Q&A — Parivartana + Conjunction Order & Software Location Issues

Q&A — Parivartana + Conjunction: Which Applies First?

The question

A student has a chart with two planets together in the 7th house and a parivartana between the 3rd lord and the 7th lord. Two rules taught earlier both apply:

1. Being together: two planets in one house give each other's results. "If I and a classmate share a room and get to know each other well, I will do his chores and he may do mine."
2. Parivartana: if X is in Y's house and Y is in X's house, X acts like Y and Y acts like X. "My house is in his hands, so I better take care of his house and be like him."

Which is applied first?

The answer: no known rule

"My answer is, I don't have an answer. So you are on your own."

• The order of applying the two rules is not clearly given anywhere.
• In charts PVNR knows, with known events in known periods, he sees no pattern: in some the being-together part applies first, in some the exchange applies first.
• It may depend on the order of the periods and sub-periods.
• If you know past events, see which way makes more sense. There may be thumb rules that work; he is not aware of any. The only thumb rule he knows: switch the results.

An exchange needs a trigger

• An exchange — by conjunction or by parivartana — does not run through the whole life. It starts after a certain time.
• Until then Saturn acts like Saturn and Venus like Venus. A particular dasha or antardasha triggers it.
• From that point Saturn acts as if he is Venus — "not fully, but to a large extent" — and Venus as Saturn.
• When both rules apply, whichever was triggered first may decide the order in which results come.

Friendship decides, not benefic or malefic

A student recalls the earlier caveat: planets that do not get along do not exchange.

• If two roommates hate each other, neither does the other's work, though they share a room.
• Sun + Rahu in one house: do not jump to the conclusion that they exchange. Sun will not easily give Rahu's results. Rahu may be keen to give Sun's results, but he will not get the opportunity.
• Student: does it not matter that one is a benefic and the other a malefic? No. A priest and a thug sharing a room, if they like each other, pick up each other's habits and thinking. Two priests who hate each other exchange nothing.
• Saturn + Venus are friendly. If they have an exchange, it will give its results at some point in life.

"Whether they are benefics or malefics doesn't matter. All that matters is whether they are friendly towards each other or not."

Closeness matters for Raja Yoga, not for exchange

• Exchange of results happens even if the two planets are at the two ends of the sign. One word between them is enough.
• A Raja Yoga is different. Yoga means being together: two planets put their resources together and accomplish something.
• Quadrants show the effort of this life. Trines show the blessings and luck carried from past lives. When a quadrant lord and a trine lord join, the two agendas collapse into one.
• For that the planets must interact strongly. At the two ends of a sign the Raja Yoga is not fully functional and gives only marginally good results.

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Q&A — Town Names, Coordinates and Accuracy in the Software

Two towns of the same name

A student finds two Washingtons listed in one US state.

• The US atlas in the software is an official database from a US government agency. If it shows two towns of one name in a state, there are two.
• Big cities are not duplicated within a state. Smaller towns sometimes are.
• The software cannot help. Ask the person which one: the nearest big city, the neighbouring towns, or the street address, and look it up on a map site that gives longitude and latitude.
• Within one US state the error from picking the wrong one is usually 5–10 minutes of birth time. Across states the rising sign and degree are totally different.
• In a large Indian state it is worse. One common town name occurs three or so times in Andhra Pradesh, in districts at opposite ends of the state. The wrong one can cost 15 minutes — unacceptable, because Navamsa and other divisional lagnas are very likely to change.

Villages that are not in the atlas

• For the US the software and the professional ACS Atlas hold the same data, from the same source.
• For the rest of the world the software gathers data from various official sources and holds about 2 million towns — more than the ACS Atlas, especially for India, where it includes small villages.
• Some villages will still be missing. Use the nearest big town, or estimate ("40 miles north-west of Bangalore").
• A professor once worked out his daughter's birthplace by trigonometry from the town centre, driving distances and the radius of the Earth. Today a mapping site or Google Earth gives coordinates to a fraction of a degree. If you know the hospital you can get them to seconds of arc.

Do not get carried away by one parameter

"If you have the longitude and latitude very accurately, you may think, yes, I have a very accurate chart, but the problem is the time may be inaccurate."

There are many parameters. Perfecting one while another is loose gains nothing.

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Closing Q&A — Is Any Lagna the Best?

A student asks whether some rising signs are better than others.

• PVNR first jokes: the best is Virgo (his own), the second Pisces, the third open to whoever bribes him.
• No serious astrologer ranks lagnas. One modern author's "Systems Approach" does: it calls Gemini the best lagna because under its own definition of malefics no planet is malefic for Gemini. That author has Gemini lagna.
• PVNR normally does not comment on other astrologers' methods. This one he tried sincerely: he bought six of the books and studied the system for seven or eight months, with a statistical study. His finding: it explains any past event with a neat logic, but for prediction every result is possible. He knows of no replicable technique in it. Some of its followers predict well for a while through their own luck and intuition.
• "It's very easy to convince people in Kali Yuga."

Nothing is good or bad in itself

• No nakshatra, house or sign is good or bad per se. Virgo people are intelligent, analytical, logical — and blunt and undiplomatic. Libra people are balanced and diplomatic and lack other things.
• The rising sign is one factor. Look at the planets influencing it.
• Good depends on what you want. For an analytical person, Gemini and Virgo. For a sattvic person, Pisces. That does not make the others bad.
• The earlier statement that Upapada in Taurus makes marriage difficult is a statement of fact, not of value. Whether that is good or bad depends on the person.
• Good and bad vary with desha, kala, patra — the country and culture, the age, and the class and background of the person.

"Astrological principles tell you what various things are. Whether they are good or bad depends on the person."