — that is when he taps the gods for the answer.
• PVNR once watched Sanjay Rath cast a Prasna on a computer whose clock was about 10 hours wrong. It was neither moment. Every criterion was still met — Jupiter in lagna, Navamsa lagna tied to the native's chart — and the reading of the illness and its course was accurate.
• So the difference between the two schools may not matter much. "When God wants to give you an answer, irrespective of other things, you may get an answer."

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